Healthy Environment, Healthy Business

What is the difference between living healthy and not living healthy? More importantly, in business, what is the difference between a healthy, productive company and an unhealthy, unproductive company? There actually isn't a very drastic difference in action. There IS a very drastic difference in results. The difference is goals. Small steps in action make a big difference in results.

We've discussed setting goals in the past, but let's go deeper with it to see how small changes lead to big results. It starts with the difference between goals that are supported and goals that are not. As you may be able to tell (by logic or personal experience) goals that are supported are much more likely to be reached.

As I begin work with each of my clients, I see a clear issue that needs to be addressed before anything else. The issue is the environment. I'm not saying that everywhere I go has an unhealthy environment. I just need to ask the question, how healthy is the environment? Often, when we start the conversation it goes something like this:

Client Company: "I want to save money, so how can you help me get my people healthier?"

Me: "First, let's look at what is causing the current health situation." "What are you doing now to support the health goals of your employees?"

The business owner may or may not already be doing some things. Regardless, the point is to ask the question to get the environment at the top of the priorities list. If we know what the issues are and what employees' goals are, now we can start to change the environment that they work in. As we alter the environment, people are able to make changes within it.

It only makes sense to make sure that goals are supported by the environment. No one woke up this morning wanting to be unhealthy and not feel good. We all want to feel good, so if the environment can support this, we all will.

One way to illustrate this is by looking at goals strictly from a business viewpoint. If I ask the question: "What are you doing to support the performance goals of your employees?" it is much clearer for most employers.

The following scenario will illustrate this, but also show how to use what is common practice in business to create new possibilities.

Sales Goals- your company requires each sales rep to close 20 clients per month. You don't care how they do it, between calls, in person meetings, networking, or otherwise, but their goal is twenty clients by month end. If this is to be realistic, you have to look at the time they will be spending and how they will be spending it. If they have 30 hours of internal meetings, it will be difficult for them to devote much time to external communications that will lead to sales. Therefore, this would not be an environment that supported 20 clients for the sales rep. As an owner/manager, you would not set this up because the conflict would be clear.

Health goals are not quite as clear to see in business. That is where I come in! It is easy to say: "Get healthy." It is more challenging to set up an environment that will create and support health. Challenging, yes, but impossible? No. It starts with that simple question:

What can I do to support the health of my employees?

This may lead to more questions, but the answers reveal themselves quickly and clearly. You know your business needs and what each employee needs to do in order to keep things going. The health of your employees is no different. They each have goals and a certain amount of time and energy to devote to them. By creating a realistic sales goal, your sales team is able to work toward it, accomplish it and your company sees the benefit. In order to do this, you need an environment that can support these goals. If your environment doesn't support the goals, your company and everyone in it will suffer.

By creating realistic health goals and an environment that supports them, your employees will be able to work toward these goals and of course, your company sees the benefit. Best of all, your sales goals will improve as well. (See my article: Health Strategy, Appearance and Performance)

How does this happen? Goal setting is a habit. Success is a habit. Anyone that can be successful in one area can also be successful in another. By creating the environment that supports success, your employees and of course, your company will achieve more success. A healthy environment helps you create a healthy business and clearly a healthy business is a successful business.

What Are Your Environments Costing You?

One of the fastest ways to reach your dreams is to change your environment. What are environments? There are many different kind of environments. Physical environment would constitute clearing your physical space. Cluttered space creates clutter thinking.

Spiritual Environment are the envioronments you create to connect with your spiritual side. Some people do it in nature, surrounding themselves with beauty and others do it through meditation and slowing down to listen to the whisper of their souls.

Environments are also the people we spend time with. We look at what we are working on in our lives and then surround ourselves with others who are creating the environments to reach similar goals and intentions. We then have them support us and we support them in order to create harmony and success for both involved.

A couple of examples … If better health is one of your goals, it would make sense to surround yourself with people who value health. Or, if growth and prosperity in your business is your focus, it would be smart to surround yourself with winners—people who are moving forward, inspiring each other and making a difference.

But before you make a decision to change your environment, you need to take certain steps to attract that new environment.

The first step is internal research. Ask yourself, What do I need? What kinds of changes do I need to make in my life?

Let's assume again that one of your goals is to make more money in your business while at the same time making a difference. In that case, look for an environment that can support you in achieving that dream.

The second step is to develop those qualities in yourself that will attract, effortlessly, the environment you are looking for.

For example, to create an environment where you can ask for support, you must be willing to be vulnerable so that others can support you.

Ask yourself, If I put myself in that environment, am I ready to receive support? So many times I have noticed a pattern in women who come to my coaching practice and experience being vulnerable in a safe environment. They are able to take that energy and acceptance and begin creating those same authentic and honest relationships in their other world.

