The 2 Abilities You Need To Lead And Live With Excellence
By Janice Marturano
With lives that are overbooked and constantly distracted, this headline sounds good, right? Only 2 things? Sounds simple.
And it is simple. Simple but not so easy.
Your ability to lead and live with excellence is directly related to:
- Your ability to connect with yourself, others and the community; and
- Your ability to skillfully initiate and meet change.
The ‘not so easy’ part is taking the time to stop long enough to allow yourself to see how you are meeting the moments of your life now, and opening yourself to what you might learn from your discoveries. This learning can help you become more connected and more skillful in meeting the many changes that all of us face in life. Training ourselves to stop, look, listen and respond is what the non-profit Institute for Mindful Leadership (www.mindfulleaders.org) has had the honor of teaching to professionals from around the world for more than a decade. As a partner of Thrive Global, we are pleased and proud to be offering our workshops and training to Thrive Global clients.
For most of us, our days are packed with meetings and appointments, deadlines and family pressures. It is easy for us to slip into autopilot mode, and go through each day without noticing what is happening. And when you don’t notice what is happening around you, how can you expect to feel connected? How can you be ‘skillful’ in meeting changes, or, for that matter, how can you identify the changes that should be initiated?
Perhaps you aren’t sure if you are on autopilot. Try a little experiment right now-look at today’s date, are you surprised? Does it somehow feel that it can’t possibly be late fall? What happened to early fall? Does it feel as though it should still be early summer?
When you are on autopilot, you miss your life. You are not connected to your body, your family, your business colleagues or your community. This disconnect can reduce your opportunity to make the kind of conscious, creative and clear choices you need to live a life that is fulfilling and nourishing. And, when you are not paying attention, it can impact your innate ability to lead in a way that makes a difference in your workplace, in your family and in the world.
Mindful Leadership training is one way to learn how to step off the autopilot treadmill. And we are here to help you.
The Institute’s Mindful leadership training has 3 core components-meditation, leadership reflection and Purposeful Pauses ™. It is a curriculum that trains you to develop your brain’s innate capacities, and then uses those capacities to explore the challenges and opportunities of leadership in the 21st century. The Institute’s training is neuroscience-based, practical and can fit into anyone’s lifestyle.
Just as you know that you can train your body to be more resilient and more flexible, neuroscience has shown us that you can train your mind to be more focused, creative, clear and compassionate. Like all training, mindful leadership training requires commitment, patience and self-compassion. You will begin to strengthen your resilience, your focus and your ability to see your own reactivity and conditioning. And you will more easily recognize when you drop into autopilot.
As you continue to practice and apply mindful leadership to meetings, strategic sessions and calendars, you will be enhancing your opportunity to live your best life, and make a difference in the lives of others. The choice is simple, and the choice is yours.