A Beautiful Energy Experiment

Throughout 2025, we’re continuing to explore our energy. How it affects us physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. To help us to do this we’ve been hooking up with a series of experts who set us an experiment every month to help us discover a new way of managing our energy.

The Beautiful Business Design Project is built upon the belief that beauty is our homecoming and has the power to change the world. That belief in beauty, and faith in its power to create good is what the world needs right now. And the more people we can inspire and engage through this simple yet powerfully optimistic idea, the more our world and humanity’s relationship with it will transform for the better.

Many scientists accept there is no comprehensive explanation for our understanding of beauty. Yet the laws that describe our cosmos – nature’s deep design model are described as beautiful. Einstein and Paul Dirac both believed this to be true as did the Nobel prize winning scientist Frank Wilczek. They have all discovered nature's order is founded on symmetry and harmony: a beautiful deep design model at macro and micro scale. Yet, in western thought there is a deep mystery with our spiritual relationship with the Earth. Which is why we don’t think beauty, we know it. Or, as the philosopher Iris Murdoch pointed out, “beauty is the only spiritual thing which we love by instinct”.

So, for the next four weeks Chris and Jim are going to be following the experiment set for us by Alan, to explore how Nature's deep design model can show us the way to reconnect ourselves, to each other and to rethink the true nature of: business, organisational culture, values, metrics, economy, and how to redesign business to create a regenerative world.

The experiment looks like this:

Week 1: Beauty immersion with daily journaling

To kick-start our journey, week 1 involves an immersion into content on the topic of beauty. Alan has shared a beautiful list of content for us all get our heads into here.

Whilst we immerse ourselves in this content, our brief for week 1 is to introduce the daily practice of journaling our observations and thoughts as they come, based upon the immersion material. What has come up for you that deepens your inquiry, that you would like to explore further? What challenges you? What inspires you? How does this work offer up a different framework for yourself, for your organisation / business, for your clients?

We then add in a daily walk of 30 mins, using this time to notice: your inner state, your breath. Feel all you experience as you walk; sounds, textures, what do you see, what do you feel, what do you taste? Be aware of what comes up.

Week 2: Provocations to deepen your inquiry

If we take beauty seriously it blows the doors off everything. Is this true?

Ask yourself the questions or ponder the provocations below, noting what comes up for you as you do this…

·      If beauty is our homecoming. How do you come home?

·      Beauty engages all our senses, physical, sensual and spiritual

·      Beauty is timeless, universal and intrinsic; like the woof of a fabric, it runs through every cell, every creature and every artist, every person.

·      Does beauty get us out of surfaces and into the foundations of things?

·      What are the foundations of things?

·      Is beauty critical to our future well-being?

·      Plotinus believed beauty is the only spiritual thing we love by instinct.

·      The realm of beauty exists at a deeper, timeless order of absolutes.

·      Do we think beauty, or do we know beauty?

·      How does this statement take us back to our true nature?

·      What is the nature of nature?

·      Beauty is a verb not a noun. How do you “do beauty”?

·      What is Good? Is Good sovereign?

·      A law of nature is she self-organises. Where or what is the nature of self-organisation?

·      How is beauty a guide to truth?

·      Where is the beauty in what I am doing?

Week 3: Language

This week we’re exploring an exercise in language. As Robin Wall Kimmerer explains, “when a language dies, so much more than words are lost. Language is the dwelling place of ideas that do not exist anywhere else. It is a prism through which we see the world”.

Based on the immersion material from week 1, write down key words and ideas that you believe represent the notion of beauty. Then write key words which are not beautiful.

What do these two different languages say to you?

How do they ask you to reframe your values, behaviour, your company in its day to day and long-term form? Could this language shape or reshape purpose and practice? Does the language of beauty take you beyond ideas, frames of sustainability? This exercise you should go back to throughout our time together.

Week 4: Reflection. How do you live today?

To close out the experiment we’re going to write a letter to ourselves about how we would live more beautifully. What would that look like? This is for you only and not to be shared, but to be looked back on to help keep you on your journey to exploring beauty.

We’ll be reporting back throughout the month on how the experiment’s going for us, so keep an eye out for our updates on our social media channels. Or even better, join in with us by following us on Instagram and LinkedIn and sharing any vids or stories of your experiences of beauty – we can’t wait to hear about the impact it has for you.

And if you want to find out more about Alan’s work and his transformative learning experiences based upon the foundations of beauty, head over to Beautiful Business and get in touch with Alan to start your journey today.

Have fun with this one…

Big Love,

Upping Your Elvis

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