Business

The 4 B’s: A Powerful Accountability Practice for the Four Main Areas of Your Life

January 25, 2021 by Stephen Rodgers

As we are just a few weeks into the New Year and many are making resolutions and setting intentions for 2021, I’d like to share a personal accountability practice that I have been doing for many years.

An accountability practice is something that keeps you focused and committed to your goals. Many successful individuals find that having a system to keep them accountable is a key part of their success.

I call my accountability system The 4 B’s, and they represent the four main areas of my life that I seek to maintain and improve to ensure that I keep evolving and becoming a better version of myself every day, one step at a time.

The 4 B’s Are:

Body: My physical health
Being: My spiritual health
Bonds: The health of my relationships
Business: My financial health and abundance in my work

Body

Practices to improve your Body can include eating a healthy diet, doing some form of exercise, getting a massage, doing some form of physical work, yoga, etc.

Being

Practices to nurture your Being can include meditation, yoga, prayer, taking a walk in nature, going to your church, synagogue, temple, etc., or any other practice or ritual that increases your spiritual connection.

Bonds

Activities to strengthen your Bonds may include calling an old friend on the phone, spending time with your family, attending a social event, doing something to help a loved one, co-worker, or friend, among many other actions.

Business

Actions to improve your Business may include creating new content, learning a new skill, taking a course, or anything you do that is working on your business or working in your business.

Here is a sample chart filled out for one week:

The simple chart below has a space for each B for each day of the week. I score myself as either a “0”, a “.5”, or a “1” for each category depending on whether I did something that day to cultivate each area.

At the end of the week, I add up each daily tally to get the weekly score. This has been a powerful practice that shows me exactly where I may be neglected an area of my life so that I can take measures to rectify it.

Below I’ve created a link where you can download the blank 4 B’s sheets to start your own practice.

Good luck and let me know how it goes for you!

Printable 4 B’s Sheets

The IGI Principles: Now Available!

September 18, 2020 by Stephen Rodgers

**IGI**
Is about living in **IGI**: *Inviting God/Good In*
Rather than **EGO**:
*Edging God/Good Out*

Today, September 18th, 2020 is the release of my new book The IGI Principles!

This book lays out my philosophy of IGI, or Inviting God and Goodness In, and how it can transform your business and your life.

Get The Book Here!

My second book after the Amazon Bestseller Lead to Gold, the idea for this book was born many years ago when I was inspired by Wayne Dyer’s statement that “Ego” means “Edging God Out”.

The realization hit me that the opposite of EGO is IGI: “Inviting God In”.

In this book, I lay out my IGI philosophy while offering seven foundational principles including gratitude, integrity, forgiveness, and service that are essential for success, abundance, and happiness.

The IGI Principles help you discover your unique gifts and guide you in sharing them with the world as a spiritual being in this human experience.

These principles and strategies apply to all forms of professional work, whether the individual is a solopreneur, the CEO of a multi-million dollar company, or an employee in a company of any size.

If you are seeking to bring Spiritual Intelligence into both your life and your business or work this book will undoubtedly be a valuable resource for you.

This book is the distilled essence of what I have learned from decades of leading businesses while integrating my spiritual practice and experiencing massive success, abundance, and fulfillment as a result.

“Each moment leaders, and all people, are either Edging Good Out or Inviting Good In. This is their choice, and they are always receiving the fruits of their choices.”

There are books and teachings that help you achieve business success, and there are teachings that guide you to spiritual fulfillment – but never before has there been a blueprint to achieving both.

IGI is that teaching, and this is that book!

Get The Book Here!

IGI & The Coronavirus Part 2: An IGI Perspective on the Big Picture

May 2, 2020 by Stephen Rodgers

This is the second part of a three-part series of posts. This post will look at the big picture of this coronavirus pandemic situation and invites you to consider how this event can aid us in discovering what is truly important in our lives as we take the big picture perspective and discover compassion and our greater unity as Human Beings.

Part One focused on the practical steps we can take in our daily lives and our business and work lives.

Part Three will address the deeper, spiritual significance of this event and how you can view it from an IGI perspective that will help you navigate these chaotic times and evolve to experience more goodness in all aspects of your life.

Sometimes life gives us our greatest gifts cleverly disguised as our worst nightmares. When adversity happens we are challenged to dig deeper within and discover who we truly are and what is important in our lives. Sometimes we need these crises to happen in our lives to awaken us from our slumber and catalyze us into a greater experience of life.

The 4 B’s

This pandemic is an event that shakes us out of the habit of our daily routine and gives us the opportunity to reflect upon our lives and re-evaluate any number of things, such as whether we are living the life we desire and whether we are taking care of our physical, mental, and spiritual health. We can take responsibility for our bodies and our minds by taking care of our physical health and staying positive without succumbing to fear.

