Finance Meets Spirituality
I grew up excessively curious in character. I am generally interested in anything and everything as long as it helps me understand this world a tad bit better. From Neuroscience to Anthropology, Finance to Ancient History, I’m genuinely interested in all and that’s because the world is genuinely that interesting. Once you let the curious genie out, you can’t summon it back and in all seriousness, you shouldn’t. Curiosity is one of the most precious traits to hold onto. However, I soon realised that I didn’t have all the time in the world either. This isn’t just a struggle of curiosity. The ease with which we’re now able to get information and the amount of choices we have at our disposal can make most of us feel stuck feeling as though there’s always something more we could be doing with our time. For me, if I started learning a new language, I would get derailed by another subject then yet another just to realize that I couldn’t get to the sweet spot of diving deep into anything I showed interest in. While the cause in my case is unrelenting curiosity, it might be different for others however, we all meet at the same juncture of having too little time for the things we wish to pursue.
I wanted to dive deeper into things I wanted to do to allow myself to slow down and completely devote myself to it. To understand what was important for me, I looked at all the things I was doing or wanted to do to uncover commonalities in all and how those commonalities could help me in who I wanted to become. For example, I strive towards becoming a self-aware individual. This means I can wholly devote myself to studying and practicing spirituality while finding practical applications at work that allow me to work towards the very same goal.
So here are some common denominators I have found in Finance and Spirituality, helping me both become a better human being and a professional while also bringing spirituality to practical context of my day to day life & making my work a deeper, meaningful endeavour in my life.
Negotiations & Self Awareness:
I have been reading up on “Principled Negotiations” to better my skills as a negotiator within the context of my work. Most of what’s involved in becoming a skilful negotiator (which can help you become a better partner or save the world from a Nuclear War — the possibilities vary massively) is around developing awareness. In order for you to communicate effectively, you have to be able to see things and I mean TRULY see things from other people’s perspective to understand how they view the problem at hand given conflicts lie in people’s minds and not objective reality. This helps you uncover their interests and work your way from there to allow room to create win-win situations for all. It insists on keeping your egos aside which means effective negotiation is not about “I want this” but “We both have a mutual interest in advancing this so let’s see what we can do together to make this work”. The skill of becoming an effective negotiator crucially hinges on the quality of self-awareness which allows you to see your own biases, ego, perspective, judgements, fears and through that lens, those of others.
One of the life changing outcomes of embracing spirituality, which I hone through meditation, is it allows you to develop self-awareness which is simply to become aware of who you are. It is to become aware of your thoughts and tendencies without acting upon them. This allows you to gain insights into your own behaviour and patterns, helping you to create a healthy distance between your inner self and your thoughts. Since your mind influences the body and vice versa, you can strengthen the positive connection between the two by further developing awareness and using it to create new patterns and behaviours.
So essentially, I can hone in on the quality of awareness through my meditations which helps me become both a better human being and hopefully a better professional.
Business Outcomes & Human Nature:
When you start meditating and going deeper within yourself, you start relating to other people more. You start to resonate with their struggles, their emotions and their experiences at a much deeper level. You come to realize that once you scratch the surface of “What do you do? Where are you from? How’s the weather?” there’s “What does life mean to you? When did you feel like life wasn’t worth it? What are your inner struggles? What brings you joy?” and at that magic spot, you connect. Now there’s no going back. When you take this beautiful skill to your profession, you’re instantly better attuned to people around you — be it your colleagues or your clients. Knowing we are all the same and truly believing that we’re all manifestations of the one just makes me so much more curious to learn about people, no matter the age/profession/relationship.
I would endeavour to understand the people I work with at a deeper level when I can which makes it easier for me to navigate the professional conversations. If I’m in the room with a highly regarded Chief Executive of a firm and I ask them “What brings you the most joy?” and they say “My kid’s smile. The greatest joy I’ve known” — I’m connected. Let’s talk business now.
In the same manner, it helps me develop deeper friendships and a deeper relationship with my partner. So I would continue to invest time learning about Psychology & Spirituality so as long as it helps me understand and connect with people in a deeper way, serving me both to become a better human being and a better professional.
Reincarnation & Big Picture:
“As a caterpillar, having come to the end of one blade of grass, draws itself together and reaches out for the next, so the Self, having come to the end of one life and dispelled all ignorance, gathers in his faculties and reaches out from the old body to a new” — The Upanishads, a classic of Indian Spirituality.
You don’t have to believe in reincarnation to know that zooming out from where you stand currently can help you in a whole lot of situations in life. The ability to tamper with your magnification of life can help you capture the true essence of life. Spiritually, you start developing the skill to space yourself out from momentary situations in life and develop a nuanced perspective. For example, when I started working, I was extremely vigilant with money. I would spend and complain about the spending. One of these days I zoomed out and saw the never-ending loop this had created. When I thought about the things in life I would like to spend on 20–30 years from then given the point of money is to meet certain ends, I wanted the very same things I was complaining about. So I stopped complaining and gracefully, stepped out of the loop. On a different note, if you’re going through a phase you perceive as tough in life, zooming out and imagining what things would be like a few years from now can help you gain the strength & perspective to balance your response.
As a professional, I use this skill to understand how organizations move and make decisions. What is at the heart of their strategy and how it does flow down to the likes of people like myself? You can start to make connections between what’s happening in the world, how people act on those happenings in their affiliation to certain organisations, how organisations then translate the same through their products and services and on it goes. For example: Ukraine/Russia conflict which has led to all kinds of instability around the world. This led to people reassessing their affiliations with the region. This led to government sanctions on Russia which led companies around the world to urgently assess their exposure to the country. This led to financial technology firms like FactSet (where I work) to leverage their data capabilities to allow clients to assess their investment in the region and take appropriate action. This led to creation of a new feature in the product that allows them to see supplier chain relationships for any company they research to uncover Russian links. So we started from the big picture and ended up narrating the link to the picture of which you’re a part of.
Who thought Finance & Spirituality could be such good friends after-all?
