By Josephine McGrail
Josephine McGrail explores how mindfulness can transform leadership by helping individuals return to presence, clarity, and compassion. When practiced with intention, mindfulness becomes more than a wellness trend—it becomes a necessary response to uncertainty, offering grounded insight and resilience in how we lead and live.
We live in an extremely complex and fast moving world. We are constantly faced by challenges from the world’s economy, health and climate. We are ever changing people in an ever changing world – and most changes are entirely out of our control.
Yet we live life with the firm desire to try and keep things steady, predictable and most importantly: preferable. We want things to go our way. However, this we know for sure: In an ever expanding universe the only constant is change.
The most odd and complex concept is at play here: We know it yet we defy it – always pushing against the changes when they (naturally!) occur.
Often we find ourselves stuck on the idea of why something happened, and what could have been. Or struggling anxiously to predict the future and the worries we might attach to outcomes.
What we dismiss persists – understanding stress
Here is another fact we know: stress happens when we are disappointed about the past or anxious about the future i.e. when we resist the changes we face. When this happens, we are committed only to what we want and we think we know better than life itself. We refuse to let go of the mindset that is keeping us stuck in the stress cycle – like the gorilla who sits with his arm inside the tree trunk, clinging to the banana that is keeping him stuck.
To let go of the “monkey mind” and no longer be “imprisoned” by it is to realise that everything is just a thought – and a thought can and will change.
This is where mindfulness can help. It all begins if we courageously decide to give this ancient practice a go. Not because it’s “trendy”, not because HR is asking us to add it as a wellness factor to our brand, not because we need to heighten our productivity in an ever increasing competitive market, but because we have finally reached a point where we are ready and willing to let go of the banana.
We must be willing to let go of the illusion of controlling outcomes and return to the one thing we can control – our own inner world, our culture, our values and our shared destiny as a company and a community.
We can read all the statistics, have all the examples and yet nothing will change until we personally decide to commit to leading from a different and more human approach. Sadly most of us keep on going as we have always done and secretly expect a different outcome. Einstein called that insanity.
Your business and the people that are impacted by it are about so much more than what can be measured in pounds. In this very moment, you hold the key to creating a new reality – a beautiful, bountiful reality where truth, justice kindness and creativity are at the forefront. Where peacefulness occurs naturally from bonding and connecting with fellow humans and where arriving home from the office early on a Monday is a common occurrence.
What would make you decide to change direction and commit to a new way of not only doing, but being? Take a moment to get clear on what would need to happen in order for you to commit, because until you do nothing will or can shift. The physical, mental, emotional and economic health of your teams, family, friends and wider communities depends on it.
Returning to zero
Practising mindfulness, whether as a personal way of being or engaging in group sessions, has immediate benefits. By using breathing as a guide we are immediately brought back into a state where we can feel a sense of being in our body. By focusing on our breath (the quality, the sensation, the temperature of it) we drop from head into heart and body. We remember our point zero – common ground – where we all come from and all shall return to. We remember our humanness.
Once in touch with our own sense of sensibility (and fragility!) even just by noticing our own heart beat we are immediately more aware and compassionate of others. We automatically enter a world where we consciously consider each other.
All conflict starts from a sense of perceived isolation -them against me and vice versa. The state and being of the ego which is always fearful, always looking out for risks and always trying to keep us “safe” by keeping “the dangerous out”.
When operating under constant stress, we are in the sympathetic state of our autonomic nervous system. This means we are constantly on edge scanning the environment for threats. Safe to say this is not a very conducive place for creativity, agility or resilience – all qualities that we as leaders as well as team members strive to operate from.
Mindfulness has the ability to rescue the nervous system -and save millions. Mindfulness meditation soothes the automatic nervous system and brings balance back so you naturally operate between sympathetic (adrenaline inducing “up and go” freeze/fight/flight mode) and para sympathetic (melantonin inducing deeply relaxing and restoring “rest & digest” mode).
Mindfulness is the tonic your nervous system as well as your business needs. It is helpful when everything is going well and everyone is hitting and exceeding goal after goal, and it is here when things like covid happens and the world feels like it is falling apart.
The best thing though is that it is completely free to learn and practice – and if you want it, it is yours for life.
Josephine McGrail
