GOT MINDFULNESS?

Bess GallanisPresented at Ignite ChicagoFebruary 6, 2012

Got mindfulness?

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PRESENCE IS MY PRACTICE

Let’s dial down the energy a little and get our technology distractions out of the way.

Send that text.

Refresh your email.

Update your Facebook page.

Good. Now, close your eyes and take a nice, deep inhale and let it go.

The great opportunity of our time is to harness our inner technology … to learn to fully optimize nature’s most powerful operating system: the human mind.

Bess Gallanis. All rights reserved. 2012

Photo by Justin Barbin

PRESENCE IS HIS PRACTICEOne of my personal heroes, Chicago’s favorite son NBA basketball coach Phil Jackson, says “. . . to have your best performance, you have to be relaxed.”

I’m not going to argue with a man who ran out of fingers to wear his championship rings.1

Coach Jackson is famous for two revolutionary coaching techniques: the triangle offense and mindfulness training.

The parallel here is this: in our interdependent world of work, family, life and love, technical skill will get you only so far.

There is another half to the performance equation and that’s what we’re here to explore.

1 Basketball coach Phil Jackson, the NBA championship record holder with 11 wins.

Bess Gallanis. All rights reserved. 2012 3

ATTENTION INTERRUPTUS

Our greatest challenge as knowledge workers isn’t time management, but attention management.

We know that a clear and focused mind is essential to peak performance, yet you – all of us here tonight -- live in a state of continual partial attention.2

When you multi task, you’re attention is a mile wide and a millimeter deep.

Attention interruptus is a variation on the theme. If you are not interrupted by yet another incoming email, instant message or Tweet, you will interrupt yourself.

Whatever you want to call it, multi –tasking equals lost productivity, leading to anxiety, leading to stress.

2 Linda Stone


CRASH AND BURNStress is the result of too much distress from your environment. Everyone has their unique stress threshold and when you’ve reached your limit, the input overwhelms your physical, mental and emotional capacity.

Your blood rushes from your brain and into your limbs to fuel the fight or flight response. Your adrenal glands release hormones of mass brain destruction. Ergo, stress.

The Medieval origin of the word stress is to draw asunder and tear apart. Your brain on stress is in a frenzy.

Under stress, your capacity for self control plummets. Mistakes are more likely and poor communication is a given. Your problem solving ability flies out the window – because it’s been torn asunder.

Spend too much time in metabolic over drive and you get ... crash and burn.



GOT MINDFULNESS?It was my own crash and burn that led me from my yoga mat and meditation cushion into an executive leadership program at an elite business school.

Our first assignment: meditate for 20 minutes

While most leadership programs focus on tactical skills, this program focused on developing personal awareness and mastery of one’s inner life.

I quickly learned that leadership is an insight job. From grade schools to elite graduate schools, from the US military to members of Congress, people are practicing mindfulness to enhance their self-awareness, to learn how to quickly transition their focus, to detect and rescript negative thinking, to develop resilience and to recover more quickly from stress and emotional events.

THE POWER OF PRESENCEa way of paying attention

How you manage your attention today influences your life tomorrow.

At any given moment look at where you mind is at. It’s either fretting over the past or fantasizing about the future.

Mindfulness is the skill of keeping your attention focused in the present and on your experience of the present moment.

It is the mental discipline of systematic self observation and self-awarenes.


CHANGE YOUR VIEWself observationMindfulness won’t change the world, but it can change your world.

Numerous studies have documented the benefits of mindfulness practice to reduce stress, increase self control and promote more perceptive body/mind awareness.

Mindfulness turns your gaze inward, toward your self. From this insight, you can act with intention to your thoughts and emotions rather than react without thinking.

Through this systematic process, it’s possible to improve your well being and your performance.


DEVELOP RESILIENCEresponse (ability)A day filled with stress, ambiguity and change sounds like white water to me.

You start the day headed in one direction, it takes a turn and before you know it, events are moving in the opposite direction – and fast. Your body churns with stress and your mind struggles to focus.

This is your fork in the river: do you resist, react or respond with intention?

Mindfulness equips you with the tools to navigate the changes and challenges of your day – in real time.

The more you work at it, the more you expand your capacity for stress, change and ambiguity.

