It’s time to include love in your mission statement
After more than 25 years working in social innovation and entrepreneurship, I have a joyful longing which is bubbling over, a need to disrupt the status quo, a burning desire to do as Rumi suggested, “Run from what’s comfortable. Forget safety. Live where you fear to live. Destroy your reputation. Be notorious. I have tried prudent planning long enough. From now on I’ll be mad.”
I want to talk about love. Love. Love as a mission. Loving yourself. Love as the gateway to remembering you are ‘of’ the planet and that it breathes you, so your business solutions must be ‘for’ it too.
If we are going to win hearts and minds on taking action for the planet, we need to radically practice the compassion and collaboration that we preach. I think we are all exhausted by the toxic, non-collaborative environments and behaviours, which get disguised and excused under the urgency of an organisation’s compassionate vision and mission.
I want to invite numb hearts to break wide open with love and joy and awe and gratitude. Because what happens then is the dam-burst of your unique, incredible, exquisite, problem-solving creativity. Invention. Innovation.
Oh yes, also important to mention. I haven’t made this up, it is all backed by the science of wellbeing, particularly the work of Barbara Fredrickson. Positive emotions deepen your connection to your creativity, your resilience and your resources for taking action. More profoundly, they connect you to a sense of one-ness with the planet and those around you.
I have this crazy idea. It’s a bit like the Footloose moment we all dream of having…(a guilty pleasure, maybe just me then)…this delicious urge to dance into organisations and start talking about love as part of mission statements, to see the jaws drop open, the wriggles of discomfort, the down-right irritation.
I know, from experience, when I get those moments of resistance that I have hit the nail on the head and dropped in the pebble of disruption. It becomes a mosquito that won’t go away.
With love for the planet in mission statements — as a lived practice and experience — we become a huge eco-system — from impact investors to solopreneurs and everything in between. If we really want value-added for people and planet, then love is our answer within our own organisations and partnerships.
What futures do you want to unfold?
Do you dare to get there by taking the risk on love?
Originally published at www.flowinaction.org
