Show Notes
Tami Simon hosts the popular Sounds True podcast, Insights at the Edge, which has been downloaded more than 20 million times. With its guiding principle “to disseminate spiritual wisdom”, Sounds True has grown into a multimedia publisher that has produced over 6,000 titles, has been included twice in the Inc. 500 list of the fastest-growing companies, and is North America’s leading publisher of spoken-word spiritual teachings. She is also the founder of the Sounds True Foundation, which is dedicated to bringing spiritual education to people who would otherwise not have access.
She addresses the question of “What Could Possibly Go Right?” with thoughts including:
- The power in our reservoirs of energy and health, “the potency and glory of the very right, present moment”
- That “our souls are being stretched to respond to the challenge of our time”
- The translation of worry and grief into “constructive action, or letting go”<
- hat we should lean into what we’re each inspired by and called to do
- The connection we create by using devotional vocabulary and other bridging language
- The transformation of business leadership and “unleashing of human potential at work” through wisdom-based education
Resources
- Podcast: Insights At The Edge, hosted by Tami Simon https://resources.soundstrue.com/podcast/
Connect with Tami Simon
Website: https://www.soundstrue.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/soundstrue
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/soundstrue
Twitter: https://twitter.com/soundstrue
Transcript
Vicki Robin
Hi, Vicki Robin here, host of What Could Possibly Go Right?, a project of the Post Carbon Institute in which we interview what we call cultural scouts, people who see far and serve the common good, asking each one of them our one impertinent question. With all that seems to be going awry, what could possibly go right? My guest today is Tami Simon. Tami is the founder of Sounds True, a multimedia publisher based in Boulder, Colorado. Tami started Sounds True in 1985 at the age of 22, with a clear purpose to disseminate spiritual wisdom. Over a 36 year history, Sounds True has produced more than 3000 learning programs with the world’s leading wisdom teachers and has been named twice to the Inc 500 list of the fastest growing private companies in North America. Tami also hosts the popular Sounds True podcast, Insights at the Edge, which has now been downloaded more than 20 million times. She is also founder of Sounds True Inner MBA program, now in its second year; a nine month immersion program that trains entrepreneurs, managers and employees on the inner wisdom skills needed to create businesses that honor the human heart and uplift society. And now here’s Tami.
Welcome, Tami Simon, to What Could Possibly Go Right? I met you at the conference that actually changed the trajectory of my life, the 1989 Globescope Pacific Assembly, where you were just starting your work of recording conferences, which then turned into Sounds True. It’s a whole other story, why that changed my life, but it was the source of Your Money or Your Life, and that was really the source of so much else. Anyway, you have invested the decade since then in bringing truth to others through sound recordings and have evolved to bringing wisdom teachers and teachings to millions of people. Now here we sit over 30 years later, in the middle still of a pandemic and growing polarization and social animosity and rising authoritarianism around the world and the drumbeat of climate disruptions that are really spooking people who did not believe this was coming, and actually rattling many of us who’ve seen it coming.
Your recordings help us face and heal the past traumas that are getting reactivated now, and also find peace in the middle of this chaos. You are a true and long term cultural scout, one who sees far and serves the common good. So I am really interested in what you are going to tell us about what you’re seeing now, what sparks on the horizon are deepening in society that you see that may bode well for our future. So here’s our basic basic question, Tami. With all that seems to be going awry, what could possibly go right?
Tami Simon
Well, thank you for setting up this conversation. I think it’s so important to sense into what’s going right right now, right here, right in this very second. So what’s going right, Vicki? You and I, we haven’t been in contact in a long time, and here we are together, talking about ideas that we care the most about. And our listeners are joining us, and we’re experiencing a type of online community that is galvanizing, that is opening up truthful stories for people, that’s inspiring people. Where there are movements, that there is fuel being added to the fire because of our ability to communicate with each other like this and gather like this. So that’s a whole heck of what’s going right.
