Mind Full or Mindful?

Mind Full or Mindful?

“Mindfulness means paying attention to what’s happening in the present moment, in the mind, body and external environment, with an attitude of curiosity and kindness”

-          Mindful Nation UK Report

 

Few days back, I attended a 5 day Mindfulness Retreat at a place called Dharamshala, in Himachal Pradesh. The place is located at the foot hills of the Himalayan Mountain range. It is a splendid place with awesome beauty of the magnificent snow capped mountains, waterfalls and water streams criss-crossing the small town. It is the place, where the famous Dalai Lama, lives too.

 

It was such a delight that a programme on “Mindfulness” was conducted at such an enthralling location. The programme was titled SMILE which is an acronym for “Shine with Mindfulness Inspired Leadership and Emotional Intelligence”.

 

I was curious to understand how mindfulness is related to Emotional Intelligence and Leadership. The programme made me realise the importance of mindfulness, in more ways than I imagined. I realised that Emotional Intelligence is the foundation of good Leadership and Mindfulness is the foundation for Emotional Intelligence. So, Mindfulness is the bedrock of being an effective leader. Emotional Intelligence consists of the building blocks of Self Awareness, Self Management, Motivation, Empathy and Compassion. And all these essential qualities can be acquired in the form of skill, if we can embrace Mindfulness.

 

We are living in a world of high stress, high distraction and high expectations and we are constantly trying hard to accomplish our tasks and achieve our goals, by putting more and more hours of time, but ultimately end off dejected, as everything seems to be a moving target.

 

So, how can mindfulness help? Here are some benefits, stated by mindfulness practitioners and experts. Mindfulness helps to:

• Reduce Stress

• Increase Focus

• Improve Emotion Control

• Increase Empathy and Respect

• Increase Resilience

• Improve Physical Well being

• Improve Creativity

• Enhance Collaborative spirit

So, the question to you now: How Mindful are you? Mindfulness calls for conscious and consistent practice. Are you willing to give it a try?

Is not the list tempting enough to bring Mindfulness to your life? So, how does mindfulness help us to achieve these? There are several mindfulness practices and techniques, that can be used. There were various tools discussed that can help someone to bring mindfulness to practice. I have shared a few of them as a separate article in this issue, under the topic “Mindfulness Practices”

 

So, what does mindfulness advocate? Mindfulness teaches us to “Think Less” which is quite opposite to the popular belief that people who think more, achieve more. Mindfulness believes in reducing the quantity of thoughts and instead focuses on the quality of thoughts. On an average human mind produces over 60,000 thoughts, out of which 80% are unconscious and negative thoughts. Thoughts are like soap bubbles and soon pop off. So, it is only a few thoughts that really matters to us. The differentiating factor between successful people and unsuccessful people lies in the quality of concentration.

 

Mindfulness discourages multi-tasking. It believes that if we have to do a quality work, there should be a singled minded focus on the task.

 

Mindfulness asks us to stay away from the many distractions that surround us and steal away our valuable time.

 

 D. Senthil Kannan,

  Managing Trustee, PALMS, Tuticorin.

  Author of "Transformational Thoughts" - A Journey of learning 

  Email: senthilkannand@gmail.com