gratitude – Page 9 – Grow Mindfulness

Loving-Kindness Meditation: A Form of Gratitude

Jon Kabat-Zinn provides an extended loving-kindness meditation that incorporates gratitude for the love of the people in your life who are close to you. It also involves self-love and kindness towards others who may have hurt you in the past.

Jon makes the point that engaging in loving-kindness meditation on a regular basis equips us to deal with the ups and downs of life. It especially enables us to tone down our anger or rage towards another person who may have hurt us. Our expression of gratitude and kindness helps us to restore equanimity in our lives.

Feeling the love

The loving-kindness meditation offered by Jon begins with capturing the essence of the love that a really close person in our lives shows toward us. It involves basking in the ways that this unconditional love is expressed towards us while appreciating what it means to be loved for who we are. Once we have captured these feelings of being loved, we can express kindness towards this person by repeating Jon’s words in a conscious, meaningful and personal way:

May they be safe and protected and free from inner and outer harm. May they be happy and contented. May they be healthy and whole to whatever degree possible. May they experience ease of well-being.

Loving-kindness towards yourself

Jon’s meditation moves onto expressing loving-kindness towards yourself. This involves moving beyond any negative thoughts, self-criticism or self-loathing and being open to loving yourself as you are, taking your cue from those who love you unconditionally.

It is often difficult to embrace self-love and kindness towards yourself but the practice develops a healthy self-regard that enables you to rise above the thoughts that would otherwise drag you down. The meditation involves recognition of your basic humanity. By using the above-mentioned kindness phrases towards yourself, you are wishing yourself safety, happiness, good health and overall well-being. In other words, you are being kind to yourself.

Loving-kindness towards someone who has hurt you

In the meditation that Jon provides, he progresses to having us think about someone who has actually hurt us in some way. He is not asking us to forgive that person but to acknowledge their basic humanity, just as we have done for our self. This entails moving beyond the hurt to expressing kindness to the person involved through using the kindness phrases provided above. This loving-kindness meditation helps to dissolve our hurt and anger and to see the person as connected to us through our universal humanity.

Expanding the field of loving-kindness

Jon suggests that the field of loving-kindness can be limitless. We can expand our focus in the meditation to include people in the immediate world around us or in the broader world – focusing on individuals or groups, e.g. expressing loving-kindness to people who are experiencing the trauma of a hurricane or to volunteers helping to fight poverty.

You do not have to extend your field of awareness during this form of meditation – you can choose to restrict your focus at any point. You may find, particularly with an extended meditation, that you become easily distracted. In this case, as Jon Kabat-Zinn suggests, you can notice your distracting thoughts and imagine them as bubbles that burst as they reach the surface of boiling water or burst as a result of you popping them.

Loving-kindness meditation helps you grow in awareness of, and gratitude towards, those around with whom you come into contact on a daily basis. It opens you up to appreciating the significant others in your life and to extending positive thoughts to the broader community, so that your awareness of your connectedness expands. This form of meditation can also help to reduce anger towards others who may have hurt you – it enables you to expand your response ability in the process. As you grow in mindfulness through loving-kindness meditation you increase your awareness of others and empathy towards them.

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Gratitude – a Reflection

In my last post I wrote about simple gratitude exercises. There was one in particular that resonated with me – reflecting on your day. As a result, I reflected on a specific event that occurred the day before. It was a cafe meeting I had with two of my colleagues. Reflecting on this event brought home to me how much I take for granted in my life. I will share my reflections about my gratitude for this interaction in the following post.

Gratitude for colleague 1 – occasional colleague

I last worked with this colleague about six months ago. Despite this elapsed time, I found we virtually took up the conversation “where we left off”. I often marvel at how this occurs – when you are with real friends, you seem to be able to resume “where you left off” even after 6 months, a year or even many years – it’s almost as if you communicate in the ether over time, even when you are going your separate ways.

Underlying this ease of conversation, is a common value system and belief about the inherent goodness of people. In our case, it also relates to an approach to organisational consulting which sets a lot of value on respecting people and seeking to create positive, productive and mentally healthy organisations. It is a rich source of support when you have a colleague, however occasional, that you can relate to so easily and share a common paradigm about people and organisations. I am very grateful for this rich relationship, developed more than three years ago, which has provided me with such professional support.

Gratitude for colleague 2 – weekly collaborator

Over more than a decade now, I have worked weekly with a colleague with whom I collaborate on manager/executive development and organisational reviews and development. While we may not be working specifically with a manager or organisation all the time, we are regularly sharing resources, planning workshops or interventions, reflecting on our activities and following up with clients.

