Seven Practices of a Mindful Leader. Marc Lesser

• being able to concentrate easily,

       • that your face will be brighter and clearer, and

       • at the time of death, the mind will be clear.

      These are pretty great benefits! I would add that, if you practice “love the work” in these ways on a regular basis, you are more likely to be happier and the people around you will be happier. Your work will be more effective and more successful. And you will influence the culture around you to be more engaging, creative, and lighthearted.

      WHAT IS “THE WORK”?

      While “love the work” means bringing the intentions and perspective of love to everything we do, this practice also refers to a very specific kind of work: cultivating mindfulness. This means seeing with greater clarity what really is and letting go of whatever more limited worldview we have constructed. It means cultivating greater self-awareness in order to, paradoxically enough, become less self-centered. It means actively questioning what is with an open-ended curiosity.

      To love the work is to open ourselves and notice, the best we can, the ways in which we create limited mindsets and narrow mental models. To use the terms raised earlier, it both embraces and transcends Small Mind, or our default mode network, by accessing the perspective of Big Mind. When we reduce or let go of self-referential fears and worries, we realize that wonder and connection are our true default modes of being. Loving the work recognizes that there are many realities, many ways of being, and that we should not be overly attached to our version of reality.

      The work of mindfulness is to step outside ourselves in order to see ourselves and notice what we aren’t aware of. We try to identify our unspoken fears, blind spots, biases, and assumptions. This means cutting through the places where we are caught, limited, attached, beholden to outmoded beliefs, and stuck in patterns or stories. By loving the work, we build trust in ourselves, we become more trustworthy, we cultivate inner strength, and we improve relationships and results.

      This work requires courage. Not the physical courage required to save someone’s life or fend off an attacker, but the courage to be real, open, and vulnerable. The courage to feel uncomfortable and exposed, like the Google engineer who wept openly and shared the pain that had brought her to the workshop. It’s the courage to speak and take action in the midst of these feelings. The payoff is well worth it.

      MEDITATION: LEARNING TO STARE, PRY, EAVESDROP

      Meditation is a core practice for cultivating mindfulness. Meditation is designed to help us interrogate reality and to increase our comfort with change, difficulty, and the unknown. In recent years, this has been verified and quantified in scientific research. For instance, a 2011 study entitled “How Does Mindfulness Meditation Work?” by Britta Holzel, Sara Lazar, and others describes some of the concrete benefits of mindfulness meditation. The study’s summary describes it like this:

      By closely observing the contents of consciousness, practitioners come to understand that these are in constant change and thus are transient. The mindful, nonjudgmental observation fosters a detachment from identification with the contents of consciousness. This process has been termed “reperceiving” or “decentering” . . . and has been described as the development of the “observer perspective.”

      Here’s a closer look at what that means in more everyday language.

      “CLOSELY OBSERVING THE CONTENTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS”: An important aspect of mindfulness practice and of interrogating reality is observing our thoughts, feelings, and sensations — becoming more aware of our experience. Sometimes we feel things without fully realizing what has triggered those feelings. We also construct an identity, an “I” and a “me” with particular desires and aversions. Mindfulness is becoming intimate with our consciousness and noticing habits and patterns.

      “UNDERSTAND CHANGE”: By becoming familiar during meditation with the fleeting nature of our thoughts and emotions, and gaining more understanding of change, this aspect of mindfulness becomes a regular feature of moment-to-moment awareness.

      “DETACHMENT FROM IDENTIFICATION”: Mindfulness supports the ability to see our stories and narratives as reflecting our subjective, and not objective, reality. As the Google engineer stated, we are more than our roles, more than the persona we develop. Meditation helps us step back and observe our thinking and emotions as an outsider might. We increase our ability to see ourselves with more perspective.

      “REPERCEIVING”: This is related to detachment. The practice of noticing and becoming familiar with our thoughts, feelings, and perceptions helps us become less identified with them, so we can see them in a different light or perhaps in more useful and accurate ways.

       Mindfulness Meditation Practice

      Let’s practice.

      Begin by bringing attention to your body. Find a way to sit, whether you are in a chair or on a cushion, where you can be fully alert and fully relaxed at the same time.

      To emphasize relaxation, start by softening the area around your eyes and the muscles in your face. You can keep your eyes open, without focusing, or close your eyes if that feels more comfortable. Notice and if possible let go of any places you are holding or feeling any tension. Notice the transition from whatever you were doing to stopping, pausing, and letting go. Whatever you were engaged in, your projects, to-do lists, all your unfinished business — let it all go. It will be there later.

      To emphasize being alert, sit up slightly straighter than you might normally sit, putting some attention to your spine, arching your back slightly. Choose how to place your hands and your feet. Open up your shoulders and chest, allowing breathing to be unrestricted. Often we restrict our breathing without being aware of this.