Ways to be More Mindful at Work

Shamash Alidina, in a very recent article on mindful.org, offered multiple ways to be more mindful at work.  I want to discuss one approach which entails short mindfulness exercises and expand on what Shamash has written.

Using short mindfulness exercises

In the work environment today, everyone tends to be time-poor and under pressure – conditions that can be improved through mindfulness practice.  However, with limited time available, it is important to keep workplace mindfulness practice restricted to short exercises as illustrated below:

Shaping intention – after a brief grounding process, you can focus on what intention you plan to bring to a meeting or interaction with another person.  Clarity around intention can shape positive behaviour even in situations that are potentially stressful.

Checking in on your bodily tension: you can get in touch with your breathing and any bodily tension and release the latter after being grounded.  Tension builds in our muscles often outside our conscious awareness.  Releasing the tension progressively throughout the day can prevent the bodily tension from building up and help to avoid an overreaction to a negative trigger.

Self-regulation – we previously discussed the SBNRR process to identify feelings and bodily manifestations, to reflect on patterns in behavioural response and to use the gap between stimulus and response to develop an appropriate way to respond in a situation that acts as a negative trigger.

Mindful breathing – stopping to get in touch with your breathing particularly if you are feeling stressed or overwhelmed by a situation. You don’t have to control your breathing just notice it and rest in the space between in-breath and out-breath.

Self-forgiveness – we can forgive ourselves and others for the ways in which we hurt them, or they hurt us.  Self-forgiveness requires us to ignore the myths that surround forgiving yourself and to release the burden of our past words and actions that were inappropriate.  Forgiveness of others can be expressed internally and/or externally in words and action.

Gratitude – it is so easy to express gratitude or appreciation whether internally and/or externally.  There are so many things to be grateful for, even when circumstances seem to weigh against us.  Gratitude also has been shown to promote positive mental health and happiness.

Compassion for others – when we observe someone experiencing some misfortune or distressing situation, we can internally express compassion towards them, wishing them wellness, resilience and happiness.

As we grow in mindfulness through mindfulness meditation and reflection, we can develop ways to  practice short mindfulness exercises in our daily work.  We will see many opportunities throughout the day to be more mindful and present to ourselves and others.  We will also learn to be more self-aware and aware of others.  In the process, we can develop better self-management techniques.

 

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Image source: courtesy of johnhain on Pixabay

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

Improved Decision Making through Mindfulness Meditation

There are times when we have great difficulty making a decision.  We may be confused by the many options, daunted by the task and overly concerned about the outcomes.  Sometimes, if we are anxious, even relatively small decisions can leave us paralysed.

Decision making can be painful particularly if you can see multiple options and your anxiety grows with the inability to choose between them.  Sometimes this anxiety is driven by a perfectionist streak – we may want to make sure we make the right or perfect decision.  Unfortunately, this is rarely obtainable because we are often making decisions in the context of inadequate information.  The information we do have may be clouded by our emotions or attachment to a particular option or outcome.

Indecisiveness too can be compounded for different personality types.  For example, the Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator suggests that people who have a Perceiving (“P”) type personality prefer to remain open and gather more information before making a decision, while the Judging (“J”) type personality likes to get things decided.  These personality traits can  lead either to an inability to make decisions or the habit of making hasty decisions to relieve the tension of decision making.

Improving decision making through mindfulness meditation

Diana Winston from MARC at UCLA provides a meditation podcast to enable improved decision making.  She suggests that we can use mindfulness to focus on our thoughts and emotions during the decision-making process.  In her view we can learn to be present to whatever decision making turns up for us.   We can use the principles of mindfulness to bring awareness to the discomfort of trying to make a decision.

Sometimes this will involve showing self-compassion towards ourselves – accepting that we cannot make the perfect decision, even with full information.  It requires acceptance of the fact that our decision making will be inadequate at times, but that this will provide the opportunity to learn and grow.   Mindfulness meditation can enable us to make the best decision possible at the time, uncontaminated by emotions that can cloud our judgement.

If we bring openness and curiosity to what we are experiencing during decision making, we can name our feelings and learn to control them.  We can better understand the patterns embedded in our decision-making processes.  For instance, we may find that once we have to make a decision, we automatically drop into negative thinking which generates anxiety about the possible outcomes.  Through mindfulness meditation we can learn to control these negative thoughts and focus on addressing the issue and the information available without our negative thinking confounding the issue.

