Spirituality: it's good business
Madelon Miles
Competitive co-workers? Difficult customers? Demanding managers? Whether you're a business-owner, an employee, or a client, you've doubtless encountered challenging situations concerning one (or all) of the above. Is there a solution that blesses everyone involved?
Yes, says Madelon Miles, President of Milestones, Inc., and it begins with listening for God's direction.
In this lively Q&A audio chat, Madelon shares examples from her own career as a publisher and leadership consultant, and explores how ideas from the Bible and Science and Health can be applied practically to issues such as business ethics, self-employment, project management, and office politics.
spirituality.com host: Hello, everyone! Our topic is, “Spirituality: it’s good business,” and we’ll be talking with Madelon Miles, a Christian Scientist in Los Angeles, California. Madelon is President of Milestones, Inc., a leadership consulting firm.
Each of us is touched by business in some way—when we’re shopping at a local store, if we have our own business, or work for one. But running a business requires making sometimes difficult decisions, dealing with ethical issues that aren’t always easy to define, and lots of other considerations. More and more, people are turning to spirituality as a way of uplifting business practices. And today, Madelon is going to share ideas from her own experiences, and also the specific contribution that Christian Science can bring to our work.
Madelon, do you have a few comments you’d like to make to get us started?
Madelon Miles: Sure. First of all, thank you so much for inviting me to be here, and all of those out there listening to spirituality.com. Just maybe a word about my own development spiritually. I’ve been in business for a number of years, really since the height of the women’s movement. And that’s when a lot of us were competing head to head for jobs traditionally held by men. I learned long ago that if I self-identified as a struggling female mortal, I’d probably just get tossed around by the headwinds of all the current cultural and business practices that were related to either gender or my age.
What began to make a huge difference was learning more about spiritual identity—Who am I really? And to do that I used the Bible and Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy as my primary resources, and began really finding amazing shifts in both the way I was perceived and all the opportunities that started to open up. By the time I was 32, I was the youngest, and the only female, publisher in the whole Scripps Howard newspaper chain. That was really the result of learning that our business or career success has much more to do with yielding to what God has in mind for us than somehow pushing ourselves into certain positions.
The second point I was thinking of in talking with everyone today was moving from my own development to working with others. As the years progressed, I was either leading organizations or, increasingly in our own company, coaching people who were leaders in business. And on the surface, that looks like trying to help people develop their own leadership skills, get along with others, figure out how to unsnarl relationships. But really, what has been going on all these years, is bringing that same spiritual perspective I had started to apply to my own life to my viewpoint of others.
And then, finally, a third point is that I was thinking a lot about how businesses evolved over the years. There are thousands of books written about the workplace and trends and cultural practices, leadership models. But I’ve seen a lot of shifts in the workplace, and here’s the bottom line. We’ve gone from a military top-down model, where people were told what to do and followed directions given by a leader—somebody at the top of the heap—to a much more flat organization, where we need to take responsibility for our own actions.
And the world’s moving so fast, most managers can’t possibly keep up, and they rely on their employees. So now people have to figure out how to empower their employees, and certainly if you’re self-employed, that’s especially true.
Then in the early ’90s, a concept began to be tossed around called “emotional intelligence.” And it was essentially people making a distinction between IQ—what you might call raw brain power, which everybody thought was what led to business success—to people saying, “No, it’s really about what you might call emotional intelligence, or how we get along with each other.”
Now today, fast forward another 15 years—I think the workplace has come to a place where we’re all realizing it’s spiritual intelligence that has to take the forefront—that it isthe skill set for us to be not only effective within ourselves, but with each other. And that’s the platform I try to stand on, both in my own development and in working with others.
spirituality.com host: I love that idea of spiritual intelligence. And some of the people who are asking questions I think are going to go right in that direction. Richard is from Falls Church, Virginia, and he says, “I’m having a problem with a co-worker who keeps taking all the credit for joint projects we do. I don’t want to have to play politics, and I want to stay on good terms with him. Any suggestions for a spiritual way to solve this?”
Madelon: Oh, Richard, great question. You’ve got a lot of company out there. The most common thing we see in the workplace is how team members really work together effectively, and somebody taking credit is a fairly common sort of ploy.
I’ve been giving a lot of thought in the last year to Jesus as a team leader. Now that’s not a term we think of him much as, but teams are simply the organizational framework or foundation for almost every profit or nonprofit that I’m aware of today. And learning how to be an effective team member becomes a critical skill for our own peace of mind, and also as we want to progress up some kind of career ladder.
So I think we can go back to Jesus as a team leader and look at his team. If you were to sit down and read any of the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John, in the New Testament, and —thinking of Jesus as a team leader and his instructions to his disciples— make a list of what the disciples need to do as team members, I think we would get huge insight into the most practical kind of relations we need to have today.
