In the first aspect of Mindful Leadership, Personal, there are 5 core components:
- Attention
- Open awareness.
- Acceptance
- Non-identification
- Choice
1. Attention
Let’s start with the first one, attention. In mindfulness, attention is paid to what occurs in the moment, and it doesn’t matter whether it’s an internal feeling, like an emotion or a thought, or something external, like a conversation that you’re having. Mindfulness is about paying attention to what happens at this moment. Becoming aware of thoughts, physical sensations, emotions, feelings…you’re in contact with whatever is happening right here, right now.
2. Open Awareness
If you’re anything like me, I’m sure you’ve noticed that your mind is very good at automatically judge everyone and everything around us. You can think of judging as a way of labeling things. We put a label on something or someone; “they’re a good performer”, “they’re a poor performer”, “that outfit is attractive”, “I don’t like his shoes” and on and on. What we’re really doing is constantly looking at reality through a lens of our own subjective judgments. They’re not universally shared…they’re ours.
Now, that’s not to say judgment doesn’t have its place in keeping us safe, seeing opportunities or avoiding risk for example. But because it works so well in those situations, we apply that ability to everything going on in our worlds. With mindfulness, we cultivate an open awareness of this automatic tendency to judge and begin to shine a light on our ability to confuse reality with the judgment that we have about reality.
So, open awareness means that rather than being judgmental or judging everything within ourselves and outside ourselves, we invite ourselves to have fresh and new ways of seeing ourselves, our people and our organizations, rather than in ways that have been influenced by all kinds of outdated beliefs, habits of mind and viewpoints.
3. Acceptance
For this next one it gets a bit more complicated because the third component of mindfulness is what is called acceptance. Rather than pushing back, trying to change or cling to an experience we’re having, we allow ourselves to be with what is happening…whatever it is…right here and right now.
If we feel sad, angry or happy we cultivate an accepting stance towards those emotions, which means that we allow ourselves to feel those emotions, rather than pushing them away or trying to manipulate them, change or hold onto them. In my world or organizational change, this is a key component in helping people move through what they might feel is unpleasant or uncomfortable for them in the workplace.
You could say that change resistance and not wanting to be present with the experience at work, can be a form of conflict or struggle: we don’t want reality to be as it is. In contrast, mindfulness supports us in accepting reality, accepting what is happening right here, right now, in terms of experience. I feel sad, or I feel happy or whatever.
It’s important to understand that acceptance has nothing to do with being some sort of doormat and just accepting everything that happens. When somebody says you’re awesome, mindfulness doesn’t tell you to accept everything, good and bad, that happens to you, rather it’s about accepting the emotions, like gratitude, fear or sorrow that emerge as a result of the experience.
4. Non-Identification
When we are too identified with thoughts or emotions, they can take over. Non-identification means that we shift to becoming more of an observer of our thoughts and emotionsrather than being caught in them.
With mindfulness, it’s all about becoming aware that there is a difference between what you’re feeling and thinking and you, the one who observes the thought or the feeling. You are not an emotion, feeling, or the thought that emerges.
For example, I experience sadness, versus I am sad. When you say to yourself, I experience sadness, there is like an observer watching that inside of you. Someone who notices that state of sadness, a kind of detachment or distance from the emotion. In contrast, “I am sad” means there is no difference between me and the sadness anymore. They are fused in nature. When we get identified with the emotion, it usually means that the emotion is going to take over our behavior. For example, perhaps you experienced an argument at some time where afterwards you or the other person said something like “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean what I said. I was angry. My anger took over.”
Non- identification, applies to our thoughts too. When we identify with thoughts, it means that we take our thoughts seriously. It means that we believe everything we think and that our thoughts become some kind of objective truth. As odd as it may sound, once we start to learn and observe thoughts, we start to see that thoughts are just thoughts, you could think of them as clouds passing by. There’s nothing you have to do about them. It’s just a product of the mind, and they come and go.
Non-identification gives more room for you to see that states like emotions and thoughts come and go. You will not feel sad forever. You will feel sad, but it fades away naturally. Same with happiness. These feelings may come back after a while, but they will also fade away, so you will not stay sad or happy forever. The same applies to thoughts.
We have so many thoughts in life and what seemed so true once, may seem to be completely false later. Thoughts come and go; they change and there’s no need to attach to them.
Mindful awareness creates room between our impulses (e.g., wanting to respond when getting angry) and the eventual response (staying calm).
5. Choice
The last component is choice. When we focus on allowing ourselves to experience emotions, accept them, and observe them, what is happening is that we allow ourselves to gain distance from them without letting them take over.
This means that what happens is that very soon, we experience room between what we have always done, our regular behavior, our automatic patterns, our impulses, and our reactions. Let’s consider the previous example again. When I experience emotion, and I get fully identified with this emotion, I may start shouting. When I take a step back using mindfulness, and I start observing what’s happening, for instance, I may start noticing, “Oh my gosh, my body is getting really tense now. I feel pressure on my chest. I’m having these aggressive thoughts.” This mindful awareness creates a pause between what is happening at this moment, and my impulse to do something or say something out of anger. What I will eventually do, shouting at somebody or not, becomes the result of a conscious choice. Mindfulness creates room between what is experienced and your reaction that follows from this experience.
Mindfulness, you could say, creates choice, and this choice is freedom. This is the big difference between conscious and automatic behavior. Our impulses guide automatic behavior, and conscious behavior is mindful behavior guided by awareness.
Becoming a Mindful Leader
Providing tools and techniques for people to steady themselves, stay grounded and understand their inner states in the midst of change is my offering and goal for those I work with. The practices I share that actually work with clients include; meditation, mindfulness, building emotional intelligence, effective communications, self-compassion and empathy. They are easy to learn, easy to use…but hard to master skills which require continual practice. With practice these are the best ways I know to help them move forward and navigate their world. No matter what gets thrown their way. Life is a marathon not a sprint.
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