Mindfulness benefits my business? I thought it was just for yoga.

May 3, 2017 by Sara Jane Lowry

How does mindfulness benefit my business?

Mindfulness benefits business but only if you use it. If you’re a start-up company, a freelancer, a small business, or a nonprofit, you are stressed – about money. Stressed thinking does not lead to good decisions, more sales, or improved relationships. It damages our health. In our agitation, we often focus on small things we can control, rather than bold moves. We try to manage the details of what we are already doing rather than calmly analyzing what’s going well and what’s failing. We are unable to come up with creative solutions.

And what is failure anyway? Failure is part of critical growth. Did you see a child give up walking after falling down? Of course not. You see them learn to hold onto things, to take shorter walks, and to fall down but get up again. There are dozens of studies on how mindfulness practices can improve our stress levels, and our sleep. Stress can also have a huge impact on our creativity and decision-making.

Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.

– Winston Churchill

Creative paralysis is fear of failure

We procrastinate in making hard decisions, and holding the hard conversations we dread. It’s as if avoiding things will make it get better. Mindfulness benefits include converting our fear of failure to action. One of the most frequent sources of creative paralysis is fear of failure. It’s nonaction that keeps us stuck doing the same thing over and over with no improvement rather than risk ‘failure.’

So, back to mindfulness and what benefits it brings to my business. Mindfulness does 4 important things for business leaders: it brings focus, clarity, creativity, and compassion (for yourself, and others) back into your field of awareness. I recently was working with a nonprofit executive. She was simply unable to see how her reluctance to create an earned revenue program was keeping her tied to fickle foundation funding. When we began to explore her beliefs around money using mindfulness, she began to let herself explore new opportunities. Mindfulness benefits for her were connecting again with skills in leadership that she could use in this new endeavor. And, happily she was able to gain foundation dollars to support the launch.

Mindfulness benefits: is it really as simple as breathing?

Breathing is where you begin to focus your attention. And the breathing that is part of mindfulness work is where you start to get some distance from the pressure of current issues. It’s where you start to tune into what your body is feeling, and the emotional surges that upset your day. Mindfulness is a practice which means you might try to do it every day, or even several times a day. You do it because the practice bears fruit within days of keeping at it. You can read more about the steps to mindfulness here. Or find a more in-depth blog post by John Parrot called The Art of Mindfulness: Why it Matters to get a full look at the benefits of mindfulness.

beach mindfulness benefits

When you go to the beach, you breathe in the salt air, you feel the warm sun on your lips, and the wind across your shoulders. You notice the ocean, the sky, the sand as you gaze at the ocean waves coming in and out. You often find you’re not thinking about much of anything. And, you can probably see mindfulness benefits easily in this scenario.

Now imagine having a moment like that in your day where instead of waves, you see those things you believe to be failures, or irritating people, or worrisome sales numbers also floating in and out with the breath. Can you be a witness and observer and look at it on all sides? In a place of detachment, can you step back and let it just be without assigning pejoratives, and see what isn’t working?

Shifting beliefs

Mindful benefits your ability to face what scares you. It is possible to see how your beliefs and thoughts can be transformed to ones of confidence, to courage, to a creative solution as we see how to shift our usual patterns by becoming more aware of them. And, your mind can become a bridge from the problem to the answer.

Mindfulness is for everyone, especially leaders: 4 steps to begin your practice

April 21, 2017 by Sara Jane Lowry

Mindfulness is for everyone, especially leaders

We are well aware that our bodies can be trained to make us healthier, flexible and stronger. We now know from neuroscience research that there is mindfulness training can cultivate and strengthen our mind’s capacities. Mindfulness is something we all have naturally, but it is more easily tapped into when we practice on a daily basis. Mindfulness lights up parts of our brains that aren’t normally activated when we’re mindlessly running on autopilot.
According to the Institute for Mindful Leadership, mindfulness practice can strengthen and cultivate four hallmarks of leadership excellence-focus, clarity, creativity and compassion. I have been working with some clients in developing a mindfulness practice and we begin with these steps:

#1. Set aside some time to be mindful.

Even 10 minutes. Best if you do it first thing in the morning while your creativity is at its most free. But you can do it over coffee, or lunch, or walking from one meeting to another. Make time. You don’t need special cushions.

#2. Observe the moment you’re in that you’ve chosen to get mindful.

Mindfulness is not stopping all your thoughts, or attempting to achieve a state of calm. The goal is actually simple: we’re attempting to pay attention to the present moment, without judgement

#3. Thoughts will come and go

Let them pass by. And if you end up following them? When you catch yourself, bring yourself back without judgment of them or of you.

#4 Return to the present moment

Observe the moment as it is right now. What you’re thinking, feeling. Where you’re sitting or walking. Feeling your breathing in and out. Over and over, this is the practice.

This is the work. Just this. Here and now.

It sounds simple, but it isn’t always easy. Let the mind stay focused here and now. Don’t get discouraged when your mind goes off – that’s why this is a discipline, a practice. Mindfulness isn’t about “fixing” you, and it’s not about stopping your thoughts.

Meditation and Mindfulness

You can use meditation practice as a way to practice mindfulness too. There are a couple of ways to do this:

We start with focusing on the breath as a way to anchor your mind in the moment by focusing in on breathing in and out. I suggest that you focus on where you feel the breath in your body, in your nostrils, whether it’s warm or cold, do you feel your diaphram against the chairback. When your mind wanders and you notice it, just say “wandering” and bring it back to the breath. Be kind to yourself in this process. Find a sense of ease and well-being in this moment of breathing and being present.
We also use the mind to focus by moving through our body from our feet to our head, and seeing where there is tension. Just bring the mind back to the sensations of breathing, or of our bodily tensions. No expectations or judgments, just noticing each thing.

Mindfulness can help you enjoy a cup of tea more fully, walk mindfully down the hall to your next meeting and be more present, have a more engaging conversation, or wind down for a relaxing night’s sleep. And that feels like it might a practice worth doing.

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