We have in common a shared set of values which among other things encompasses working continuously to develop mentally healthy organisations. We do this through the Confident People Management Program (CPM), a longitudinal, action learning program we conduct with managers and executives in Government agencies throughout the State. In all, we have worked with over 2,000 managers in the past decade or so.

Additionally, we have undertaken organisational interventions at the request of clients who want to increase leadership effectiveness, undertake collaborative strategic planning, develop a positive and productive culture, heal divisions or act on aspects of organisational life identified by managers and/or staff as unsatisfactory.

My colleague has the contacts, the persistence and energy to generate this work – and I regularly express appreciation for this collaborative work and the rich experience and learning that this provides (not to mention the revenue involved also).

I appreciate her courageous commitment to her values and willingness to challenge others when their words and actions do not align with their stated values. Associated with this is the readiness to question her own words and actions through ongoing reflection. This personal commitment to continuous improvement in herself and others is foundational to the success we experience in engaging managers and organisations. It is underpinned by her absolute commitment to meet the needs of our clients, whether they are individuals, groups or organisations as a whole.

There is also an underlying courage and willingness to “have a go” and try something different which is both refreshing and encouraging and has taken us into consulting realms and activities that I thought would not eventuate. This is the inherent developmental aspect of our professional relationship, as we stretch our boundaries to meet the needs of our clients – managers and organisations.

I appreciate too that my colleague does not have “ego” investment in any of the processes we plan for our manager development or organisational intervention activities. This makes it so much easier to plan, explore alternative options, experiment and change course mid-action. It also facilitates the ability for collaborative reflection on action as well as in-action.

I am grateful that our relationship has been built on complementary skills – with my colleague contributing a unique depth of understanding of our public sector clients and their history as well as endless contacts. My contribution focuses on process design and our collaboration has developed my process design skills and provided the support/opportunity to explore new processes and embed different processes into our manager development activities and organisational interventions. We also share a common understanding of group and organisational dynamics and a commitment to action learning and the values that underpin this approach to manager and organisational development.

Underlying all this however, is a common set of values around respecting and valuing people and seeking to facilitate the development of mentally healthy organisations where executives, managers and staff can develop themselves and their organisations. We often describe our work as “enabling organisational participants/groups to have the conversations they should be having”- whether that is managing upwards, sharing values, planning together, resolving conflicts or building each other’s capacity and capability.

I have worked with many colleagues over more than forty years of educating and consulting, and it is rare indeed to have a colleague who brings so much to a professional relationship, who values the relationship above self-interest and is willing to collaborate in the very real sense of the word. My reflection on this cafe meeting brought home to me how much I value this ongoing professional relationship and all that it has enabled me to undertake and achieve. For this, I am very grateful, but I realise how much of this richness I take for granted. Reflecting on various professional experiences with my colleague is a catalyst for this expression of gratitude.

As we grow in mindfulness, we learn to take less for granted and grow in appreciation for the many people and things that enrich our lives. Reflection really aids the development of this sense of gratitude. Through reflection we come to see what others have contributed to our wellness, growth, mental health, sense of accomplishment and happiness. In relationships we can become who we are capable of being. Ongoing reflection helps relationships, professional and otherwise, to develop and grow richer. There is so much about reflection that underpins gratitude. Being mindful helps us to reflect, just as reflection contributes to our development of mindfulness and the associated internal and external awareness.

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The Benefits of Gratitude

Increasingly research into gratitude has highlighted the benefits of being grateful and expressing that feeling through thought, writing or action.

Neuroscientist, Glenn Fox, in his article, “What the brain reveals about gratitude“, argues that scientific studies have established that expressing gratitude can improve your health, your relationships and your overall happiness. He also asserts that recent research demonstrates that gratitude alleviates depression.

In support of this view, Joel Wong and Joshua Brown established through their research that gratitude practice helps people who experience mental health issues as well as people who are mentally healthy. They postulate that practising gratitude displaces “toxic emotions” such as anger and resentment through the cultivation of positive emotions such as appreciation.

Wong & Brown, drawing on their research, demonstrate that just the act of expressing gratitude has substantial personal benefits and that sharing the expression of gratitude is not essential to realise these benefits. Their research entailed a control group of participants writing “gratitude letters”. They established that the benefits of being grateful grow over time and that there are sustained, positive effects on the brain, including “greater neural sensitivity in the prefrontal cortex” which leads to improved mental health over time.

They comment insightfully:

Much of our time and energy is spent pursuing things that we currently don’t have. Gratitude reverses our priorities to help us appreciate the people and things that we do have.