The time and space that you may have right now as you practice social distancing and are in a state of semi-quarantine is a great opportunity to focus on what I call the 4 B’s – Body, Bonds, Business, and Being. These four aspects of our life and health that are essential for our well-being and happiness.

During this time, you can nurture your Body by taking a walk or doing yoga and stretching at home, as well as making sure you eat a healthy diet to bolster your immune system. With the extra time on your hands, you can improve your Bonds by spending time with your immediate family as well as calling friends and relations on the phone. For Business, you now likely have more time to work on your business or work without distractions and can use this time to catch up on things while connecting with your clients through the Internet. Finally, your Being can be nurtured through any number of spiritual practices or by taking time for reflection and contemplation.

What is Truly Important?

In addition to using this opportunity to nurture your total health, this pandemic offers you an opening to discover a deeper sense of vision in your life path.

I think back to years ago when my wife was unexpectedly in the hospital. I was in the middle of selling one of my companies and was very busy with emails, phone calls, text messages, and meetings up until that night when she was unexpectedly taken into the hospital. The next day, she was in the ICU unit and I wasn’t sure if she was going to live. Suddenly, everything had a completely different meaning and every email and phone call seemed so insignificant and unimportant.

I no longer cared if I responded to them or not and it completely put into perspective what was important. I delegated some of that stuff to others because people still deserve answers, but I knew it wasn’t my purpose at that time because I had a new shift in priority.

When I think about the personal crises in my life in light of the coronavirus, as much as this is life-threatening and has ended some people’s lives and will continue to do so – at the same time it is good to look at the big picture of this. What does this mean for our global planet? What does this mean to us as human beings and what does this mean for our spiritual souls?

This is something that has happened from the beginning of time. Humanity has experienced famines, floods, and diseases periodically from the very beginning. Usually, when natural disasters do their initial damage, there’s always good that comes from it in the form of innovations and learning from the past. New theorems are created, new advances in healthcare are developed, new laws are passed that benefit the people, new regulations are passed, and people innovate new ways to do business.

In the same way, this situation can lead to positive growth, changes, and innovations within a business and in our society as a whole. Changes must inevitably occur within organizations as people tighten up their belts and stop spending money on things that aren’t essential. It causes people to reach out to people they would not otherwise come into contact with as they are looking for forgiveness and a sense of unity.

While there have been occurrences of selfishness and greed, such as fighting over toilet paper, there have been far more expressions of compassion. We may see that this event has caused the world to come together in solidarity and recognize our fundamental interconnectedness.

The Big Picture Perspective

I like to visualize this fact of our interconnectedness and gain a sense of perspective with the Google Earth application. If you zoom all the way in and look at your house you can look at the roof of the house and the backyard. You can then zoom out and see the neighborhood, you zoom out again and you can see the town. You can zoom out further to see the city, then the state, then the United States or whatever country you’re in. You can keep zooming out and can see half of the world before zooming out all the way and you’re through the atmosphere and you’re through the clouds in the sky. You look down and you see the earth, this round ball that’s spinning slowly that’s got such beautiful colors with the blue in the ocean and the green and you look at it and it gives you such a different feeling, looking at from that higher level looking down onto the earth.

Anytime there are daily problems or issues within my life, my business, or my relationships, I like to say, “OK. What level of the Earth do I need to zoom this out on?” A situation that seems very grave and serious when zoomed in up close becomes much less stressful when viewed from the broader perspective which sees the whole.

We have to deal with the problem at hand and we must have hands-on contact sometimes with these issues that might exist in business or life, or in this case, the coronavirus. But when you look at the very big global perspective and the spiritual perspective from the time humanity began and into our future you can see that we are currently in a very small place in time and space in the grand scheme of things.

By seeing the big picture perspective with this pandemic, you can see how this situation can be transformed into a benefit for yourself and for humanity as a whole. You can see how you can use what life has given you and turn it into a benefit for yourself, your loved ones, your business, and the world.

Whatever will happen with the coronavirus, whether it continues for a month, two months, or six months, whatever it’s going to be, there will be these ripple effects and it will have consequences for our world long after that.

Compassion & Unity

In these trying times, we must be in solidarity and compassion with those who have lost and will lose loved ones to this illness. Many souls will likely choose this time to leave the Earth and while this may be looked on as neutral from the absolute perspective, from a human perspective there will be much sorrow and experience of loss. This is an opportunity for all of us to further open our hearts and embrace the sorrow of the whole world. I hope that this worldwide experience will assist us all in recognizing our fundamental unity with all life.

You can look at every situation as to what you are being in service to – your ego or IGI. It is an opportunity to choose between being in your IGI versus acting from your ego. Those who act in ego will find themselves isolated, alone, living in fear, and actually weaken their immune systems causing themselves to become more susceptible to the virus.

Those who invite goodness in and act in IGI create for themselves a vital state of inner health and find support and solidarity with all of humanity as we collectively meet this challenge and a great opportunity to make positive changes in ourselves and within our co-created world.

