|
|
Workplace Yoga: Asanas for Struggling Entrepreneurs
It’s common knowledge that you can tell who the good people are during the bad times. Although intuitively I feel that the market has turned, many of us are still financially in the bad times: out of a job, out of money for our companies, out of energy for the roller coaster we have paid too dearly to ride. When times get bad, people get frightened. Fear is an interesting and primitive emotion. It triggers the "fight or flight" visceral response our bodies put out, which is called cortisol and is very bad for us in large doses. Among other things, cortisol makes cholesterol, which makes heart attacks. That’s the long-term effect. In the near term, as CNBC calls it, fear causes people to lash out at others to protect themselves. If the others are lions and tigers, that’s an appropriate and potentially life-saving response. But if the others are of your own species, and are just as frightened as you are, it may be gratuitously destructive. A while back I wrote a piece about best practices for layoffs, in which I also pointed out that we are dealing with human beings, even when we lay them off. This diatribe will be about how people posture when unable to pay their bills. I experienced this (on both ends) for twenty years as the owner of a service business. The message is the same: try to remember there’s a human being on the other end of the process. For some reason, this is a very difficult lesson. There are three common asanas, or poses, people strike when they are temporarily or permanently out of money. I’ll just give you the details, and you can pick the response that best suits your own mindset and practice it for when you need it (if you aren’t already depending on it). The simplest pose is to pretend that you don’t owe them anything, or that nothing unusual is happening. People in this pose should not return phone calls, should carefully ignore bills, and screen incoming calls to them. If you are aligned correctly in this pose, you appear to have vanished from the earth. To take this pose safely, you must connect to others in your organization, construct an elaborate story for them about why you either cannot pay, will not pay, or - and this is level 3, the highest – should not pay the vendor. Level three requires the most imagination and agility, but striking the pose at the simplest level will inspire people in your own organization to follow your lead and also screen the offending vendor’s calls. The danger in this pose is that sooner or later the vendor becomes furious and takes you to court, or you lose your credibility with your own employees. More complex is the eternal promise to pay. In this pose, you tell the vendor that you are soon receiving more money, and that he/she will be paid next week/month/year. This pose is comfortable, because it allows you to take phone calls and have conversations with people who have honestly performed work for you, may be your friends, and are certainly surprised if you strike pose number one and refuse to talk to them. This pose requires a sense of balance and rhythm, because you are in an elaborate dance with the vendor, leading him/her away from collection agencies and small claims courts. Your goal in this asana is to make the vendor as tired as you are of the entire process, until he/she moves on to the next event and ceases to call. Then you can go back to pose number one, and pretend to yourself that nothing has happened. The third pose, I have concluded, must be tantamount to a one-armed handstand done by advanced yogis in isolated parts of southeast Asia. Why, if it is not of this level of difficulty, does almost no one attempt this pose? This pose is the good faith effort. In the good faith effort, you first ground yourself by studying your available resources. Once aware of what you have, you detail the places it must go. Performing a deceptively simple process of division, you send each vendor a fraction of what you owe. Part of this pose involves actually speaking to or meeting with the vendor, explaining the circumstance, and working out a mutually acceptable payment plan. This is a challenging and difficult posture, requiring focus, balance, concentration, strong will, and compassion for another human being.. However, when you are aligned correctly in this posture, you will find yourself supported by your vendors and suppliers, and your burdens made lighter by their presence. They will continue to supply you and do business with you until you all recover together. This posture is useful for increasing energy, strength, and flexibility, and is the best insurance for survival.
Links:
|
