Most people believe that mindfulness is just a process where one meditates and thinks happy thoughts. To some degree, that is true, but this depends on your mindfulness strategy. Today I want to share with you the next step in my mindfulness strategy to take it one step further.
Although there are hugely popular and successful people who practice mindfulness, what I am curious about is where practicing mindfulness can benefit the everyday leader. The aspiring, seasoned or expert leader who everyday has to deal with a multitude of problems, decisions and people. Therefore, in this five-part series I will be discussing five areas of mindfulness and exploring benefits to leadership behaviours. Part one covered the first two areas: Self-awareness & Gratitude. Part two explained the second area: Visualising. With Part three I will move on to the next area, which is one I incorporate as part of my daily routine: Unconscious awareness
Also, as a bonus to those who read the entire five-part series, I will build and share a mindfulness focus routine so that by the end of the series you will understand fully how easily you can adopt it into your life and leadership journey.
Why?
We all have two forms of thoughts, internal and external. Internal thoughts are the ones in which we think a thought, sometimes a bad thought, but we internalise it. We do not communicate this thought with anyone else. External thoughts are the opposite, these are thoughts that are externally communicated to others. The one I really want to focus on here is the internal thoughts – side note: the way you deal with externally communicating thoughts can determine your level of Emotional Intelligence as a leader.
I want you to imagine this scenario, you are the leader of a team and your boss tells you that a new person, who we’ll called Maria, is joining your team. You didn’t interview Maria and have no idea what she is like. When Maria arrives you greet her and introduce her to the team, you know, the usual induction stuff. However, when you met Maria you immediately thought to yourself, so internally, that she isn’t very presentable. You internalise this thought.
Later in the day, this thought pops up again, but this time develops into more than just a passing thought. You build on the fact that because Maria isn’t presentable, maybe she won’t be good at her job and maybe she won’t fit in to the team. You speak to her later and unconsciously give her a cold attitude. Maria has no idea what she did wrong.
What our brain is designed to do in almost every situation is to look to protect us. Our brain sparks thoughts based on what we see, hear, feel, smell and goes into protection mode. Often these are negative thoughts which don’t necessarily apply in todays society. What happened in this scenario is that you allowed your internal negative thoughts to run wild unconsciously without you being aware of them. These unconscious thoughts then controlled you actions, creating a negative outcome. If you have been following my work then you know that a leadership responsibility is to create positive outcomes, and allowing unconscious internal thoughts to drive your actions does not allow you, a leader, to do that.
Now imagine this for the exact same scenario, but this time when that negative internal thought pops up regarding Maria’s presentation, you focus on that thought and override it. You consciously decide that no, her presentation has nothing to do with her ability to do her job or fit in with the team, and actually, that thought is your opinion entirely. The thought fades away, you speak to Maria later and all is well. You start to develop a relationship with her. That is the difference between being aware of your conscious thoughts or not.
How?
So how do you get to the stage of controlling your unconscious thoughts? When I went through this process I was in a similar position to above. I would have a range of negative and positive thoughts, but I’d often let the former linger and the latter wonder.
What I found is that the key here is that I need to make two elements a priority in order to make my unconscious thoughts conscious so that I could take control of them:
- Presence
- Focus
For the exact reason I explained earlier, my brain is trying to protect me. So unconsciously my brain casts away the positive thoughts and allows the negative thoughts to linger and develop. This was allow my thoughts to go to pretty dark places. In order to take control I found that by being present in the moment allowed me to hear these thoughts. I would take a few moments in my routine to be present in that exact moment and suddenly I could start to hear the thoughts which then allowed me to focus on them.
As I practiced this I become quicker and quicker at it and for me, it almost felt as though my thoughts were a filing system where I could quickly focus on a thought and decide whether to cast it away, or to focus on it more. I become aware of my unconscious thoughts which gave me control.
What?
Step three in the mindfulness plan is to be present and focus in on your wondering thoughts. This allows to take control of the thoughts you allow to develop within your mind, so that you can make decisions based on conscious thoughts rather than being controlled by unconscious thoughts. Here are the steps to help you do that:
- Take a 2-3 minutes to just sit, close your eyes, take a few deep breaths and let your thoughts wonder
- Be present by bringing yourself back to your thoughts if you feel yourself thinking about other areas of your life, such as what you have to do when you get to work
- For positive thoughts, focus on that thought and understand why it makes you happy and develop the thought
- For negative thoughts, focus on that thought and consciously decide why that thought isn’t good for you, reframe the thought into a positive one and cast the negative thought away (note: at first this may take longer than 2-3 minutes)
- Take a deep breath, inhale then exhale and move on to the next step, part four: Happiness
Being aware of your unconscious thoughts is not in many mindfulness routines you may read, but this could be one of the most powerful steps as allowing negative thoughts to develop in your mind will take you to dark places. By thinking through those thoughts, casting them away and reframing them into positive thoughts will leave you feeling happier, in control and more motivated.
Continue the process with part four: Happiness.
Thank you for reading, JT.
Want to take your leadership to the next level? Buy my book on Amazon here.