Exercises like my last post where I reflect on important life lessons identify our values and what is most meaningful to us. It’s a timeless personal and leadership principle that I call “spirit and meaning.”
Spirit and meaning are a missing link in many lives, teams and organizations. Many with material prosperity live in spiritual poverty. That is what drives the growth of meaning seekers in society. We want to go beyond more, more, more success and meaning. We want to make a difference.
Our work and our lives become more meaningful the more they are in harmony with who we are and touch the core of why we exist. We are spiritual beings having a human experience. When we feel the most love, passion or energy, we are most alive.
In Leading with soul: an unusual journey of the mindmanagement consultants and professors, Lee Bolman and Terrence Deal (co-authors of the classic Corporate cultures – the 1982 book that popularized the idea of organizational culture) conclude: “The signs point to mind and spirit as the essence of leadership.”
Dead Leader Walking: soulless, loveless and meaningless
In his book, The greatest wonder in the worldOg Mandino tells a story about his encounters with Simon Potter, a modest and learned wise man. In one conversation, Og and Simon discuss the miracle people can perform in their own lives by bringing their dead spirits back to life. Simon explains the need for this miracle: “Most people are already dead, to varying degrees. Somehow they have lost their dreams, their ambitions, their desire for a better life. They have given up their fight for self-esteem and compromised their great potential. They have settled for a life of mediocrity, days of despair and nights of tears. They are nothing more than living deaths, confined to cemeteries of their choice.” We need to fear death less and fear an empty life more.
The culture of a family, team, or organization is “the way we do things around here.” A toxic culture is loveless, passionless and meaningless. It has a weak heart and a sick soul. A healthy culture is concerned with doing meaningful things by being purposeful. It has a high energy spirit.
Leaders make work, families, communities, or life in general purposeful. I can only do that when I am filled with purpose. Spirit and meaning begin in the leader. It’s an inside job. They can only be developed from within.
Meaningful life or meaningless work
When tackling the hustle and bustle, organizations can lose their heart and soul. Without realizing it, or ever intending to, they can lose their deeper sense of meaning. Goals, plans, reports and figures take over. In the harsh glare of sober analysis, soft “sensitive, sensitive” emotions such as spirit and meaning evaporate like dew in the morning sun.
It’s like trying to understand what makes people laugh. The analysis can help us understand what is funny, but as we see with an AI-generated joke, the humor is now as dead as a dissected frog.
Regardless of our position in an organization, leadership means doing what we can to change that. We can be part of the solution, not part of the problem. But we must ensure that we do not become victims of a heartless organization with a hollowed-out soul.
It’s too easy to find ourselves numbed by jobs that aren’t fun but actually feel like work. Profit, wealth, or career success can become ends in themselves rather than a means to fulfill our deeper, more meaningful destiny.
If we are not in touch with our own hearts and souls, we may not realize how our life energy is slowly being depleted by work that does not nourish our spirit and give us richer meaning. We can become hollow victims as our lifeblood is sucked from us.
But I can’t blame ‘them’. I may not choose to be the victim of a toxic team, family, or organization, but I do choose whether I am a victim.
Spirit check
Here is a checklist to help you assess your level of mind and purpose. If you can’t answer every question with a passionate – or at least a warm – yes, maybe it’s time for some deeper soul searching.
- I have not ‘sold out’, but have remained true to my own soul.
- I feel like my life has meaning and that I am making a difference.
- I help build a healthy culture at work.
- I build a healthy culture at home.
- I continually explore my inner space to deepen my mind.
- I love key people in my life by helping them grow and achieve their dreams.
- My work expresses my life purpose.
- I have a deep sense of spiritual connection in my life.
- I am aware of the present and recognize when I am living in the past or the future.
- I catch myself worrying or feeling guilty and name the emotion before it becomes overwhelming.
- I don’t believe everything I think.
- Quiet solitude and personal reflection time are a regular part of my life.
We may find Einstein’s conclusions too extreme, but he gets to the heart of life and leadership: ‘What is the meaning of human life, or for that matter the life of any being? You ask: Is there any point in asking this question? I answer: The man who regards his own life and that of his fellow creatures as meaningless is not only unhappy, but hardly fit for life.”