If our thoughts keep wandering or negative thoughts intrude during the process of mindfulness meditation, focusing on sounds can help anchor us as listening is a natural process that we can do with minimal effort.  Listening to sounds can enable us to return to mindful decision making.

As we grow in mindfulness, we can learn more about the pattern of thoughts and emotions behind our decision making, bring them into the spotlight, and develop better self-management techniques so that our decision making is not delayed unduly or contaminated by negative thoughts and emotions.  We can learn to be more compassionate towards ourselves.  Mindful breathing can help us too to manage the tension of decision making.

 

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Image source: courtesy of johnhain on Pixabay

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

Developing Inclusion through Mindfulness

In a previous post, I discussed the six core traits of inclusive leadership and acknowledged the role that mindfulness plays in developing inclusion in our thoughts and behaviour.  In this post, I would like to develop this theme further.

Inclusion involves openness and receptivity to what is different and diverse.  It is the foundation of real knowledge, insight and wisdom.  It involves more than being sensitive to diversity but also valuing and embracing it.  So, it entails not only a way of thinking but also a way of being in the world.

Through mindfulness, we can become aware of our implicit biases and emotional responses to people who are different from us.  We are then better able to manage our habituated responses and increase our response ability.

So much of our bias is unconscious and conditioned by our social, cultural, geographical and educational environments and associated experiences.  One way into our biases is through meditation on our emotional reactions to people and situations that challenge our view or perspective of the world.  Our feelings of discomfort can portend our inner bias and raise awareness of our tendencies to exclusivity.

If we can stop ourselves from reacting automatically, breathe deeply and consciously, notice and name our feelings, we can respond more appropriately and, eventually, act in a more proactive and inclusive manner.  If we reflect on the pattern of our thoughts and actions when we meditate, we can isolate negative emotional responses to a particular person or group.  Having identified the stimulus and the nature of our reaction, we are better placed to manage our response.

When we reflect through meditation on our thoughts in particular situations, we can more readily isolate our assumptions and stereotypes and understand how they are impacting our behaviour.  Through this increased self-awareness, we are better able to develop inclusive thoughts and actions.

Research has demonstrated that loving kindness meditation, which typically incorporates self-compassion and compassion towards others, can mitigate unconscious bias.  This approach to developing mindfulness places increased emphasis on similarities and entails expressing desire for increased well-being, happiness, equanimity and resilience for others.  Development of positive intentions towards others builds an inclusive frame of reference and affirmation of diversity.

As we grow in mindfulness, we see our biases in a clearer light, understand their impact on our behaviour and become more open and able to adopt inclusive behaviour.  Developing inclusion in our words and actions can be achieved through mindfulness if we consciously employ meditations that invoke acceptance and inclusion.

 

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Image source: courtesy of pixel2013 on Pixabay

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

Exploring Your Personal Vision

I previously discussed the need for a personal vision as a leader in an organisational context.  But what if you do not have an organisational leadership role? The benefits of a personal set of values and a clear personal vision apply to you as well.

The power of vision is that it attracts support and resources, helps you to integrate the diverse aspects of your life and enables you to notice things that would otherwise pass you by.  Lou Tice, author of Smart Talk for Achieving Your Potential, spoke eloquently about the power of vision and argued in Smart Talk that:

You will never accomplish all that you dream, but you will seldom accomplish anything that you don’t envision first.

Vision is like a magnet pulling ideas, people and energy towards you – enabling you to achieve a unique contribution to your community and the world at large.

A personal vision helps you to ride the waves of life, with its ups and downs, highs and lows.  It provides some form of protection against the temptation to be your lesser self when pressured to give into the expediency of the moment and say or do something that is hurtful or harmful to yourself and/or others.

Discovering your vision and values through meditation

The Mindful Movement provides one of the many meditations that help you clarify what it is you value and how best to formulate a personal vision that can evolve over time as circumstances change and you become better equipped to pursue what flows from your uniqueness and life experiences.  Their guided meditation helps you to Discover your Values and your Vision of your Ideal Self.

This meditation provides an ideal way to become grounded first through a process of progressive body scanning and muscle relaxation.  This frees your mind to be open to the potentiality of your uniqueness.  It helps still the negative thoughts that can act as a barrier to developing and pursuing a vision.

In establishing a personal vision, you are sowing the seeds for happiness in your life because it opens up the possibility of doing something meaningful beyond yourself through using your unique set of knowledge, skills and life experiences.

As you grow in mindfulness, you will be able to gain a clearer view of your personal vision, realise your potentiality and experience a deeper happiness in contributing something worthwhile to your community and the world at large.

