So you have decided that you want to sell your business. I guess this leaves you with mixed emotions.
Perhaps at one moment you can feel the impending liberation and the next a sense that you will miss the buzz of it all.
It’s about the rest of your life and new and different forms of fulfilment. Some business sellers will have their future path nicely mapped out before them. Many inevitably will spend large chunks of time reflecting on the past. Others will be firmly grounded in the present, living every moment.
But wait a moment. Have you ever considered that, in reality, the present moment is all there is, it’s precious, and there may not be a next moment at all?
On this basis, living in the present is all that counts and part of the liberation process is freeing yourself from aspects of your personality that may have hindered your personal development and important relationships with others. All human beings need a personality to survive in the world but on occasions the ego that goes with it has an annoying habit of getting in the way!
Knowing your personality type
There are many personality profiling systems, often used in workplace situations to try to interpret and make sense of interactions between work colleagues and within teams. It’s typically about making people more effective and efficient to make more profit for shareholders.
But what about people as human beings? And what about YOU?
For thousands of years human beings have attempted to understand themselves and others better for practical as well as spiritual reasons.
One of the oldest, if not the oldest, is the Enneagram ("a drawing with 9 points" is the literal Greek meaning), the distinct circular symbol of which can literally be traced back thousands of years to distant civilisations. The Oxford English Dictionary intriguingly describes it as "a nine-sided figure used in a particular system of analysis to represent the spectrum of possible personality types".
The Enneagram details 9 different personality types with their associated characteristics. The core principles of this system were rediscovered during the past 100 years or so through the tireless efforts of Gurdjieff and later Ichazo.
Once you know your type so much that was previously unexplained becomes clear to you. And it has nothing to do with changing who you are. It’s about accepting the motivations and behaviours typical of your type and to continue using the positive aspects to your advantage whilst recognising how the less healthy elements of your personality type adversely affect you, and the others around you. This is powerful stuff.
There is no need to "try". All that is required is that you become more self aware of the present moment and notice what is happening in everyday situations. By working on your personal development in this way you will move up the levels to healthier states of personal fulfilment.
So as you approach your life changing decision to sell your business why not consider finding out more about your personality type and how that knowledge might help you to live the rest of your life in a fulfilling way with the proceeds from all your hard work.
This is just a summary. Learn more about personality Types at: http://stephenc.co.uk/
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