TruthBook Religious News Blog

Ruth Ostrow | February 29, 2008

IN the elegant foyer of The Four Seasons Hotel in Sydney, 350 business leaders have gathered. Chief executives and managers from all the major corporations are there.

They have come as members of the Australian Institute of Management to hear advice on how to be more effective in business, but not from a sales guru. They're here to listen to one of the great thought leaders of our time; father of the positive psychology movement; Mr Happiness himself, author of the best-seller, Learned Optimism, Dr Martin Seligman PhD.

Seligman is selling the happiness message to our top corporations and he intends to return to Australia next year with a team to run in-house programs. "I teach the new prosperity," he tells me later.

"Not how to get rich, but how to stay prosperous in all aspects of life: work, home and body. We need to look at a gross wellbeing indicator, not Gross Domestic Product so we can get ahead without illness, depression, anxiety and fear stopping us in this new, positive paradigm."

Indeed, there has been a paradigm shift in corporate thinking since I last worked as a finance journalist in the "greed is good" 1980s and 90s.

Cairns says this is the new frontier - business with a spiritual edge. "I don't use the word spiritual. It is about transformation. To get the most out of your business and people, you have to work on yourself first. Buddhism has given me a profound sense of meaning and purpose."

Akehurst says: "I was an anxious over-achiever driven by anxiety, wanting targets to be met, and fear of failure. The change is that I have become mindful of the moment, I am only motivated by the positive, and have learned the value of authenticity and integrity. When you tell the truth to the people you work with, you save so much valuable time and money."

Rennie from McKinsey, a promoter and fan of both Seligman and Rinpoche, says: "When I tried to sell this type of thinking into the corporate market 10 years ago I was considered a heretic. Now it's mainstream."

Meanwhile, David White, a director of Port Jackson Partners who is organising the meditation event, says what's really being taught is "the science of the mind" and how to transform thinking to achieve quantifiable results.

International Business Week summed it up thus: "It may sound flaky but a growing number of companies are setting off on spiritual journeys ... in search of a soul as a way to foster creativity and motivate leaders." The list includes US corporate giants such as AT&T, Boeing and Xerox, not to mention the World Bank, where leaders sit in a semicircle once a week and "connect".

The crux of the new prosperity movement is happiness, not a superficial happiness but a deep, resounding contentment born of having abundance in all areas of life: work family and play.

As Seligman says, happiness doesn't come from pleasures alone, such as making money or having sex, but from adding a deep sense of meaning - what the Buddhists and yogis call bliss.

Property developer Bruno Grollo, of Rialto fame, understands this. "You work so you can gain security and material wealth, but money never made me happy. I made money but I never felt the way I did when I was 18 or 21, so I realised that money didn't matter. Transcendental meditation is the closest thing to the euphoria of youth I have discovered," he once confided to me.

With an international Happiness conference being held in Sydney in May, the medical statistics bear out the premise. Happy people live eight to 10 years longer and fight off illness at double the rate of others.

The Reserve Bank's Akehurst, admired for his leadership qualities, shuns the notion that working with concepts such as happiness and authenticity is the "soft and fuzzy" option. "This is hard-nosed business practice. It creates tough but fair leaders."

He says: "Authenticity is a beautiful, time-saving process. When you cover up, people know it's not true and trust is damaged. If you say something isn't working, everyone says that's bad, and gets on with fixing it. Otherwise it takes ages to get things sorted." Personal growth leads to efficiency.

It's two decades since I wrote my book The New Boy Network on the excesses of the 1980s. In some circles people joked that to be interviewed by me was the kiss of death, as those I had revered for their enthusiasm and determination seemed to go down like tenpins: Larry Adler, father of Rodney; textile king Abe Goldberg; Alan Bond; Christopher Skase; Adsteam's John Spalvins; Robert Holmes a Court and Coles Myer's Brian Quinn.

Many Asian visitors went with them, such as Thai confectionery mogul Jack Chia and Malaysia's Lee Ming Tee.

Why? I have thought a lot about it the past decades, myself having moved to Byron Bay to embrace wellness. I have observed that what drives you can drive you over the edge. My own journey echoed theirs. A workaholic, a believer that somehow external success would take away that nagging sense of fragility and unworthiness that so many of us feel, I soon discovered external success was like water to sand and resulted in burnout and bad decision-making. At the height of my own career, burnt out and suffering depression, I walked away.

Years later, having sat at the feet of people involved in personal growth: Buddhists, yoga teachers, wellness and longevity masters, I have unravelled the greatest mystery of all.

The answer to happiness is the ability to live now, comfortable in your own skin whatever the circumstance.

Greek poet C.P. Cavafy talks about not being so outcome-driven, not so eager to get to Ithaka, mythical home of Odysseus. Rather, he says, to be able to enjoy the journey itself on the high seas will teach us to appreciate the riches of Ithaka when we arrive. Seligman calls it being in the flow of life. The Buddhists call it absorption in the moment.

Others simply describe it as the pleasure of stroking your child's face or playing with the family dog. Whatever it is, those able to connect from the heart, rather than through ego alone, seem more able to achieve enduring success.

Indeed, coming back to Sydney to put into practice what I've learned, I have found a different corporate landscape. While some - such as the recent spate of overgeared entrepreneurs - are still suffering for their sins of hubris and being too driven, it's a rapidly changing world.

Funds management icon Brian Sherman is fighting for animal rights, our Prime Minister is fighting for home care for his son, and former Microsoft mogul Daniel Petre is taking time off to be with his wife and kids - all for the sake of joyfulness and meaning.

According to Gordon Cairns, words such as empower have replaced command and control, while abundance and prosperity have replaced wealth.

My new column, Business Life, is about the things that matter: business and life, work and play, passions and health, heart and soul - in balance. In a world in which happiness is the hottest new corporate commodity and health and success depend on it, it's no longer a dream to have it all. It's a necessity.

Labels: abundance, business, Dr Martin Seligman PhD, happiness, learned optimism, meaning, Ruth Ostrow, spirituality