Speed Is the Enemy of Depth

    —
January 7, 2014

Right before the holidays, I had the opportunity to interview author and business philosopher Peter Block. I love talking with Peter because he often challenges the status quo and underlying assumptions of business; very often when I speak with Peter, I feel like I am being held by my feet upside down (the way little kids are sometimes dangled by their parents) and out comes a bunch of unexamined beliefs and behavior patterns.

In my most recent conversation with Peter (an interview for Insights at the Edge), we discussed creating work in the world that matters, work that communicates our whole-heartedness and honors our relatedness with other people. And in the discussion, he questioned two assumptions that are embedded in contemporary business life: that “scale” is critical for success and that we better move quickly if we are going to accomplish our goals.

I pushed Peter on this notion of scale not being important. Scale-ability is of course one of the first things an investor looks at when analyzing a potential investment opportunity. How could this not be an important consideration? If your business can’t scale easily, how can it grow rapidly and attract investment capital if needed? Peter was dismissive of my concerns. His focus was on the value of small businesses to create jobs that are soul-satisfying for people, businesses that have a hand-made quality and are not dependent on investment dollars for success. As Peter was talking about ignoring scale-ability as a design criteria for business, I thought about the business person as an artist, someone who creates with the ingredients that he or she has at hand and is not particularly concerned about whether or not such an artistic creation will ever be repeated.

But then our conversation moved on to the notion of speed and Peter’s comment that “speed is the enemy of depth.” This statement hit me where it hurts, so to speak, right in my gut, and even more so, in my heart. For the last 3 months of the year, I had been moving at such a speed that I had lost track of my softness and feeling connection (and a bit of my sanity, truth be told). I simply couldn’t digest or assimilate everything that was happening (both in my personal life and in my professional life), and I think it is fair to say that I ended the year resembling a flattened pancake of a person. Life had rolled over me and I hadn’t taken the time to “feel into and through” everything that was occurring. I spent the first week of the holidays resting and reflecting on Peter’s statement, “speed is the enemy of depth” until I felt my feet and the earth back beneath me.

It is now the new year and I have had plenty of time to rest and pad around the house in my pajamas and be with my great love and our cocker spaniel and friends, and write cards, and stare at the falling snow. I feel plump again (figuratively speaking, of course), not flat and surface-like.  And now I face the question, how do I not let myself get caught in the speed trap again? I am convinced that no creative endeavor — and certainly a business is a creative endeavor — benefits from an excess of speed. And when it comes to relating with other people (or to ourselves) speed seems to create jaggedness and not contact and understanding. Interestingly, in speaking with one Sounds True author about a potential recording project that we were designing together, we talked about how in her presentation she wanted to cover various life topics such as personal health and relationships and spiritual connection. I asked her “what about our business or career life?” And she said, “We’ll cover that in the relationships section because really what is business but relationship? That is really all it is. Look around you,” and she made a gesture pointing to the Sounds True office that houses 80 employees and 20 or so dogs and on some days a couple of birds and children, “all of this is based on relationships.”

And so SLOWING DOWN is my orienting principle as 2014 begins. I want to relish the richness of my life and not be flattened by it. If you have any slow-down suggestions for me, I am all ears, as they say. I will slowly read your responses (without skimming), at least I hope so.

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Tami Simon

Photo of ()\

Tami Simon started Sounds True at the age of 22 with a dream and a tape recorder. Though she had no experience running a business and only a vague idea of what she wanted the company to be, Tami had her guiding principle strongly in place: to disseminate spiritual wisdom. Over its 36-year history, Sounds True has grown into a multimedia publisher that has produced over 6,000 titles, has been included twice in the Inc. 500 list of the fastest-growing companies, and is North America’s leading publisher of spoken-word spiritual teachings.

One of the world’s very first organizations to focus on multiple bottom lines as part of its founding mandate, Sounds True has expanded steadily over the years while staying true to its original mission. Partnering with the leading spiritual teachers of our time, Sounds True now has a successful book publishing program (distributed by Macmillan) and has grown to produce events, certification programs, and transformational online learning experiences.

Tami hosts the popular Sounds True podcast, Insights at the Edge, which has now been downloaded more than 20 million times. She is also the founder of the Sounds True Foundation, which is dedicated to bringing spiritual education to people who would otherwise not have access. She lives in Boulder, Colorado, and in British Columbia with her wife, Julie Kramer, and their two spoodles, Raspberry and Bula.