The third step, once you have created the inner qualities that allow you to attract and be in that environment, is to be willing to take a risk.

Yes, making new decisions, meeting new people, stepping up big in your life, are risky! They all require stepping out of your comfort zone. But if your desire is strong enough, you will do what it takes to leap forward toward your big life. When the pain of remaining small becomes too much, you will have no choice. The leap you take doesn't have to be big and scary. It can be small, such as investing in a mastermind group or entering into a relationship with a coach who can support you in creating environments for success. And you don't have to do any of it alone. With a support system in place, you can create new environments easily.

Rosa Bonheur

French painter Rosa Bonheur (1822-99) was "the most internationally renowned woman painter of the mid-nineteenth century."1

Bonheur was one of the most talented and successful painters in the 19th century, she began showing her work in the Paris Salon in 1841 and quickly made a name for herself as a painter of animals with a focus on the domesticated animals of France.  In the 19th century a greater number of women were pursuing art as a career and studying in the École des Beaux-Arts.  Yet it wasn't usually possible for women to draw and paint from the nude model where students would learn anatomy as it was considered morally corrupt. Due to this, female painters of the time often turned to subjects other than figurative history paintings. Mary Cassatt famously painted mothers and children, Cecilia Beaux painted portraits, Berthe Morisot painted scenes of modern Parisian life and Rosa Bonheur focused on painting animals.

While the move away from history painting put limitations on paintings and commissions for women artists, Rosa Bonheur was so skilled at painting animals that she attracted attention at an early age.  By age 26 she received an important commission from the French government to paint her work Plowing in the Nivernais.  Bonheur traveled to the Nivernais region so that she could paint the landscape and oxen accurately.  

Ploughing in Nivernais, Rosa Bonheur, 1849, Musee D'Orsay

The work shows a typical French rural farming theme of the fields being tilled in the autumn.  While her work is part of the Realist movement of Millet, Breton and Courbet, in a sense this rural scene is rather romanticized.  There is a nobility given to both the animals and cowherds.  When she was painting this the influences of the industrial revolution were spreading throughout France and Europe, and this scene pays homage to traditional methods of labor.  

Rosa Bonheur "based the work on a description of oxen in George Sand's celebrated pastoral novel of 1846, La Mare au Diable (The Devil's Pod), on her long study of animals in nature, and on the paintings of Paulus Potter, a Dutch seventeenth-century painter of cows whose work she admired."2  Below is an example of Potter's work; The Bull, Paulus Potter, 1647, The Hague.

Bonheur's painting was widely acclaimed and after it was shown in the 1849 Salon she received numerous other commissions.  She went on to have many well known and influential patrons such as Britain's Queen Victoria and the American millionaire and philanthropist Cornelius Vanderbilt.

The Horse Fair, Rosa Bonheur, 1852-55, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Bonheur's most well known work may be her later painting, The Horse Fair, painted from 1852-55.  The painting is owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the museum website says of the painting The Horse Fair, "The artist drew inspiration from George Stubbs, Théodore Gericault, Eugène Delacroix, and ancient Greek sculpture: she referred to The Horse Fair as her own "Parthenon frieze."3

More than one version of The Horse Fair exists, after it was exhibited Bonheur painted another version and prior to the finished work she painted several smaller studies.  After exhibiting the work she traveled to England for a while where she enjoyed further success.  She was represented by gallery owner Ernest Gambart who had many of her popular paintings turned into lithographs and published.
 

Bonheur did much of her drawing and painting outdoors (rather than solely in her art studio) and preferred wearing pants to the elaborate dresses that were popular in the mid-19th century, at that time it was necessary to obtain a permit in order for a woman to wear pants in public.  Rosa Bonheur obtained one and was able to move about with ease painting her subjects in their natural setting while wearing pants to do so.  She was considered "radical in her personal life, but artistically and politically conservative, a confirmed monarchist and a realist."4

Rosa Bonheur, André Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri, 1861-64, Getty Museum

Rosa Bonheur enjoyed a successful lifelong career, and lived to be 77.  Her work was popular among all classes in society and during her career she became the first woman officer in the Legion of Honor.  It would be no exaggeration to say that most artists painting animals in the 20th century would have been influenced by Bonheur's work.



1 Rosenblum, Robert and H.W. Janson. 19th Century Art. NY: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. 1984. p. 223.
2 Chadwick, Whitney. Women, Art, and Society. NY: Thames and Hudson Inc. 1990. p. 180.
3 Metropolitan Museum of Art website- http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/435702
4 Chadwick. p. 180.