It's not who you know
Early in my professional career I became acquainted with what was purportedly the most important business advice I’d ever receive: “It’s not what you know; it’s who you know.”
Which was doubly negative for me as I knew very little and had few contacts in my network.
Further, the adage felt deeply incongruous. Shouldn’t the quality and impact of one’s work provide far more substance than job titles in a social network?
Yet a basic search on Amazon or Google reveals the thousands of books and millions of web pages dedicated to “improving your network” to land a better job and make more money.
It’s who you know.
While it may lead to some success in the business world, who you know has zero relevance to inner prosperity.
It’s not who you know. It’s who you are.
When it comes to experiencing deep peace and unconditional happiness, you need only a network of one. Yourself.
Although there’s a curious characteristic of this solo consortium of contentment - it requires you to do nothing.
If fact, quite paradoxically, any attempts we make toward the attainment of peace have the decidedly negative effect of pushing it further away.
Happiness is a choice, not a consequence.
It’s a decision to know ourselves as we truly are. Without which, pain and disappointment dominate our existence.
Slightly paraphrasing from Lesson 68 in A Course in Miracles:
To experience sorrow is to forget who you are. To experience sorrow is to see yourself as a body. To experience sorrow is to make the wrong choice in the mind and condemn the body to death.
Which is why the course makes clear, “Your goal is to find out who you are.” (W-pI.62.2)
Who we are.
But not a body with a name. The “network of one” is a reflection of infinite oneness. A "oneness joined as one" as the course so beautifully depicts.
Our true reality is perfect peace, experienced the moment we make that choice in the mind.
Join me in Thursday’s class where we’ll dig into practices for discovering who we really are. I look forward to seeing you then.