What I notice in any moment is when we can start with a deep appreciation, and I mean this seriously, a deep appreciation of the health of our bodies, whatever health we have right in this moment. We have the beauty of relishing our inhale; the top of the inhale, where there’s so much potential; the exhale and the feeling of the exhale; and then that interesting open space at the end of the exhale. A breath is going right, right here, right now. And I’m starting with this in answer to your question, because I think sometimes if we place the majority of our energy outside of us into what’s going wrong, the challenges we face, what we need to address, what we lose is our reservoir of unstoppable energy. And that reservoir of unstoppable energy is the potency and glory of the very right present moment. I don’t mean this in any way to skip over, or to not include the pain and difficulty. What I want to bring our attention to, is our utter co-creative power in the moment that comes from that great love of life, that great love of life that’s accessible to us, just in one inhale or exhale, just in one looking at the quality of light in the room. Just that the quality of light or the quality of darkness, the room you’re in now. What is it? What’s the quality of the air, the quality of what your feet feel like touching the ground, or the bottom of your sit bones feel like on a chair? And then from that place, we have a sense of rightness. Rightness and being alive at this time, right at this time.
Now we’re here, I think each one of us is here. You mentioned being a cultural scout, and it’s very kind of you to say that. What I know is that I feel inside of myself, a kind of tender hearted warrior, rainbow warrior, whatever language you want to use. What I mean by that language is I’m here to serve powerfully. That’s the warrior energy in me. And the tender-hearted, the rainbow, is that it’s coming from a place not of defensiveness, not of armor, but of a softness with energy moving through. That’s very right, and that’s happening in response to the challenges that we see.
So the question I would ask people in terms of what’s going right is, do you feel you’re in your right place? Do you feel that? Because when you do, that’s going really right, even if what you’re doing is addressing very difficult problems that we share. What’s right is that your soul and my soul in this moment are being stretched. We are being stretched to respond with a whole lot of care and intelligence and creativity and greater embrace of each other, of people who are different than us of all of our emotions. So our souls are being stretched to respond to the challenge of our time. That’s very right. Very right, right in this moment. If you feel that you’re not in the place where your soul is being stretched to respond to the needs of the moment in a way that feels really right, I would encourage you to make those moves, make those moves so you feel your co-creative power in this moment, to be addressing the challenges that we’re facing. So that’s a bit to begin our conversation.
Vicki Robin
Wow. Yeah, I love number one. I think part of – not to bring us down but – part of what rattles us is that social media, even when we, you and I, are using the online world to bond, gather, learn, co-create. Honestly, I always think when people are complaining about social media, I think about the groups I’m part of, and what I’m learning from them, and how I can present something small that’s going on in me and like 100 people will have something to say about it online. I mean, this transfer that we’ve gone through from IRL, in real life, to this online world has been so beneficial for people like you and me and many others. And yet, the media is training us to have it just one more thing that we worry about. So I just appreciate that, that you brought that to us. That, in a way, the worrier in us – not the warrior in us – the worrier in us is being stoked by things outside of us that may or may not be real. They’re just one incident that’s magnified among the thousands that are not magnified. So important to remember.
Tami Simon
Vicki, one thing I want to say, and this is a little challenging, but what I like about you is that you’re open to have a dialog. So here it goes. I’m not a big enthusiast about worrying at all. No, I’m not a big enthusiast. Now, I think to have concerns, and then find inside how you want to address them, that’s powerful. That’s good. Yes, there are things that are upsetting, things that are deeply grieving, that create grief in me that I want to respond to, that I will work to change. But the energy of worry has a kind of, when I hear the word and when I think about it and when I know in myself that mind pattern that I can get into, it’s one that’s not particularly constructive. It doesn’t really go anywhere. I think it’s probably not good for my health, certainly not good for sleep. It’s not the right energy, that brings forth more generativity, more joy, more brightness, more solutions in the world. They come from a different kind of energy inside.
