135: The pendulum running your business
Plus a story from Carolina about her mom and a beer.
Starting this month, notes from our Wonder Questions calls
There’s a call we host every month that we’ve barely talked about here in our newsletter. Starting today, that changes.
It’s called Wonder Questions. Over 200 of you are in the Sacred Business Network at this point, and a group of us shows up live for it every month. It’s an hour long. We pick a passage from a teacher we’re sitting with. Carolina or I read it. Then we open a few questions that don’t have right answers. People share what’s actually alive for them in their business and their life. We listen. We respond. An hour later you've seen something about your business or yourself that you couldn't see when you first joined the Zoom.
Once a month from here on out, I’ll be sharing what came up on the call. Not what individual people said. That stays in the room. But the teaching we sat with, a few thoughts from Carolina, and a few from me.
So here’s what happened this month.
We read from a book called Reality Transurfing by Vadim Zeland. The passage was about pendulums.
A pendulum is what happens when a big group of people get worked up about the same thing at the same frequency. Think sports games, social media, the news, a political fight. Once enough people are feeding the same emotion at the same frequency, that energy starts to behave like its own thing. It pulls more people in. And it feeds on whatever attention you give it, including the attention you give by being against it.
The person who can’t stop hate-scrolling and the person who can’t stop telling everyone how bad social media is are stuck in the same pendulum. Energy is energy. The pendulum doesn’t care which side of the argument you’re on.
The way out is what Zeland calls disengagement. Disengagement is more subtle than it sounds. You don’t have to leave the situation. Your external behavior can stay the same. What changes is on the inside. You feel the pull and you don’t latch on.
This concept has been one of the more useful things I’ve read over the years for how I approach my own business.
After so many conversations with people building heart-led businesses, I see the same rollercoaster everywhere. You get into a high state. Vision work, a great coaching call, a moment of real clarity. You feel like you are on the top of the mountain. The next day you crash. A week later you’re doubting the whole thing. Then you’re back up. Then back down again. That’s the same pendulum, just one you set in motion yourself.
Carolina shared on the call that freedom doesn’t sit on either side of the pendulum. It sits in the middle, in what she calls neutrality. You’re there with people, warm and paying attention, and you’re just not getting swept away by the river.
She told a story to make it real. A few years back she was in the middle of a divorce, had moved countries, was Airbnb-hopping with her kids, and had just lost a big chunk of her money. Her mom came to visit. Carolina was bracing for sympathy. Her mom took one look at her and said, this situation is so bad, all we can do is celebrate. Let’s go drink a beer. They went and got a beer. They laughed about it. The pendulum broke right there.
For me, the practice has shown up most around sales. I used to tighten up the second a sales conversation got real. Now when I notice that pull, I get up from my desk and put on music. I dance for 30 seconds to a minute. It looks ridiculous if you saw it. It also works. My body remembers it has a choice.
That’s what the call kept circling back to. You don’t have to fight what’s pulling on you, and you don’t have to withdraw from things. The work is simpler than that. Remember what isn’t yours, and choose what frequency you actually want to be in.
This kind of conversation is why we built the Network. There are plenty of places online to talk about funnels and pricing and Substack growth. There aren’t many where you can sit with people who already understand what it means to build a business from the inside out, and explore the actual questions that change how you show up in the work.
If you want to be in the room for the next one, we just put up a new page for the Network. You can see a bit more about the types of folks that show up for these calls, read what they are actually like, and decide if it’s a fit.
See you on the next one.
Phil
Who We are Celebrating This Week: Gary Allen
Gary writes for midlife people who feel a pull toward something more. His Substack is about reshaping your life to fit who you are now, not who you had to be to get through your thirties. Practical, grounded, and worth a read if you're in that stretch.
Gary runs the Life Design Collective. He’s our latest member to join the Sacred Business Network, and we are so glad to have him in the fold.
Things I’d Like to Share
Most conversations with doctors stay clinical. Andrew David Shiller, MD isn't most doctors. This episode of In Full-Light stayed clinical for about six minutes and then went somewhere I rarely hear physicians willing to go.
Here’s what Mustafa Tarik Pehlivan had to say about it:
Most marketing conversations chase the sexy stuff. Matt Brown isn't most marketers. He spends his days on the unsexy infrastructure that decides whether any of the sexy stuff actually reaches a human.
Here’s what Billy Broas had to say about it:
Here’s what Dr. Bronce Rice had to say about it:
Memorable Quote
Vadim Zeland — “Pendulums are not malevolent in themselves. They simply need energy. They do not care if they devour you in the process.”
