The Season of the Soul : Growing Your Business and Life From the Inside Out

Sunset over the River Avon and Abbey Mill, Tewkesbury

As I write this it is Autumn Equinox, and there is always a feeling of change this time of year. I have to admit, the autumn and spring equinoxes are two of my favourite moments in the year. I feel them more than the solstices, I think. 

Solstices to me feel like a pause, whereas equinoxes really feel like a shift, you feel the movement the change in the air. I am definitely sensing that change, this year more than any. 

The Autumn is the season of leaving and letting go, letting go of the previous season, whether that be the actual season, summer or a season in your life, the releasing of something that no longer serves you. It has a bittersweet feeling a sort of wistful feeling about it as we say goodbye to those long warm summer days but look forward to those long cosy autumn and winter evenings. 

I love the light, the energy at this time  and for two weeks twice a year at Equinox, I am blessed with the most stunning sunset views. I live opposite two rivers the Severn and the Avon and the Sun sets perfectly over both rivers between a large gap of river front buildings directly in front of my home. I feel like Hafren (Welsh name) or Sabrina (Latin Name), the River Severn Goddess, has gifted me this view at this hallowed time of year. 

It is 11 AM and I am sat outside now writing this. The sun is shining and the sun feels perfect, just enough to warm my skin, without feeling too hot and too intense. As the Sun moves into Libra on the Equinox, for a moment everything just feels perfectly balanced, in equilibrium before we start moving into the winter. 

I have to admit this last year has been a tough one. Personally it's felt heavier and harder than most. Over the last 6 years or so, I have been doing a lot of healing and inner work. Peeling back layer by layer, the healing and growth journey is continuous. 

In business, my core expertise in continuous and business improvement, I have found in life it's no different. Improvement and growth is a continuous practice, in order to keep moving forward or to ascend in life (be that material, mental, spiritual), it takes devotion, ritual and practice. Daily acts of love towards yourself, your business and your family. It takes commitment and conscious action. 

I almost said " conscious effort" there, but effort feels like the wrong word, as if it is an act of love, it doesn't feel like effort. That doesn't mean we have to love everything we do or to love everything that needs doing. But that the driver and energy behind the action is that of love. 

When I wash my children's clothes, cook their food, plan their birthdays, Christmases, I often don’t love that stuff. I wouldn't do it for just anyone. 

I don't mind doing it for my children, it gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling, because I am doing it for people I love. So why should work be any different? Why is work any different? Why does work feel like effort…

I think, the difference is love.

We see people who work passionately in types of work that from the outside seem unbearable, but they seem devoted to it. Doctors in Gaza, for example, witnessing the most distressing and traumatic scenes, witnessing the depths of darkness that humanity can fall. But they do it, they put their lives in danger and work passionately. Why? Because they are driven by love and a purpose. 

This year I have being doing the healing work but I have also been through another awakening process. Similar to healing, awakening spiritually is also a process of breaking through layers but it’s breaking out from the inside rather than from the outside in.

With healing, we are often starting from the outside. We notice the symptoms, issues, the patterns, the  behaviours, results in our lives that we are not happy with. We first tried to address the symptoms, to find that it's not really effective, the problem keeps coming back you can’t seem to shift it. 

So an example I will give in my life is my weight, and feeling physically healthy and energised.

Historically, me controlling my weight has been nothing to do with physical health. It's been more about looking good from the outside, capitalism has made sure that we grow up feeling not good enough, not pretty enough, not thin enough from a young age we saw TV, magazines showing us what, “we should look like” how our bodies “should look”, handed impossible standards to meet. In time with social media and editing, it’s gotten worse. Capitalism sells us stuff by making us feel we are not enough, we need to buy products to make us good enough. My relationship with weight started from here, I needed to be thinner otherwise I wasn’t enough, I wasn’t thin enough, attractive enough. 

As I worked on my relationship with myself and those shadows of not feeling enough, my weight started to gain, slowly but over two years it made a big difference of increasing in two dress sizes. 

I was not happy about that, not because I was not feeling enough but because preferred feeling slimmer, it felt more comfortable, I like to run, I don't like the feeling of carrying extra weight. However, I also want to be healthy and feed my body good nourishing food. So in the past I would have sorted out a bit of weight gain with starving my body for a bit, feeling weak and tired but this time I wasn’t prepared to do that. I didn’t mind losing it slowly what was more important was how I felt, how I felt inside...