 

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Image source:  Photo taken on Murano Island, Venice

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

Mindfulness – Being in the Moment

At the moment, I am writing from my room in the Hyatt Regency Hotel overlooking Darling Harbour in Sydney – certainly a location conducive to mindfulness.  Sydney Harbour, even on an overcast day as it is today, has a natural grandeur and beauty that induces awe.

I woke this morning and undertook the guided meditation on fear that I had written about previously. This meditation builds awareness of both our thought processes and the attendant bodily sensations.  It can lead to a calming of the mind and bodily relaxation.

Later, while I was reading Haruki Murakami’s novel, South of the Border, West of the Sun, I came across this profound statement which reflects the stance of being-in-the-moment:

Look at the rain long enough, with no thoughts in your head, and you gradually feel your body falling loose, shaking free the world’s reality. (p.86)

You can be-in-the-moment by focusing on some aspect of nature, your breathing, bodily sensations or sounds around you.  Mindfulness meditation helps you shed anxiety-inducing thoughts and free your body from  the tension or numbing effects of fear.

With clarity gained through mindfulness we can be in a better position to assess potential risks and more readily develop strategies that will enable us to reduce the risk and attendant fears.  So, it does not mean that we fail to act on realistic fears but that we learn to manage them constructively and respond appropriately.

Fear is a natural process as a form of self-protection but we can too easily see threats where they do not exist – the negative bias of our brains tends to work overtime so that we tend to anticipate the worst possible outcome, rather than what is most likely to happen.

As we grow in mindfulness through meditation and reflection, we can come to grips with our anxiety and fears, learn to name the feelings involved, understand how they are manifested in our bodies and develop calmness and clarity to manage them.

 

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Image source:  courtesy of pattyjansen on Pixabay

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

Cultivating Inclusive Leadership

Leadership in the future world of work presents many challenges, not the least of these being managing the diversity that will confront leaders. Diversity takes many forms – diversity of markets, of customers/clients, of technologies and of the workforce.

As countries around the world become more strongly interdependent, connected through international trade agreements and treaties, the diversity of issues will expand exponentially.  This is reflected in complex market relationships involving very significant differences in economic, cultural, political and logistical make-up.  Marketing channels differ radically by country and are constantly evolving.

The growing diversity of customers/clients has forced companies and government agencies to become more customer/client-focused in terms of communications, systems, structures and procedures.  Underpinning this responsiveness, is the need for leaders to develop a new mindset that puts the customer at the centre of considerations of policy, strategy, organisational culture, staff training and organisational access.

The emergence of new technologies, such as robots and artificial intelligence, demands that leaders are open to new ideas and ways of doing things and are creative and innovative in the way they create and deliver products and services.

The complex shift in the mix of employees versus contractors and part-time versus fulltime, creates new challenges in terms of workforce management.  Added to this shifting complexity is the need to provide flexible working arrangements, a development accelerated by the availability of emerging technologies.  The growth in an increasingly educated population, with ready access to information globally, also means that leaders will be increasingly dependent on the knowledge and skills of their workforce.  This will demand robust self-esteem and increasing capacity to connect and collaborate.  Concurrent with these challenges is the need to manage increasing generational diversity in the workforce and the related inter-generational relationships and conflicts.

Taking these macro changes into account will demand that leaders develop the capacity for inclusive leadership – the ability to manage the complexity, uncertainty and disruption of the diversity that is growing on every front.

Traits of inclusive leadership

Juliet Bourke and Bernadette Dillon produced an article published by Deloitte titled, The six signature traits of inclusive leadership: Thriving in a diverse new world.  I will discuss each of these six traits and relate them to the diversity issues identified above.

Commitment– according to Bourke and Dillon, research shows that inclusive leadership is more sustainable when it involves a personal commitment to the underlying values of “fairness” and “equity”.  While acknowledgement of the business case for inclusion can encourage leaders to be more inclusive, a commitment of heart and mind is necessary to sustain the desired behaviour.

Courage – it takes courage to challenge prevailing norms, structures and policies in the defence of inclusion.  Going against non-inclusive thinking and behaviour can lead to isolation and conflict and requires a courageous stance over a sustained period.  It also implies vulnerability and readiness to acknowledge our own mistakes and weaknesses.

