Recently I had a post go viral. It was Adam Leipzig’s insightful TED talk, “How to know your life purpose in 5 minutes.”
I watched LinkedIn as my post began to trend. First a couple of thousand people viewed my post. Then, in the days after I posted the link, it reached almost 50K views. I kept asking myself, “Why have almost 15 million people taken the time to click on this TED talk, when there are now millions of other videos to watch?”
It didn’t take me long to come up with an answer.
People want to have meaning in their lives. They want to have passion not just with their partners, but also with themselves. This desire for passion is there whether they are working as a technician in a lab, are functioning as an HR director, or serve as the CEO of their company. People want to know they’ve taken the right road on their life’s journey.
The next obvious question is, how do you know when you’re on the right path?
This involves making the time for just a bit of quiet. You need to be able to hear what may only be a whisper telling you what to do next.
Yes, this is going to require you boldly take some action and pause for even five minutes today to make yourself a priority.
To just sit and not to plan. To sit just to sit. Noticing the weight of your body evenly distributed on a solid base. Feeling the sensations where your body is making contact with the chair, and not wanting it to be any different than how you find it. And when your mind wanders as it surely will, just escorting it back to the sensations you’re feeling by sitting.
Yes, even the Harvard Business Review agrees that, “The Busier You Are, the More You Need Quiet Time.”
“Cultivating silence, as Hal Gregersen writes in a recent HBR article, “increase[s] your chances of encountering novel ideas and information and discerning weak signals.” When we’re constantly fixated on the verbal agenda—what to say next, what to write next, what to tweet next—it’s tough to make room for truly different perspectives or radically new ideas. It’s hard to drop into deeper modes of listening and attention. And it’s in those deeper modes of attention that truly novel ideas are found.”
It all comes back to Mindfulness, and paying attention to our thoughts, body sensations and mood in a non-judgmental way. This practice will give you the space right now to be able to hear the next steps you need to take as your life is quietly calling out to you. You don’t want to miss hearing it!
How can you help your team find meaning in their work, in their personal life?
(And perhaps you are asking, can you help your team? The answer to this is ‘yes’!)
Harriet provides actionable results when working with groups of all sizes – she guides employees and provides tools so they can incorporate Mindfulness into their lives. This translates to improved performance on the job and a demonstrated ROI.
This is an investment you won’t want to pass by. Contact Harriet for more information on customized options for your organization.
PHOTO CREDIT of Heart: Steve Halama on Unsplash
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