“The true nature of spirituality and meaning is found in the nitty-gritty of life –
not rarefied or exalted, but at our disposal in responding to life’s everyday,
ordinary challenges”
Our spiritual beliefs may be filled with doubt, confusion, flux, change. This is
not a weakening spirituality. For as long as we consider, think, review and
assimilate and search for the deeper meaning of our world, we are
strengthening our spiritual self. It is never too late to grow.
For too many people their spiritual or religious life is kept simply for the rituals
of life’s big events: birth, marriage and death – the hatching, matching and
despatching of life. But spirituality can offer us ways to cope with our
everyday frustrations. It turns the nitty-gritty into a training ground for a
better version of ourselves. When what we have accumulated and achieved
no longer fulfils us nor inspires us, then we need to consider our Spiritual
Evolution – the development of ourselves outwards in service to others and
the world. It is here that we will find the happiness we have been searching
for.
We all consider ourselves to be “above average” in being kind and loving. We
can’t all be right.
Love is not just an emotion. It is the cornerstone of human evolution.
Like the tree that falls in the forest when no one hears it, love travels like
sound waves, a fundamental part of the fabric of the universe. Like sound
arriving in the human ear creates the sensation of sound, love’s waves are
sensed as the human emotion of love. But love exists without us.
For too long we have considered spirituality to be a private matter – something
we should not talk about to others. But as research has shown spirituality to
be a fundamental pillar of good health, it must be considered in every aspect
of public life: education, healthcare, architecture and town planning,
government and the workplace. Spirituality then is deeply personal, but it is
not a private matter.
Parenting ~ “the opportunity to nurture a seed before we know what it will
grow to be” (Ira Progoff). But sometimes childbirth can seem like its first and
final spiritual moment. How can we reinstate parenthood as the foundation
and the future of society?
Spirituality cannot be forced upon an individual or a society. But when we
come to see that society is built on the littlest of things we do every day, then
we begin to understand that spirituality can be nurtured or destroyed.
The culture that surrounds the maturing child, the patient, the employee and
all members of our society, filters and adjusts the growth of each of us, stifling
or nurturing our fulfilment and supporting or destroying our potential for each
of us to find answers to the big questions about our existence. Our culture can
either give permission to a young man who is struggling with depression to
verbalise his questions about the purpose of his life, or to choose instead to
medicate those questions away.
Our culture’s media, literature, arts, advertising, entertainment industry,
educational and healthcare system can either give him the vocabulary to ask
these big existential questions, to value rather than make an illness of his
search for purpose and meaning, or it can simply shut him down. None of us
would intentionally silence him, but what a society doesn’t practise gets
forgotten.
Spirituality cannot be forced upon an individual or a society. By its very nature
it is personal. But when we come to see that society is built on the littlest of
things we do every day, than then we begin to understand that spirituality can
be nurtured or destroyed.
The culture that surrounds the maturing child, the patient, the employee and
all members of our society, filters and adjusts the growth of each of us, stifling
or nurturing our fulfilment and supporting or destroying our potential to find
answers to the big questions about our existence. Our culture can either give
permission to a young man who is struggling with depression to verbalise his
questions about the purpose of his life, or to choose instead to medicate those
questions away.
Our culture’s media, literature, arts, advertising, entertainment industry,
educational and healthcare system can either give him the vocabulary to ask
these big existential questions, to value rather than make an illness of his
search for purpose and meaning, or it can simply shut him down. None of us
would intentionally silence him, but what a society doesn’t practise, is
forgotten.
There is no point in complimenting ourselves for being nice to strangers and
people we like. Real spiritual growth happens when we push ourselves to
show love when it is difficult or seems undeserved. That is when we Evolve –
playing our part in human evolution. Just as a muscle strengthens when its
fibres are slightly torn and then grows back stronger when it is challenged by
resistance, we too grow when we do the heavy-lifting in everyday life. Every
hour provides us with opportunity to be better, kinder, more patient. This is the
heavy-lifting of spiritual growth.
Don’t wait for someone else to change the world. You are my someone else.
“As we, together, seek new solutions and responses to the challenges facing
humanity, we are invited to explore the necessary connections between
economy, ecology and ethics” ~ President Michael D. Higgins, president of
Ireland in The Seven Day Soul.
Transformational leaders transform others. They are moral heros. Self-
transcendence is the next step in our evolution – a life lived in service of others.
Challenge yourself to see if, each day, you can be a little better than you were
the day before. Life is our training ground.
“….What I do is me: for that I came…” ~ Gerard Manley Hopkins
Do you want to find more meaning in your life?
For decades, research in psychology has provided us with ways to motivate
ourselves and our teams, to create leaders and to manage stress. But until
recently we have been spiritually shy, unwilling or scared to speak about
human spiritual (existential) needs. But the explosion in research in this area
tells us that now is the time to speak about purpose, meaning and our
existential needs. Albert Einstein once commented that to be religious was to
have found an answer to the question of the meaning of life. But these
questions affect all of us. They are wrapped around the stress and
unhappiness so many people live with every day. Families, society, business,
and government must create a space for these conversations.
Spirituality addresses the fundamental questions about our existence: why we
are here, the purpose and meaning of our lives. It is time we educate
ourselves about our Existential Health.
Alongside individual rights, we must all recognize our our individual
responsibilities.
With both, we balance.
Holistic HR is the transformative power of servant leadership and the striving
to create the Meaning- Centred Workplace. It is the next frontier of Workplace
Wellbeing.