The Four Alignments

In the study of Alignment, one comes to understand that there are actually four different Alignments which interplay one with the other. These are the Communication Alignment, the Professional Alignment, the Business Alignment, and the Life Alignment.

What we see is that individuals who tend to be aligned in one facet will be aligned in the others, and conversely that discord in one will spill over into the others.

An individual whose communication is aligned understands the connection between what they need to say and what the listener needs to hear. This means that they start from the perspective of the listener and always think about what the hearer is hearing or the reader is reading, rather than focusing on themselves. Their output is governed by the input needs of the recipient.

The professional who is aligned centers their professional output around their unique giftings and aligns those precisely with the unique needs of the right clients, unlike the diffuse or unaligned professional who will do whatever it takes for whoever will pay. The laser approach versus the cluster bomb approach. Or cluster something.

A business in alignment does not need to invest time and energy trying to con consumers into buying stuff they really don’t need, because they have figured out the alignment between existing acute needs and their exact product or service. No need to shill and to shrill, just focus on quality, timeliness, satisfaction, and reputation.

Of the four Alignments, the most difficult of all to master is the alignment of one’s life. Unsurprisingly, it’s also the foundation for the others. Perhaps that’s because each day brings new experiences, new knowledge, new paradigms, new relationships and new challenges, and these all tumble together to create us anew, day by day. Life moves fast, faster than the other three, and it can quickly get ahead of the unprepared.

Those of us who think about and guard our values, our principles, our purpose, our habits, our relationships, and our actions will, for the most part, be at peace with ourselves and our worlds. But those who just let stuff happen will find their lives out of control, just one small disaster away from ruin. I speak as one who has not yet won the war.

You’ve probably noticed that the most effective communicators generally happen to be people who “have it together”. The Dylan Thomas’s and the Jack Kerouacs of the world are the exceptions that prove the rule, and even in cases like those, Thomas and Kerouac actually had deep understandings of their own broken selves.

The professionals at the top of their game are almost always strong and effective humans in their own right, community leaders, thought leaders, generous, and strong. They have their personal lives mostly together, and if the personal life unwinds, so does the professional life.

Businesses that thrive through generations and market cycles are, more often than not, founded and controlled by towering individuals who know themselves deeply and live personal lives of integrity and purpose. If you take this as an investment principle, well, you’re welcome.

This isn’t Pollyanna stuff, it’s fundamental and practical. Whether in our personal lives, our businesses, our professions, or our communication, the odds are always vastly better when we are in alignment.

Great things are accomplished by those who are aligned.