Articles

We’re all in the same business.

The business of belief.

Strip away the products and services and it’s what business really is.

A playground for the exchange, trade and transfer of belief and conviction.

And the experiences that follow.

We start businesses based on beliefs and assumptions.

We buy products and services because we believe they’ll give us what we want.

Or help us avoid what we don’t want.

We trade time and money for what we believe offers a fair or necessary exchange.

Sales and marketing are 100% about belief.

Inviting others to believe something new.

To believe they need what’s offered.
To believe now is the time.
To believe the cost of not acting is greater than the cost of acting.

Nobody buys what we sell.

They buy their belief in an outcome.

And in a feeling.

All of this is obvious enough.

But what’s often missed is this:

It’s not the beliefs of others that matter.

It’s our beliefs that do.

It’s what we assume and believe that determines our results.

Thankfully, our beliefs aren’t hidden or subconscious.

They’re on display.

Our world is the reflection of what we believe.

What we prioritise and do.
What feels reasonable or unreasonable.
What we pay attention to and react to.
What we’re trying to overcome.
What appears realistic, possible or impossible.

They all reflect our beliefs.

Business is beliefs made visible.

Ours. We can only know ours.

Which is why trying to change results (or others) without noticing belief is like arguing with a reflection in the mirror.

When we see this; effort softens.

Not because we stop caring or are less ambitious.

But because we stop fighting effects and treating symptoms.

What’s left isn’t more strategies, tactics or shiny new solutions but something far more valuable:

The freedom of noticing what we’re standing in.

Because from here, we see business doesn’t need fixing or improving.
Nor do we.

We see beliefs aren’t something we need to change, reprogram or wrestle with.

Although I once bought and sold that belief!

When we recognise we experience through belief, orientation naturally reorganises.

Beliefs fall into line.

Experiences follow.

There’s a story about a butterfly I heard recently.

A man sees it struggling to emerge from its cocoon.

Wanting to help, he cuts the cocoon open.

The butterfly emerges and survives.
But its wings never develop.
It can’t fly.

The man’s intervention wasn’t cruelty.
It was misunderstanding.

He’d assumed the struggle was the problem.
When in fact, the struggle was the process.

Most advice given to entrepreneurs comes from a similar misunderstanding.

It assumes struggle means something’s wrong.

That it’s a sign something needs to be fixed, improved or optimised.

So the advice focuses on some form of intervention.

Clarity
Strategy
Habits / Behaviours
Mindset
Something to improve or to help the self that’s struggling.
In other words: what to do to become a much better caterpillar.

And to be fair, a lot of this advice works.

Up to a point.

It helps us crawl faster.
It helps us survive on the branch.
It may help us reach much higher branches.

But it never leads to flight.

The entrepreneurs and business owners I work with aren’t in need of rescue or self-improvement.

Many are very successful.

They’ve worked hard.
They’ve pushed through.
They’ve endured the pressure, setbacks and heartaches.

And at some point, something has become clear.

Endlessly working on the caterpillar isn’t working.

This moment is pivotal and yet it’s so often misinterpreted.

For many, the response is to invest in a new caterpillar improvement initiative.

But what if the cocoon is perfectly doing its job?

Because it is.

Struggle and striving and difficulties have an intelligence to them.
They don’t exist to punish us or toughen us up.

They don’t exist to make us more resilient or better at striving.

They exist to exhaust a false identity.

As long as we believe we are the caterpillar, one way or another life will keep inviting us to outgrow that belief.

Sometimes gently.
Sometimes not.

The problem is not that we haven’t improved ourself or our business enough.

The problem is we’ve been trying to perfect something we were never meant to remain.

We were never meant to become a better caterpillar.

We were meant to discover the caterpillar was never who we truly are.

When this is recognised, focus re-aligns by itself.
Work becomes easier, cleaner, simpler and authentic.
Decisions become easy.
And realising what we’d love stops feeling like constant self-management.

Flight isn’t something we have to earn.
It happens naturally when we stop interfering with the process.

Until then, no amount of advice on how to crawl better will satisfy what knows it was born to fly.

If this resonates, I’ve expanded on this perspective in a short manifesto here.

I’ve just returned from a trip to Cambodia.

We were in Siem Reap Province where a large percentage of the population live on an income of around $80 a month.

About £2 a day.

This is not the average.

Some live on less. Some on more.

Median reported salaries are as high as $200 – $250 a month.

But you get the picture.

Relative to our income, it’s very little.

I’ve been to Cambodia before.

What I was moved by then and again on this trip was this.

Most of the people are rich.

They’re happy.

They value family, friendship, kindness, honesty, generosity, helping others and being happy above objective wealth.

This isn’t to romanticise hardship.

Poverty is real and challenging but what struck me is that, for the most part, they live with a deep recognition.

The know peace, happiness, fulfilment and freedom don’t come from money or achievements or from anything ‘out there’.

They know life is only now and that resisting now is what clouds our innate peace and joy.

They’re not out to get, they’re out to give.

Even if all they’ve got to give is a smile and a warm hello, they give freely.

When I visit Cambodia, I’m also reminded of what I hold to be one of the saddest things…

To be objectively wealthy but starving for happiness, peace and more time.

That’s real poverty.

Because the truth is our peace and happiness are never absent or missing.

They’re just being overlooked.

Here’s a simple experiment to test this for yourself.

Firstly……..Time.

Consider that it’s always now. Time is simply how we track movement.

Time is a concept. We can’t find it.

All is now.

Past and future are held in now.

Our entire life experience is movement in now.

Now, notice that worry, doubt and fear all need a timeline in order to exist.

Without our belief in time, they dissolve.

Take a moment in now to really contemplate this. It can be quietly transformational.

Now, fully allow whatever’s here now.

Whether it’s your thoughts, feelings and emotions, a mental narrative, something someone has said or done or circumstances; be an unconditional yes to all of it. Fully allow all of it.

Resist nothing.

Hold onto nothing.

Notice the effects.

Notice what makes itself known when you’re not resisting life in the only ‘time’ life ever is, ever has been and ever will be.

That’s true wealth.

That’s life itself – it’s you.

The silent, timeless, peaceful, quietly joyful background within which all the movement takes place.

The awareness that’s always here now, which is never absent and which money can’t buy.