Will positivity and personal values alignment with company culture lead to profits? Delivering Happiness CEO Jenn Lim (pictured left) and Zappos founder Tony Hseih will tell you that it does. In fact, at Zappos, a company that is valued at over 1 billion dollars, new trainees are offered $2,000 to leave if they do not feel positively aligned to the company values and culture.
I recently conducted a fascinating interview with Delivering Happiness CEO Jenn Lim, as part of my ‘The Fulfilling Happiness Edge’ radio show. In our extensive interview, she reported how the company values were created through the input of every person on staff and this is one of the main reasons why their staff retention, customer service and productivity are so impressive. She also spoke candidly about how these values went on to create a sense of social capital and spawn the massive Delivering Happiness social movement.
After having already spent thousands on training people, you would only ever voluntarily pay someone $2,000 to leave your company if you truly believed that better people, greater opportunities and higher profitability were still available to you. Your personal life is no different. Assuming there are no issues around personal safety, the only reason you would ever end a personal relationship is because you believe there are greater opportunities for fun and fulfillment with someone else.
As a success and happiness coaching psychologist, I have always promoted the importance of living by your core values as one of the biggest secrets to personal and professional success. After the interview, I asked myself what kind of a mindset is required in order for us to connect to our deepest and most inspiring values?
Difficult questions often lead to simple answers. The answer lies in the difference between abundance versus scarcity based thinking. Life is filled with contrasts. Thinking styles are no different. Some are optimists, and other pessimists. Some people have an open, expressive and abundance-focused style of thinking, but unfortunately, most people are trained to be scarcity-focused.
The question then becomes: how do you access the emotional state and mindset of abundance? Here is a simple 3 step procedure to assist you in opening up your mind to abundance and positive values based thinking.
1. Shift your physiology.
Sit tall with your shoulders back, have your head up, eyes forward and begin breathing deeply. Spend 20-60 seconds just focusing on your breathing and imagine simply letting go of all of your thoughts. (Mindfulness practitioners should be able to do this quite easily).
2. Find a relevant memory.
With a clear mind, choose a memory where you were feeling and acting in a confident, successful and abundance/opportunity focused way. If you can’t think of such a time, imagine how you would be feeling and acting if you were confident, successful and abundance/opportunity focused.
3. Ask empowering questions.
Maintaining your physiology and keeping those images in mind, ask yourself empowering abundance focused questions. Here are 5 for you to write down your answers to:
What is it that I stand for?
How do I want people to know and describe me?
What am I going to create and give?
Who shares and supports my values and would brainstorm ideas with me?
What do I need to do right now, and continue doing in the future to start turning these ideas into reality?
The only thing to do now of course, is put your answers into action. The first two steps of the above process can be done in a couple of minutes or less, and will easily lead you into the third step of asking empowering questions. This exercise should be practiced regularly in order to keep you aligned with your deeper values and develop your abundance focus.
Living by your own values is essential for true personal and professional success. Fortunately, you will not need to pay those who do not share your values to leave your presence. The more attuned you are to your own values and sense of abundance, the more likely it is that you will naturally gravitate towards people who share similar styles of thinking and feeling.
To listen to Aleks’ interview with Jenn Lim, click here .