I’m thinking of things like, at the last supper, just before the crucifixion, when Jesus knelt down and washed their feet and encouraged them to do the same, I think that’s in the Gospel of John, chapter 13. And times when they were vying for popularity with Jesus, the team leader, and he’s basically saying to them, “You know, just mind your own business, and follow me.”
So what the rest of us have to do as team members is think, “What does it mean to follow Christ Jesus? How can he be a practical role model to us today?” And you know, at the core of his teaching is love. And figuring out how to love each other when others don’t seem to give us a lot of reason to do that is the great kind of spiritual accomplishment of today. And that goes back to the core of, What do we really believe our fellow man is?
And this is where the teachings of Christian Science have illuminated the Bible. Mrs. Eddy, who wrote Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, was a tremendously thoughtful, insightful Bible student. And so much of what’s in Science and Health points us back to the first chapter in Genesis, where we learn that man is made in the image and likeness of God.
Then our work in the workplace becomes, “How do I see this person who might be arrogant, self-centered, or sort of a glory hog—how do I see them the way Christ Jesus would have seen them, in the image and likeness of God? What would he have done? How can I love in a way that is practical and probably is going to demand that I change my behavior and my attitude?”
spirituality.com host: That was very insightful. I never thought of Jesus that way before. Darlene in Montgomery, Alabama, asks, “Is it possible to be spiritual in the workplace without disrespecting other people’s individual views? Not everyone I work with is on the same spiritual path as I am, and I’m worried that I might insult someone.”
Madelon: Darlene, I love that question, because it’s coming from such a loving place of wanting to share what’s meaningful to you and yet not wanting to be intrusive. I think you’re so wise when you say that people are on very different spiritual paths. I’ve certainly found that in my experience. People are on different church denominational paths, or people are on different religious paths, or people are on different philosophical paths that they’re searching to lead them to a spiritual answer.
I go back to a statement in Mark that Jesus made. I think it’s Mark 16, verse 15. He told all the disciples, “Go … into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.” And I think people who are Christian have wanted to take that literally, and certainly have through the centuries. And often the way we’ve taken that is to go to some country that most of us might never visit or travel to or know much about, and be a missionary.
But I think in today’s workplace, where we want to be very respectful of each other’s individuality, it’s really about how do we love in a way that is nonintrusive, respectful, courteous, that uplifts and supports? There are so many creative ways to do that without using religious language. And certainly, Darlene, I share your desire to share what’s meaningful to you.
One of the great adventures of the last 20-plus years of my working career has been how to share spiritual ideas in a way that’s palatable and able to be received by others. And I find it’s your life that speaks. One of my favorite old adages, and I don’t know if it’s traceable to whoever said it, but it goes something like, “I can’t hear your words, because your life is speaking too loudly.”
spirituality.com host: That’s really helpful, and I would just want to add to that that people in general—they can tell if there’s a spiritual thought there, and respond to that. If there’s a desire for exposure to spiritual concepts, people will respond to the kind of love you’re talking about.
Madelon: Right, and I’ve seen that so many times. I’ve been called in to deal with extremely discordant situations—co-workers who can’t get along, don’t even want to be in the same room together, and yet they’re so important to the organization that management doesn’t want to let either individual go, so their conflict really has to be resolved. How we encourage each other to begin to be truth speaking and respectful simultaneously? How to be supportive, but not preachy, simultaneously—that’s the adventure. And you know, we’re all learning.
spirituality.com host: Now this question from Eduardo in Buenos Aires, Argentina: “As a business owner myself and a student of Christian Science, I have found that seeing my business as a God-directed activity has helped me through many trying situations, given me peace of mind, protection, and a calmer point of view with which to face the day-to-day challenges.
“One aspect of business I would like to know your experienced opinion about is, not everybody expresses the same moral integrity, which includes honesty. I find that correctly evaluating the moral integrity of my customers is a fundamental issue in business, for only then do I know if it is good to do business with them or not. Yet this is, in a way, classifying, and not seeing God’s child as He sees him or her, as a perfect expression of God. Is your experience similar? How do you resolve the conflict in your own mind?”
Madelon: That is a great question. First of all, I love that Eduardo realizes that his business is very much a God-directed activity, and he’s already probably proven so much. This is one more arena where we have to bring spiritual discernment and insight to bear. Whether it’s cultural mores or individual habits, there is such a wide variety of what constitutes moral or ethical behavior in the workplace, and we have to be very clear in what is our standard and stick to it, and also know when to enter into negotiations with others.
