Aesoph Group

By Christopher Aesoph, MA

      What would you rather have: a pretty soul, or a pretty face?

Looking back over the past decade, is it easier for a business person to lose their deepest, soul-level values when money flows freely, or when the economy is tight? The truth is, one can end up soulless in either atmosphere, but for vastly different reasons. When money flows like warm candy, the reason is greed. Num num would be the operative response. So many goodies flowing to everyone all around you, you want some too. Ask anyone involved in the subprime mortgage mess. On the other hand, when money arrives like a cold fish in rough seas, the reason is fear. Don’t let it slip away. Grab all you can. No more num nums.

The conclusion is clear: You can devolve into a position of sans soul anytime, for any reason. This is bad news if you demand 100 percent certainty and awareness of the ongoing condition of your soul, but good news in terms of drama and interest. You’re a lot more interesting if you can lose it, and if you have to struggle to keep it.

Now on to the pretty face part, which includes a review of your recent judgments. We’re looking at judgment not from a base point of view, as in, “I’m not in jail,” but from a higher vantage point, like “I feel that my life overall is being lived as well as it can, and I’m even occasionally motivated to improve it.” Mistakes in judgment are not only costly, but more importantly, they are an indicator of the soul condition. Poor judgment abounds when a soul is out of position. The results of the decisions we make everyday tell us, overall, if our judgment is sound. When the whole world feels like it’s against us, in reality we’re mis-judging the circumstances. Something in our mis-judgment—self-pity, frustration, impatience, lack of gratitude, delusions of genius—has placed us in a position versus the world. This never works out well.

A study of what is supposed to be a very unbiased, objective system of delivering judgments—the justice system—offers clues as to how vulnerable our decision making abilities, and our souls, are. In one study,* people who were described as good looking received far fewer convictions than their less appealing counterparts. In addition, when convicted, the good lookers served an average of 22 months less in prison. If all it takes is a pretty face for people to be swayed in a system in which judgment is the ultimate goal, imagine the influence of other factors in the daily tussle of business: ego, money, power, belonging, competing. When winning becomes the goal—when winning is motivated by any of the factors just listed—our thinking can quickly become murky, if not downright twisted. Loss of good judgment follows losing the soul. Any good Catholic could tell you that.

Not to say that there’s anything against winning. Winning is good. It’s just that winning for one often means losing for someone else. In the financial markets over the past decade, people became so enamored of winning that they were willing to nearly destroy the financial system that made it possible. Many people justified their actions by pointing out that everyone else was doing it. That’s a mighty powerful tonic, the combination of money (the num nums) plus pressure throughout the entire financial system to play along. People fell into mis-judgment. They drank of the tonic--deeply. If you didn’t, it’s likely because you didn’t have enough money to take the big swig.

Piling up dollars is not the only measure of good judgment, or the condition of a soul. It is one measure, yes, but there are others, like choosing to avoid trouble, choosing to search for ways for everyone to benefit, and being able to sleep soundly knowing that you’ve done your best to be successful, creative, fair and thoughtful. Add to that doing what you really love to do, and you've got a whole soul. And maybe you even shared a bit of your prosperity with someone who could use a boost.

But don’t forget, along with a sound soul, apparently it also helps to have a pretty face.

*When Emotionality Trumps Reason: A study of individual processing style and juror bias.  Gunnell, Justin and Ceci, Steven. Article first published online: 25 JUN 2010, DOI: 10.1002/bsl.939.      Other judgments influenced by the defendant’s race (Sargent & Bradfield, 2004; Sommers & Ellsworth, 2001), age (Bergeron & McKelvie, 2004; Mueller-Johnson, Toglia, Sweeney, & Ceci, 2007; Warling & Badali-Peterson, 2001), religious conviction (Johnson, 1985), gender (DeSantis & Kayson, 1997; Fisher, 1997; McCoy & Gray, 2007), physical attractiveness (Stewart, 1985), occupation (Loeffler & Lawson, 2002), and ethnicity (Perez, Hosch, Ponder, & Trejo, 1993).