So I think the initial worry would be like, Okay, how do I translate this into constructive action, or letting go? And I think those are both valid options, meaning, is there something I can do here that’s really constructive? Can I get my feet and start walking, and do it? That’s powerful. Let’s go. And if not, then can I let go of this? And this is a big thing to say, I don’t know how you’ll respond to it, but if there’s nothing I can do constructively, then can I give it to a higher power? Can I give it to the force of life, the flow of life? But me worrying about it? I don’t see the point.
Vicki Robin
I totally agree with you. I have become unfamiliar to myself, because of the level of worry. I’ve been a worrier but what’s happened in the last five years or so, is that the unfolding of the world seemed bigger than anything I could track. I mean, part of the benefit of sitting here and having this podcast is that I get to talk to people like you at least once a week, and gain a bigger perspective. Because I’ve been the big perspective person, and I have come to that. As I’ve worked through my reactivity to the world, the first thing I got to was, I can accept the unacceptable not because it’s acceptable, but because it is.
Then more recently, I’ve just had a determination, is I will not engage my body-mind system in things that I don’t have decisional power. Or if I can’t, I ask myself as I read the news, is there something I can do about this? I can even send love and energy to refugees, I can do that. But beyond that, if I can’t do anything, then I’m going to pay attention to where I do have influence. For me that choice is I’m working locally, and I’m also working with – you know me from the old Your Money or Your Life world, but there’s something called FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early). It’s an immense global community of people who have at least taken responsibility for their own sort of bundle of stuff. So I’m working there, asking the question, what else can we do as a community? I’m working in the places where I have clarity or influence.
Tami Simon
I would add to that; clarity, influence and inspiration. I think that’s very, very important, because I think sometimes we look out, and there are things that are happening, that upset us, that we’re concerned about. But we may not actually feel the call inside, it’s not really alive for us to make those moves and do those things. Then we discount the way we are called. So we are called to do something, whether it’s in our family, or for me, I have such a deep love of wisdom traditions and spiritual teachers. I can have the thought, Well, that’s not good enough, Tami, just interviewing spiritual teachers ad nausea and that’s not enough. You should be volunteering in your local water system project locally. I think to myself, Yeah, I really care about that. And then I go to make the phone call and I think, I don’t want to do this. I hate administrative meetings. I hate this kind of, I’m so bad operationally, I’m much better focusing on kind of future transformation through the embrace of spiritual wisdom teachings.
I had a conversation with Paul Hawken about this, because I read his new book. And as I was reading it, Regeneration, there were 100 different projects that were profiled. I was like, I’m looking for the one. And he’s like, Tami, what about what you’re already doing? And I was like, Is that good enough? Is that enough? I’m so concerned about climate change. And he’s like, I think the work you’re doing is beautiful. It’s profound. It has such an impact on so many people. And besides you love it, you’re called to it, it’s what you wake up and want to do. And I was like, Yeah, that’s true. He’s like, Just stick to it, stick to it. So part of what I’m saying is what we’re each inspired to do, what’s right in front of us, I think that’s what we’re called to do. The next step, the next step. And there are other people working on these other projects who have natural proclivities for those projects.
Vicki Robin
Yeah, I think there’s a quality of trust that it takes. That sort of impulse to do this and that and rise to every occasion that shows up on your doorstep. I think that comes from a misplaced sense of control, that we can actually control things out there, if we just worked hard enough to talk to enough people or just get this legislation passed. As you say, there are people who are called to that. There are people who are called to policy work, and I am called to policy work as sort of poetry. I can talk about it.
For me, actually, I recently came to what my value add really is, is language. I call my work now Moving Wisdom, Moving Words. Just getting heart-filled letters to the editor, heart-filled memos. I can do that. Actually, I would like to be an ultimate deep fake, where I put out these beautiful words and concepts about things that could go right, or whatever it is I’m seeing, and then just notice that political leaders have stolen my language. You see my words coming out of other people’s mouths, because they’re out there. People are just picking words out of the environment. So I’m just charging the environment with the best words I can. That feels powerful to me.
