The concept of harmony has always been present with me. I was much more aware of the "disharmony" in my life growing up. The word HARMONY itself didn't enter my thoughts until about 4 years ago.
The "turning point" from disharmony, if there was one, was when Amy Farr said to me in 1990, "With everything you say and do, you either give life or take life away". Until that moment, the concept of disharmony followed me. I had lived all of my life, figuratively, in someone else's home. I wanted to get my arms around this feeling and this idea of harmony, but I couldn't.
When I heard that quote, it was the seed of a new way of thinking for me that started me down this path.
I remember nearly 15 years ago - the thought that followed me was that I had to get my "contentment" and my happiness from my reality, and my ambition and my drive from my goals and dreams. I understood that there had to be two points of reference, and that when we tried to conceive our emotions from a single place, it left us lazy or wishful, either satisfied without a fire in our belly, or fired up but focused on the deficiencies of our lives. At the time though, the visual in my mind was a graph with two ilnes, one being reality, one being dreams and across the horizontal axis was time.
The concept of "atom of the moment", the two circles, started around 2010. The thought that we had to "Freeze Time" and focus only on the moment. The idea that it was only in the moment, where we constructed or destructed our path.
Almost exactly a year ago, as I prepared to share the concept of Harmony in front of a large group, I presented to a small group of CEOs - and they were confused. So, I wrote them the following message, and things started to get a little clearer...
Friends:
The gist of my message is this:
Harmony is achieved intentionally in our lives and in our businesses by being mindful or each and every moment.
Harmony is achieved by choosing in each moment to embrace and acknowledge actively and with great sincerity and clarity the real value and the unique gifts of the people and the situation.
Harmony is achieved by actively expanding each and every moment in the direction of our aspirations, our vision, and our dreams.
Perhaps these thoughts confuse things more than clarifies them.
My passion is NOT centralized in knowing yourself, thought that is certainly a part. I have a passion for harmony. I believe that when lives are in harmony, you can feel it, you can sense it, just like when you listen to a great piece of music, or see a great piece of art.
Harmony is active.
It requires movement.
Harmony can be achieved in every moment, and then acknowledged over time, and it can also be lost in an instant.
Harmony happens when you acknowledge everything in the moment, and you find the next step that builds and plays elegantly on the one before.
Harmony requires compromise, you can't play whatever note you feel like playing next… you must play the note that fits, the note that needs to be heard, the note that builds on the note before.
I was thinking yesterday that we tend to think of life and business as a race with many finish lines. We are encouraged to set goals constantly. And, I get that. But, setting a vision and a direction is so much more important than setting goals.
Setting a vision and constantly moving towards it creates harmony and success and peace of mind.
I see life more as a poem full of great verses, than as race full of finish lines. Sure, goals help you define the pace, but goals are nothing, in and of themselves. Think of it this way… who cares what the final annual sales and profit for any given year? How does that matter? Don't we care much more about what the sales TREND is over last 4 quarters and what we forecast it to be this quarter? It's not about the goals, which are a point in time, it is about the growth, the flow, the trajectory... and the next moment.
When we don't have conversations that need to be had...
When we choose not to say things that are frustrating us...
When we withhold data from our teams...
When we pretend in any way that what IS, ISN'T, we are failing to embrace the moment, and we are building up distrust, and hesitation, and we start to create disharmony, and we start to feel it.
And, others start to feel it.
Harmony begets harmony, and disharmony begets disharmony.
The longer you go pretending things are what they are not, the longer you go not addressing business issues that really should be addressed, dealing with situations that need to be addressed… you start creating and feeling disharmony.
When you feel like you don't want to wake up, or when you don't want to talk to someone, or when you don't want to deal with something…. Those are massive and clear signs of disharmony… and those are moments that you have to act on and address immediately.
If you choose to be passionately committed to harmony in life and in business, you deal constantly with difficult situations as quickly as you can, embracing the gifts of all that is there in every moment, not because its easy, but because it allows for the best possible outcome, and for peace of mind.
Along the way in business we will occasionally terminate people, or get rid of vendors or have to stop efforts and initiatives that need to be stopped – but if we approach each of those moments by fully valuing all that they bring to us first, we are able to come to conclusions more elegantly, and so often with great consensus and trust.
When someone has to be terminated, you can so often help them come to that conclusion, or at least feel very comfortable that you sincerely gave them every opportunity. You cannot feel like you gave them every opportunity, unless you engaged in the discussion believing in their gifts. The question then becomes, are their gifts adequately suited for the role.
I think the whole conversation about fight or flight is flawed.
Science also teaches us that we are constantly, as people, looking for validation of our worth. We need it, as much, or more than we need our next meal.
That being the case, both fight or flight when it comes to situations with people questions worth. It says that our minds will look to either FIGHT or LEAVE, neither of which instill confidence or give life.
I have read, and very much believe, that also in our brains, when faced with a situation, we can choose to EMBRACE.
Fight, flight or embrace.
Imagine, if in every situation, we conditioned ourselves – to EMBRACE FIRST. Embrace first the people that are in the moment… acknowledge them for their effort and their intent… acknowledge the business for the core competency that it has… see what is right in the moment, before looking for what is not…
It starts to change everything…
You can achieve "success" without achieving harmony, but you can't achieve happiness without harmony, you can't achieve peace of mind without harmony… you can't create an environment around you that people gravitate to without harmony…
I see no correlation between wealth and happiness… but I see a great correlation between people who live their lives consciously or subconsciously achieving harmony and people who live in peace and happy…
Be passionate about harmony, be conscious of each and every moment… and you will feel gratitude… and you will be energized… and finish lines will come and go… and you will smile deeply because they won't matter… because you'll know better… you'll be winning and celebrating each and every moment along the way.
THANKS – and let me know, does this make it clearer, or does this confuse it further? Have a great day!
And, so it goes... and so it evolves...
Nestor Benavides