What is a Good Life? #125
Reclaiming The Sacred In Business with Nikki Trott
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This Week’s Podcast
On the 125th episode of the What is a Good Life? podcast, I’m delighted to welcome our guest, Nikki Trott. Nikki is a renowned author, speaker, strategist, CEO adviser and podcaster dedicated to empowering business to thrive in harmony with humanity and the Earth. Her book, Sacred Business, is a manifesto for the transformation of ourselves woven with strategic action to create a new era of life-affirming business. As the host of the acclaimed Going Conscious podcast, she explores journeys of visionary entrepreneurs creating prosperity from purpose. Nikki has advised over 100 iconic brands and startup founders and is redesigning capital for regeneration as founding partner of Barefoot Ventures.
In this conversation, Nikki explores her journey toward authenticity and purpose, discussing the profound impact of writing her book, and the interplay between personal and spiritual growth, and business transformation. She emphasises the importance of intuition, feminine energy, and the balance between surrender and action in both life and work.
The conversation touches on the need for a shift from traditional, fear-driven practices to a more holistic, sacred approach to work, drawing on the lessons of Sacred Business.
The weekly clip from the podcast (2 mins), my weekly reflection (2 mins), the full podcast (59 mins), and the weekly questions all follow below.
1. Weekly Clip from the Podcast
2. My weekly reflection
We have made up a game that so many of us have bought into that it actually feels like the totality of life.
Go to school, get good grades.
Go to university, get good grades.
Get a good job, get good money.
Continue to spiral upwards.
Buy nice things.
Acquire more. Bigger. Better.
Pass those on to the next generation and encourage them to do likewise.
Hopefully be happy, have a good life, or have it be better than others’.
However, just like currency is a shared belief — and can collapse if people stop believing in it — I sense this idea of life is beginning to teeter.
We’ve now watched multiple generations play this game. Even those we might have considered winners don’t seem particularly happy.
While more and more people are playing by the rules but can’t afford a home.
When the game could dangle happiness and a home, people showed up.
But the more we see lives move forward without fulfilment, the more we watch people struggle just to step onto the board — the more suspicions rise.
The saddest part is when the game becomes the full measure of a good life.
So much goes unnoticed.
So many participants are so focused on the game that they miss the riches already present in their lives — riches that, if taken away tomorrow, would bring far more sorrow than the game’s promises could ever justify.
Our health. The health of loved ones. Time with the people we love. The quiet joys of deeply attentive relationships.
The game convinces us that it’s not time with loved ones we want — but less time with them, spent in nicer surroundings and locations.
It convinces us we need to collect enough chips to earn “quality” time.
As if they are not already here to be enjoyed now. The embrace of a loved one, the joyfulness of a child, laughing your ass off with a great friend over a slowly paced coffee.
It also tells us that we can do whatever is necessary to acquire those chips.
Our values, ways of being, how we treat each other — all of that can be shelved while we’re in the space of collecting.
It doesn’t seem overly concerned for who you really are. That the widening gap between who we are at work and who we are outside won’t matter.
The game seems to suggest that love, kindness, fairness — these don’t belong. They may even slow your progress through its levels.
While there’s little room for honesty if it threatens the organisation you play for, or your own advancement.
What must it do to us, to live in a world of little love for so many hours a day, months in a year, years in a lifetime — all under the promise that this is the path to a better life?
And if it doesn’t feel better yet, or you don’t feel enough yet, the answer is always the same: acquire more, get to the next level — that’s where the payoff is.
But when the game ends — when the equivalent of the VR headset is taken off — you look around and see what’s been missed.
What was available all along: love, connection, nature, people, laughter, joy, sorrow, loss. All of it here, ready to be felt.
I can’t imagine there wouldn’t be at least a hint of regret for the life that wasn’t.
I feel like I’ve left the game — and yet, of course, I haven’t really, or entirely anyhow.
I left a career in finance, but whether through conditioning or fear, the game still manages to stir something in me now and then.
The advertisements are everywhere, even if I don’t buy what they’re selling.
All I hope is to keep seeing through it. To continue to laugh at it, when it tells me my life — or I — am not enough.
It’s 6 a.m. on a Tuesday morning in Berlin. Sunlight is shimmering through the leaves of a tree. There is more work I could be doing.
Whenever a tension emerges that I need to be doing so much more than I am, I generally take it as an invitation to let go again. I know I am doing enough as it is.
I’ve decided this morning to go to the forest with my nearly two-year-old daughter instead of giving in to that feeling of scarcity.
It’s a decision I don’t expect to regret when I look back on this life.
When I finally take off whatever of the game’s headset still remains.
To sign up to the What is a Good Life? Course
3. Full Episode - Reclaiming The Sacred In Business with Nikki Trott - What is a Good Life? #125
4. This week’s Questions
How might you bring a sense of sacredness into your work or business?
Do you consider your work generally supports or hinders your inner growth?
About Me
I am a coach, podcast host, and writer, based in Berlin, via Dublin, Ireland. I started this project in 2021, for which I’ve now interviewed nearly 300 people. I’m not looking to prescribe universal answers, more that the guests’ lines of inquiry, musings, experiences, and curiosities spark your own inquiry into what the question means to you. I am also trying to share more genuine expressions of the human experience and more meaningful conversations.
If you’re interested in exploring your own self-inquiry through one-on-one coaching, joining my 5-week What is a Good Life? group courses, or fostering greater trust, communication, and connection within your leadership teams, or simply reaching out, feel free to contact me via email or LinkedIn.