Every employer is looking for trustworthy, whole-hearted employees who will work not only for a salary but who will take as much intelligent, creative, and industrious interest in the development of the business as the founder of the business himself. The employer and the employee both have a common goal—the real success of the business they have undertaken together. Both of them are servants working for one cause.
The best way to please your employer is to be kind, obedient, and pleasant to him, and to give him better service than anyone else in his office. In this way you can earn the highest position in the place, and then continue to develop your creative ability so that your employer will feel he would be blind without you. Perhaps your employer will then be glad to give you a partnership in the business.
Be sure to obey the reasonable commands of your boss or immediate superior. Try to keep him pleased by hard, intelligent, productive work, by extreme pleasantness and courtesy, and also by doing part of his work. Tolerate a cranky employer by increasing your kindness and courtesy, and internally ignoring his rash behavior. During meditation, concentrate at the point between the eyebrows and broadcast: “Father, calm my employer.”
Perseverance, creative ability, attuning to the unlimited power of God in daily meditation, honest business methods, loyalty to your employer, thinking of the business you are employed in as your own business, tuning in with your immediate superior or the owner of the business and with your Cosmic Boss, God—by using these methods, you can unfailingly please both your office employer and your Divine Employer, God.
During meditation, say: “Father, bless me that I may be able to offer the best service in the business I am in. Father, bless me that I may please my employer and everyone I contact.”
Service should be your goal
If you can convince your employer by your actions and creative ability that you can increase his income honestly, he will gladly give you the best position in the place for his own benefit. Your mind must be on creative ability and not on money making, and then money will be your slave instead of your master.
Most workers want high positions, but they forget to develop the necessary qualities of efficiency, creative ability, loyalty, and unselfish selfishness. To desire your own upliftment by making more money for the business you work for is not a sin, but is called “unselfish selfishness.” Your “selfishness” must be directed toward the unselfish desire of helping your employer.
Remember that developing your usefulness is the surest way of attracting notice and success. No creative businessman can carry out his work by himself, and the largest and smallest concerns the world over are looking for honest, loyal, dependable, energetic, creative workers.
Develop your creative ability
You must think creatively every day and equip yourself with the necessary knowledge and experience that your business demands. Creative thinking consists of going into the Silence every day for at least half an hour, and in putting your entire mind and concentration on discovering how you can improve your line of work and how you can become fit for a position of greater responsibility in your present business.
If there is a chance of promotion in the business you are in, continue using your creative ability for the well-being of your employer’s business. But if your work is mechanical and has no future, develop your creative ability in a business that attracts you, and then secure a position in that business. When you are sure that you have a position in the business you like, then quit your former, get-by job.
If you develop your concentration and creative ability, you can learn to love any kind of work and can develop your efficiency and success in any direction you choose. But it is better to use your creative ability in work to which you are instinctively attracted, than in work to which you have to awaken your interest anew.
If you don’t like to work for others, you must learn to be your own employer and employee. You must use your creative ability to acquire complete knowledge and experience in one branch of a very serviceable business. Use your creative concentration to gather capital for your business by working and borrowing; save money for it by leading a frugal life.
Congenital defects of a non-productive, non-intelligent mind can only be removed by meditation and creative thinking. Contact with God can remove all human limitations that impede success. Learn to receive success vibrations from God during meditation, and from successful men in the world.
The use of your creative ability will lead you to the sphere of unlimited success. By daily thinking about your line of work and the business you are in, and by business training and experience acquired in school or at work, you will find your knowledge of your business increasing a hundred-fold.
Acquired business experience must be expanded by constantly using common sense and creative ability. Penetrate deeply into the region of creative thought, and you will learn from A to Z about a business and will be able to manage any business in the best possible way. Use creative intelligence to cut down overhead expense and discover better methods of production, advertising, and distribution.
Selfishness in business
Selfishness is the metaphysical blunder which leads self seeking industries to undergo the throes of periodic
depressions and false inflation.
If all the businessmen of the world are selfish, then each businessman has millions of inimical competitors. But, if each businessman wants to succeed by including the success of others in his success, then each businessman will have millions of helping business friends. “Each for all and all for each” must be the motto for real success and happiness in business.
Your most important engagements
Systematize and schedule your engagements. Your business engagements are important, and for them you sacrifice your equally important engagements of daily physical exercise, and of bathing the nerves and mind with the peace of meditation. Your business engagements have always come first in your consideration. They can remain the most important until you are called away into the Mystery beyond. But I advocate evenness of development and prosperity. I do not believe in spiritual aspiration being chloroformed by business madness.
Many people think that unless one is “at it” day and night he is going to be left behind. That is not true. The one-sided business-bent man, forgetful of the other duties of life, is not the truly successful man. It requires the greatest skill to live life evenly, rightly, and successfully.