So what I’ve done through the years is really pray about who my clients are. And I’ve worked a lot with a verse that Jesus said, “And I, if I be lifted up … will draw all men unto me.” The way I’ve interpreted that is that Christ Jesus so understood man’s spiritual relationship to God, that he viewed his fellow man through that sort of prism, or spiritual lens; and that as he did that, people were drawn into his experience who were ready for the message that he had to give.
I’ve used that, and it may sound odd, as what I call a kind of spiritual marketing approach—that I want to only be with those individuals I can bless and be blessed by. Now that doesn’t mean those relationships are always easy ones. In fact, it seems the more I pray that way, the more difficult situations are to unsnarl, and yet the greater the blessings.
But what it does mean, is that we can be extremely protected from ever entering into business relationships with people that either have ulterior motives or don’t have the same ethical standards. Somebody told me once that their favorite definition of Christian Science was it was a shortcut—meaning that as we listen to God’s direction, we don’t have to go through these difficult, deep valleys. We can really expect to be lifted up and over situations that are going to try to suck us down or suck us dry or undermine us.
So I’m thinking about Jesus talking about being “wise as serpents and harmless as doves.” And the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, had so many people come into and out of her life as she became increasingly a very popular leader and figure in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. And there were a number of occasions where she worked and worked with people who simply would not rise to her standard. And she had to finally and firmly and lovingly say, We need to part. We need to go our separate ways.
I think we have to be very alert to do that as well.
spirituality.com host: The next question is from Deborah in Chicago. And she says, “Do you have any ideas for ways to use prayer as part of a planning strategy? I have my own business, and, organizationally, I sometimes have trouble getting everything in place before I start.”
Madelon: Oh, that’s a good question. I think prayer, again—to use that definition of a shortcut—prayer is going to tell us what’s important and what’s not. There is so much today in the business world, and it’s 24/7 culture with BlackBerry® devices and the Internet and cell phones, that would demand our constant attention. And what I would encourage Deborah, and anyone who is trying to be planful about their strategy, is to see that the most important time that they can spend is their quiet time—and I would encourage people the first thing in the morning, early, to establish their day on the basis of what God is directing them to do.
There’s a definition of God that Mary Baker Eddy uses—Mind, divine Mind, or infinite Mind, another term for God—that is really saying, God as infinite Mind is the all-knowing. He knows what we need. He certainly knows what our businesses need. And what we can do is simply try to align with that.
I can’t tell you how many times—I’ve started my day that way consistently for many years now—and I’ll be at my desk with my to-do list, and a thought will come to me very strongly to call someone. And as the years have gone by, I feel like that is simply God, divine Mind, directing me, and I’ll make that phone call. And so many times, the other person will say, “I can’t believe you called. I was just thinking I needed to talk to you.”
And I think that’s our strategy. It’s not so much a human strategy as it is to be so obedient to what Mind is directing us to do and to follow that—that we let God dictate our days.
spirituality.com host: I love that idea. Jerry in Palm Springs says, “Madelon, have you always used spirituality in business? Was there a particular experience when you found prayer really useful?”
Madelon: You know, I was raised as a Christian Scientist, but I think, like everyone, you have to come to it on your own. And I had a number of experiences. During my teen years, I went to some summer camps where I got lost in the mountains. And I had a wonderful experience of finding my way down, and a wonderful physical healing of feet that were badly damaged, and I began understanding that there was a spiritual reality very different from what the senses were telling me that was very real. And I needed to be more cognizant of that than what the senses were telling me. So, to answer Jerry’s question, I really did always use a spiritual approach, but, frankly, sometimes much more than others. And I always regretted when I didn’t.
A number of things come to mind, but to be brief, I was working for a man early in my newspaper career who had a very different set of values than I did, and we were just going nowhere fast and butting heads. And it became so unpleasant.
One morning, I just was praying and praying, and the story of Daniel and the lions’ den came to thought. And I opened the Bible and reread it—this is a story that a lot of children learn who love the Bible—and the thought came to me that when God shut the lions’ mouths, Daniel got out of the den. He didn’t stay in there to see the lions’ mouths continue to be closed. Now that may be a sort of odd interpretation, but what I walked away with that morning was that I needed to leave. And I’d never left a job before, and this seemed before like an unthinkable sort of “quitting” mentality.
Well, I walked in, and that morning, he called me into his office and fired me. And I had never been fired before, and as I was packing up my things—this is absolutely true—the phone rang, and it was the publisher of our competitor newspaper asking me if I would take the top job in the company.
And I went on to have a great experience. But Mrs. Eddy has a great piece that says something about meeting to part. And I’ve often loved that—that there are people that come into our experience, and we basically need to sort of say, “Okay, you go this way, and I’ll go that way.”
spirituality.com host: Gloria in Ankara, Turkey, says, “Is it realistic to expect that a single ethical base can be applied in business in all countries of the world? How can international companies find a common, solid foundation for good, ethical business?”
