Using Our Hearts

Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day once again.
There are those who decry this day as a made up, commercialized holiday designed to sell cards, candy, flowers, jewelry and formal dinner dates. For those folks I remind them of the legitimate historical roots of love and truth in the life of the real man who inspires bold romantic actions today. St. Valentine did exist and can be researched in any way you choose.

I also suggest some context:

The Super Bowl started out as a nice little season-ending game between the National Football League and its rival, the upstart American Football League. My Green Bay Packers won; and my mother is still miffed that the game ended and the network cut directly to regular programming. We clearly take this a little more seriously in these modern times. We may even be calling this national event St. Doritos’ Day in a few hundred years. Think about it.

All this said, I would also suggest a reframing of Valentine’s Day as a chance to reinvent our hearts as a tool of our own trade, whatever our trade happens to be. Much conversation in the business community, particularly in entrepreneurial circles, focuses on “heart-centered” or “soul-inspired” practices and goals. Withdrawing from the need to participate in competitive business models, heart-centered business owners work from a creation-based model, one in which generous cooperation is the name of the game. The idea is simple: we are each here to make a specific contribution to the world, live our purpose, and no one else has what we have to offer. Competing with others for anything, from raw materials to market share, literally defeats one’s own purpose.

Warren Sautebin, my minister growing up, as well as a tremendous influence in my life, called this servant leadership. Generous cooperation, the hallmark of heart-centered business, is exemplified in working together, helping one another identify and manifest the gifts we have to share, however we choose to do that. Unlike business management, which is achieving results based in telling others what to do, servant leadership is about helping people grow themselves in forward movement to more life for all and less for none. In helping others grow, we also grow; hence, it really is more blessed to give than to receive.

Using our hearts as the central tool of our trade, whether it is as coaches, consultants or corporate executives, means we know our gifts and talents have a valid place in the personal and economic development of the world. It also means we are already an inspiration for those we serve, whether we have met them or not. Using our hearts is also a balance of immense power with the rich resource of our minds. Thinking and feeling, united and directed with conscious choice through the actions that grow our businesses, build the strongest of foundations from which we may reach and help even more people attain their own success.

St. Valentine is remembered in traditional ways for encouraging relationships to blossom and grow from heart-centered actions. We talk a lot about building relationships in business today. Perhaps we can carry this sense of service forward and remember St. Valentine as an inspiration in a new way this year.