LESSON 2 :: The Launch

Heeding the call to spiritreneurship and beginning the first phase of the business cycle.

• Wrong Notes? Let me ask you a question. Which musical note is a wrong note? Is B-flat a wrong note? C-sharp? Obviously there are no “wrong” musical notes, but only notes that are in the wrong place at the wrong time, thus destroying the harmony. I believe that Heaven will consist of every person doing what he or she loves most — of every note being in the right place. To me, Hell will be an eternity of people having to do work they hate.

Define Success Before You Begin

Welcome to our second lesson. In this eye-opening segment we are going to look at the powerful and dynamic possibilities for you and your business when you decide to take the launch into becoming a spiritreneur. You believe you can fly! You know that you are no longer willing to be fed with things and situations that don’t fill your soul. You know you were created for a unique, divine assignment.

Whether you are going to venture out to a solo operation or you are going to choose to become a spiritreneur in your current environment and organization, there are four essential building blocks you will need to have in place to navigate the other elements we will learn about in the rest of this course. Each page of this lesson is devoted to one of those building blocks.

The essence of this lesson boils down to this: know who you are.

What Does it Mean to Be a Success?

Many people realize they are called to be spiritreneurs because they have a growing uneasiness and dissatisfaction with how they, their colleagues, and society traditionally define success. They know in their souls that the outward appearances of success — or even what someone else believes at their own core to be success — is not the gauge they are inspired to use as a measure of their deepest meaning and fulfillment.

So the very first step in this entire process is to define what success looks like to you. After all, if we are not clear about what true success looks like, how will we know when we get there?

A variety of powerful influences seek to define success for us: the life our parents worked for and either achieved or didn’t achieve, the ever-present media and advertising, the everyday conversations we have with co-workers, neighbors, and friends, etc.

By all appearances, Jesus did not aspire to be a success in the modern sense of the word. He defined his success as doing “the will of God,” and then made all of his choices based on movement toward accomplishing that success.

As you refine your definition of success, ask yourself:

• What does my successful life look like?
• What does my family look like?
• What is happening in the lives of customers and those I serve?
• What external forces am I listening to that may be swaying me from my own authentic definition?
• What choices do I need to make to start moving toward my definition of success?

Only when you have defined your success will you be able to make choices moment-by-moment, day-by-day, and year-by-year that bring that vision into reality.

• Tell Me Why You Can We are often inclined to think of why we can’t live our dreams than why we can. To put this obstacle in perspective, make a list of all the reasons why you can’t do what you’re dreaming of. Hand the list to someone who wants only the best for you, and have them wipe out each of your excuses. Make a new list of all the reasons you can live your dream, including as many scriptural references as you can.

Guard the Right Treasure

Once you have a clear picture of success as defined by you, it’s time ask yourself what your highest treasure is.

Spiritreneurs stay in constant touch with their dreams and visions. They know they must work from their highest gifts in order to be doing what they love and honoring God in their everyday work. Your treasure is your highest gift. It is the furthest your dreams can take you. It means not settling for second best.

Jesus knew the power of highest gift when he told a story of three people who had been given gifts to use. Two of them took risks, made their gifts public, and multiplied the good those gifts did for themselves and others. The third one, seeking security and not wanting to lose anything, buried the treasure in the ground. When accounting time came and the bestower of the gifts wanted to know how each person had impacted their world and enriched their own life with what had been given to them, the first two received praise and were given more to work with. The third received criticism and lost the little he had fearfully guarded.

False Treasure

Common examples of false treasures are a steady paycheck and job security (while hating your work), self-worth based on the praise of others, providing abundantly for a family (while never spending time with them), or dull work with a great pension plan.

You can be sure you are guarding the right treasure when you are consistently asking yourself, “What is the best use of my highest gift?” This question will prompt you to see all of the opportunities available to you and to open the door to the various — and often unforeseen — resources waiting at your disposal. This question will help you clear away the impediments and excuses you find for not moving forward. And in true spiritreneurial fashion, this question will make you more able to see the unseen, and envision what those with buried treasure cannot imagine.