Madelon: That’s a wonderful question because business has become exceedingly international, and one could argue that with so many different cultures and ethical bases for decisionmaking that there is no common ground. I find the common ground is love. It’s really that simple. I’ve never met an individual, and I’ve traveled in many, many countries all through the years, who did not want to be loved. And by that I mean appreciated, acknowledged for who they are, admired for their qualities and individuality.
I think as we figure out how to love each other in very practical ways that are respectful to those cultures, we’ll find business opportunities opening up. I’ve had occasions both in Japan and in Europe, where I was working in highly diverse ethnic situations with people who had very different approaches. And this demand that the Bible makes on us to love, both loving God and loving each other—after all, Jesus said these were the two greatest commandments—I think they’re translatable into every conceivable business circumstance.
Now that doesn’t mean you don’t have to exercise tremendous courage sometimes. I was doing business in China, the People’s Republic of China, back in 1984. We had the first joint-venture publishing agreement in Shenzhen, and it was very, very new for Americans to do business. And I was the first American female a lot of these men had worked with. And it was not a small thing to figure out how to be respectful, but also hold the line with what we would do and would not do.
And I’ve taken great lessons from, again, Jesus, as the model business leader—the courage he showed going into that temple and challenging the men who were exchanging money on the temple steps and overthrowing those tables. That’s an easy story to love at a distance. It’s a very different thing to live that.
I remember one business situation where there was a team—I was asked to facilitate a team meeting. They were at each other’s throats, and they had an extremely important deadline in the coming weeks that would make or break their division. It was a major entertainment company, and literally millions and millions of dollars were at stake, and many, many people’s jobs. This was the senior leadership team. And they couldn’t stand to be in the same room with each other.
And we essentially had a great moment of truth-telling, that required, frankly, great personal courage, because I thought, “They’re never going to work with me again. They’re going to fire me on the spot, tell me, ‘Thank you so much, but you need to leave now.’” And exactly the opposite happened. And these were people, by the way, from all over the world at that table. They represented Europe and Asia, their distribution arms.
And a great moment came—about three months later, I got a gold DVD of their number one movie that had broken all records, really because this team had come together in such a remarkable way.
So love is the answer, but it’s often tough love. It’s love undergirded with Principle and truth-telling.
spirituality.com host: And by that moment of truth-telling, could you just elaborate briefly on that, without giving anything away?
Madelon: Sure. Sometimes, what truth-telling is—in my work, it might be different than other people’s work—but what I’m called in to do very often is facilitate relationships that have gone south, or gone awry. And what that particular moment meant was speaking aloud what I saw going on. It was the sort of proverbial elephant in the middle of the table that nobody would address.
And sometimes that’s what we have to do—whether we’re on a team internally or we’re called in as a client or a customer or a facilitator or an external consultant. It’s having the courage to say what needs to be said that, frankly, many are not willing to say. And I find it’s the single most difficult thing in my work, for me. It’s certainly the most difficult to speak, but it’s the most difficult to know when to say, to say it with great love, but great courage and clarity.
spirituality.com host: Thank you, that’s very helpful. Now this is from Melolly in Detroit, Michigan, and she’s saying, “How might a woman just divorced and at retirement age think about starting over if she has not had a business career? Could prayer help with something like that?”
Madelon: Melloly, what a pretty name. Well, bottom line, Melloly: prayer works for everything. There’s not one situation that prayer is not effective in. And by prayer, let’s be specific what we’re talking about. Prayer, to me, is not begging or pleading or asking God for something that we think we need. It’s really aligning our consciousness with what is spiritually true, with what God already knows about us.
So, as an example, God doesn’t know you as a female, as a divorcee, as a certain age, as somebody who’s been out of the workforce trying to get in, or in the workforce trying to get out—because it goes both ways. What God does know is His own image and likeness. And I would just encourage Melloly to just dive into the Bible and the book that we’re talking about on spirituality.com, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, who had so many revelatory insights into that Bible, for a real clarity about who you are—who you are as the image and likeness of God.
And what I think we find is that God knows us in such an extraordinary way as the very image of infinite intelligence. There is nothing we cannot know that we need to know as the reflection of this divine Love that works with great grace, and goes forward with gentleness and power simultaneously.
It would be hard to tell you in this conversation how many times a day through the years I turn to that verse that Jesus said, “I can of mine own self do nothing.” I think he was really serious when he said that to the disciples: that we as the reflection or image of God can’t do anything of ourselves, but as the reflection of God, there is nothing we can’t know, nothing we can’t do.
