Leadership & Mindfulness - Mobius Executive Leadership

LEADERSHIP & MindfulnessThe Serene SubwayClose your eyes. Imagine your spineis a tube of pure white light. Imaginethe light glows brighter and moreintense. The light represents healingand clarity.Summary of the eight lawsof meditationThe Eight Laws allow you to transformeffort to effortlessness, to powerthrough difficulties with ease, and tomultiply the amount of calm in yourlife. Remember them before startingeach meditation.You Are Effortless 1 Relax2 Be Playful3 Be Gentle4 Open BodyYou Build Calm 5 Use Attention toFocus on CalmYou Deepen Calm 6 RepetitionYou Maintain Calm 7 The ChainAnalogyYou Find CalmEverywhere 8 Hidden GemsSUPER BUSY: THE UPSIDEHere’s the good news. Busy peopleuse the same skills to create successthat the Dalai Lama uses tomeditate. That’s why busy peopleare the perfect students to learnmeditation. Let me give you someexamples.Successful people have the capacityto focus. One of the mostimportant, if not the most important,skills that underpin thegreatest meditation practices(vipassana, mantra, breath, concentration,and contemplation) isthe ability to focus. When the DalaiLama repeats a mantra, or places hisattention on the space between hiseyebrows (or third eye), or focuseson his heart, he uses the amazingpower of focus.In the same way, the Super Busyknow all about narrowing their focusonto one topic; whether that personis a lawyer preparing for a case or acurrency trader focusing on the Reutersscreen, the outside world andall distracting issues are ignored.The currency trader blocks out alldistractions and secondary priorities—thedesire to phone his wife,start planning a family holiday, talkto his friends, read the paper, finishhis tax return, talk to his staff. All ofthese worthy priorities are put aside.It’s exactly the same skill the DalaiLama uses.The only difference is that theyfocus on different things—the lawyeron his case, the currency trader onthe markets, the Dalai Lama on hismantra, third eye, and heart. All cankeep their attention tightly focusedregardless of distractions.So powerful is the capacity tofocus that if there is only one thingyou learn from this book, let it be theawesome power of mastering yourattention.Successful people can do twothings at once. Most of us can talkon the phone and check our email.We can “split” our attention. We candrive a car and mentally run throughlists of tasks for today. Nearly all ofus can walk down the street and betotally lost in stressful thoughts. Wecan be talking to someone, listeningto that person’s conversation,and be focusing on our own train ofthoughts. This capacity to split ourattention on two things at once canbe used to profound ends.The Dalai Lama and all great masterskeep part of their attention ontheir center. For example, you canwalk down the street and have part ofyour attention on the ocean of calmrather than stressful thoughts. Youcan talk on your cell and have part ofyour attention on your heart, and sobuild up the quality of heart energy.You can check your PDA and havepart of your attention on masteringyour breathing as a way to still themind.Attention is lightning fast, automatic,and instant; it all depends onwhat you use it for.Successful people overcomechallenges. Successful people thriveand grow through challenge, makingthem perfect candidates for masteringmeditation.Meditation masters are mastersbecause they overcome the obstaclesand challenges in meditation in spiteof distracting thoughts, or feelingsof frustration. Meditation mastersrecognize that these obstacles willnot master them. Great meditatorsare those who stick to the practiceregardless of the challenges and hurdlesthey face.“There is no enlightenmentoutside of daily life.”THICH NHAT HANHSuccessful people mastersubtlety. At peak performance,superior athletes understand thecritical importance of subtlety. Letme give you an example. The SwedishWinter Olympic team returnedhome with zero medals from the1998 Winter Olympics. They calculatedthat if they had improvedtheir performances by 5 percentthey would have won the majorityof the medals. Small changes makebig results.Meditation masters are obsessedwith subtle movements. They focustheir attention on subtle shifts intheir breath to see how present theyare. They are obsessed with smallshifts in body posture as an indicatorof how present they are.www.mobiusleadership.com | Mobius Executive Leadership 19