Unchain the melody: building business for an age of wisdom

Be more sustainable, more purposeful, be more regenerative, care more, do better, be better, try harder, keep pushing, be…well just be… more.

Frankly, the noise can be deafening.

As creatives and small business owners, must we also - on top of all we have to juggle in our lives -  be the standard bearers for lofty visions of building better business?

Well yes, we do, if we are all to enjoy ‘peace, dignity, equality on a healthy planet’ as the UN quite reasonably posits.

In fact we need to drastically change the way we think, organise, create and do business in this  fragmented world,  where our current mechanistic systems and societies only exacerbate the diminishing connection we have to ourselves and to our planet.

With complex problems to solve, and pathways seemingly riddled with potholes to navigate, building a business can be daunting, bewildering, and a wrecking ball  emotionally.

But many of us have tapped into an infinitely rewarding path,  hidden just out of plain sight; a path that is  revealed  with merely a dash of optimism, some inner listening and a microshift of mind.

“The mystery of life isn’t a problem to solve, but a reality to experience”,  famously wrote Frank Herbert, author of the legendary Dune.

Rather than piling on expectation to our already Sisyphean burden, the one giant leap we can all take in order to shift away from the ashes of our increasingly obsolete, self-serving propositions, begins with imagining a new reality for ourselves, for our species and for our planet. To have the imagination and courage to write a new narrative, and to trust in the winding path that our new story reveals.

Energy flows where attention goes.

Every thought, emotion and decision we make carries energy, makes an impact. Our brains are hard-wired to facilitate those aspects of consciousness that we choose to focus on, with neurons hastily working to forge new connections, once our mind is set.

When we rekindle that which makes us human -  our creativity and imagination, our vision, our energy, our empathy -  when we learn to listen to our intuition and amplify our uniqueness, we begin to open up and see the infinite possibilities before us.

As we notice that, as like the natural world, we as humans also ebb and flow in cycles of creation and decay, we start to loosen our obsessive hold on - or fear of -  processes and the outcomes.  We embrace failure as part of a bigger, regenerative  cycle.  A time to nurture, a time to create, a time to reap the fruits of our labour and a time to hibernate. Patterns as old as the dawn of time.

Humans have an incredible power to learn and to adapt. As we open up our connection to ourselves, to each other, and to nature, we see more clearly that our separateness from nature is an illusion. That intrinsic growth comes from within.  We see that to be fulfilled and prosperous we need to live with nature, not off it and on it.   As this is revealed we will build more businesses that are inherently and strategically anchored in evolutionary design based principles.

Larger  corporations are increasingly susceptible to notions of well meaning but inherently arduous transformation -  being easily diverted by the introspective rabbit holes that pop up with short term reporting rhythms. As smaller, more nimble,  businesses with great inner power,  we have a window of advantaged opportunity to found and drive genuinely innovative and regenerative economy.

We have birthed so much of our current world with fear and self serving notions. Now increasingly large numbers of us wish to write a new, more hopeful human story; to build meaningful business that benefits all, not just the privileged few.

The clarion call to reclaim our humanness is now urgent and strong, yet sings not from place of ego, fragility and fear, but from a place of respect, vision and wisdom; an eternal knowing that has finally made it through its long, long journey into the light.

If we imagine it, we will build it.

It’s time.

Hilary is a problem solver, idea generator and artist who, after spending 30 years in senior strategy and insights leadership roles, founded Sundial Studios  to support herself, others and organisations to expand their creator energy and connect back to themselves, to others and to nature; ultimately so that more whole brained decisions are made by us all, for us all.

Note: The main body of this article was written in March 2024 for the inaugural issue of a magazine, that is still percolating.