What Is Required For Your Company Right Now
As per previous blog post, lets just say that we were to accept Angeles Arriens conclusion that what all great leaders do regardless of culture or circumstance are the following four steps:
Show up and choose to be present (Warrior)
Pay attention to what has heart and meaning (Healer)
Tell the truth without blame or judgment (Visionary)
Be open to outcome, not attached to outcome (Teacher)
I thought it might be helpful to discuss each step in turn. So today we will focus on: Show up and choose to be present.
There are 3 pieces of this seemingly very simple statement. First, show up.
Woody Allen once said that that 80 percent of life is showing up. At first, I was skeptical but now having essentially been out in the work world for over 30 years (!) I think it is dead right. There are days that just getting out of bed, getting breakfast on the table, the dog walked and showing up to work with matching shoes is an accomplishment. Every goal is reached by putting one foot in front of the other, by showing up and taking action day after day after day. Despite tedium, exhaustion, confusion, distraction, anger, resentment, whatever it is that makes you want to fly off to a deserted island and never come back.
Which brings us the second piece: choose. We can always make a choice to pay attention. It is so easy to go unconscious in the hustle and bustle of daily life, to forget that we can choose not to lose focus, to think that something is more important than what is in front of us right now.
And, finally the third piece: be present. I chose the picture of the Cheetah because animals are always utterly present and they are good role models for us in that way. One way to get better at being present is to practice mindfulness.
The practice of mindfulness has been shown to reduce stress and anxiety, but it also helps us to pay attention to what is happening right here and now.
I will, for our purposes, define mindfulness as: The self-regulation of attention so that it is maintained on immediate experience, thereby allowing for increased recognition of mental events in the present moment and adopting an orientation that is characterized by curiosity, openness, and acceptance. *
There is no big secret to practicing mindfulness. You can simply stop a couple of times a day and ask yourself the questions:
Where am I?
What is going on?
Who am I with?
How do I feel?
What is required of me right now?
All the other thoughts that buzz through your mind like a fly in the room are not relevant and you can swat them away exactly as you would a fly.