Quotes by Patricia Aburdene

We need to graduate from the ridiculous notion that greed is some kind of elixir for capitalism - it's the downfall of capitalism. Self-interest, maybe, but self-interest run amok does not serve anyone. The core value of conscious capitalism is enlightened self-interest. As Jim Cramer on CNBC says, "Bulls make money, bears make money, pigs get slaughtered."

We've now become conscious of the uncalculated social, economic, and environmental costs of that kind of "unconscious" capitalism. And many are beginning to practice a form of "conscious capitalism," which involves integrity and higher standards, and in which companies are responsible not just to shareholders, but also to employees, consumers, suppliers, and communities. Some call it "stakeholder capitalism."

Welcome to the Dawn of Conscious Capitalism--a popular, decentralized, broad-based crusade to heal the excesses of capitalism with transcendent human values. Every day Conscious Capitalism wins new converts in the paneled boardrooms of global business.... Equally important, the actions millions of us take, "from the supermarket to the stock market," are drafting a more wholistic brand of free enterprise which will forever outshine the Chicago School--and win someone somewhere a brand-new Nobel Prize.

More than a name, logo or "iconic" CEO, a brand is a place in the heart where employees, investors, suppliers--and Conscious Consumers--meet to tell a company's story, says brand guru Elsie Maio. "When brand reveals authenticity, values and humanity's drive towards consciousness, it's a powerful strategic advantage."

"Spirituality" in business sounds lofty. How practical is it?

The answer is “very.” There’s a fundamental way in which Spirit and consciousness contribute to worldly success—and it has long been ignored. [. . .]

As experts, authors and gurus often note, the game of business is to influence the external world. But here’s the point: How can you control your environment if you can’t even manage your own thoughts and emotions? In other words, how do you rule the world without first mastering yourself?

The cornerstone of effective leadership is self-mastery.

In Megatrends, published in 1982, John Naisbitt and I talked about the birth of the Information Economy. For millennia, the West’s developed economies had been based on agriculture. That was how people made their living. Then came the Industrial Revolution. Sometime in the 1960s or 1970s, we argued, another, more subtle upheaval occurred: More and more people held jobs in which they created, processed or manipulated information.

By 1982, the Information Economy was up and running, but it was still a controversial idea. “Information?” some folks scoffed. “There can’t possibly be any economic value in that.” But by the 1990s, the Information Economy had blossomed into the age of high technology, now a trillion-dollar industry.

Today we are on the brink of another extraordinary revolution. The Information Age is already over and an exciting new epoch is taking its place.

Remember, the key point is this: When wealth is derived from a new source — say information rather than industry — a new economic era is born.

Spirituality is today's greatest megatrend, but where is it taking us? What's the future of our compelling interest in all things spiritual? To discover the answer, we must first clear up a common misunderstanding about the spiritual path.

Most of us harbor the belief--reenforced in the media--that a passion for the "inner life" takes us away from the world, rendering us self-obsessed, if not downright selfish.

Well, the truth is: it does. But only at first. During the journey's initial introspective chapter, many instinctively withdraw from the daily grind of modern life. Why? Because, seekers grow more sensitive and too much stress will overwhelm the fresh, emerging spiritual consciousness.

Often we detach in order to heal: as we fill with Spirit, we release a lot of old emotional baggage, find peace, discover a new inner voice--and that requires a fair amount of energy. When my own life-long spiritual journey intensified in 1994, I shut off the TV for two years and rarely read newspapers. Good-bye violence, cynicism, TV commercials. Hello silence, meditation and hearing myself think.

But later the spiral path of Spirit takes a different turn and we plunge into an exciting new phase: our return to the world. Now regenerated, we come back to society and service. That is exactly what millions of people--investors, consumers, managers--and the business leaders you'll meet in this chapter are up to--living their spirituality day-to-day.