Come to the edge, he said

In my previous article, "Calling Gurus to Account" I mentioned a blind-spot that affects all of us. I inferred that sometimes we get carried away with the idea of possibility and endless happiness, forgetting about those we may leave behind.

That blind-spot sees us ignoring the systems and communities that support us. It's the community and technical infrastructure that enables us to achieve our goals – imagine being dropped into war-torn Somalia, without cells phones, money or an embassy to hide in. What things might we expect to 'attract' in that environment?

Those who do our plumbing, our carpentry, cooking and care-taking all play a vital role in each of us achieving our dreams.

It's the integration and marriage of dreams, desires and potentials with the inherent limitations of systems that is my primary work as a belief doctor. My work involves understanding and explaining how this integration is ignored or denied. It's this lack of integration of supportive systems with individual desires and potentials that is the primary cause of the growing epidemic of depression in the world today. It's people's expectations exceeding the capacity of the present community to support individual dreams and aspirations that causes the upset.

Hence my call to gurus to remember the wider community that supports them as they jet around the world, staying in 5 star hotels. If everyone was enlightened, who would pay to listen to a guru? is there space in the present system for everyone to be enlightened?

To some extent seeking and working towards greater material well-being is good – it drives creativity and innovation.

But a deeper, sustainable view recognises that "we're all in this together" – it behoves any self-respecting motivational guru to consider lifting the community, not just those who want to 'get ahead' of the pack. We don't need more competition or 'winners' who win at the expense of others ... nor do we need or want perfect harmony. As a recent article in Harvard Business Review emphasises, "Conflict-free teamwork is no way to achieve success. A peaceful, harmonious workplace can be the worst possible thing for a business.1

What is desirable is a deeper understanding of the value of an expansive, aware, rambunctious individuality, one that embraces creativity, difference and originality ... and community and connection.2 This is not airy-fairy, do-goody thinking. It's good for business and the bottom line to shift our focus away from simply being more competitive, to being more creative. Research has confirmed that creativity in new markets is around four times more important to the bottom line than out-competing one's competitors.

As William Butler Yeats reminds us, it is creativity in the form of growth that is the fount of happiness.3

• 1. "How to pick a good fight," Harvard Business Review (reprinted AFR Boss Magazine, February 2010, Fairfax Media Pty Ltd, Sydney, page 40
• 2. What we might call an integrated-awareness that combines physical with spiritual, possible wtih actual.
• 3. "Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth. We are happy when we are growing." William Butler Yeats.
• 4. Guillaume Apollinaire