Module 11 mindfulness and leadership. As you develop a greater awareness of the interplay of your thoughts and emotions, you will find that you have a leg up on your peers. practicing mindfulness actually helps to make you a better leader. And modeling mindfulness for the rest of your coworkers helps to make your corporate culture a more positive and productive one. Well, the recommended approach to practicing mindfulness has been to engage in a mindfulness meditation for 10 to 20 minutes a day. This serves well as an introduction to take your mindfulness practice to another level, engaging into 20 minute meditation sessions daily is ideal.

A mindful approach to leadership will enhance your mental toughness, increase your ability to focus selectively on what you need to focus on, improve your capacity to feel compassion, and loosen the constraints we naturally placed upon ourselves that inhibit our creativity. When studying these aspects of mindful leadership, it is important to remember that each concept overlaps and builds upon all the other concepts mental resilience, Since the United States Military Academy at West Point has recently developed a mindfulness approach to leadership training that focuses on enhancing mental resilience. The West Point model posits that the world has become increasingly volatile, uncertain, chaotic and ambiguous v UCA. Mental resilience is required in order to navigate a world marked by VCA. But what is mental resilience and how can one develop mental resilience is that quality which allows a leader to weather adversity, adapt to stressful situations and recover. Mental resilience is mental toughness.

Here are some approaches to increasing your mental resilience builds strong social support networks. As a leader, you will frequently find yourself pulled in many directions. Developing a good network can help mitigate this but keep in mind that this is a two way street. Helping others can also have a positive impact on your own well being as well as providing a strong network for the future. Approach crisis situations with both and immediate while you may feel a sense of impending catastrophe in the immediacy of a crisis. If you take a moment to imagine better circumstances in the future, this can help provide perspective.

Act decisively. Once you have determined what needs to be done take action. The more you procrastinate, the greater the opportunity for problems to spiral out of control. Practice self maintenance. When you are in a leadership position in particular, you will experience high degrees of stress. Using exercise meditation and relaxation to help ventilate that stress will allow you to perform better when the next inevitable crisis arrives.

Focus while mindfulness is helping and focusing your attention in a neutral and accepting fashion as a leader, you will constantly find yourself having to decide upon what to focus on. Understanding the goals and values of your company and your shared mission is a vital step toward prioritizing your focus. familiarizing yourself with a company mission statement can help in this regard. Another helpful approach is to compose the personal mission statement, which focuses on your personal values and a professional mission statement, which focuses on your leadership goals and values within the company. familiarity with what is important to you and to your company can provide key insights as to which way to prioritize your focus. compassion.

Developing a genuine sense of compassion for other people is a great side effect of a continuous practice of mindfulness. Compassion means that you try in good faith to understand where another person is coming from, and the peculiar challenges that they have to face. having compassion for others when you're in a leadership position is vital for building sustainable support networks. One helpful approach to leading others is to imagine your thought processes as transparent to everyone. When you do this, you'd become much more aware of negativity in instances where you are not being as fair and understanding as you can be. with greater capacity for mindfulness.

You can intervene in when your thoughts veer into the negative and reassess situations and people from A more neutral and accepting standpoint. Creativity. The flexibility and adaptability that comes with a practice of mindfulness are exceptionally helpful in being creative. Being a creative leader also means that you provide an environment where creativity is rewarded, too rigid and approach to rules and regulations can stifle creative thinking, which requires the same openness and neutrality that you strive for in practicing mindfulness. In a stifled environment, the status quo tends to dominate and the phenomenon of groupthink blinds you to your shortcomings. One approach to increasing your own and your team's creativity is the scheduled times for play as a group.

Keep in mind that this is played with a purpose to help recharge the creative juices and allow them to flow. Words from the wise Emmett Ray if he wants to conquer the anxiety of life, live in the moment, live in the breath. James for us Mindfulness is simply being aware of what is happening right now without wishing it were different. Enjoying the pleasant without holding on when it changes which it will, being with the unpleasant without fearing it will always be this way, which it won't