So many times, I’ve been called into situations with people who were, what I’ll sort of laughingly call scary-smart. Really smart, so much smarter than me. And you know, I think, “I don’t know anything to share with these people. They can outthink me at any turn.” But I realize that’s not the intelligence we’re talking about. We’re talking about spiritual intelligence that knows what to say, when to say it, how to say it. That will lead you—whether it’s into an employment opportunity or whatever. But it’s a great way for you to mine your many spiritual talents. And boy, if there’s one thing I know, it’s that the world of business needs spiritual talents.
spirituality.com host: Madelon, I was thinking as you were speaking that Mrs. Eddy herself is a good example, because she basically started a business after her 40s; I think she started The Christian Science Monitor when she was in her 80s. So there’s opportunity, and as you said, for spiritual thinkers.
Madelon: That’s right. And maybe I could just say one other thing, if I could on this.
spirituality.com host: Sure.
Madelon: You know, when you go out and look for a new working opportunity, you need to produce a résumé. And there are obviously standard tools in business that you have to be skilled in, you’ve got to produce a good résumé—it’s got to have great grammar and no typos—all the things that one would hope people would know to do to have high standards.
But I would encourage anybody in the job market, or who is currently working that wants to make a move, to create a spiritual résumé. If you’ve been out of the work world, you’ve not been out of the world. And in that world, whether it’s Melloly or any other listener, you have been practicing spiritual intelligence and spiritual qualities throughout the years. What have you learned from that? And a great exercise is to sit down and capture those things on paper so that you get very clear about these tremendous spiritual talents you already have. And my suspicion is that as you find the right opportunity, it will be exactly someone who needs those spiritual qualities.
spirituality.com host: That’s great. Now this person is writing from Chicago, Illinois, and says, “What if another worker’s ethical violations come to our attention? Is there a way to help correct the situation without just being a whistleblower?”
Madelon: There’s something in Matthew called the Matthew Code, that I understood even some of the military academies had used, which was, If you have a problem with someone, you go to them directly before you go to others. And in the Matthew Code it talks about a member of the church. So that the Matthew Code concept is if you come across something, such as an ethical breach, how do you address it? You go straight to the person.
Now we get to this same theme that I think is fairly repeated in our conversation today, which is this balance between love and truth. How do you lovingly tell someone something that you’re concerned about, and do it in a way that doesn’t mince words but is extremely respectful? Now I’m not saying this is easy.
I will say that I find if there’s one pattern of the human mind that is not very attractive, it’s the desire to blame. I’m not at all saying this is the case in the Chicago caller, but I am saying before we ever go and address something, I think that we have to be very clear that whatever we’re seeing, we’re not just interpreting through some lens of our own thinking. It has to be accurate. There has to be clear evidence that something has gone wrong. We don’t ever want to become “ethical police” in our organizations that go around telling others what they need to straighten out.
The counsel of the Sermon on the Mount comes to mind—Jesus counseling us to remove the beam from our own eye before we remove the splinter from another’s. I would encourage the questioner in Chicago to work with the Sermon on the Mount, and to read Mrs. Eddy’s interpretation of the 23rd Psalm, which is in Science and Health, where she puts in the word Love for “The Lord,” that “[DIVINE LOVE] is my shepherd.” And between those two things, I think she’ll be guided to do exactly what she needs to do.
spirituality.com host: Now this is from Susie, who wants to know, “How do you deal with bullying in the workplace?”
Madelon: Susie, there are all kinds of ways to do this. There is a term that has come up in both psychological and business circles for a number of years now, called boundary setting.
I think there is a lot of merit in this term, which is that it would be inappropriate for anyone to be cowed or bullied by another individual, whether it’s on the playground with fifth graders or whether it’s in the workplace with adults. And boundary setting, to me, is about putting down an appropriate line, saying, “That is not acceptable behavior toward me. Please do not do that again.” So first of all, I think we all are within our rights to create what are these appropriate boundaries.
Now that’s on a human level. On a spiritual level, how do you address this? I’m going to sound like a broken record, but I really am going to go back to what I said earlier about divine Love. Love is the most powerful thing there is.
All you have to do is think of a mother bear protecting her cub out of love. And my understanding is that hunters always would prefer to meet a male bear, even though they’re larger, than a mother bear in the woods, because the ferocity is so strong. And I could argue that ferocity is coming from love.
Well, it may be a crude analogy, but we have to be ferocious in our loving. We have to be so clear that the bullying behavior we see has nothing to do with the man that God created. It has everything to do with a mortal picture that we are being tempted to believe in.
So there’s a great line I’m trying to remember where Mrs. Eddy talks about dealing with error, and she uses error just the way we might think of an error in mathematics that three plus three equals seven. We don’t spend a lot of energy on the seven, we get very quickly to, No, the answer is six.
