Mindfulness and happiness are often linked because people who practice mindfulness often say that they are happier? However, why is that and can that help you in leadership?
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. Part three captured Unconscious Awareness. With Part four I will move on to the next area, which is one I incorporate as part of my routine: Happiness.
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?
I want you to imagine a child (could be your child) who is having their 2nd birthday. On the day they receive ten presents which vary from big toy houses, a fancy motorised car, dolls and more. You, the parent, help your child open these presents which they pick up and put back down. Later, you find your child, as happy as you’ve ever seen a child, playing with the wrapping paper.
Your child, who doesn’t really understand the concept of a birthday yet, had no idea what they were receive or what these toys are (because they are still in the boxes). Your child had no expectation of what they were getting so when they got the wrapping paper they were over the moon!
According to a study on well-being [1], the level “Happiness depends not on how well things are going but whether things are going better or worse than expected.” Expectation destroys happiness.
I want you to now imagine this scenario with your child. Five years later, after many birthdays where your child had be showered with gifts and they fully grasps the concept that birthdays = presents, it is there 8th birthday. However, this time things are different. Your family deciding to move country and you are yet surrounding by many friends and family. You have a small birthday with your immediate family and your child only receives one gift. They are upset and have had the worst birthday ever!
Of course, they haven’t. They are surrounded by loving parents, but because your child has this high expectation of what a birthday means, they have directly linked that expectation (presents) to happiness. So when they didn’t receive all those presents, they were “unhappy”.
This happens every day in our lives, from: expecting too much from a husband/ wife, expecting too much from a restaurant or movie, or expecting too much from that cheap knockoff purse you bought. In short, happiness and expectation are directly linked.
Therefore, in order to increase your general level of happiness you need to lower your general level of expectations, i.e. lower expectation = lower risk of disappointment. However, this only works in scenarios where your happiness is linked to an expectation which is dependent of others, for example, the birthday scenario. This same method of lowering your level of expectation doesn’t work so well if your expectation is dependent on you.
Take for example, you want a promotion in the company you love and career you’re passionate about. You know that this job has a better salary and better perks to give you more control and freedom. If you apply the same method of lower expectations to lower disappoint you won’t push as hard personally to do what’s required to earn the promotion. You’ll think, “Oh well, I’ll go for it and if I don’t get it I don’t get it”. What ends up happening is that you don’t put enough effort in and you don’t get the promotion. You don’t get more control and more freedom which leads to you being unhappy with your situation.
Now imagine a situation where you have a high expectation of personal achievement for yourself. You expect that you will only do the best that you can and they if you fail personally you will hold yourself accountable. Your promotion situation has two outcomes:
- You do your best and get it, celebration time!
- You do your best and don’t get it.
But this time, instead of saying “oh well”, you hold yourself accountable and say, “Well, maybe this isn’t the right time in the company, let me look elsewhere”. You try even harder next time and get it!
Where expectation is dependent on others, keep it low.
Where expectation is dependent on you, keep it high.
How?
So how do to get to a point in your mindfulness routine where you can lower your expectations of others and keep expectations of yourself high? How do you find a healthy balance? When I went through this process I was in a similar position to above. I would be constantly disappointed because situations didn’t have the outcome I expected them to have, but I was fortunate that I always had high expectation of myself to achieve a goal. So I had to find a way to lower my expectations, but keep mine high. Difficult, but not impossible.
What I found is that the key here is that I need to make two elements a priority in order to achieve this balance:
- Focus on the moment
- Hold myself accountable
Where I needed to lower my expectations of others, I would focus my mind to what was upcoming on that day, for example a dinner party for my wife’s birthday. I would then think of possible things that I would expect to happen in order to make me happy, for example:
- People turn up on time
- People don’t show up empty handed
- People don’t say statements to upset other people
I would then acknowledge and accept that those kind of events were outside of my control, so I would make a conscious decision to focus on the moment by being present. If I focused my energy to the moment rather than things outside of my control I was able to lower my expectation of outcomes and be present to enjoy the moment, no matter what happened. Obviously, sometimes drastic things happen which affect happiness which are out of your control. I found the best thing to do here is just accept that it has happened and talk to a trusted person about what happened.
As I said earlier, I have been fortunate to be someone who has always had high personal expectations, but I had to find a balance. To do this I would identify the actions in my day which were within my control. I would focus my mind and use affirmations to remind myself that my decisions and actions shape my reality, no one, but me, is accountable for my actions. This gave me a sense of motivated drive and the understanding that certain actions were within and outside of my realm of control allowed me to find a balance.
How can this help you as leader?
To simply this explanation, as a leader you have two key roles:
- Guide, coach and influence other people
- Be the person people look to for direction and inspiration
Looking at the first part, as a leader, you will often face scenarios where you will provide guidance, coach people and utilise influence to create positive outcomes, but the outcome just isn’t what you expected.
If you consistently let high expectations of other people control your happiness, over time you will face many disappointments. These disappointments, experienced time and time again, will cause unhappiness in your role as a leader. Additionally, you may face negative consequences such as: stress, burnout, depression, or result in you leaving the role.
By lowering your expectation of others you reduce the risk of this happening, but you must consistently have a high expectation of yourself to be a leader who, now looking at the second part, is the person others look towards for direction and inspiration. Having this balance will allow you to stay committed to challenging role of leadership whilst being able to reap personal and collective results.
What?
Step four in the mindfulness plan is to find a balance between lower expectations of others and higher expectation of yourself. This allows you to be able to focus on the moment and be accountable for your actions. Here are the steps to help you do that:
- Take a few minutes to just sit, close your eyes, take a few deep breaths and focus your thoughts to what is happening in your day
- Part One: Lower expectation of others
- First identify the thoughts that would result in you having a high expectation of others
- Acknowledge that these are outside of your control and that no matter what happens you trying to predict an outcome will result in unhappiness.
- Let go of your ego in this process, relinquish control and relieve yourself of the expectation of these thoughts taking place.
- Part Two: Increasing the expectation of yourself
- Identify the actions in your day when you a responsible for the outcome
- Acknowledge that you are responsible for the outcome
- Affirm to yourself “my decisions shape my reality. I am accountable for my actions”
- Affirm to yourself “I will strive to be the best version of myself”
- Take a deep breath, inhale and exhale.
This is not a solution to being indefinitely happy in a position of leadership, but by managing your levels of expectation you spend less time being disappointed, and more time being the leader you want to be. By finding this balance you will also see a general increase in your levels of happiness and also your drive and motivation to better yourself. This step is key in becoming a better leader and also steps forward in your personal development.
Continue the process by learning step five in the mindfulness routine: Control.
Thank you for reading, JT
References
- [1] Rutledge, R., Skandali, N., Dayan, P. and Dolan, R.J. (2014). A computational and neural model of momentary subjective well-being. Available at: https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/07/31/1407535111.abstract?sid=f5370547-398d-4317-af5e-0026adb31e03