Robert Emmons in his ground-breaking article, “Why gratitude is good“, shares the results of research undertaken with his colleagues and lists the demonstrated physical, psychological and social benefits of gratitude. He asserts that gratitude entails more than appreciating what is good in our life – it also involves acknowledging the people who have enabled that “goodness”. This entails recognising that the source of what we experience as good is often someone outside of ourselves.

The researchers designing these research studies often had participants produce a gratitude journal – recording on a regular basis the things that they are grateful for. We can generate the positive energy of gratitude by reflecting on what is good in our past life or in the present.

As we grow in mindfulness through gratitude meditation, we train our brain to recognise what is good in our life, to appreciate the contribution of others to our happiness and mental health and to express that gratitude often and spontaneously. Through this state of positivity, we are better able to handle the challenges and stresses in our life.

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

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The Positive Energy of Gratitude

Karen Newell contends from her research and experience that gratitude generates positive energy within us and around us, helping others we interact with. Daily gratitude meditation can still your mind, open your heart and increase your connection to the world around you. There are so many things that we can be grateful for – whether in the past or the present.

Reflection on our past – gratitude for all we have learned and experienced

Reflection on our past can open up appreciation for our parents, our upbringing, the mentors we have experienced, our friends at school and at work, our education and the opportunities that were provided to us – whether at home, at work or within our community. A life review can give us access to these endless catalysts for gratitude.

Reflecting on our parents could open up appreciation for the opportunities they created, the sacrifices they made for us, the support they provided in difficult times and the lessons they taught us in how to live our lives. We may have learned the enriching gift of gratitude and kindness from one or other of our parents who modelled this stance in their daily life.

Reviewing your past with openness and curiosity will increase your awareness of what you had that you can be grateful for. When you look at the opportunities that you had in your life to date, you can see so much that opened new paths for you or consolidated existing paths. You could even draw a snake-like image with different bends in its body to illustrate the positive turning points in your life that led to a greater source of accomplishment, contribution or personal enrichment.

Gaining positive energy from gratitude for the present

The present offers so much to be grateful for – even the very air that we breathe so many times each day. We can think of the knowledge, skills and understanding that we have that open opportunities on so many fronts – in our work, relationships, family and communities.

Our knowledge of technology and the internet open new ways of connecting, building relationships and creating new things – such as blogs, videos, podcasts, websites, social groups and online resources. We can express appreciation for these opportunities and resolve to use them to better ourselves and the world around us.

There is so much to savour in our daily lives – we could savour the space of being alone, the development of our children, our achievements and rewards, nature and its beauty, the stillness and calm that comes with regular meditation practice.

As we grow in mindfulness, we can become increasingly aware of what we have to be grateful for and tap into the positive energy that will surround us and others as we express our gratitude for our past and our present. Regular gratitude meditation will enrich our lives and those we come in contact with.

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

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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)

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Living the Present Moment

The present moment is all we have – this very moment is our life. Yet we spend so much time being someplace else. We are thinking about what we have to do or wishing that our life was different. We can be caught up in the emotions of envy, disappointment or regret and overlook what is happening now.

So often we look forward to an activity with a friend or colleague and yet when the moment arrives, we are thinking of something else – our focus is elsewhere other than the present moment. When we can be really in the present moment we can savour being alone, being with someone we value and appreciate, experiencing the joy of our child’s development and happiness, or the beauty of the nature that surrounds us.

The role of meditation practice – bringing us back to the present moment

In one of her many meditation podcasts, Tara Brach coaxes us to show up fully for our life experiences, instead of being absorbed by our busyness. She encourages us to be with our mind and our body in the moment.

Meditation practice trains us to bring our attention back to the present moment again and again. It helps us to develop the discipline to stop our minds wandering or entertaining thoughts that take us away from the moment that we are experiencing, whatever form it takes.

If we can maintain meditation practice over a sustained period with a degree of frequency, we can begin to find that we tend to stop ourselves in the course of some experience and remind ourselves to savour the moment. This present-mindedness can grow and develop and embrace more of our life and our interactions with others. We can learn progressively to be truly present to ourselves and others.

As Tara points out the starting point is often getting in touch with our own bodies and our bodily sensations – whether it is the sensation of warmth or cold, tightness or softening, retracting or expanding. What we develop through being in the present moment is gratitude and appreciation and we can experience joy and happiness through the process. Tara describes what we develop through meditation practice in these words:

The art of appreciation and showing up for our life and living with more connection and gratitude.

As we grow in mindfulness through meditation, we can appreciate each moment and savour more of our life, instead of letting the present moment continuously pass us by. Through regular and persistent meditation, we develop the art of bringing ourselves back to what we are experiencing in the moment.

