Overcoming Life’s Hurdles with Utopian Business Leader, Eda Çarmıklı

Eda Çarmıklı is a firm believer that it is never too late to become what you might have been. There is a wonderful word in Sufism (tekamül), says Eda, which is about evolution, that essentially every hurdle, everything that happens in our lives is there to teach us to grow, to become a bigger version of ourselves. 

“I work on myself a lot, to become the best version I can be, so that I can be a good mother, a valuable addition to my company, and to the world itself.’

Eda is the co-founder of the global collaborative platform, Joint Idea; lifelong laboratory growth program Life Works Labs; and social tribe, Love Mafia. She’s also a second generation shareholder in Nurol Holding, an industrial conglomerate in Turkey operating in construction, infrastructure, machinery, energy, investment, banking and tourism. 

Personal growth, vulnerability, and utopia

“While I’m still growing, I’m still learning what I am designed to become. And it’s wonderful that until our last breath we have the opportunity to reinvent ourselves, re-refine or wake up from our ashes, to rebirth to the new version of ourselves.”

This idea of discovering who you truly are, or are supposed to be, is a key driver for Eda. Being a second generation shareholder she understands the burden that comes with carrying a story that isn’t necessarily yours. And this knowledge has compelled her to find her unique voice, in order to contribute to the story bestowed upon her, rather than just being a conduit for it. 

One of the most important things we can do, says Eda, is not dwell on the past but embrace what has come before and accept it, because we cannot change it, it is there. What has happened, has already happened. There is no reason to talk about why, but rather understand how we can learn from it, and what we can take from it, and how we can move to the future. 

“Contemplation about the past, the options, why and how doesn’t serve me, because it’s already happened. We’re all going to die one way or another, but between those two breaths, how we live and grow, is the most essential part of the story.”

Learn to voice your truth

The most amazing tool we have, says Eda, is the one that we all have equally, our voice. The words that we use, that we choose every day, we can move mountains with our words. Words are magic. 

As human beings we go through these different stages in life. We are born, we are educated, we get married, have children, retire, and we die. At least, that’s the path that our generation believed that’s how we should live, says Eda. But somewhere in the middle of that, Eda realised that her life was not going in the direction she wanted it to go. 

So, how do you reconcile where you want to be with what where you are now? If you’re patient, says Eda, your time will come. Take Eda’s family business, for example. A few years ago, they decided to build the family constitution and make the family council active. This essential process is still ongoing, but hopefully it will align all 10 cousins, so that when they take over they are aligned with one common voice and one common perception of where they want their ship to sail. 

“I get to mingle with each employee and get to know them personally, and maybe, if we hear them and understand them, we may break the barriers between the upper level and the lower level. Because they are the ones who are going to make the ship sail, we’re just going to be guiding it.”

Leadership, growth, and sustainability in a family-owned business

Investing in your employees, says Eda, is the biggest long term solution all companies can do. Education is the only thing that can change where we are going in the whole world right now. And the well being of the employees is the way to go. 

Each one of us are leaders; we shouldn’t be expecting the CEO, the CFO or the head of the company to lead us somewhere. Instead, says Eda, we should encourage our employees to have the courage to voice their truth, to share what they see is not working and what is working and what needs to change. If you give voice to them, the ones who are inside the company, rather than coming top down, a bottom up approach, a reverse mentoring approach, that could bring a long term solution. 

“We talk about sustainability as a goal. But unless the people in your company know sustainability in their well being and apply that in their lives, they cannot apply that in their work life. So the educational part is very important.”

Exponential humanity and learning to listen

Eda’s current work with her life partner Markus Lehto, through the Life Works Labs that they co founded together, is about growth programmes based on the term ‘exponential humanity’, a phrase that’s more commonly used to talk about technology, says Eda. But we should use this phrase more commonly to talk about humanity. Because in order to shine as humans, we have to realize our true human capabilities,  we have traits that technology can never possess: consciousness, connectivity, and creativity.  

If leaders take one piece of advice from Eda, she hopes it’s this: listen. We get so caught up in the narrative of our own mind, of our reality, that we rarely listen to one another. First, you have to listen to yourself – listen to your body, what it’s telling you, not your mind, but your gut feeling. To be able to hear intuition , you have to quiet your mind down, because the mind is very loud and it overshadows every other voice within us, and prevents us from listening to other people. 

“We listen with the illusion in our minds, with the perception that we build in our minds. And then we don’t hear what is being said. We just take what we want to hear. And then we say: you said that to me.”

Collective intelligence, love, and compassion in business

Listen to Chief Oren Lyons, Native American Faithkeeper of the Turtle Clan, when he advises leaders to consider  seven generations in our decisions and actions, says Eda. Whatever you’re doing today, whatever industry you’re operating today, if  generations from now you can’t foresee  your kids, your grandchildren, to be doing that business, start thinking of ways to navigate your ship so that it can serve in another way to humanity.

What the world has always needed is one thing, and it still needs that today, says Eda; love. We need more love languages, especially in business. We have to be more compassionate with each other and with the world itself.

If the talk resonates with you, we’d recommend you listen to this episode too: Oren Lyons