Cognizance of bias – we all suffer from unconscious bias in our perception of others whether the bias is based on age, sexual preference, culture, economic position or employment status.  Bias leads to words and behaviour that undermine inclusion.  Unconscious bias creates blind spots resulting from a lack of awareness of the hurt we cause through our non-inclusive perceptions, words and actions. Inclusive leadership thus demands both self-awareness and self-management to prevent bias creeping into our actions and decisions. It also entails understanding of, and support for, people who are experiencing mental illness.

Curiosity – inclusive leadership entails openness to, and curiosity about, other ideas and perspectives.  It involves not just recognising differences but also valuing them and learning from them.  Curiosity fuels life-long learning – an essential requirement for inclusive leadership.  Bourke and Dillon argue from their research that inclusive leaders deepened their understanding of diverse perspectives by “asking curious questions and actively listening“.

Culturally intelligent – cultural intelligence has emerged as a critical leadership trait because of the global mobility of the workforce.  Now termed “CQ“, cultural intelligence involves “the capability to relate and work effectively in culturally diverse situations”.   It goes beyond cultural sensitivity and entails sustained interest in cultural diversity, a willingness to learn and adapt in culturally diverse situations and ability to plan for associated inclusive behaviour.

Collaborative – as the world of work changes with considerable rapidity and in unpredictable ways, the need to collaborate is paramount for effective and inclusive leadership.  This involves creating space and opportunities for sharing of ideas and different perspectives by diverse groups and personalities.  Synergy can result from such connections and collaborative efforts. My own research reinforces the fact that collaboration is motivational and engenders engagement, energy and creativity.

As we grow in mindfulness we can develop our emotional commitment to the value of fairness, strengthen our courage and resilience to pursue this commitment, cultivate self-awareness and curiosity and enhance our capacity to collaborate.  Mindfulness then will support our efforts to cultivate inclusive leadership in our own thoughts, words and actions and those of others.

 

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Image source: courtesy of geralt on Pixabay

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

Developing Leadership Capacity for the Digital Age

In the previous post, I discussed the challenges posed by the digital age and shared Sky Jarrett’s perspective on how mindfulness can enable a leader to thrive in the new world of work.  Rich Fernandez, in his presentation during the Mindful Leadership Online Conference, provided a complementary perspective on what leaders need to do to cultivate “future-ready” leadership capacity.  Rich was formerly Director of Executive Education at Google, a Master Teacher for SIYLI and founder of Wisdom Labs .

Rich described future-ready leadership as “having the mental and emotional clarity and balance to meet all of life’s challenges, situations and people that you might encounter”.   His presentation focused on how to develop these leadership characteristics.

Developing mental and emotional clarity and balance

Rich identified the following ways to develop these core leadership characteristics for the digital age:

Mindful listening – being present enough to focus on what the other person is saying and sufficiently open to understand their message and be influenced by it so that common ground can be developed.  Rich suggested that the American Senator John McCain was an exemplar of mindful listening because he sought “constructive bipartisan dialogue” and enabled continual conversation to reach that elusive middle ground.  Mindful listening requires a preparedness to avoid reacting mindlessly, prematurely offering a solution or pursuing an agenda.

Response flexibility – to engage in mindful listening you also need to have what Rich calls “response flexibility”- which is the agility to be able to respond appropriately and in respectful way to the other person’s communication.  I have discussed a way to develop response ability in an earlier post.

Values alignment – ensuring that your behaviour actually reflects your personal values.  Rich mentioned that Marc Benioff – founder, Chairman and CEO of Salesforce – is an exemplar of values alignment and puts service to the community ahead of profit.  For example, he has built meditation rooms on every floor in the new, towering Salesforce building.  His organisation practises business consciously so that “stakeholder management” is top of mind and is discussed as often as shareholder management – placing the needs of consumers on a least an equal footing with the wants and needs of shareholders.  Rich shared a series of questions that can help a leader check their values alignment – “What are your values?”, “Why are they important to you?”, “To what extent are your words and actions aligned with your values?” [poetic licence used here].

Personal vision – this flows naturally from a consideration of values alignment.  So, this is about a vision for oneself as a leader, not the organisational vision (although it is ideal that there is a strong alignment between the two).  Rich poses some relevant questions from the Search Inside Yourself Program to help clarify a personal vision, “What is your vision for yourself and your life?”, “What will your legacy be – your personal contribution to the world?”, “If your life exceeded your wildest expectations, what would it look like – what is happening and what are you contributing? [some poetic licence here too].   I previously discussed Goldie Hawn as an exemplar of someone who is committed to a personal vision and has aligned her words and actions in pursuit of this vision.