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Feeling Joy for Others

We have so many opportunities to feel joy for others and to extend our desire for their joy to grow and continue. However, we can be held back by feelings of envy or jealousy about their good fortune, especially if it comes at our own expense, e.g. when someone gets “our” carpark spot during the mad Christmas shopping period.

Meditating with a focus on feeling joy for others who have experienced good fortune, achieved an outstanding outcome or been publicly acknowledged for their achievement, can take us outside our self-absorption, build our capacity for “empathetic joy” and warm our own hearts through “vicarious joy” and the experience of happiness for them.

Diana Winston provides a meditation podcast on feeling joy for others in which she guides us through the process of focusing on the joy that someone else has experienced as a result of their good fortune.

Feeling joy for others meditation

Once you have achieved the initial meditative state of being grounded, you can identify someone or group of people who have experienced joy and happiness as a result of some event, achievement or fortuitous gift.

As you focus on the joyful experience of another person or group, try to place yourself in that experience – feeling what they must be feeling, appreciating what they are grateful for. You can use images to intensify this identification and what Diana calls “appreciative joy”.

Once you have been able to clearly focus on the joy of another you can then express the wish that their good fortune continues and that their joy grows and develops in a sustainable way. This expression of good will can offset constant exposure to the media’s focus on peoples’ ill fortune.

There is something special about this feeling joy for others meditation in that it takes us away from self-centredness, opens our eyes to the rivers of goodness in the world and enhances our sense of gratitude.

As we grow in mindfulness, we become more aware of others and their experience of joy in times of good fortune and more generous through our appreciative stance engendered through meditation where we focus on others’ joy.

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

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Grow Mindfulness through Humility

I have been discussing being mindful at work. It seems appropriate to draw on the lessons from superb leaders who turned their companies into great companies that enjoyed longevity as well as success.

In his book, Good to Great, Jim Collins identified what characterised these highly successful leaders. It was not, as you might surmise, their outgoing nature, their capacity to “sing their own praises” or their readiness to boast about the achievements of their companies. These great leaders were characterised by two key qualities, “personal humility and professional will” reflected in their quiet, almost shy, demeanour together with their determination and resilience

I want to concentrate on the “personal humility” quality here. Humility is closely linked to mindfulness in that genuine humility requires a level of self-awareness that is realistic and accurate and not based on negative self-evaluation.

Developing mindfulness through personal humility

Personal humility is a “road less travelled”. Most people are either boastful of their achievements (a habit cultivated by our competitive society) or dishonestly “modest”. The middle road is difficult to achieve but beckons when you want to grow in mindfulness and achieve its attendant benefits.

Shamash Alidina, author of The Mindful Way Through Stress, provides some strategies to develop personal humility in his insightful and comprehensive article on how to be mindful at work:

Develop mindfulness practices – as we have seen through the blog posts on this site, mindfulness meditations and activities help you to develop a genuine self-awareness that is neither boastful nor involves “beating up on yourself”. These practices enable you to move from self-absorption (talking about your own achievements all the time in conversations with others) to recognition of what others have contributed to your present success.
Being conscious of who has helped you – at any point in time, you can take a few minutes to focus on who has helped you to be where you are. Being conscious of what you have it terms of work, colleagues and professional networks, can help you to develop a fine-grained awareness of those who have contributed to making you who you are and what you have achieved.
Show appreciation to those who have helped you – this can be expressed towards people who have done even the smallest thing to help you, e.g. finding a resource for you or linking you to another person or idea. If you develop the habit of showing appreciation in your everyday life, then it becomes a spontaneous act to do so in your work situation/ professional life. Often we appreciate someone’s words or actions but fail to communicate this to them – we assume they know. Expression of appreciation is an act of gratitude that builds mindfulness.
Value the opinion of others – it is so easy to quickly dismiss the perspective, opinions or views of others as if our stance is the right one all the time. However, being humble demands a recognition of the limitations of our own perceptions, knowledge and skills and an openness to others through respectful listening for understanding.

As we grow in mindfulness through mindfulness practices, being conscious of who has helped us and showing appreciation and respect for their help and alternative opinions, we can progressively develop a true personal humility.

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Slow Down for Gratitude

In the previous post, I discussed being mindful at work. Among, the suggested ways to be mindful in this environment were slowing down and being grateful. If we slow the pace of our life wherever we are, we can focus on gratitude and develop not only a positive outlook on life but also the resilience to bounce back from setbacks, challenges and difficulties.

Diana Winston, Director of Mindfulness Education at UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Center (MARC), maintains that mindfulness is very much about living more in the present moment. In line with this view, she explains the nature of mindfulness in the following way:

Mindfulness is about paying attention to our present moment experiences with openness and curiosity and a willingness to be with what is.