Words are important, and language is important. Years ago doing Your Money or Your Life work, we put together a pamphlet. We were inspired by John Robbins, he had a pamphlet of 100 statistics that once I read it, I stopped eating beef. So I thought, what can we write about consumerism? We did something called All Consuming Passion, and we collect the 75 statistics that we arranged in such a way that, in a way, people would just start to be disgusted by the activity, the implications of activity. For years after that, I saw hundreds of newspaper articles that used our data, because reporters were out there grabbing data. Anyway, that and local work is what I’m called to do.
Tami Simon
Now I’m thinking and thinking about words, it brought something up for me, which is we recently published an audio series with Caroline Myss. She’s a teacher who talks about the power of holy language, holy words and how, in many ways, holy language has been lost in our contemporary world. Because people think if they use words that are like, I have a covenant with life in some way, or I believe and have a faith in this or that – words like covenant and faith, powerful holy words – that they’ll be perceived as maybe they’re back in some superstitious, mumbo jumbo, biblical religious times; we don’t need that.
But somehow, in our rational, contemporary world, if we’re missing that sense of being connected and devoted to what is sacred in our lives, to what’s not human, to what is beyond and includes the human, what’s beyond our rational capacity to perceive; if we’re no longer infusing our language with that type of devotional vocabulary, we’re missing something that’s so important, at least to me, to the human heart, to the process of the heart that’s in relationship with larger forces. So I just want to bring that in too, the power of holy language.
Vicki Robin
So riffing off that. One of the ways that liberals, progressives, whatever you want to call us; one of the ways that we look untrustworthy, is that we’re not using that language. The heartland has church, as still for so many people, it is the core, it is the teaching, it’s where they gain the strength to go on another day. And the fact is that we don’t use religious or holy language.
Tami Simon
Right, so I think the challenge would be, you’ll notice the words I used were words that had meaning to me. Covenant, I feel like I have a covenant with life. What that means to me is I feel that I have made certain promises to deliver my gifts to the world. And that that is a type of inner set of vows that I’ve made as a soul. Okay, so I used words soul, vows, covenant, but I’m using words that mean something to me. I’m not just pointing to some language that’s dead, that I don’t believe in, that’s not natural to me, that’s not native to me. And I’m bringing to it my own interpretation, what actually means something to me. So I could use a word like source and feeling part of something bigger than my human being that I’m a part of. So I think it’s important as we find our language, that it’s language that’s actually animated in our own experience. It’s true for us. Then I think we can build bridges too and see what language is true for other people. Oh, that’s interesting! It’s kind of similar. It has a similar feeling underneath. Interesting.
Vicki Robin
Mm hmm. I feel like the word devotion for me is animated, I would say.
Tami Simon
Yeah, beautiful word. Your life expresses so much devotion, yeah. Vicki.
Vicki Robin
Yeah, I’m devoted. Actually, sometimes I apologize, but I just say to people, I like God words, so here, I’m going to use it. I have felt a lot in my life, that my life is a dialog with God. Like, Hey, what do you think about this God? I know that’s sort of my personalized sense of something that’s really almighty, but I come out of the Jewish tradition and that is in me. Shards of light. All of these words are in me. What I was pointing to – and maybe what it sounded like was sort of a cynical, using of language that isn’t natural to me – but I think that what you’re saying about Caroline, that the fear of using language that refers to your deeper soul commitment in this life, the fear of using that language actually contributes to a sense of alienation. Like, I don’t understand you, because where’s your faith? What are you devoted to? Are you only intellectual? Presencing in people who have a strong religious faith, what people who don’t express their faith or the kinds of faith that they carry, it makes it more alien.
