Blog
Workplace Mindfulness
4 Key Findings from The Power of Purpose Symposium
By Gillian Secrett, CEO, Møller Institute, Cynthia Cherrey, President and CEO of the International Leadership Association, Rebecca Curry, Senior Community Development Specialist, ICF, Rachel Thomason, Programme Manager, Møller Institute
The Power of Purpose Symposium was launched in 2017 as a joint venture between the Møller Institute and the International Leadership Association (ILA). The symposium grew out of a need to bring theory and practice together to expand our understanding of the pow…
How Mindfulness-Based Programs Work to Improve Students’ Academic Performance
By Karen Alexander, guest contributor
Student levels of stress and depression have been climbing at an alarming rate, and science is showing the negative effects of such states of mind and emotions on learning. With a persistent national achievement gap, adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) affecting almost half of US children, and a staggering 52% national rise in adolescent major depressive episodes from 2005 to 2017, more states and school districts are recognizing the need for a holistic view…
What Leaders can learn from Seers
By Kathryn Goldman Schuyler, guest contributor
As the use of what is called “mindfulness” expands in the workplace, I have been reflecting on what mindfulness has meant over the centuries. Although mindfulness-based practices can be used to reduce stress, they have long been intended for more profound purposes. Rather than becoming a “technology” of stress relief, such practices can develop an understanding of interdependence and impermanence. This, in turn, generates compassionate connections …
How to take a Meta-Moment
By Marc Brackett, guest contributor
As we all know, our best attempts at calm, thoughtful reflection work only when we feel in control of our emotions. If you’re raging with resentment or crushed by disappointment, you’re probably not capable of the reasoning required to see a situation in a new light. You first need to bring down your emotional temperature, lower your activation, and give yourself the space required for rational thought. Maybe you take a few deep breaths, a few steps back, a w…
Practice O.U.T. to shift from Doing to Being
By Christopher Lyddy and Darren Good, guest contributor
If you’re like most people, you’ve had the experience at work of sitting at your computer and suddenly coming to realize that you haven’t typed a word in ages. Instead, you may have just been mindlessly ruminating about a past incident with a colleague, or imagining the next encounter.
Getting “stuck” in this thought process, according to numerous interviews we conducted in a study of working professionals, can really interfere with being…
Creating a New Myth For Business - The Healing Organization
By Raj Sisodia and Michael Gelb, guest contributor
The dominant narrative about business remains focused narrowly on generating as much profit and growth as possible. This is done by generating as much revenue as possible, which means selling as many products as possible to as many people as possible at as high a price as you can get away with, whether people benefit from these products or not. Since profit equals revenue minus cost, traditional businesses also look to minimize costs. They do …
Reflections from 2019 Garrison & Mindful Leader Un-Retreat
By Michael Doyle
Our careers provide us the opportunity to contribute to society, help us support ourselves and our families, and give us a sense of purpose of fulfillment. But for a great many people, the gap between this ideal scenario and their day-to-day seems to only get wider, as their working lives become more and more stressful and frustrating.
The benefits of bringing mindfulness into the workplace are well-documented, and yet it can be challenging to win over reluctant colleagues an…
10 Reasons to Integrate Mindfulness Practice with Your Work
By Marc Lesser, guest contributor
Company Time is a series of one-day and weekend retreats that I have been co-leading at Zen Center’s Green Gulch Farm for the past 20 years. These retreats are for people interested in integrating mindfulness practice into their work, for those looking for ways to make their work more meaningful and more connected to their deepest values, and/or for those considering some kind of career or life change.
In these retreats, our role as teachers is to ask questio…
Mindfulness: Disrupting Oppression in the Workplace
By Regina Smith, guest contributor
I am a black woman in my mid-forties and a senior executive at a small progressive predominantly white organization. I have approximately 10 direct reports, and I report to the president. Of the people who report to me, two are people of color (male-identified), and none of the other executives who report to the president are people of color. Even at a liberal and progressively-minded spiritually-based organization, the air we breathe is still the air of domi…
The 5 Abilities Mindful Leaders Cultivate
By James Van Auken, guest contributor
People constantly wrestle with themselves. An impulse, a habit, an expectation—juxtaposed by a limitation, governance, or imposed denial of desire—all create disorienting dilemmas that can drive behavior and diminish mental resources. And in this internal wrestling contest of impulse, desire, and habit on one team and moral reasoning, responsibility, and “doing the right thing” on the other, a cyclical battle pervades.
In our contemporary society, we are o…