Building these capacities is called resilience.


IMPROVE YOUR FOCUSmindful flowIf you stopped to think about, you would realize how much of your mindspace is occupied by a spontaneous stream of thoughts. We make a countless number of choices and decisions from autopilot mode.

Practicing mindfulness helps you build up the resources and self control to resist distractions, to better sort the signal from the noise in your daily interactions and to manage your emotions and responses to the daily flow of stuff.

Focus becomes less a struggle and more about getting into the flow.



EASY BUT NOT SIMPLEnothing to loseThe only thing standing between chaos and calm in your life are a few tools, including how to relate to yourself, your experiences and other people through mindfulness.

You have every reason to give mindfulness a try.

You won’t have to eat, drink or smoke anything.

You won’t give up carbs or meat.

You won’t even work up a sweat.

You have nothing to lose but a few distractions … and a lot of stress.

As Einstein said, “. . . everything should be as simple as possible, but not simpler.”

So here I offer you a simple, but not easy, introduction to mindfulness.


BREATHE DEEPLYEveryone take a deep breath.

Again.

Inhale deeply. . . let it go.

I bet you feel better already.

Breathing is the killer app of personal and professional performance.

Your breath is the tool you can use to make sure you have a secure connection to your inner technologies – your body, your emotions, your thought and your actions.

Do this for five minutes every day: Concentrate fully on your breathing and nothing else.

Your blood pressure will drop. Your arousal threshold will drop. You will be more calm.

When you are calmer, you make better decisions.


MIND AND BODY CONNECTIONWe think of our mind and body as separate.

Your head is up here, and it carries around your brain and your thoughts and your eyes that see the world from on high. Your body is located below and it just all seems disconnected.

The reality: mind and body are an integrated system. Your body holds information and when you listen it will reveal its intelligence. It’s language is physical sensation.

Most of us are familiar with the downside of this integrated circuitry. Stress pools in places like lower backs, necks and shoulders.

There are upsides, however. Your gut contains an extensive network of nerves that communicate with the brain. Scientists call is the second brain. Performers call is stage fright. Others call it gut instinct.


EMOTIONS HAVE FEELINGS TOOThink about this: when you are in the grip of an intense emotional experience – love, anger, frustration – what do you feel?

That’s right! We experience emotions as bodily feelings. Remember, the mind and body are an integrated system.

The truth is this: when you give your full, mindful attention to the emotion, when you yield to the feeling of the emotion, look at it, observe it, let it roll over you – it loses its hold on you.

This pause creates the space you need to consider a response rather than a reaction to your emotion.


A MIND OF ITS OWN“Of all the liars in the world, sometimes the worst is your mind and its fears.”

Thank you Rudyard Kipling for pointing out that our minds have a mind of their own. Pay attention to your thought stream for a few minutes and you will notice how much of your thinking is automatic. Your intellectual mind applies labels and assumptions to your experience without challenge – or even a second thought.

Mindfulness keeps you focused on the experience – without labeling things, judging the experience as good or bad, or judging yourself. This is what Buddhists call ‘beginner’s mind.’

When you let go of all your intellectual thinking, ideas are no longer good or bad. They’re just ideas. Absent judgmental thoughts, you may see how much novelty surrounds you.


CONTROL YOUR CHOICESThe more you practice paying mindful attention, the more control you have over your choices.

And who in this room wouldn’t choose more:

Calm and creativity.

Passion and productivity.

Love and laughs.

More mindfulness.

Namaste, metta, peace!

BESS GALLANIS INC.WWW.BESSGALLANISINC.COM312.659.7572

Bess Gallanis is the founder of Speaking with Power and Persuasion, an award winning ‐corporate communication and executive communications coaching firm.

She prepares senior executives, crisis teams, professionals, business owners and start-up founders for high visibility, high impact communication events – investor presentations, media interviews, keynote speeches, sensitive conversations, employee engagement, personal branding, thought leadership and ideas-driven conference presentations.

Recognizing that wellness is a leadership issue, Bess challenges business executives to think differently about the role that mental, physical, emotional and spiritual resources play in their communication skills and professional performance.

Got mindfulness?

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GOT MINDFULNESS?