Ask people what they do, and they’ll roll off company names, job descriptions, and alphabet-soup-laden titles (“I’m Jane Schmo, MA, CMC, DDT) faster than Takeru Kobayashi downs hot dogs.

Ask people who they are, though, and they tend to flounder (“Umm… I’m nice…”).

People tend to define themselves by what they do, more than who they are.

Aren’t actions defining?

Absolutely. Words without actions carry about as much weight as a wet tissue. But if you’re relying on your actions to define who you are, you’re missing a big piece of the puzzle — and, your business’ success is suffering because of it.

Why?

The foundation for any successful business lies in clarity. If you don’t have clarity about who your audience is and what their problems are, then you’re up the creek none of us like being up, and paddle-less to boot.

Here’s the kicker: Without clarity about who you are, you’re never really going to be able to stand solidly enough to serve anyone. You’ll be like a flagpole, planted in a hole filled with styrofoam packing peanuts.

Clarity in your business is self-knowledge (funny, that’s what the sages have taught about enlightenment for ages…). With self-knowledge, you know from the inside-out what your business is about: what you bring to the table and who you want to come to eat at that table with you.

As you sing your heart’s message to the world, people who resonate with it are going to respond.

It’s not where we’re heading, it’s where we are

These days, as the “Web 2.0” concept explodes — the movement towards greater levels of “social interaction, conversation and community,” as my friend Dawud Miracle says — the absolute need for authenticity and genuine passion is essential.

If your business speaks without your heart’s voice — the passion and conviction that sources in your own soul — who is going to want to listen to you?

Okay… but how?

As Carl Jung said,

Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart…. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.

In order to know who you are, and breathe life into your business’ vision, you need to look inside.

Obviously, mindfulness practices, such as meditation, are key for this. By growing your ability to pick up on the subtleties within you, your self-knowledge will naturally grow.

But awareness alone sometimes isn’t good enough. You can become aware of a room half-darkened by shadow, but light is needed to illuminate the rest.

Have you ever looked at a slide on a light-box? Or held a piece of fine paper up to a light bulb? All of a sudden, nuances that were hidden before become revealed.

Bringing the light into your heart, through a practice such as the Remembrance, will do for your self-knowledge what the light-box does for your view of the slide.

The Remembrance (the invocation of Oneness) amplifies your awareness of the connectivity with the Oneness that lives within your own being. As such, it illuminates what within you is similar to the One, and, what is different from it.

Slow down there, egghead!

You don’t have to understand this to benefit from it. After all, gravity is still a theory, but knowing that it exists keeps you from jumping off a cliff. That’s helpful, right?

What this whole illumination-business means to you is that spending time connecting to your own heart, along with asking good, introspective questions, is going to increase your self-knowledge immensely, because you’re approaching it from the inside-out, rather than the outside-in.

(Outside-in methods would include things like cheesy questionnaires that ask you about your past in order to determine your likes and dislikes… which is much like the dynamite-in-the-lake method of catching fish.)

Just last week, I watched as a client of mine got incredible clarity about herself and her business as she delved deeper into exploring her own passions, her own heart’s desire to contribute, and what her unique flavor is. That clarity is going to serve her tremendously as she takes her business forward, and the right people — the ones who resonate with her message — are going to respond.

I’ve seen it happen with Monk At Work; less than two months after starting Monk At Work, my list doubled what it had been for years.

I’ve seen it happen with colleagues, and I’ve seen it happen with clients. Fundamental self-knowledge pays huge dividends. It gives you clarity for everything that follows, like marketing, product/service/workshop creation, you name it.

So the next time someone asks you, “Who are you?”, you’ll be ready, right?