Using all our mental powers to maintain our physical bodies should not be the goal of life. There is little difference between eating food from a gold plate or an ordinary plate— in both cases, the food satisfies hunger. Then why continue to multiply self-created, useless desires, and to work night and day in pursuit of things one does not need?
Your engagement with business is important, but your appointment with serving others is more important, and your engagement with meditation, God, and Truth is most important. Don’t say that you are too busy with keeping the wolf from the door to have time for the development of heavenly qualities. Break your self-satisfied, immovable bad habit of idolizing your less important engagements and utterly ignoring your most important engagement with wisdom. No one else will answer for your actions, though others often keep you enmeshed in useless frivolities and so-called important engagements.
“Each for all and all for each” must be the motto for real success and happiness in business.
Engagements with Over-activity and Mr. Idleness both lead to misery. It is time for the modern man to shake his drowsiness of centuries and systematize his life. The modern man has learned to apply science, psychology, and system to his business for his material comfort. He ought also to apply system and science to improve his health, prosperity, wisdom, and social life. In order to do that, he must not give all his time to business, which only insures the hope of physical comfort.
People forget that living too luxuriously means a corresponding increase in use of nerve and brain energy, and the expenditure of longevity! Most people become so engrossed in making money that they cannot enjoy the comforts they have acquired.
How to select your business associates
The true success of any business depends upon the right business leader and his proper associates, and the right business management plus the right business environment. There are some businesses run by a single individual, but most businesses need to be run by a group of intelligent associates. When a business run by a single individual finds itself expanding, the owner may have to employ associates, but no matter whom you employ, always keep the controlling interest of your business in your own hands.
Most business concerns fail due to the lack of proper business associates. Employees should be judged by their previous record of success and their creative intelligence. Avoid silken-tongued but insincere, or impulsive, business associates. Such people will retard the progress of your business, if they do not entirely ruin it.
You must depend not only on references but also on keen observation, intelligence, open-mindedness, and intuition in order to select business associates with superior qualities. It is also a good idea to study the horoscope of a prospective business associate. If properly interpreted, the stars indicate an individual’s good or evil habits of a former incarnation, which appear now as instincts and hereditary tendencies.
Tests of character and ability
Attracting honest, loyal, friendly, intelligent business associates, who will make your business their business and your ambition their ambition, is the best way to conduct a business. Look for creative ability, intelligence, and above all, trustworthiness in your business associates.
Don’t take for granted the integrity of a business associate. Be sure to test him directly or indirectly, through friends or detectives. Give him a temptation and see how he reacts. Through friends, try to make your business associates talk against you, and find out what their intentions are. Forgive every minor fault twice or thrice, but never overlook treachery. A business associate who is treacherous toward you will repeat the same act when you are least expecting it, and can do you irreparable damage.
If a business associate is profligate, drinks too much, or shows no shame when criticized for his moral conduct, excuse him several times, giving him a chance to reform. If he fails to show signs of contriteness and improvement, discharge him.
Don’t employ a slow-to-understand person, or a mentally or physically lazy person. A mentally lazy person grunts and moans, and considers it a terrible expenditure of energy to create, plan, or think about your business success.
Honesty and loyalty in business relations
Do not keep a dishonest person in your employ. You can never tell what such a person might do to your business. Be sure to find out from his previous employer about his character, ability, and honesty. On the other hand, if you are an employee and you repeatedly hear something very negative about your prospective employer, then be sure to stay away from him altogether.
Never let a friend take advantage of you just because you are his friend. Business must be conducted strictly on business principles. Those business associates who stand by you in your troubles are your best friends. Never take into business a friend who would not take orders from you or follow your advice, due to wrong familiarity.
Read character through the eyes
The intuitive way
The history of an individual is in his brain, and is reflected in the eyes, which show the character, habits, and the soul of an individual. Beware of shifting, untrustworthy eyes, cruel eyes, and crafty, sarcastic, revengeful eyes. Beware of hate projecting eyes, and lack of straightforwardness in the eyes. If you feel an automatic, intuitive shrinking after looking fully in the eyes of an individual, then beware of that person.
The spiritual way
After deep meditation, hold your mind at the point between the eyebrows and visualize the eyes of your prospective employee or partner. Study the feeling in your heart. If you feel fear, don’t employ such a person.
The first impression
Keep your soul unprejudiced and look penetratingly into the eyes of the person you are interviewing, the first time you meet him. If you remain calm and receptive, your impression at first sight will be correct.
It is time for the modern man to shake his drowsiness of centuries and systematize his life.
The magnetic way
After deep meditation, pray: “Father, send me my proper business associate through my spiritual magnetism, increased through Thy Grace.”