So I’m looking for bridging language. I’m working in food system work, and food freedom and food sovereignty. It’s not about permaculture. Permaculture says nothing to a whole big swath of my local farmers. But food freedom and food sovereignty and being able to grow food and feed your community, which is a noble profession, and not have to go through reams of paperwork in order to do it. That is language that resonates broadly. So I’m really interested in the language that resonates broadly, because I can pick my words, I can be more conscious and pick words that are not accidentally offensive. And really, that’s a lot of what I’m curious about really is, how do we bridge this? It’s like that idea of what unites us is so much greater than what divides us. How do we talk into the space that we all share?
Tami Simon
Right. I think one thing, and it’s what we’re doing here, is having the courage to speak from our genuine inner experience and share it. So you said, I dialog with God about my life. And yet, there’s this quality of like, is it okay to say that? Am I going to sound like…? But Vicki, that’s true for you. And for me, my whole life is an expression of my devotion to God or life. That’s my life, and that’s what I care the most about. It’s an outpouring of that.
When I hear you ask a question like, what’s going right? Well, what’s going right, and that’s why I started and we’re having this conversation, and I’m not even talking about yes, people are watching and yes, it has impacts and social media. Okay, that’s true. But no, it’s just you and I, two human beings right now, sharing our inner spiritual experience with each other in a vulnerable way, in a language that’s not like talking about our Jewish this or that, or how it fits in this or that. We’re talking about what’s true for us on the inside.
I think that’s something that we have the opportunity to have go right, at any moment. It naturally does create this bridge to other people, because when you share what’s really going on with you, and what really matters to you at the deepest level, what you really value, what’s really happening; it’s an invitation. It’s an automatic invitation for other people to do the same. If we can share it without judgment, we’re not judging ourselves, “here’s the strange voodoo I do inside”, whatever it is; like, Okay, that’s me. Okay, great. Who are you? Interesting. Wow, that’s so different. Let me get in there. Let me see it, let me understand it. There’s a natural bridge there, because the judgment has been pushed aside. It’s just real.
Vicki Robin
I’m thinking right now as you’re talking, about I think one of the most powerful spiritual movements in our society, bridging spiritual movements, is the Anonymous groups. I used to joke that I wish I had some sort of addiction, to go to the Anonymous groups. The level of acceptance of one another is astonishing. You sit down in that seat, and it doesn’t matter if you are the vice president of a major corporation. It’s because you’re there in your vulnerability. You’re there because you’re facing yourself in some way.
Also what I think about when you say this is that, when I used to do more organizing of groups and stuff like that, I used to always start with celebration. I think because people come together a lot of times around a problem, or getting better, so I used to start with like, what’s working? Let’s celebrate what’s working. And it does create an aura in the conversation, whatever it is.
Tami Simon
Yeah, I think it’s so important to have a both/and. What I mean by that is, for example, at our leadership team at Sounds True, we end with appreciations. So you could say celebrations, but we end with appreciating each other, if there’s anything that we want to say that’s natural, that’s arising. But more in the middle of the meeting, we have a section where we talk about what’s under the table. What isn’t being said, that needs to be said, that is potentially concerning us or that we’re pushing away, we don’t really want to deal with it, but we actually need to deal with it. So we first talk about what’s under the table, and so by the time we get to appreciations, the whole meeting feels balanced.
I think this is just such an interesting thing, because I think there can be toxic positivity and toxic negativity, both. If we just get rid of the toxic part, and the toxic part is forcing ourselves to be in either one of these categories. So even like, well, what’s going right, what could possibly go right? What could possibly go wrong? What do we have no idea about that we could never even, don’t even know if it’s right or wrong? Or we don’t even know, what’s in that category? What’s the mysterious surprise, futuristic, who knows category? It’s not really right or wrong. It’s mythic. Okay, what’s mythic? How many other things too, could we bring into the conversation? And could we just be open to bring them all there, look at all of them? That’s what I like. That’s how I like to approach things personally.
