If I’m asked what the most valuable lesson I’ve been taught in business has been, sovereignty is certainly one of them.

I was raised in a culture where the old axiom “the customer is always right” was not only drilled in and drilled deep, to not believe it bordered on blasphemy.

Thankfully, a few years later, I was led to unlearn this deeply damaging slice of “common sense”. 

Which reminds me, there are two fundamental problems with “common sense”… one is that it’s common, which leads to the other which is consequently there’s often very little sense in it all.

I digress. 

In business, sovereignty equates to doing business with whom I want, when I want, at the price I want, if  and only if, I choose to do business at all.

Consequently, despite having trained more people to the highest standards in Coaching than any other individual or institution in the profession (in excess of 40,000 at the time of writing, from more than 170 countries), and served thousands of business owners and entrepreneurs across the world, I still don’t work with most people.

It’s nothing personal. Only a small percentage of people are willing to do what it takes to be extraordinarily successful in their work.

Most are not – and statistics prove it. 

I don’t want a business which feels like I’m pushing water uphill, just like I don’t want my life to feel that way. And when business does feel that way, a huge percentage of life follow suit.

I’ve been on this spinning rock long enough to know that some people just can’t get past themselves or the ideology they inherited from their environment in order to be, do and have more in their lives.

A great mentor of mine once told me most people would rather be ‘right’ than rich. Being true to yourself is the ultimate wealth in life… but if your truth is, in fact, someone else’s ‘truth’ you’ve inherited from your environment, you’re living a lie.

And many people are. 

I won’t work with certain mindsets.

This is not about judgement, it is about an awareness drawn from years of experience, and having the wherewithal to do my homework on the kind of individual I like to work with, and the kind I don’t.

I don’t claim to be everyone’s cuppa tea, and not everyone’s mine. I find this, along with direct, truthful conversation to be the most respectful and honouring way of doing business – nothing honours the choices and preferences of the soul concerned more in my book.

 Many years, and thousands of hours in the Coaching process delving into the innermost workings of the human psyche with a diverse array of countless individuals brings an education no book, seminar or course can bring.

And there are certain mindsets I’ve found to be so well-defended they’re extraordinarily resistant to growth – out of reach because they’re closed to any idea which is not in harmony with their existing belief systems…

… even if the idea would significantly enhance the quality of life of the individual concerned.

We grow most from people with very different maps of the world, yet the vast majority of the human race lack the mental strength and emotional maturity to withstand alternative views and understandings.

I’m very particular about who I work with, as I hope you are in your business. Business, like life itself, should be fun, rewarding and fulfilling, not onerous and difficult.

There are seven mindsets that I won’t work with. They are not suited to my entrepreneurial communities or my body of work.

Mindset #1: The Deeply Indoctrinated Religious Mind

The reason I get such profound results is because my work goes deep. It has to, otherwise there’s no transformation in the individual concerned.

Without wishing to sound conceited in anyway, I’ve not built my global reputation as a masterful expert in Coaching by delivering surface-level, marginal improvements for the individuals I serve.

 And shallow, surface-level, ‘happy clappy’ cosmetic self-help might make you feel great, but it soon wanes. If results are to improve substantially and  permanently, you have to dig deep and modify what is ultimately sponsoring the thinking and behaviour creating the outcomes we call results.

If you’ve wisely invested in The 4 Pillars of Entrepreneurial Mastery™ in the past, you’ll know of the profoundly powerful insight you get on what I’ve just described in the second pillar.

I don’t like the idea of associating people with labels. More on that in another blog. I guess plenty of people would consider my outlook on life as “libertarian”.

I believe we should have the right to follow whatever path we choose, and do whatever ever we please, as long as it doesn’t violate the rights of other sentient beings (and I include animal and vegetative life in that equation).

While I respect individual choice, including choice of theology, I’ve found with most people there’s not been much choice in the choice at all. 

Stay with me.

The vast majority of our species inherits its theology largely dependent upon which part of the Earth it is born and raised upon.

Rare is the individual who is willing to challenge the central tenets of the theology they inherited.

   I’ve worked with thousands of people with diverse religious beliefs. I respect their right to follow whatever path to the divine they choose to, as long as it doesn’t impinge on alternative views. 

Respecting someone’s ideology or theology doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be challenged or questioned. I’m a Coach. My job is to question what is ultimately sponsoring the quality of your thinking so you can evaluate if and how it serves you in life.

 I believe in spiritual liberation, not incarceration, and in the name of equipping myself and the people I serve to express their unique abilities and limitless potential into their personal and professional lives, I reject and challenge many aspects of the indoctrinated dogma and blatant falsity that is taught through the world’s man-made, fear-based theological constructions.

In essence, I’m not only not religious, I deplore religion and what it does to the psychology of mankind.

Deeply damaging ideas sprung from religion run deep in society. And they don’t just negatively impact those who choose a religious path. 

For example, the idea that any human being is born ‘sinful’ or ‘unworthy’ is an abhorrent idea, one of the most damaging ever set upon our species… and one I passionately and wholeheartedly reject.

Equally I reject the fear-mongering, judgemental, narcissistic creator depicted by the world’s theologies.

Many find my approach difficult to accept given the map of the world they inherited from their environment.

I’m no atheist. On the contrary, I enjoy a healthy spiritual life. I simply don’t recognise the God of the world’s theological constructions, see them for what they are, and wholeheartedly reject them.

Consequently, in my business life I choose not to work with those who are so deeply indoctrinated into beliefs they did not originate they are not only unwilling to question and re-evaluate them, such is the fragility of their consciousness,they’re easily affronted, operate with hypocritical and sanctimonious piousness, and either look to be, or can potentially be, offended when alternative or enhanced understandings are shared.

If you have deep-seated religious beliefs, regardless of which theology you follow, and you find it unpalatable to allow others the right to express their truth if it contravenes the ‘truth’ you’ve been fed, you’ll find my world, and it’s pursuit of heightening consciousness, far too uncomfortable, far too confronting, far too challenging and, consequently, far too unpalatable.

The same applies if you’re overly pious, or take political correctness or ‘wokeness’ to such extremes as to take offence to any sense of humour which doesn’t fit with your own.

In fact, if you’re one of those folks who’s had a sense of humour bypass (and there are plenty of them these days) – I’m the last person to be around.

As much as the nature of my work compels me to communicate matters with an often serious demeanour (it is, after all, a very serious subject matter given this is what ultimately determines the quality of our life experience), beneath it lies a ridiculously child-like sense of humour. 

Life’s too short not to have one of those… and the mindset seeking to diminish or even extinguish the flame of humour in others because of the fragility of their own psychology will never fit in my world,

As my kids often tell me… the kids I’ve unquestionably “ruined” by my filthy sense of humour… I should be ‘cancelled’, because the day I pamper to the opinion of those who seek to vet, constrain or restrict humour to what they think is “appropriate” is the day I’m ready to leave this beautiful spinning rock.

Again, “To thine ownself be true”.

Now this first example of the boundaries of sovereignty in my world is taken care of, if you’re still with me, next comes, naturally, the second mindset I won’t work with… 

… and even more insight on this all-important topic of sovereignty.

Warmly.

Christian

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