So my motivation has changed, from one of lack and not feeling enough, and of cycles of self punishment to being motivated by self-love and care just wanting to feel healthy, energised and vibrant and to just feel good inside. My motivation came from a inner place not reacting to the outside and a feeling of lack or not being enough.

Now, when I go for a run, or cook myself a delicious, healthy, nutritious meal, or do yoga, I feel amazing. I feel like each act of self-love gives me a boost.

Whereas I used just think "eat less", and I would berate myself for eating. 

So, with healing, it often starts by looking at the outside. Why does this keep happening? Why do I feel like that? Why can't I seem to change this?

So, we  dig in deeper and deeper, we look for the root cause. We work with that. The deeper we go with healing, cutting and stripping back those layers, we eventually hit on our core essence, our source, the true soul self.

Those layers we built over a lifetime, they once served to protect us, it’s our ego and belief system it was formed mostly through our childhood through programming, programming  from our environment by our families, schools, media and culture.

And underneath all that is the true you, the soul you.

A lot of people arrive at the soul self this way (I did), although there are other ways to get there spiritual practice (something the healing journey led me to) and often extreme traumatic events can take us there, the ones that “shake us to our very core”, as the saying goes. I think that is the core they mean, the core essence, the soul self.

That inner you, is the diamond in the rough and we all have one underneath those layers.

Awakening, is when that soul self, inner you starts to drive. Your mind, body and soul are connected and the inner self leads and that’s when the magic happens. The soul just knows, the soul came with ancient universal knowledge. Just like a flower doesn’t need to be told to open up in the morning and to close at night, or the Salmon hasn’t been told how to find their way to their spawning grounds that can be over 5,000 miles away, they just know. 

Once that inner you is leading you stop allowing external things to control you. Other people opinions, comparisons, whether you are good enough, thin enough, rich enough, liked enough and so on, it doesn’t matter anymore. Those feelings are of lack and scarcity and nothing can ever satisfy that ever, it’s a bottomless pit. 

When you connect to that inner essence, you are tuned into that why, that soul purpose. Once you feel that, it's different, it's a feeling of love, a feeling of peace, a feeling of being grounded a warm sense of bliss, you know your worth. Your drive comes from a place of love, gratitude, abundance and creativity, not fear, comparison and lack. Tap into that, and we start to work from source, from the inside out. 

A business is really just an extension of the person who built it or the people driving it. When someone starts a purpose-driven business, it nearly always begins in that same place, from the soul, that calling not a gap they spotted in the market or a way to make money. Something in them needed it to exist in the world, and the business became the shape that took. 

That's the real difference between a purpose-driven business and one that isn't. It's not that money, markets and profit don't matter, they do, you can't run a business without them. It's about what's actually driving the thing. A purpose-driven business is led by that soul, that intrinsic calling. The external things, the numbers, the growth, are there, but they're not in charge. A business that isn't purpose-driven has that the other way round, it’s pushed from external pressures and it feels that way. 

And here's the part I think most founders don't see coming. Even a business that begins entirely soul-led can lose that over time. As it grows, as more people and more influences enter the mix, the external factors can so easily creep in and take hold of the wheel. It's not that those factors were ever the problem. It's that they were never supposed to be the one driving. Does the tail wag the dog, or does the dog wag the tail? When purpose leads, profit and growth are just what naturally follow. When profit leads, purpose becomes aspirational, rather than the thing actually running the show.

A business is a creation, it’s a manifestation. It's a product of human thought and action.

What is driving that action is what makes the difference between a business that is driven from source, from love, or one that is driven from external factors, profit, appearance.  

When it's driven from a place love and purpose, it no longer feels like effort. Yes, it's work, but it's an act of love, devotion and purpose.

Often the problems we find in business are the same ones that keep returning, the same patterns, the same themes. Most of us sense that fixing the surface won't fix it for good. Businesses build up their own layers too, processes, habits, ways of doing things that once protected them, just like we do. And underneath all of that, if you strip it back far enough, is the same thing we find in ourselves: the why, the purpose it was actually built for.

If the purpose is leading then the systems are built from a solid foundation, the business flows. Businesses, like people, move better, more intentionally, when working from the inside out, from source, led from the soul.

So how do we actually do this? How do we drive our business, and our life, from the inside out?

That's exactly what I'll be exploring every Wednesday in Pure Source, my new weekly session for purpose-driven leaders. This piece is the why. Pure Source is the how, the practical work of actually living this out in your business, not just believing it. If any of this has stirred something in you, come and do the work with me. Wednesdays, 11am.

Book your place here: https://www.pureimprovement.com/appointments