Be fully alive! (Part 1)

“In order for your business to become fully alive, you must become fully alive inside it.” John Jantsch, The Commitment Engine p. 18

There was definitely a time when I was not fully alive in my business. John Jantsch has a simple definition of marketing and it’s getting someone who has a need for what you offer to know, like and trust you. I didn’t really know, like or trust my own business! Yet, over time I have been able to come fully alive inside my business. Part of that has been a healing journey and part of it has been a growing realization that this is what I was born to do.

Know: We all come with varying degrees of knowledge into a field. Sometimes the things we learned while in training whether that be vocational school or college don’t really apply in the real world of work. Sometimes we train for something and find ourselves doing something completely different. For me I spent years training for the ministry and found myself in business. Sure, I had worked in the family business when I was 15 sweeping floors, cleaning paint cans, and washing cars but 20 years later I found myself suddenly in charge of it and learning to do computerized estimates, deal with insurance claims and marketing to referral partners. Somehow my classes in Theology weren’t providing much help here. And the view I had on the bottom of the org chart when I was 15 also did not prepare me for this new challenge.
Like: Secondly, I didn’t really like being in business. At first. Now, I absolutely love it. But in the beginning it was just a means to an end. I just needed a paycheck so that I could do what I really loved which was ministry. That, I thought, was my calling and really, what could be more important than God’s work? Business was just a cow that gave me milk. I wasn’t attached to it. I was using it for one purpose: a paycheck.

Trust: I didn’t trust my business. I didn’t even trust “business” in general. I saw it at best as a necessary evil that would some day go away as we became more enlightened or God more fully redeemed the world.

But over time I came to know, like and trust my business. I know much better now the technical side and the how-to side of how it operates and what makes it go. I’ve also come to see that it has a personality, a unique way of being in my neighborhood and in my industry. And I like it. I have learned to like it in the sense that it brings me loads of joy and the more I work in it and at it the more joy it delivers. It’s like the guy in Chariots of Fire who said he feels God’s pleasure when he runs. I now feel God’s pleasure when I’m running Center City Collision. And lastly I trust it. I know that it is part of the good world that God created and I’ve come to believe that God fully intended business to be a part of the world he created and loves. That’s important to me because if that’s not true then I would have no hope for encountering his presence in the bulk of how I spend my day. But since that is true I can count on him to be there, ahead of me, waiting to reveal more of his abundant life to me there.

Iraneus, a church father from the 2nd century said “The Glory of God is a person fully alive.”

How are you coming alive in your work? I’d love to hear about it in the comments below or an email to kevinrains@gmail.com.

(In Part 2 I will discuss specific strategies for coming more fully alive inside your business.)