Author photo © Jason Elias

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Tami Simon: Being a Spiritual Entrepreneur

A magazine article about Sounds True founder Tami Simon referred to her as a “spiritual entrepreneur.” At first, Tami wasn’t sure about the label. Yet over time, she came to appreciate and embrace it. Today, the art of spiritual entrepreneurship is a central facet of Sounds True’s Inner MBA® program. 

In this host-only episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami shares her thoughts and feelings about what it means to lead a company dedicated to the well-being of its employees as equally as it is to business success. For anyone looking to bridge their innermost values with how they make a living, Tami reveals seven principles of the spiritual entrepreneur, with insightful guidance on honoring the voice of the heart; leading with presence; why relationships need to come first; creating a culture of care, engagement, and well-being; alternating between high performance and good rest; how to embrace challenges as growth opportunities; claiming our personal agency and doing the work of “cleaning up”; business as a means to address real social needs; maintaining trust in the unfolding process; making a commitment to “lift each other up” in the way we do business; recognizing our interdependence; and more.

Standing Together, and Stepping Up

Dear Sounds True friends and community,

While holding a mirror to our own organizational accountability, Sounds True unequivocally stands in solidarity with the Black community, the family of George Floyd, and the many others who have been victims of police brutality and ongoing racial injustice.

We stand with and for our Black employees, our Black authors and colleagues, our Black customers, and all of the protestors and social change activists—past, present, and future— who are working to put an end to racism in every corner of our society.

And we are committed to not just stand in solidarity but to step up.

Since George Floyd’s murder, we have been having many in-depth discussions among the 125-person staff at Sounds True about the most meaningful actions we can take as a transformational learning company to help educate ourselves and our community and contribute to the dismantling of racism.

We have been asking ourselves questions such as:

  • How can we best use our platform to better amplify the voices of wisdom teachers who are Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC)?
  • What’s in our Shadow, as individuals and as an organization? What unconscious areas must now be brought into awareness?
  • And how do we actively address these areas so that we can evolve as an organization and be a force of genuine service in the world?

The answers to these questions are not simple, quick, or easy. It has taken me a while to write this email to you, our beloved customers and Sounds True community, because we have felt as a team the need to listen carefully and look deeply within in order to lay out an action plan moving forward that will contribute to meaningful and substantive change.

Anything less falls short of what I believe this moment is asking of us.

We also want to learn and evolve in partnership with you. We are learning and growing together as a community, and it has been important for us to create a moving-forward action plan that invites engagement from our entire audience.

With arms wide open, I invite you to witness, support, and step up with us in the following ways:

  • Over the next two years, Sounds True will be undergoing an in-depth Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Training in the workplace. This training initiative has been in development for over a year, and will be provided by TMI Consulting, led by Dr. Tiffany Jana. Dr. Jana is coauthor of the books Overcoming BiasErasing Institutional Bias, and Subtle Acts of Exclusion. As part of the training, we will be uncovering how unconscious bias, microaggressions, and micro-acts of exclusion show up in the workplace, in our personal lives, and even in our products. The training also includes a thorough audit of Sounds True’s hiring practices, HR policies, marketing materials, and more.

  • Sounds True also wants to include our customers, authors, and partner businesses in the introductory phase of this training process that we will be embarking upon. With that in mind, we are hosting a three-part webinar series on “Healing Racism” with Dr. Jana, beginning on Wednesday, June 24, at 8:00 pm ET | 5:00 pm PT. The series is free, and we are inviting our customers, authors, and business associates to join the Sounds True staff for this online training and to walk this part of our journey together. As someone on our email list, you will be receiving all of the details in future emails.

  • It is clear to us at Sounds True that we need to publish and otherwise amplify the voices of more authors and presenters who are Black, Indigenous, and People of Color. If you have ideas about new BIPOC authors you would like to see published at Sounds True or included in our summits and online offerings, please write to us at acquisitions@soundstrue.com.

  • The Sounds True Foundation, formed in 2018, is increasing its efforts to raise scholarship funds for BIPOC students to attend our Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification Program and become trained as mindfulness teachers who will bring this practice to diverse communities all over the world. We will be hosting a virtual fundraiser on June 30 for this initiative and will be emailing you with more details.

As I mentioned, working to dismantle and heal racism—in ourselves, in our organization, and in our world—is not a flash-in-the-pan effort at Sounds True. This is a long-haul commitment to the creation of a different world that is just, kind, and equitable. And we have a heckuva road to travel with you to get there.

And we are committed. We don’t want to simply talk about spiritual awakening. We want to embody it … as individuals, as a company, and as a force in the world. Humbly and boldly, we are going to give everything we have and invite you to do the same. This is the time for us to step up, together.

With love on the journey,

Tami Simon

Founder and Publisher, Sounds True

P.S. You can learn more about our commitment to creating a more compassionate world here.