Well, in the workplace, bullying behavior can be so aggressive, that it’s like a “seven” screaming at us. But what we need to do is see it’s still just seven. It’s an error. It’s never the man that God created. We need to ferociously stay with what is true about man, and claim this for ourselves, that we are not able to see anything but the image and likeness of God.
So let’s just think for a minute again, about, What would Jesus do? Think about that instance of not one leper, but ten lepers. Now leprosy was so heinous in the first century that you legally, if you were a leper, had to stay over a football field away from someone if they were downwind of you. So leprosy was a hideous disease.
Well, Jesus had compassion and loved those men in spite of that disease, and it brought healing. I think bullying is as aggressive in behavior as leprosy must have been to the body. It’s aggressive, it shouts at you, and yet it’s no more real. And we can see through that, through Love, and through holding our own sense of man to that high ground the way Jesus did.
spirituality.com host: Deborah, who’s from the San Francisco Bay Area of California, says, “I have a small business and make a product that I’m about to launch into a new market. I’ve invested a lot of money and time, and frankly, I’m a little afraid of failing. I do feel it’s the right step, but now and then fear creeps in, and I start doubting myself and my ability to succeed. Any suggestions?” I think she probably has a lot of company on that one.
Madelon: Absolutely. This is a tough one, only because after you’ve put so much into something, you feel like you gave birth to it, and you want to see it succeed. I think, Deborah, that while I’m sure your product is a wonderful one, and it could be very successful, what we want to do is discern between fear that would hold us back and what I call the angel messages from divine Love, or God, that are directing us.
And the reason I’m saying this is because I had a business, and this does not have to be your experience, but I’m just sharing so you’ll know where I’m coming from. I had a business that I poured everything into—my heart, everything, all the money, even some family members’ money, for three years. And we were very close to breakeven. And the market changed, and it just pulled a lot of businesses under, and ours with it. And I had to file bankruptcy on it. Everything I had done up until then had just been golden. But this business crashed and burned. And it was one of the toughest things I’ve gone through.
Now, as I look back, being very candid with myself, there were signs along the way that I needed to change direction. I was so committed to seeing this thing succeed the way I wanted it to, that I ignored those. Did I learn a lot from that experience? Absolutely. And it changed the course of my career, and, one could say, in a very lovely way. Much good came from that.
So the fear—I think as you ground yourself daily in knowing that there is no other Mind that you can hear but the divine Mind, and you hold to that throughout the day, you will be guided to make the tough calls, even when they don’t always make a lot of sense humanly. And that little business will take whatever form it needs to take.
There is a story about Daniel when he was in captivity in Babylonia, praying three times a day. And when Mrs. Eddy was a child and read that, she determined that she, too, wanted to pray throughout the day. And I’ve found that when I break for lunch if I’m driving somewhere to meet a client or somebody, I try to remember that, and just turn my thought to divine Mind and say, “Please tell me what I need to know. What do You want me to know this instant?” And know that you can hear. And you’ll be guided. You’ll know exactly what to do.
spirituality.com host: I love your willingness to share your own experience on that. This next question is from Jody in Australia, and I’m not quite sure what she’s asking. She says, “I’m finding that abundance in our experience is helping my husband and me to help others. Do you find this?”
Madelon: I hope, Jody, what you’re indicating is that your human experience has been richly blessed. You’re finding yourself in a position able to give, and to give generously. And I honor you for that and for the motive to make a difference. And even there, whether we’re giving of our material riches or of our spiritual talents, or both, we can ask the Father for guidance and know where that wealth, however it’s depicted, will be best received, and where it will go the farthest.
There’s that great story about the leaven—Jesus told the parable about the leaven, and the woman who put it into three measures of meal. It’s the whole concept of a little bit going a long way.
I love that metaphor, because whether it’s our material wealth or our skills and talents wealth that we’re giving to whatever enterprise—nonprofit, profit, our families, our communities—that the loaf that goes into can rise in the appropriate way. That may be a tricky metaphor, but I think people understand what I’m trying to say.
spirituality.com host: The leaven is going to do wonderful things.
Madelon: Exactly. And we’ll know where to put it.
spirituality.com host: Mike in Rutland, Vermont, is saying, “How can we know we are on the right path in our business practices? I feel I am, but competitors seem to be more successful.”
Madelon: I think immediately of that wonderful line from Shakespeare, where he says, I always thought, “Comparisons are odious.” And then I heard somebody say, Shakespeare actually said odorous. Either way. it certainly works.
But, I think we’ve got to keep our eye on our own ball. We just have to, again, keep turning to Mind. I know I’m being repetitive here, but it’s interesting: when the young man came to Jesus and said, “I’ve followed all the commandments. What else do I need to do?” Jesus said, “Sell everything you have, and follow me.”
