What's More Effective for Business Growth, Energetics or Strategy?
Last week, I came across a piece of writing that directly addressed a very specific, somewhat contentious (in some circles) and nuanced point.
It went something like this: “It's all very well meditating with gold light, but you've got to take aligned action in order to create growth in your business”.
The article argued that an ‘energetic’ approach to building a business was abstract, ineffective and often used as a big ol' excuse for sitting back and waiting for things to happen.
Taking the words at face value, there is some truth to this. Even the most technically advanced visualisation alone isn't enough to build things in the real world.
But I felt a distinct tension behind the words. I could feel that this writer held an ambivalent relationship to energetics (not surprising, judging by the ridiculous narratives on social media around it). Like many of my clients and contemporaries, she was familiar with the ideas and concepts behind it, but she'd clearly had mixed results.
Aha! Perfect, I thought. This is literally my favourite topic to unpack. I'm going to write a newsletter about this.
One of the biggest lessons I've learned over the last few years is that the energy you bring to your concrete, strategic action (i.e. focussed, deliberate and discerning) is exactly the same energy that you can and should bring to your closed-eye, energetic practises.
Sometimes I think we attribute an undefined, ‘feminine’ energy to energy practises and a defined ‘masculine’ energy to concrete action. Like energetics are Yin and strategy is Yang.
What if…… both are both.
Imagine yourself in full strategic flow. Your mind is sharp, you're crystal clear on your objective. You're making specific decisions based on the information available to you. You know what you want to achieve and you look for the most effective, streamlined way to get there.
It's exactly the same with closed-eye practise. When you're able to bring skill and refinement to your somatic and subtle energy exercises, you're following the same sequence. You have a clear intention and objective. You consider the information available to you (i.e. what becomes visible to you in your inner world) and you systematically engage with it as a direct pathway to meeting your objective.
Yes, each of these methods uses different faculties in different ways. But they're both strategic, practical and intuitive in equal measures.
Let me break it down into a neat little sequence (immensely satisfying for my brain 🤓)
Objective: increase the subscriber count for your newsletter by 50%.
Subtle energy approach: close your eyes and bring the objective to mind. Notice how your body responds. Zoom into any specific sensations, get right into the middle of it. Get to know it from the inside, notice what it's telling you about the relationship you hold with the objective. You start to see/sense/feel a deeply held belief that it's very difficult to increase newsletter subscriptions without being on social media. You identify this belief as being a major obstacle to taking the kind of action necessary to achieving the objective. You deploy specific techniques and tools to dissolve, release and harmonise this belief until it no longer holds the same emotional charge. You zoom back out and you integrate the newly healed part of yourself with the rest of your body.
Strategic, aligned action approach: now that you've identified this belief - and healed a layer of it - you're able to think more creatively about customer engagement, and how you could build community without actually being on social media. Because you've energetically cleaned up the story you held around it, your mind is more flexible, open and curious. Ideas and solutions appear that you may have previously dismissed or overlooked because they made you feel uneasy.
Both of these approaches were structured, intentional and aligned with the objective.
If you examine the original sentence again (reminder: It's all very well meditating with gold light, but you've got to take aligned action in order to create growth in your business) can you now see how important and inextricably connected they both are?
Aligned action, by its very definition, needs to be aligned. Which means it needs to sit in right relationship to something else. To you. To your Soul, to your body, to your values, to your customers, to the Soul of your business.
As someone who spent years careening between uneasy, slightly desperate meditations and downright hustle tactics, I feel this topic deeply. To have found a balanced, practical approach to leveraging the entirety of what's available to me when building my business is an enormous reason for why I teach, practise and advocate what I do. Practical, useful, effective energetic practises to help you build and shape the life that you want.