Mindfulness is “where emotional intelligence [EQ] and wellness come together.” It is the epicentre of positive cultural change, both for the individual and in turn, the organisation.
Mindfulness is just being awake and aware – sound simple, it is, but are we doing it? Being tuned into yourself, to others and the environment helps leaders ‘see’ and ‘understand’ with greater clarity. As leaders, we get too focused on the cognitive aspects of our roles, they can gradually become mindless – we become oblivious to important aspects of what is going on around us, or even inside us. Our personal vision may be clear, but implementation goes awry and life gets away from us. We become so focused on the company and clients that everything and everyone else in our lives falls from focus. Eventually, when people are ignored enough they just stop caring.
Sliding into mindlessness is not always noticeable – when we focus on cognitive functions, such as solving a problem or analysing something, the empathetic networks in the brain that enable us to tune into people and their feelings are suppressed. Living mindlessly can result in tunnel vision, difficulty navigating complex systems, stress, unintentional behaviours, low creativity, and poor physical health,
Two Forms of Attention
There are two forms of attention, focused attention and scanning attention. We need to constantly scan ourselves and our environments to be aware of what is going on – this uses the empathetic network in the brain. Then we can engage the cognitive functions of the brain to analyse, the make sense of the signals the empathetic network picks up. Mindfulness helps us to pause and tune in – to notice more, to get time to process incoming information. People around you will notice the difference – they will feel more valued.
In a work environment we are constant seduced into cognitive mode by cues to engage in automatic work mode. We need to find ways of anchoring ourselves in mindful moments – and simply spending a few minutes focusing on your breathing is the easiest and most accessible tool available.
Author: Gail La Grouw. Insight Mastery Program Director, and Strategic Performance Consultant for Coded Vision Ltd.