I like to think of that in today’s vernacular as not meaning we need to get rid of all of our earthly belongings and become homeless, although if that was the direction, maybe somebody needs to do something along those lines. But I think it means let’s get rid of every material encumbrance—anything that weighs down our thought—so that we can follow this Christly role that Jesus did, this truth about the relationship between man and God, man in God’s likeness.
Let’s let go of everything that would trip us up, whether it’s a sense of competition with others, or, to be very practical, what if we’re really disorganized? We need to address that. Principle is a quality of God—order, systems. Maybe we need to learn how to be a better bookkeeper or we need to hire somebody to do that.
Business is a wonderful discipline at a most practical level. It demands of us to either grow ourselves in that area, or acknowledge that we really don’t want to spend our time on that, but we need to get help, and to reach out for help, and to have the humility to do that.
spirituality.com host: And humility is a pretty important characteristic, isn’t it?
Madelon: It’s the number one thing. You know, one of the things I find in business is people who are growing all the time, whether it’s spiritually or emotionally or as business leaders, and they are often great readers. And my spiritual teacher, years ago, talked to me about reading biographies of great people.
I’ve just recently finished an amazing book on President Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States, called, Lincoln’s Greatest Speech: The Second Inaugural. It’s about his second inaugural address in 1864. And just about five weeks later, he was assassinated.
It’s an extremely heartfelt speech, turning the nation to God at a time when the North could have been jubilant over the failure of the South to win the Civil War. And instead Lincoln has his very famous statement about, “With malice toward none, with charity for all ….”
I think if there was one quality that Abraham Lincoln embodies, it’s humility. And yet, one now hears he’s not only the greatest President the United States ever had, but probably the greatest American that has ever been. And I think, from such humble beginnings, all the way through to his final days, he was so humble about his ability, turning to God.
So it’s a great example, and we certainly have it in Jesus and Mary Baker Eddy and so many that have accomplished great things.
spirituality.com host: Now this is a little bit of a tricky question here. Bill in Wilmington, Delaware, says, “Can you give some tips on how to show love to people you think are taking a company in the wrong direction? We have new upper management brought in from outside, and it’s clear they don’t have the knowledge or background to make the right decisions. What can I do prayerfully to help my company?”
Madelon: I see that so often. Two things, Bill. One is in your own prayers to affirm that Mind, God, governs that business. That it is not governed by human minds who are either ill-informed or well-informed, because sometimes, the most knowledgeable management can take a company in the wrong direction. We all know what happened with Enron and others. So I think your prayers as an employee are to affirm that God is governing that organization and guiding it.
The second thing is to pray for your own role—that you will respond to the direction that divine Mind, God, is giving you. And this goes back to our comments about courage. Sometimes it means that you find yourself suddenly in a situation—I mean, it could be as harmless as an elevator ride with the new CEO or COO or CFO—and you suddenly have an opportunity to say something.
It can be a memo you’d write, or an e-mail, or something that would be your response to an inner prompt. Those situations are so varied. But all we have to do is think about Jesus finding tax money in a fish’s mouth to know that, our most practical needs are met in the most creative, unusual ways. Our job is to notice that and to respond to it.
spirituality.com host: This one is from Yemil in Mexico City: “What are the qualities needed for leadership in 21st-century business?”
Madelon: I could answer it on a couple of levels. On a human level, people might tell you things like influencing skills, that what is most needed is how you get buy-in from people you have no direct reporting relationship over, because so many organizations are now modeled after a team formation, where you’re working with peers more than just direct reports. So those influencing skills, persuasion skills, and so forth.
I will tell you something quite different, and this may sound like I’ve come from another planet, but I think the best guidance, whether it’s the 21st century or the first century, is Acts 1, verse 4. If you recall, Acts is the second part of a book, the first part of which is the Gospel of Luke. Bible scholars think the same author wrote both. Acts picks up where the Gospel of Luke leaves off. Jesus is just about to leave the disciples; the ascension has not yet occurred.
I’ve often thought that the best business advice ever given would be what Jesus was going to tell his disciples before he leaves them forever. He’s only been with them for three years. This is his parting shot—what is he going to say? And verse four reads—and this is the King James Version—“And, being assembled together with them, commanded them that they should not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father, which, saith he, ye have heard of me.”
Now what he’s talking about is the descent of what the author of Acts calls the Holy Ghost, or in the Greek it means Spirit—pneuma. What that word wait means to me is, the best skill of a leader in the 21st century going forward is to wait on the direction of spiritual inspiration.
We are in a culture that is a ready-aim-fire culture. It’s shoot-from-the-hip, make a decision fast. “Don’t think too much because, oh, my gosh, we’ve got to move, our competitors are getting out in front of us.” And the onus is to move too fast, too jerkily, and very often the hardest thing to do is wait until you feel a real sense of compulsion.