Diana provided this explanation when introducing a gratitude meditation as part of the UCLA’s free, weekly Mindful Awareness Podcasts. In this podcast she highlights the value of being grateful for the small things that make up our daily lives, from moment to moment.

Gratitude for the small things in life

It is not a big deal to be grateful for the small things in our life that we take so much for granted. We can overcome this lack of appreciation through overfamiliarity by slowing down what we are doing and expressing appreciation for the small things in our lives. This can be done as part of a meditation process or “on-the-go-slow”.

Firstly, we can focus on our senses and the wondrous world that is open to us through sight, sound, touch, taste and hearing. With sight alone, we have access to colours, shapes, lightness and darkness and the never-ending variety of the sky, the flowers and trees, the birds and the animals we encounter in nature.

With hearing, we can access a very wide variety of sounds, the nuances in people’s voices, the chorus of birds and the buzz of life around us. Recently, I was playing a game of tennis against a young man who was deaf and his sister, and it prompted me in the moment to be grateful for my hearing. He communicated with his sister by sign language but was unable to communicate with myself and my partner except by hand movements and limited facial expressions. His hearing impediment clearly affected his game. On reflection, I am now conscious that he could not hear the sound of the ball leaving the racquet and be able to judge the speed and distance of the ball that comes with hearing this sound. So, there is a lot to be grateful for with the sense of hearing.

On another occasion, I was playing tennis with a male partner who was becoming increasingly agitated and frustrated with losing points because of his lack of timing and coordination. The temptation was to join in with him and express my own frustration at my own lack of timing – negativity is contagious. However, for once, I just expressed gratitude that I could be playing tennis after a long layoff, that I could run and still play some good shots. I sensed, too, that my partner gained better self-control by the end of the game through the influence of my calmness and focus – positivity is contagious. If we slow down, and savour the moment and what we have, we can achieve better self-management through control over our emotions and our responses.

As we grow in mindfulness, we can more often be-in-the-moment, and develop our positive outlook on life and build our resilience in the face of setbacks, whether at work or play.

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

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Being Mindful at Work

In the previous post, I wrote about mindfulness at work and identified some ways to be mindful while working. Here, I want to take this further by suggesting some other strategies, again using the article by Shamash Alidina for my inspiration:

1.Slow down

In slowing down, we can become more aware of our inner thoughts and outer environment. If you find yourself rushing from place to place, you can slow down and engage in some form of mindful walking. Often we are rushing, not because of a deadline, but because this haste behaviour has become habituated. You can pull yourself up in the act of rushing around and just take a few steps at a slower pace. You might ask yourself, “Why am I in such a hurry?” This mindful practice can start with your behaviour when getting to work, so that when at work you are already conscious of your hurrying behaviour and more able to “slow down to speed up”.

2.Treat stress as your friend

This approach seems counter-intuitive. Most of what you read about stress is how harmful it is to your health. Yet there is an optimum amount of stress that improves your health, energy and productivity. Without sufficient challenge we suffer boredom and malaise; too much stress leads to “frazzle”. Kelly McGonigal, in her TED talk, encourages you to “make stress your friend”. Research shows that how you perceive stress can, in fact, influence the way stress impacts you. If you have a positive perception of stress – you see your pounding heart as energising you and getting more oxygen to your brain – you are able progressively to reduce your physical response to stress and to increase your capacity to manage it. So, in a lot of ways, it is “all in your head”. Being mindful, you can get in touch with what is going on in your body, and instead of panicking, you can view this bodily response as “readiness for action”.

3.Develop a gratitude bias

We hear about the negativity bias of our brains, but it is possible to develop a “positivity bias”. Kabat-Zinn suggests that you become what you pay attention to, e.g. you can become grateful, compassionate or empathetic by focusing on these aspects through mindfulness meditation. Being mindful of what you have and expressing gratitude for these things “has a positive impact on your creativity, health, working relationships, and quality of work”. Instead of focusing on the aspects of your job that you do not like, you could look at what you do have that you appreciate – expressing gratitude for the fact that you have a job, that you can make a difference, have a supportive boss, have colleagues who are collaborative or have highpoints in your day when you realise that you are doing something meaningful. You can substitute a positivity bias for a negativity bias, by frequent and regular recall of what you appreciate in your work.

Your thoughts play a large role in how you experience the world and your associated mental health and mood. As you grow in mindfulness through the practice of being mindful at work, your thoughts become more positive and your brain becomes “more efficient, focused, effective at communicating with others, and better at learning new skills”.

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

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