3 Ways Corporate Leaders can use Mindfulness as a Career Growth Accelerator

Hello friend! 👋

Let’s talk about this pretty beat-up topic.

First,

Mindfulness is not therapy.

While the popularity of mindfulness in the past two decades has helped spread the word to many different people and cultures, such popularity always comes at a cost.

In this regard, the cost is misconceptions that down play the true benefits.

Misconceptions like thinking that mindfulness “slows you down” or that it is “a self-administered spa treatment”.

While mindfulness does have therapeutic outcomes, it is a lot more powerful and profound than that.

Being a Director, in a Fortune-100 company, based in the busy and ambitious city of Dubai, means I have three very demanding environments to deal with every day.

Mindfulness has offered me the opportunity to effectively engage in this environment in order to thrive, not just survive.

In this article I aim to share three ways mindfulness shows up as a growth multiplier.

Let’s dive straight in!

❌ Boundaries or Burnout

Our growth lies right outside our comfort zone, we all know that.

How many of us can recall challenging times we went through that helped us emerge stronger and more capable?

This level of stress (known as eustress) is beneficial, and I would argue is essential, if we want to grow and achieve our potential.

However, the tendency for continuous growth in a highly demanding environment can easily overshoot from manageable discomfort to overwhelm.

When overwhelmed we do not only damage ourselves physiologically and psychologically, we tend to damage those around us as well.

This can have a significant (negative) impact on the collective culture of the workplace as a whole.

This is where mindfulness plays a paramount role in helping indicate and recognize when we are operating in the zone of overwhelm.

When I check-in with myself daily, and be present throughout my moment-to-moment activities, I become familiar and aware of all the internal indicators that help me gauge and set my boundaries.

Growth outside comfort zone. Overwhelms beyond dusconformt- mindfulness helps recognize. Boundaries or burn out. Boundaries not limitation they're rules for the game - a tennis game is no funif it has no court and no score.

🤝 Leading Through Trust

Leadership is a complex, demanding, and rewarding characteristic.

Through my writing I try to simplify such complex concepts, in order to help people take an active role in starting and cultivating them.

One way to simplify leadership is to relate it to something we know very well – trust.

Trust is at the core of leadership. Self-leadership thrives in self-trust (confidence in self), and leading others only works on the basis of trust.

Trusting isn’t easy.

Trusting requires patience, emotional intelligence, support, and consistency in showing up.

One of the main pillars of mindfulness is emotional regulation – to understand that thoughts and emotions come and go without us having to unravel them.

Having the ability to be present moment-to-moment helps me prevent any over-reacting or auto-reacting, both of which can be detrimental to my relationships.

When I am aware of my auto-reacting systems, I become empowered to intentionally choose a more fitting response.

One that communicates patience, understanding, trust, and support.

Emotional regulation which helps build trust through patience. Leadership is nothing but trust. This is what builds confidence in the team and ignites creativity rather than fear (positive vs negative emotions with broad and narrow perspectives

💭 How Busy Is Your “Metaverse”?

I’ve been playing around with the idea in the title for a few days now, so I am happy I get to share it with you.

Hear me out.

The mind is a the most powerful intelligence hub we know of, everything in it (physically and metaphysically) is the basis of our most sophisticated inventions.

It is so powerful we can remember events from our childhood, and can visualize vividly events in the future that are yet to happen.

We can even convince others to visualize the exact same experience and create life-changing impact, like when Dr. King had a dream!

Each of us having our own, private, and personally developed metaverse.

This is the power of human civilizations, and what sets us apart from all other animals (tempted to continue, but will keep it at that 😊)

This powerhouse can help us advance individually, and can also be a major source of frustration.

How many of us spent hours in bed over-thinking? Whether before sleeping, after waking, or even in waking up in the middle of our sleep?

Through this powerful visualization engine we bring full-blown, stadium lit meetings right into our bed. Usually meetings we are anxious about, or conversations we find difficult.

That’s a recipe for a downward spiraling disaster – when even our ultimate place of comfort is not safe anymore.

There is a solution to avoiding this; psychologists call this our ability to exercise metacognition– the awareness that holds our thoughts.

Mindfulness itself is the exercise of this ability – the ability to see our thoughts, recognize we have the choice to disengage from them, and returning to being present to whatever activity we are meant to be present for.

When my mind is clouded by excessive overthinking, I lose clarity and peace of mind.

Mindfulness allows me to instead think clearly, when appropriate, and find effective solutions to what I’m trying to solve.

With that I want to pass the pen to you;

What is that one activity you can bring more presence to?

Can you visualize it?

Make a commitment to be present for it, starting today, and see this practice naturally overflow to other activities as you progress.

Have a Super Sunday!

With much joy,

Hashim

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Whenever you’re ready, here are 2 more ways I can help you:

1. Awareness Strengthening via Mindfulness Workshop: Sign up to the upcoming FREE 90-min workshop, to explore the science-backed benefits of mindfulness. The last one filled up in 2 days!

2. 1:1 Coaching: Book a free 30-min Coaching Discovery Call to explore the value of getting scientifically-proven Positive Psychology and Coaching Psychology frameworks that are tailored to your own journey to reach your goals. Let’s grow together! 💪