Small Business Marketing: Lessons from Eckhart Tolle

awakening - an exploding light

awakening - an exploding light

As far as I know, Eckhart Tolle does not write about small business marketing.  However, his focus on creating a better life through consciousness has profound implications for small business owners and their marketing efforts.  So profound, in fact, that I am unlikely to offer more than a surface exploration of Eckhart Tolle’s writing and its implications for small business marketing.

Photo credit: The birth of consciousness by Kevin Dooley 

Small business marketing: Being controlled by your thoughts

A fundamental principle espoused by Eckhart Tolle is that you spend so little time in consciousness, if at all.  He talks a lot about the tyranny of your mind and emotions – often the emotions are generated by your own thoughts.

So his proposition is that you are captive to your own thoughts and these, in turn, are driven by Ego – a hard proposition for anyone to swallow for sure.  However, just reflect! – when was the last time that you were free from the tyranny of thinking about the past or the future? When are you just conscious of the present moment, your own existence, your breath, your surrounds (including the sounds)?  Even when you see something or hear something, you immediately attempt to interpret it or categorise it. 

The march of the Ego – non awareness 

When Eckhart Tolle explains what he means by Ego and its impact, it is easy to understand and relate to what he is getting at.  He suggests that much of your thoughts flow from the need to justify your actions, compare yourself with others, strengthen your perceived position relative to others or delude yourself by ignoring the hard realities. 

It is a useful practice to just listen to your own thoughts – what messages are you giving yourself.  Is it that you are not good enough or recognised enough?  Is it that you cannot tolerate someone ‘junior’ pointing out mistakes or another way?  Is it that you refuse to explore other options for marketing your small business because you ‘think’ that it might not turn out well and show you in a bad light? 

It is very enlightening to listen to your own self-talk and to become aware of how your self-talk sabotages your own efforts.  It is particularly instructive for you to listen to how you justify your actions and to identify what is the reference point for those justifications.  It is even more instructive to explore why you ‘feel’ a need to justify yourself at all. 

Small business marketing – the impact of Eckhart Tolle’s ‘being conscious’ 

Eckhart Tolle argues that you are not your thoughts, you just ARE!  Your thoughts, along with your derived emotions, are part of your external reality – they are not ‘who you are’.   Being conscious is a state of stillness – of awakening to your inner reality.  

He offers you ways to be conscious, to awake to the power of your present moment – to break free of the limitations of your thoughts and emotions.   Eckhart Tolle argues that it is only through being conscious that you can tap into your creative spirit.  It takes but a moment to be conscious – and a series of conscious moments to start transforming the way you live. 

Eckhart Tolle has some sobering lessons for small business marketing – it is not in frenetic activity or thought, but in conscious stillness, that true creative endeavour is realized.