Today I’m going to talk about something that’s a little outside of what we typically talk about, when it comes to business. We are, however, going to tie it back into business.
Me-Centric
So, when we’re young, we have a very “me-centric” view of the world. It’s all about getting food, it’s all about my needs, it’s all about everything that has to do with me.
Ethnocentric
Then, what happens is we realize that we are a part of a family. We’re a part of a community and so we realize that we’re actually smaller than we thought we were. That it’s not just about me, but it’s about my family or my community. And we move from this individualistic point of view – this me-centric view – to what we might call a tribe-centric view or an ethnocentric view. So we go from, ‘You know what, it’s just all about me’, to ‘There’s actually less out there for me in this broader community and so I actually matter less, but I have more influence than I thought I would have, because I’m part of this broader community’.
Nation-Centric
Then what often happens is our tribe-centric view may expand into a nation-centric view, where we value our specific nation or our specific culture within that nation above all else.
Human-Centric
But then, what often happens is, people will maybe travel a little bit and have an experience where somebody disrupts what their personal views are of individual tribes or cultures or groups. Then, we move and realize, ‘You know what, my tribe or my culture is actually smaller than I thought it was, but within this larger global human-centric view, it has more influence than I expected’. So, when we then move from that ethnocentric point of view, we move into a global-centric or human-centric point of view.
World-Centric
Now, what that often happens is, yes, we’ve valued a bunch of people in this human-centric point of view, but we haven’t moved to a genuine world-centric point of view. Oftentimes, we realize that there’s some integration between plants and animals and that there’s actually a lot that’s interconnected. When we look at the way that the world connects with different levels, and how when things happen in a certain ecological system it actually affects humans, we realize that actually as humans we’re much smaller than we expected, but within this system we have more power than we expected.
So, through these levels, we’ve been able to see progress and we see it in mindsets, culture, political beliefs, and religious beliefs. You can almost identify where someone’s at on this specific scale of individual-centric, or me-centric, to tribe centric, or ethnocentric, or culture-centric, to then human-centric, to then world-centric.
Cosmocentric
The last one is what happens when we then move into cosmocentric. So we see that there’s this world-centric view, but then what happens is we realize that actually the world is so small within the cosmos that is ever-expanding. I recently read that if the earth had to represent a grain of sand, the entire universe be around ten million miles wide. When you think about the expanse of the universe, we don’t yet really know what our influence on it is going to be. But, we do know that we’re much smaller than we ever thought. Our influence, however, may be much broader than we ever thought. There may be more of a universal consciousness, flow, connection, and/or energy between beings than we ever anticipated.
And, that’s what’s really interesting about what philosophers and scientists and other folks are discovering right now. So, when we look at this flow, how does this fit into our businesses? I’m not going to answer that question for you, because I think that when we look at this, and we look at the progress of what happens, it actually helps us to create our own answers around that. So, I want you to take this, think about it, go deeper with it, and tell me what your answers are in regards to how you’re going to apply this to your individual life.
Joe Sanok is the owner of Mental Wellness Counseling and the host of the top podcast, Practice of the Practice. The podcast was recently named one of Huffington Post’s top 100 podcasts. For more on personal and business growth go to www.PracticeofthePractice.com
