A visitor to my philosophy-enhanced web site e-mailed me, asking: “You talk about achieving aliveness in business. What does that mean? And if recreation time impacts our professional lives, what can we do to make that impact a positive one?” Here’s what I answered:

Aliveness in business? Is that an oxymoron? Walk down the halls or through the cubicles of most traditional manufacturing or other brick and mortar firms. See the faces of the people working there. Do those faces look alive with excitement? Do those people seem thrilled to be right there, right now doing what they’re doing? NO. And usually that’s because their manager is that way, too. He’s likely a nuts-and-bolts guy whose manager, who was a nuts-and-bolts guy, too, hired because the guy was like looking in a mirror.

So engendering aliveness in business has got to start at the top of the management ladder by energized, enlightened, caring-for-people-first managers who believe in “bottoms up” management. These are the kind of people who build and promote “idea ladders” in a firm where a suggestion from the mail clerk can get heard and evaluated all the way to top management. Where divisions take work time to hold meetings called, “This is my company, too” and evaluate what can be done locally to serve the needs of the people in that division while ALSO vastly streamlining the activities they pursue in support of company objectives.

From such close focus on the quality of their work habitat and habits, employees become more interested in the company and more willing to deliver more and more participation. Pretty soon, once they see that they make a difference, and that the company listens to and adopts their ideas, they realize that they ARE the company. And then they come alive with contribution. They belong. They are significant.

Remember this: Your business is not who you are. Who you are is what you do when no one's watching. And it is defined by those close to you.

Thus, your relationships to family, friends, and co-workers, are most important in life and as we get older we see this more. You can help improve your business and personal relationships by one simple method today, begin filling up your weekly planning calendar with the "family" and "leisure-time" activities first, then fit in the business activities after that. Put your relationships first in your life. We only get so much time for that. But it's how they will all remember us.

How does recreation fit in? Well, just look at the word. It’s re-creation. A person needs to re-create himself often and one way to do that is not to slave 14 hours daily for a company without some justifying and commensurate reward. Or at all. People who feel they have to “slave away” for a firm are not themselves enlightened nor are whey working for an enlightened firm. They need to quietly look for another job. One that fits in with their idea of what a work schedule should look like, or they will never be happy. There’s the old saying, “If you want the rest of your life to be the same as it is today, just keep doing the same things. But if you want your life to be different, you MUST change your behavior now.”

Aliveness? It’s mostly about being able to be, rather than do or have. Sadly, too many Realtors® think that doing and having certain manifestations and things define who they are.

If you want aliveness in your business life, begin a change now. Be that someone who you really are. Why wait? Carpe Diem!

Go out today and get a business life that lets you be who you really are, rather than you having to apply reprehensible grease to your square peg every day just so that it will fit into the round hole that some dippy manager at some firm assigned to you.

Truly, there is a place for you in business where you can be yourself. Perhaps we forget that truth for long periods of time in our lives. Seek your place now. And when you find it, you can do and have anything you want. Even aliveness. Maybe even ecstasy!

Published: April 3, 2000

Use of this article without permission is a violation of federal copyright laws.

Bill Koelzer is a Web marketing consultant to web-proficient agents nationwide. He is co-author, with Barbara Cox, Ph.D., of the Prentice-Hall books, Internet Marketing in Real Estate and Internet Marketing. Bill is also webmaster of Orange County Real Estate, among the most-awarded known Realtor® sites. Visit his website, Koelzer.com or e-mail him at .