Vicki Robin
It’s one of the things I’ve been studying recently is, trying to find the avenues through polarization. I read a wonderful book by Amanda Ripley. I can’t remember the name of it at the moment, but one of the things she said about getting out of this right/wrong polarization that people have just entrenched, they go further and further and further; she said, is to complicate the conversation, that basically the binary proposition which is embedded somehow in the Western mind, is almost inevitably going to drive us into a polarizing, picking sides sort of thing. So I had a friend who used to say, if you’re working on a problem and you only have two solutions, you haven’t thought well enough. You have to have at least five.
So I’m working on myself. I mean, I’ve been challenged by other guests on the question itself. It sort of has a little sassy edge. But the question itself is, presuming that there’s one thing right, that there’s an outcome that is a true solution to the mess that we’re in. I totally agree on what you’re talking about, is sort of breaking ourselves out of the straitjacket, of the Western solutionary progress is our most important product.
Yeah, so just riffing off of that. That’s sort of a big thing to heal, in our souls and in our conversations, and just how we are in the world. Just being present and celebrating what’s right, right now. It’s celebrating that we’re complex human beings and that actually, human beings have been through an awful lot, right/wrong. My other motto for myself recently is, Life goes on. Wars come and wars go, pandemics come and pandemics go, but there’s something in life itself that has this self-healing, self-balancing, self-nourishing quality. That’s another thing that we can trust. Just like what you’re saying, it’s playing our part because we like the music.
Tami Simon
Yeah, very much so. Now in terms of the premise of our conversation about what could go right and also this notion of you’re talking to people that you think are cultural scouts. I’ll tell you the frontier that I’m working on, which has to do with the transformation of business. Sounds True created a program called the Inner MBA, and what we’re looking at is what we see as a rising tide in the business world, which is for businesses to operate in just ways, just forms of capitalism, and the inspiration that people have for their business to truly honor all the stakeholders. Whether that’s the rise in the B Corp movement, or it’s the rise in employers saying, I think I’m actually really going to focus on well-being and care, because otherwise people won’t work here. And guess what? I’m discovering that when we express our love and care for the people who work with us, that they are more inspired, and they want to stay, and they bring more of their heart and ingenuity to work,
When we see companies that take a stand… As part of the Inner MBA program, we have CEOs who are participating and bringing their ideas. We had Rose Macario, who for many years was the CEO of Patagonia, talking about how when a business takes a stand and has a voice for what it believes, how that actually magnetizes customers, and makes your customers love you even more. And also how you were talking about social media and all of the negatives that can come from it, and the pros that can come from it; one of the things is that it also brings a light to what’s really going on inside companies where you can’t just say one thing and do another, and not think that the truth is going to come out. So are you really aligned with what you’re saying, what your values are? I hope you are, oh business, because you can’t just greenwash and not deliver on those values without being exposed in the world. That puts a certain pressure.
So all these different pressures. And I think the ultimate is an inner pressure that’s happening in people that say, Look, we spend so much time at work. Let’s have our work reflect the deep values of our soul. Businesses are doing that. That’s the kind of business I want to work for. And the Inner MBA is a training program, a nine month training program, for people who want this kind of wisdom-based education in business.
Vicki Robin
Yeah, that’s why there’s so many coaches in the world, is that there’s so many people working in businesses that are more or less alien environments, that they need to re-presence in themselves to be able to go back out and work another day. Some of it may be just for their own personal rising up the corporate ladder. But I think there’s a lot of coaches who are basically doing therapy for people working in corporations that feel alien to them. So do you see, is there not just more customers, but are you seeing a rising interest in this transformation of corporations into benefit for…?
Tami Simon
Yeah, I see it, because we had Lynne Twist give our commencement address to our first graduating class of the Inner MBA. She said, You know, Tami, it was 46 years ago that I attended a lecture, a commencement lecture by Buckminster Fuller, who was saying 50 years from now, every structure in our society will go through a transformation that reflects the interdependence that we now know is real. What Lynne was saying is we’re seeing that it has to happen in the business world and the kind of education you’re offering through a program like the Inner MBA, is the education for businesses to function with the consciousness of interdependence, right in the very heart in original charter of how the business operates.
