Would you like to make better decisions?
Have healthier relationships with co-workers, family, and friends?
Lower your stress and blood pressure?
Remain more focused in this very distracting world we navigate each day?
If you answered “yes” to any of these, then I encourage you to check out Laurie Cameron’s book, The Mindful Day.
Laurie is a former consultant with Accenture and has held various corporate job’s in leadership development. She is now Founder of PurposeBlue, a consulting firm which provides mindfulness training for various clients across the globe. We have been fortunate enough to have her as a guest speaker with our Executive MBAs at the University of Maryland for the past six years.
What I especially appreciate about the book is that it provides a wide variety of suggested activities that can help us “train our brains” to become more focused, calm, and aware in the moment. While meditation is certainly one aspect of how one can develop mindfulness, Laurie suggests a number of other activities. Here are some examples:
*Create a positive morning routine for yourself that gets you off to a good start. This can be different for each person. Maybe it is a short reading or uplifting music, for example.
*Slow down your texting and emailing. Give yourself time to review and rethink. We are all incredibly busy, but giving yourself just a few more moments with each message can help assure you are on point.
*Banish multitasking. We really cannot multitask. The best we can do is task-switching – which takes a lot of energy. You will actually have more time in your day if you block out periods to just focus on one thing at a time.
*End your work day with at least a few minutes of quiet time to reflect on the day. It sounds impossible, given how rushed we usually are. But taking at least a few minutes to reflect, appreciate the day, and then mindfully prepare for our transition home can be very positive.
There are tons of additional ideas in the book and I encourage you to check it out. Being a mindful leader makes us more effective, healthier, and gives us a more fulfilled life.