Continue to read Part Three.

IGI & The Coronavirus Part 1: Personal and Business Perspectives

April 30, 2020 by Stephen Rodgers

This is the first part of a three-part series of posts. This article focuses on the practical steps we can take in our daily lives and in our business during the coronavirus event.

Part Two invites you to consider how this event can aid us in discovering what is truly important in our lives as we take the big picture perspective and discover compassion and our greater unity as Human Beings.

Part Three will address the deeper, spiritual significance of this event and how you can view it from an IGI perspective that will help you navigate these chaotic times and evolve to experience more goodness in all aspects of your life.

Right now, everyone is getting bombarded with messages about the Coronavirus as we all hunker down in our homes and wait out this storm. In this message, I would like to share the perspective that I am taking for myself, my family, and my clients, and how you can take a wider perspective of this event in your personal and professional life. These are some tips that can help your business during the coronavirus.

The IGI Principles

As all of California has been ordered to stay at home, I am in the process of finishing my new book called The IGI Principles: The Power of Inviting Good In vs Edging Good Out. I am very excited to share it with the world and expect it to be released in the next month or two.

This book is the culmination of a lifetime of work in both the fields of business and in my spiritual path, resulting in the term IGI, or Inviting God In. IGI is the exact opposite of the word ego and represents the power of inviting God, goodness, or whatever you call the higher power, into your life rather than edging God out through selfishness and fear.

All things in our lives can be informed by this idea of IGI, and the current situation is no exception. This pandemic is an opportunity to learn to invite more goodness into your life and to see how you can turn crisis into opportunity, lead into gold. I’m keeping that perspective for myself, my family and friends, and my clients. I believe that this is a perspective that can greatly benefit yourself, your business or organization, and the world as a whole which needs level-headed people who meet this situation with Spiritual Intelligence.

Here is my new website where you can find more information about the new book and how to order it so you receive a copy when it is released. Until then, expect more blog posts and messages from me containing simple and practical IGI Principles for you to apply in your own life.

Guiding Your Business Through These Times

This virus is having a major impact on our work lives and businesses. While it is impossible to stop this pandemic from harming your business completely, there are many things that you can do to minimize the damage. If you use this situation intelligently, you can even come out at the end of this crisis having evolved in your business beyond what you could have if everything had continued as before.

There is nothing in life that is inherently negative and can’t be transformed into a positive outcome. Many who look at the virus see it as a disastrous worldwide pandemic that destroys our health and our wealth. But what if we look at it another way? What if we see what it can teach us, how it can improve our lives, and possibly even aid our business in becoming more profitable than ever?

People still need services, help, and guidance – and in fact, these things are needed now more than ever. Even though many people are taking a step back from their daily lives, the world must continue moving forward. We have the financial economy and the health economy and clearly at this time the health economy needs to overtake and take precedent over the financial economy. However, you still need to keep your businesses viable and running. You still need to keep paying your rent or your mortgage and your bills to take care of your family.

While the world is collectively retreating to their homes to ride out this storm, this is the perfect time for you to creatively utilize your talents and your skills to reinvent, remodify, and repurpose how you communicate and how you provide your services to your customers.

This may take the form of offering some new menu of services that may take some new pricing models, it may take reaching out to your customers and finding out what it is they want now and what they don’t want. In this time where many are being careful with their spending, you can find out what they’re willing to pay for what they’re not willing to pay for.

One important thing is to make sure that you are taking all the prudent things that can be done to protect your employees. This may mean that they work from home and take appropriate sick time or paid vacation. You may need to figure out what compensation plans you have for people who are going to be affected by this.

This pandemic can be a good opportunity to modify your business model during the coronavirus and perhaps increase your utilization of the internet and social media. You can connect with your clients and customers through video blogs and messages, emails, blog posts, and social media such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube among others to reach out to those whom you haven’t been reaching out to as authentically and as clearly and consistently as you could have.

At this time, many people are staying home and have a lot of time on their hands, so this is a great time to produce content and get it out to your audience or customers to drive engagement and sales. This is also a wonderful opportunity to share with them how you can be of value and service to them and what your unique selling proposition is that might be of value in this time of need.

This could be a time you decide that paying it forward and giving some of your services out for the greater good in a way that you would not normally do is the right thing to do. You’re being generous and figuring out how to give it to the people who need it the most.

Or maybe, you can look into reducing some of your pricing for a while so that people can utilize these products and services for the benefit of the world economy. You may take a loss right now in your profits, but in the long run, people will remember you as a business who did the right thing and helped out when times were tough.

These are just a few of many suggestions for ways you can meet this challenging situation in your business or work life and successfully navigate through the stormy times we currently find ourselves in. By applying these principles and those we will discuss in Part Two and Three, you will better be able to stay in the eye of the storm where all is calm and clear.

Check out Part 2 here, and Part 3 here!