As we grow in mindfulness, we can develop the desired leadership characteristics to meet the challenges of the digital age.  With persistent mindfulness practice, we can develop mental and emotional clarity,  achieve balance in our life, progressively expand our response flexibility, and build alignment between our words and actions and our values/personal vision.

 

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Image source: courtesy of pixel2013 on Pixabay

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

Mindfulness for Leadership in the Digital Age

Many of the presentations during the Mindful Leadership Online Conference, 17-26 October 2018, focus on what it means to be a leader in the digital age.  Sky Jarrett, for example, discussed Thriving As a Leader in the Digital Age, and highlighted the role of mindfulness in achieving this goal.  Her presentation drew on her experience with Accenture – a global consulting firm – where she is an Executive Coach and Mindfulness Instructor.

As the digital age continues to advance relentlessly with the advent of artificial intelligence and robotics, leaders are faced with new and demanding challenges and the uncertainty that derives from continuous technological, ecological and economic disruption.  Life and work are becoming more complex with the generational shift and the growth in mental illness in the home and the workplace.

Thriving as a leader in the digital age through mindfulness

Sky identified how mindfulness can assist leaders to not only survive the digital era but to thrive and achieve greatness in their chosen arena of activity:

  • Calmness – mindfulness is necessary to develop calmness and equanimity in the face of organisational and community turbulence.  Sky likens the calmness developed through mindfulness meditation to the calm of the “eye of the storm”.  She suggests that the incorporation of mindfulness practice in the life of an executive is an “imperative” like the change from analogue to digital. It is critical for a leader to be grounded and not unsettled by digital turbulence if they are going to lead effectively.
  • Trust – Sky points to the fact that we are operating in a trust economy as part of the macro environment of the digital age.  Trust underpins relationships which are the lifeblood of an organisation or community.  Trust is built through integrity and consistency.  Increasingly, followers look to leaders for guidance, transparency, support and reliability.  Mindfulness builds self-awareness and self-management which are foundational to integrity and the development of trust.
  • Connection and collaboration – the digital age is the era of connectivity. Individuals, groups, organisations and communities are collaborating locally and globally – even competitors are collaborating to achieve common goals.  The complexity and speed of change means that leaders can no longer be isolates steeped in knowledge and relevant experience – they will become increasingly dependent on collaboration with others as change outpaces their ability “to keep up-to-date”.  Mindfulness helps a leader to experience, understand and value connectedness to themselves, others and the world around them.  It also enables them to build the capacity for collaboration and enlightened action in the world.
  • Self-improvement – for many years now, we have focused on externalities including the continuous improvement cycle in organisations.  The time has come for leaders to focus consistently on self-improvement, to take themselves as the the improvement project.  This will require developing emotional awareness through mindfulness and reflection on their thoughts and actions so that a leader can enhance their response ability.
  • Bodily intelligence – Sky suggests that leaders will need a greater connection to their bodies in the digital era.  Bodily intelligence, also termed kinaesthetic intelligence, will enable leaders to sense bodily when things are not right and to take constructive action.  Somatic meditation will assist leaders to enhance their bodily intelligence and to develop the leader’s capacity to trust their body’s intuition (“gut feeling”).
  • Being present – as we have reiterated in this blog, the capacity to be present is an essential skill of leadership, no matter what the era.  However, the digital era places greater demands on leaders to be genuinely present to others when interacting.  The challenge to being present in a digital era characterised by incessant “noise” and disruptive communication, is potentially overwhelming.  Mindfulness builds the capacity to shut our the noise and to fully focus on the person and task at hand.

There are many demands on leaders in the digital age, but as we grow in mindfulness we can bring calmness and equanimity to any situation, build trust and connectedness, focus on improving ourselves through reflection, more readily access our bodily intelligence and become more fully present in our daily interactions.

 

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Image source: courtesy of pixel2013 on Pixabay

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

Cultivating Awareness of Others through Mindfulness

In the previous post, I mentioned the triad of awareness – awareness of self, awareness of others and awareness of the world around us.  In this post, I want to focus on awareness of others.

It is very difficult to be aware of others and thoughtful towards them in the busyness of our daily lives and the incessant distractions posed by disruptive marketing.  Our attention is continuously pulled away from inner awareness and awareness of others.

Our lack of awareness of others is often displayed in our blind spots – we are impervious to the effects of our words and actions on others.  It takes a conscious effort to get in touch with our core blind spot which may be blinding us to the needs of others in particular situations – whether at work, at home, or in the community.

