This is an archived blog from when I ran Conscious Public Relations Inc. from 2008-2018. Excuse the potential outdated-ness!
Seeing business cards as energy
Do you respect business cards?
I have a confession to make: I recycle business cards. I input them into my computer’s address book – or I add the person on LinkedIn with the intention to contact them through that social network. But I have never intended to keep business cards for long.
I have a business card box. People who I consider long-term clients or colleagues have stayed in the box. At the start of each year I go through the box and I recycle cards whose companies no longer exist. But I have come to learn something upon remembering what a colleague many years ago (Sam Zipursky of FreshGigs) told me – that in Japan, people treat your business card like they would treat you. They hold cards with two hands, respectfully.
And I realized that it may be possible that I am inadvertently discarding the energy that has been intentionally given to me by others by recycling their cards. It’s likely that I have done this to you, and for that I apologize!
I have since gone through my box again (saying a silent, well-wishing goodbye for cards no longer in effect) and have placed it on my shrine. I want to hold others with the same intention as I hold my own business – with respect. And I am leaving the lid open so that the chi can flow in and out of it and won’t stifle the cards. Don’t know about you, but I know what it feels like to have a stifling business.
Do you respect business cards as a form of energy from the people who gave them to you? Do you respect them as much as Larry David respects wood?
