“[Salmon] hatch in a gravel bed in a stream somewhere deep in the wilderness, wiggle up into water current and eventually enter an overwhelmingly vast ocean. After years of swimming with whales and avoiding sharks, they travel sometimes thousands of miles back to that same little stream in that same wilderness where they reproduce and die.”
Source
No maps, no guides, and no GPS units, but they manage the trip.
How?
Through interacting with the earth’s magnetic field (and smell, but this isn’t an article about salmon migration).
They solve the problem of getting back to the place they’ve only been once, by interacting with what is fundamental…in this case, the earth’s magnetic field.
Dr. Tony Nader and garten CEO Michel Heinrich discussed in a recent garten Infinity Speaker Series interview how consciousness is highly practical to businesses wanting to be effective.
With medical and scientific degrees from Harvard and MIT, Dr. Nader isn’t the average meditation teacher. He explains how an understanding of consciousness can propel businesses because it is how to cultivate a workforce with the clarity of vision to be truly effective.
Why Should Business Leaders Care About Consciousness?
The subject of consciousness is fascinating, but that’s not why it’s relevant to leaders.
Instead, it’s because understanding consciousness is how you are able to interact with reality on a more fundamental level. The more closely your effort and innovation are applied to reality, the more valuable your company’s solutions will be.
What does it mean to say that consciousness is fundamental?
Saying that consciousness is fundamental is saying that our physical world is an expression of consciousness as opposed to them being 2 separate things or that consciousness is a product of the physical world.
It’s something like saying that steam, ice, and liquid water are all H2O. If you think that water is only liquid or only ice, you will not be able to see the bigger picture and you’ll make mistakes because of it.
If you see H2O as fundamental, you can see that steam, ice, and liquid are all expressions of the same thing.
The video at minute 10 discusses this:
Being effective comes from clarity of vision;
Clarity of vision comes from clarity of thinking;
Clarity of thinking comes from the source of thought;
The source of thought comes from deep within us which is consciousness.
Stress – the normal workplace reality – reduces the field of view. Stress restricts what can be considered. Practically speaking, stress reduces broad comprehension and long-term vision.
Watch this famous video about the monkey business illusion to experience what happens with a narrowed focus.
Just like you missed what are – in hindsight – obvious things, stress reduces focus to just what is thought to be the important details from the stressful standpoint. It’s remarkable what can be missed in that state.
When a workforce is in a state of stress, physiology dictates that important pieces of the picture will be missed. Imagine what that means for your company…
Wellbeing is a sustainable competitive advantage
The most valuable problems to solve are the issues most fundamental to life on earth. When you cultivate a workforce that is more squarely dealing with reality, you will have more people who can discern between what matters and what is a distraction.
If humans were salmon without valuing the reality of the magnetic field, we would devise all sorts of ways to navigate. The trouble is, the starting point would be away from reality – any of our solutions would be subpar. Move back to reality – sensing the magnetic field – and we can now ignore all of those clever innovations that we had to develop simply because we weren’t starting from reality.
Dr. Nader explains that with meditation, people are able to experience – not just know about – this greater field of consciousness or awareness. The ability to tap into greater awareness is available, but its value in the business world has only begun to be realized – probably because we are only just awakening from the trance of hustle culture.
Supporting workplace wellbeing is about more than being nice or having programs that attract good hires. Wellbeing is a sustainable competitive advantage.
More about garten:
Business leaders committed to wellbeing in their own lives and in their companies bring in garten to support mind-body-environment wellbeing. Our bread and butter is setting up amazing food and kitchen programs that save your internal team time and stress while fueling your people with better-for-you food. We’re also expanding our offering of resources like on-demand yoga that can support your mission. If you see the ROI on investing in wellbeing, get started here. It’s easy and we are friendly.
To your wellbeing!