Читать книгу The Mindful Leader - Bunting Michael - Страница 8

I define mindfulness as maintaining an open hearted awareness of our thoughts, emotions, bodily sensations and environment in the present moment. It is paying attention in the present moment purposefully, warm-heartedly and non-judgementally. It is experiencing and accepting the present moment as it really is – not how we want it to be, think it should be or perceive it to be, but as it really is.

Kevin Pickhardt, the CEO of Pharos, a print management solutions company headquartered in New York, gave me his beautiful definition of mindfulness: ‘Being mindful is our ability to pay attention and respond to every situation in the healthiest way possible – to accept whatever happens and respond with kindness, compassion and understanding.'

Through meditation and other practices we become more aware of our habitual reactions, expand the gap between stimulus and response and make wiser choices. We learn to see the innermost motivations for our actions and become more honest with ourselves. We learn to be the observer of our thoughts, rather than identifying with them and getting caught up in the mental stories we create. In short, we become profoundly self-aware.

The extensive research I will share with you in this book shows that mindfulness is not a new age, intangible abstraction for lofty-minded seekers of spiritual enlightenment. It is a concrete discipline proven to provide real, measurable benefits for your behaviour, performance, health and happiness. It is a well-developed, thoroughly substantiated, evidence-based process for gaining clarity and accessing and developing your greatest potential. As my friend and colleague Charlotte Thaarup-Owen, founder of the Mindfulness Clinic, puts it, ‘Mindfulness practice enables us to gradually learn to use the mind just as a tool, rather than as a tool and an obstacle. Our past conditioning embedded in our mind often gets in our way and causes us to make poor decisions. Mindfulness trains the mind to become present so that we can greet every experience with wisdom and freshness and start responding instead of reacting.'