I think that is the necessary future of our institutions. It’s going to be a long haul to get there. But I think for each of us, where we find ourselves. I found myself as a business person. As you mentioned, Sounds True has been around now for 36 years, and we’re a small business but we have 150 employees. We have all the challenges that come with having difficult conversations and creating real collaboration and teamwork, and people feeling well cared for and like we’re getting a whole heck of a lot done every week. We have all the challenges. So we’ve been trying to bring this kind of training and intelligence into our company, and now sharing it also using the relationships we have with all the wisdom teachers we’ve been working with. So yeah, I think it’s a rising tide.
Vicki Robin
Well, that’s wonderful to hear, because there’s so many places where people need to buck the assumptions, that it’s this sort of dog-eat-dog world. But it’s not. We’re all in this together. This configuration happens to be business, and we want to have everybody prosper inside and as a business, because that’s our success. So I think that’s very heartening for me to hear that.
Tami Simon
There’s some early signs, Vicki. I’ll give you an example. One of the CEOs who’s participating in the program, his name is Steve Macadam and he retired about a year ago, but he worked for 12 years as the CEO of a large public manufacturing company called EnPro. North of a billion dollars on the public markets, 6000 employees. He went in and took the company through a full transformation process, where they dedicated themselves to a dual bottom line. One bottom line is, of course, their financial targets. They’re a public company putting those numbers up. But the other bottom line is human flourishing, human development. He’s introduced the practice of centering to all 6000 employees who work in manufacturing capacities. They’re dedicated to pushing authority down, so that it’s a very self-managed workforce, so that people in the factories manage their own work. So he took the company through a whole process where we care about human development equally to financial performance. Just an example. Somebody who, he himself knew, that if people were treated as ends in themselves at work, that it would both be the human thing to do, and it would be helpful for the business in terms of unleashing human potential at work.
Vicki Robin
This is such a wonderful story that it can happen within a corporate setting, and not just worker-owned cooperatives, like the Mondriaan system and many others, that these are being held up as the form of the future, because everybody needs to prosper together. But to be able to do it in a traditional business, to have that intention… I am sure that there are so many businesses where the owner’s or the CEO’s intention is exactly that. Especially the ones that are embedded in community, that basically are accountable to community because they’re neighbors. Whatever it is, you know that you’re gonna bump into people on the street. So I’m glad to hear that. I’m glad to hear that even if you’re not officially a public benefit corporation, you see yourself that way. Exactly. That’s your devotion, to go back around to that word that we use, is to bring your devotion to work. Not just your children, your daughter, your son; but to bring your devotion to work.
Tami Simon
Yeah. For each of us to bring our devotion to wherever we find ourselves. So for me, I found myself working a whole lot of hours, for a whole lot of years, and really being quite invested in business, truly. And how business operates, and the form of it, and what is it like to create a workplace culture that actually genuinely allows people to thrive and flourish and love and create. So this is my little world. But for people who find themselves, whether you’re an educator, you work in the medical profession, or the legal profession, or wherever you are; that’s your arena to transform, in this language of Buckminster Fuller, our interdependence. How does that institution, that social institution, start to reflect our values, not the values of patriarchy and white supremacy upon which it was built over the last few 100 years? But how do we bring our heart-soul values into the redesign of whatever institution we’re a part of?
Vicki Robin
I think that’s fabulous. That’s the note that we should wind up on, Tami. It’s almost like this has been a teaching about an authentic engagement from the heart and the will from the heart, with the world that we share; whatever labels you put on it. Going right, going wrong, going sideways, going up, going down. Whatever labels you put on it, how do I, from my heart and soul, engage with the world that I’m in, in the short time I’m here. What a privilege.
Tami Simon
Thank you. Thank you so much.
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