• What Makes Work Worthwhile In a recent Sloan Management Review article, interviewees listed the top seven elements that give them meaning and purpose at work. What factors were most important to these businesspeople? “The ability to realize their full potential” and “being associated with an organization this is good and ethical” topped the list. “Making money” finished fourth, with themes of service to “human kind,” “future generations,” and “community” rounding out the list.

Be Willing to Walk Away

Spiritreneurs know the secret of successful negotiators — the one who is willing to walk away is the one with the most power. Detachment from material things or the good opinion of others is a necessary ingredient to authenticity and integrity inherent in the spiritreneur’s approach to life and business.

Once you have defined your success and understand how to guard and fully utilize the right treasure, you must cultivate the inner strength of purpose and conviction that will give you the ability to walk away from the forces that would seek to compromise you and your vision.

What do spiritreneurs realize they can — and in fact need to — walk away from?

• Obsession with timing transactions and interchanges
• Working solely for money
• A “good enough” situation
• What their peers and family think they should do with their lives
• Social or economic standing

Walking away is one more indication that you are willing to and can make the crucial choices that are necessary to move toward your inspired personal definition of success and to your ability to guard and invest the right treasure.

• Start Small At one time, Jesus was no bigger than the dot on this i. His impact on the world had nothing to do with his size. All great people, ideas, events, and organizations have small beginnings. Do not think because you are small in size, in resources, or in current influence, that God will not see and bless you. The tiniest flame fills the darkest room with light.

Surrender

The hallmark of true spiritreneurship is the clear understanding that as you enter into The Launch, you do not know the outcome, or even the steps along the way, with certainty. To fully integrate spirituality with your everyday business, you need to surrender your desire for control and certainty to the one with the master plan.

Trusting that our definition of success, our highest treasure, and our ability to walk away have all been given to us by a loving God who knows our highest joy will be in concert with His loving plan, spiritreneurs can be a truly different breed of businessperson with a sense of adventure, deep peace, awe, and gratitude that they have found a better, more fulfilling way to live.

Why is surrender the only way to move more fully into a more full and rich understanding of the meaning of our work on earth?

• We join our life force to God’s
• Only in God is the human spirit limitless to create, to invent, to improve
• We see the world through a larger window of possibility and resource
• There is actually less stress in our lives as we move into alignment with our Creator

Our culture is completely unaccustomed to surrender. We believe the way to get ahead is through control, meticulous planning, engineering our situations, and directing others as mindless resources for our purposes. But the only reason spiritreneurs can fully participate in The Launch is that we believe there is a Designer outside of the self that is calling, compelling, and gifting us to move into a more powerful, dynamic, and meaningful life.

Sometimes our circumstances will bring us opportunities to more easily surrender. A pink slip, a divorce, an economic reversal — all of these can be avenues to the moments in life that actually help us sprout the wings we need to engage in The Launch. In losing something that you counted on in your former life, you may actually find the new life that offers the glory and substance you seek and in your soul know are the essence of living.

The Launch is a time of high empowerment, enthusiasm, and possibility. You have received a call and a vision of what life can be like as you do what you love for a living and honor God in your work.

Moving Forward

In this lesson, we have learned the spiritreneur is one who is willing to define their own success, recognize and use their highest gifts, practice nonattachment to influences that would hinder their ability to fly, and surrender or align themselves with the true Source of their call, their Creator God. Through these steps and others you will encounter in the book Jesus, Inc., you will become enlivened to the understanding that you are gifted and supported to make a remarkably unique contribution to this world through fully pursuing your bliss.

In Lesson 3, The Lurch, we will look at the challenges of being a spiritreneur. The Lurch is the point in the business cycle when your question yourself and your choices. Every spiritreneur encounters this phase. So did Jesus. I look forward to sharing in the next lesson the perspective and encouragement you need to know that you will indeed survive and flourish on this journey.

Assignment : Preparing for The Launch

Read Section One of Jesus, Inc. As you read, think about the following questions:

1. What is your personal definition of success?
2. What is your highest gift?
3. Where do you need to be willing to walk away?
4. Over what do you need to release control?