Seven Gifts To Increase Productivity

(6-minute Read) – We all have seven gifts within us that we can discover and use to increase our productivity.

I first formulated the Seven Aspects of Spiritual Intelligence eighteen years ago, and I wrote a mystical love story that features them two years ago. They are the go-to guides for my relationships and my working life – and they’ve stood me in good stead.

This article introduces the seven in the context of a quest for productivity at work, and reveals how to increase them in your life. They are:

• Commitment
• Enthusiasm
• Openness
• Generosity
• Self-control
• Trust
• Modesty

Commitment

Being committed is one of the strongest drivers of productivity. It encompasses loyalty and devotion, and it often requires fortitude and perseverance. It always requires a conscious decision to take up, and maintain, a position.

Not just a once-off decision – we have to re-affirm our commitments regularly because we too easily forget the reason for, and value of, commitment. We are inclined to ditch them for immediate, or short-term, gratification.

Commitment and loyalty amongst people in a company, institution or society are essential to counterbalance the modern culture of indiscriminate change, and the frenetic pursuance of easy paths to quasi-success.

Enthusiasm

Enthusiasm fuels productivity. It’s an eternally renewable source of energy. What a gift that is!

In the business world, enthusiasm has long been recognised as one of the essential traits of successful people. Truly enthusiastic people can get so excited about potential that some of their energy rubs off on the world around them, and latently influences things towards fulfilling that potential.

Enthusiasm overcomes lethargy, stagnation, regression and depression.

Without it we don’t appreciate the potential in reality. Therefore, we have no energy to be productive. Instead, things seem pointless, and productivity wanes, no matter how hard we may try to apply ourselves.

Openness

Openness is the ability to connect with the subject of the work – to immerse oneself in activity that holds one’s attention.

Open-minded people are able to conceive of the importance of their work, both directly and indirectly, and keep that significance at the forefront of their minds.

Our creative and innovative natures emerge when we are open. And with that, productivity is elevated above dreary repetition to the level of inspiration.

Openness also helps us cope with the amount of new information and mental stimulation we are bombarded with. It is the ability to not get bogged down, or lost, in detail – to not close up – but to unify and correlate important stuff instead. It’s like looking at the forest from the trees.

Generosity

Generous people are often the most reliable and productive because they hate to disappoint anyone who depends on them. A generous person is the type all employers want on the payroll.

There is nothing that creates meaning and a sense of purpose in our lives more than giving our selves completely to a cause – to serve. We are heroic and altruistic by design. This doesn’t necessarily mean we all have to help out in a war or famine zone. We can all give ourselves to the cause of serving, and helping those around us, through our work, right where we are.

There is no stopping productivity once you see your work as a genuine service, as a realm of meaning.

Self-control

When we are in control of ourselves, we are able to do what has to be done, even if habits of non-productivity distract us.

Sometimes we have to achieve this by exerting appropriate levels of self-discipline. But self-discipline is not the same as self-control. The former is a tool we can use to help us see the gift of self-control at times when we may forget.

But ultimately self-control comes from within – from a state of being.

When we lack control of ourselves we create negative energy and uneasiness. We may feel like we’re living on the edge and about to crack up, or break down, from a chaotic lack of stillness in the mind. We find it difficult to remain focussed – so difficult at times that productivity goes out the window.

Trust

Conversely, with trust we focus innately, like laser beams, because we feel we are exactly where we’re meant to be. We believe that we affect the universe through our integral connection to it. Trust drives productivity because we feel we are on the right path. We sense our efforts paying dividends.

Perhaps the greatest benefit of trust is the relief it brings from stress and worry. Stress and worry stifle productivity. In fact, they can completely immobilise us with fear. With trust, we can proceed, even if just one ginger step at a time, while fear is on the back foot.

Trust gives us courage. And productivity often requires courage.

Modesty

Modesty nullifies the negatives of ego. We can focus on work in the here and now without personal goals, identities and expectations disturbing us. Work becomes an exercise in mindfulness. We simply work, for the joy of the present moment, and all the rest falls into place.

Productivity is very often determined by how deviations or mistakes are corrected. Modest people are patient and tolerant. They realise that we all make mistakes and that patience helps in fixing these mistakes. So they return effectively to the productive path after a deviation.

Modesty is vital for successful work relationships because it enables individuals to settle into their roles without being distracted, or concerned with what others are doing. It is self-knowledge. And contentment with self.

Increasing the seven aspects

So here’s the trick: you can’t increase these seven aspects by any effort of your own. You can try, and you may seem to have some short-term increases, but they won’t be sustained. That’s not how these things work.

They’re gifts. Not prizes to be earned.

You simply need to discover them and allow them to come out. Gratuitously. Without you in the way.

The greatest irony of our culture is this: to discover these gifts of productivity, we must be completely unproductive.

We must do the exercise of nothingness.

This exercise goes by the name of meditation. But don’t get stuck on what meditation is – here it simply refers to the practice of interior quiet. Meditation is the most passive exercise you’ll ever come across. It is doing nothing, being nothing, and thinking and feeling nothing. But, counter-intuitively to many modern people, it has profound results.

A helpful analogy is to think of meditation as the key to an internal reservoir of quiet where the gifts float serenely. Visiting the reservoir allows us to dip into the gifts, and let them stick to us, so we can bring them up into the world with us. Every time we dip into them we emerge more productive – truly productive.

For productivity, properly understood, is simply the most natural and healthy human state of being.

You Can Buy My Mystical Love Story, On The Fifth Night, Featuring The Seven Aspects Of Spiritual Intelligence Here