I have a theory. I’ve been cultivating this theory for several years now, but recently had an experience that gives it some real support.

My theory is that by working on yourself and your core relationships you increase your empathetic capacity. This empathy then trickles down to every other relationship you have, including those within your business; employees, customer, venders, etc. This trickle down effect can have a positive influence on all business practices, employee and customer satisfaction, and even the impact business has on the world in general.

I recently had the pleasure of hearing a talk given by an impressive guy named Tshering Tobgay. Tshering is the former Prime Minister of Bhutan, a tiny country in between China and India among the Himalayan mountains. Bhutan is known for measuring its country’s value not on Gross National Product, but on Gross National Happiness- the overall contentment of the people.

Tshering believes that happiness, and understanding what makes others happy, is an important key to business because it gives us the groundwork for good leadership and purposeful living through business. Dr. Emily Anhalt further supports my theory in her 2017 article, “The entrepreneur lifestyle is a unique brand of emotionally taxing and stressful. In addition to focusing on one’s mental health and having healthy coping mechanisms to deal with anxiety, depression, and self-doubt, an emotional fitness regimen is an imperative asset to entrepreneurial life.

Good emotional fitness will help foster more genuine and symbiotic relationships, which is truly the crux of entrepreneurship. It will increase an entrepreneur’s ability to handle the ups and downs of starting a business, help them communicate more effectively, increase their capacity for empathy, and allow them to use their emotions to make informed and positive decisions.”

So it seems that we may be on to something here. The commonality between your life and your business is YOU. It just makes sense that one would affect the other through this semipermeable membrane of emotional fitness. I recently read a great quote that said “how you to anything is how you do everything”. That sums it up perfectly. 

Tshering and the country of Bhutan have been able to find a way to get a relatively accurate quantification on GNH. This is what Whole Life Entrepreneurship aims to do with the 3C Assessment.  Then we can increase our self awareness and identify what areas need improving. The hope is that by becoming more “emotionally fit” would yield happiness as a byproduct. This, I believe, is how we endeavor to be successful in all areas of our lives. But if we could change the world with more purposeful business that might be cool too. 

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