I think that Holy Ghost, or Spirit, is the inspiration of the Christ, Truth, that infused Jesus’ life, and that he was saying, “This is not attached to me. This is not personal. This is the Spirit of God that is with all of you. It will never leave you. It will guide you in every decision.” And it will guide us in every decision.
spirituality.com host: We’ve just got two more questions. This one is from Linda in Denver, Colorado, and she says, “Owning a business—how can you pull yourself out of such a huge financial mess when you can’t get past the self-condemnation?”
Madelon: Well, Linda, I’ll just tell you, you’ve got a lot of company, including me. That story I told earlier—you may or may not have been on—about losing the newspaper. A lot of money went down with that, and my name was on that business, and I was very visible. And my community and investors all knew it didn’t work out. So I’m with you.
My comfort to you is that I go back to the Bible all the time, and Science and Health. And what’s so interesting to me about the Bible—it is about really messed-up people and a very loving God. It is not about perfect people.
I’ve looked at that story of David and Bathsheba, and we’ve all seen a lot of affairs in the workplace. The story of David is that he sees this beautiful woman bathing and he basically sends her husband out to battle and he gets him killed, so that he can take the widow for his own. Well, you look at that, and yet, David is the king. That’s the lineage that Jesus came from. David did a lot of things wrong, but he did a lot of things right.
You might have put a lot of money into a business and it went under, or it’s tremendously challenging. All I can say is look at the balance sheet of your life. Look at the good you’ve done. And if you need to start keeping a journal of all the good that you have witnessed and been part of and experienced as the gift of God, I would say, start it. And one of the things when you get into a trough—emotionally, spiritually, one of those low valleys—go back and read your journal.
And here’s something. There’s a great line in the Bible that talks about the fact that God’s tender mercies “are new every morning.” What if you called your journal “The Tender Mercies Journal,” and you just started recording all of the tender mercies that the Father gives you every day? It will counter that sense of shame or self-doubt, and you will begin to see good far outweighs the balance in your life.
spirituality.com host: This is a question I’m going to ask on behalf of people who are dealing with uncertainty. There seems to be an awful lot of uncertainty in the world today. And I wondered, looking at it from a business standpoint, do you see that uncertainty also? And if so, have you had some spiritual thoughts about it?
Madelon: I think the metaphor that a gentlemen named Bill Bridges, who’s a business consultant who’s written a lot—kind of an expert in transition and career change—he uses the metaphor of white water. And he said that’s really what today’s business world is like. And I think it’s a very apt one.
We’re dealing with complexities we’ve never seen before, whether it’s technology or business relationships that are global, time demands, women in the workplace balancing home and work, not knowing the rules and going forward into brand new arenas for products or business practices, etc. In a way, it’s the most wonderful opportunity to get very clear on what is certain. And it’s forcing people to turn away from looking for shallow answers.
It’s not terra firma—it’s not solid ground when we go into the business world. What is solid ground are spiritual laws. What is solid ground is what we know to be spiritually true. God loves us. That doesn’t change. God loves us whether we’re in the 21st century or the fifth century BC, or the 43rd century to come. Divine Love always embraces and cares for its own. Divine Principle is always supporting us—that’s another synonym for God that Mary Baker Eddy discerned through her study of the Bible. And Principle is a wonderful, stabilizing idea.
One of the things I’d urge listeners to do would be to look up every reference to divine Principle that Mrs. Eddy has in her writings. And as you get clear on what that means, you’ll see so much of it in the Bible, as well—maybe not by that same word, but it’s there. It’s the spiritual law that we build our lives on.
So these are tumultuous times. All I know is that the demand for us is to go higher spiritually, to find the firm ground, to get out of our heads and into our hearts. This is not about knowing about God, this is knowing God. This is feeling His presence, His guidance. This is hearing His voice. This is being so in tune that when we have an intuition we shouldn’t do something, we follow it, we don’t second-guess it.
This is the ground we stand on. This is the house that we’re building in our consciousness on the rock that Jesus talked about when he said, “Don’t build your house on sand, the first storm will knock it out. But build your house on a rock.” He didn’t promise us no storms in our lives. He just promised us a strong foundation. And that’s what we have the privilege of building.
spirituality.com host: That’s quite eloquent, and I thank you for that. Do you have any other comments that you might want to make? We’re just about at the end of our time now.
Madelon: I’ve said a lot, and I think people have been so patient—those who are still on the call from the beginning. I just think we’re on a great spiritual journey. And whatever comes to us in our lives, let’s see that as our opportunity to learn more about who God is and who we are. And keep turning to the Bible and Science and Health as our resources. They really do become our maps for our lives, and they apply to every single business circumstance that can come up.
Citations used in this chat
Science and Health
King James Bible