Awareness of others requires that we move away from self-absorption.  We can become so immersed in our own feelings – pain, anxiety, sadness, boredom – that we are not aware of the feelings and pain of others.  We can also be so lost in our thoughts – planning, analysing, critiquing – that there is no room for thoughts of others.

Mindfulness to cultivate awareness of others

Mindfulness meditation is a way to break out of the trap of self-absorption – what Jon Kabat-Zinn describes as thinking that we are the centre of the world.  With conscious and consistent meditation practice, we can increase our awareness of, and empathy towards, others around us.

Loving kindness meditation, for example, enables us to think about others and express the desire for them to experience wellness and happiness.  It takes us outside our self to thoughts about others and their needs and desires.

A simple related exercise is to recall a situation that has occurred that has caused pain and suffering for someone else or a group of people and place yourself in their situation – “What would they be feeling if they have just lost their child through an accident?”   As you engage in empathetic consideration of the people involved – family, friends, colleagues – you can extend the desire for them to manage their grief and to eventually experience equanimity.  If you were to do this daily, this could help to cultivate awareness of others.

Forgiveness meditation is a way to take ourselves beyond focus on our own pain and hurt from an interaction with someone else, to thinking about and feeling for the other person in the interaction.  It takes considerable awareness to move beyond our own sense of pain and righteousness to reflect on what happened for the other person.  Forgiveness meditation is a powerful way to move beyond self-absorption to awareness of others.

As we grow in mindfulness through meditation and reflection, we can cultivate awareness of others – awareness of their pain, thoughts and needs.  We can move beyond being self-absorbed to being thoughtful of, and considerate towards, others.

 

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Image source: courtesy of pixel2013 on Pixabay

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

Identifying Our Blind Spots through Mindfulness

One of the realities of human existence is that we all have blind spots – what others see in our words and action but we can’t see ourselves.  Our blind spots may be obvious to other people who can see patterns in our behaviour.  The problem is that we can never eradicate our blind spots completely but we can learn to identify them and learn to better manage our responses – to effectively reduce the hurt to others and to ourselves.

Kelly Boys, author of The Blind Spot Effect: How to Stop Missing What’s Right in Front of You, suggests that our blind spots have a number of dimensions:

  • Visual– we actually have a physical blind spot in our eyes. You can check out your physical blind spot in each of your eyes through this link.
  • Attentional – we can suffer from an attentional blind spot because of our lack of ability to truly focus.  Daniel Goleman suggests that the capacity to focus involves the triad of awareness – focus on ourselves, focus on others and focus on the wider context.
  • Cognitive – these are the fixed thoughts we carry about the world and ourselves in the world – “I’m not good enough”, “The world is not safe”.  These may have worked for us over time but will lead us to diminish ourselves and devalue the energy and support of others.  Cognitive blind spots can cut us off from experiencing the world as it is and limit our opportunities.
  • Behavioural– we may be totally oblivious to persistent patterns in our behaviour that are very obvious to others.  It may be the way we respond to criticism or attempt to please others all the time -what Harriet Braiker calls, The Disease to Please.
Identifying the core blind spot

Kelly, in her interview with Tami Simon, offered a simple exercise to help people identify their core blind spot – “the way we hold our perception of ourselves and the world around us together”.  Identifying the core, which often relates to a sense of separateness, can lead to a major transformation in our lives.

Kelly suggests that being still and open to the present moment is a key way to access our blind spots and to understand the underlying pattern in our perceptual, cognitive and behavioural responses. In the exercise she led during the interview she encouraged people to become grounded; be open to, and aware of, their senses (sound, sight, breath) and to notice any tension, tightness or contraction in their body.  Staying with this bodily feeling is a way into understanding the underlying blind spot – “Where does this tension come from?’ “What am I saying to myself about my looks or capacity?’ “How am I perceiving the world or the actions of others?” “How am I planning to respond – why?”

As we persist with this kind of exercise, where we use our bodily awareness as the gateway to our blind spots, we can delve deeper into our core blind spot and open up the way to respond very differently – we can better understand our reactivity in certain situations and increase our response ability.  This self-awareness and self-regulation are key outcomes of mindfulness practice.

As we grow in mindfulness we begin to recognise patterns in our thoughts and behaviour and what we pay attention to.  If we persist in the relevant mindfulness exercise, we will come to understand our core blind spot. This growing realisation opens up new possibilities for us as we free ourselves from the limitations in our perceptions and responsiveness that arise through our blind spots.

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Image source: courtesy of pixel2013 on Pixabay

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.