 

Happy Holidays from Sounds True

“If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.”

—Meister Eckhart 

I believe that if people from all of the different wisdom traditions gathered together and were asked to agree on one focus for a special day of reflection, “giving thanks” would be somewhere at the top of the list. 

Gratitude changes us. Instead of looking at what’s wrong, we turn our hearts for a moment to what’s right. And there are so many things that are right. 

For example, the appreciation of one complete breath (as corny as it sounds, whenever I turn my mind to gratitude, this is the first place I start)—feeling the fluttery exhilaration of the inhale, the excitement at the top of the inhale, the relaxation of a full and deep exhale, and then the interesting open space that awaits when our exhale is complete (you can tell I feel grateful for breathing). 

And then there is the feeling of air on our skin, and the faces of the people we love, and the beauty of trees and the natural world … and we can each go on and on and on and on. 

And let’s do that! Let’s go on and on and on and on about all of the ways that we appreciate what is right and beautiful in this moment (and if you’re at all like me, with a tendency to focus on problem-solving, this might not be your usual perspective). 

And if you do go on and on and on and appreciate the beauty that is right here, you probably won’t need science to tell you that you have shifted the neural pathways in your brain (although scientific studies will certainly confirm that)—you can feel the immediate shift.

As I write this, I feel appreciative of so many beautiful “presences” in my life, including the presence of YOU. I am grateful that you read these posts, that you feel in some way connected to Sounds True, that you are interested in personal transformation, in being wholehearted and of benefit to others. I am grateful that, even though it is through this weird form of a mass communication from me to you, we are connected. 

At Sounds True, we are grateful to the entire ecosystem of which we are a part: to our authors, to the ideas themselves, to our vendors and manufacturers, to the buildings that house us, to the natural world, and to future generations. 

And most of all, we are grateful to you, the individual person who enjoys and derives benefit from the learning programs we create. And we want to make sure we are meeting you “where you are at” and that our programs are accessible and you feel encouraged to explore and learn from different teachers. Like most companies, our deepest discounts of the year are available between now and the end of December, and I want you to know about this, if you are interested. To learn more about these special offers, just click here

Gratitude creates a circle of appreciation. When we express our gratitude, the recipient feels it, lights up, and appreciates our existence in return. I love being in a virtuous circle of appreciation with you. 

 

With love and a grateful heart, 

Tami Simon

Founder and publisher,

Sounds True

 

 

P.S. Once again, our deepest discounts of the year are now available. Please click here to learn more.

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  • Trish says:

    Wonderful, insight piece, Tami. Thank you for TAKING THE TIME to write and share. Happy SLOW 2014……… Namaste……….

  • Eve DesJardins says:

    Thanks for your honesty. I just love this letter. I am doing a whle lot of work with the conscious business side of life…on a very small rural Vermont way below shoestring level and though I tap into the amazing resources, I often feel alone i the way my intuition says , oh well, who says I can’t do this in a very very simple way and still a “sucess”? I transalte a whole lot of the material I get for business help becuase it assumes so much about scale. But this really speaks to me as artist and not business woman, basically using my gift of relating to create a good enough service. That feels like the feminine principle in a really grounded way. You go girl Or rather…you slow girl! Eve

  • Joe says:

    My mantra these days is simply “be patient” … whether in a meeting, driving, shopping, meditating, cooking, eating….it’s a work in progress… Good luck. Another tip: observe cats; they’re really good at not rushing around except for when it’s really necessary. Thanks for sharing!
    JD

  • eileen says:

    “Fast, you can only do what you already know.” Anat Baniel

    Embrace your flattened pancakes Tami. And I speak from experience when I say, flattened pancakes make for excellent wraps.

    We love you Tami. Thank you for sharing.

  • Marianna says:

    Thank you for this piece. I can really relate to what you just described. It is the depth that fulfills us, not the speed or quantity of the events in a short time. I recently watched some videos on YouTube with you and it it really spoke to me what you said about interviewing people and how you felt overwhelmed about the vastness of the material you discussed and how you decided to pick ONE thing from the conversation and have a deeper connection with it. I can only remind you what you already said and chose for yourself. Pick one thing and connect to it deeply. That was a great advice for me too.

    Thank you for creating such a wonderful source of wisdom Sound True is today.

    Love & Peace

  • Karen says:

    Once again Tami you received the necessary wisdom at the time of need. Thanks for sharing. Great Advice.

  • Karen says:

    Enjoyed you’re conversation with Peter and found his material to be Right On. Thanks Tami for bringing all these artists to persons in need.

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