Global Institute of Organizational Coaching

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jim loehr

Coaching in Stillness, Mindfulness and Reflection

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Coaching in Stillness, Mindfulness and Reflection

 

It’s the beginning of the new year, which typically brings a time for reflection and assessment of the past year as well as planning for the new one.  Do you find yourself jumping right into setting goals and taking action or are you taking the time to listen to that small quiet voice inside that wants to guide some of the decisions?  Ryan Holiday, in “Stillness is the Key”  shares that there are several methods for quieting the mind; becoming present, limiting your inputs, emptying the mind, slowing down and thinking deeply, journaling, cultivating silence and letting go.  This blog will focus on a discussion of these ideas.

Becoming Present

Nancy Kline in “More Time to Think” shares that listening is a creative force.  In working with clients, the quiet between the question and the answer can often elicit information that was buried and is now unearthed.  I was talking with a client recently who shared that she didn’t realize she was feeling guilty about a past relationship until she was talking with a friend and it came up out of the blue. This form of listening either to our own quiet or the quiet that a coach or good friend allows, is not to uncover or discover to make a move, rather it is to go deeper into what can be rather than what is.

Emptying the Mind and Cultivating Silence

Dza Kilung Rinpoche in “The Relaxed Mind”  believes that it is in calming the mind that allows insights to emerge that guide us to our joys, happiness and also to know who we are.  It is in learning who we are that we can determine what’s important and what is not.  Until we differentiate between the important and unimportant, we make everything important and lose focus.  Returning our mind to a relaxed state of presence brings a clear and undisturbed view of our lives that leads to the nuggets of truth we need to move forward.

Limit Input

Shawn Achor, in “Before Happiness” calls excessive input noise.  Achor believes that noise is any information that is negative, false, unnecessary or prevents us from being able to reach our full potential.  He places noise in four categories; unusable, untimely, hypothetical, or distracting.  A skill for everyone to build is the ability to filter through all of the information we receive on a daily basis to determine what is factual, usable, timely and relevant.  How often do you evaluate the external noise in your life based upon these criteria?  How does the noise in your life prevent you from limiting input?  Achor contends that if we just reduce the noise by 5% we can be considerably more successful with the endeavors we are engaged in.

Our thinking can also be noisy and add to excessive input reducing our ability to calm the mind.  Do your noisy thoughts lead to positive thinking or negative thinking?  Wayne Dyer in “You’ll See It When You Will Believe It” proposes that many highly respected thinkers from an array of different disciplines subscribe to the belief that thought determines how our lives will go.  Our thoughts determine our emotional states.  To borrow from Jim Loehr’s writings in “The Power of Story” our thoughts lead us into our emotional states which are opportunity based or fear based with noise being fear based.  When I am coaching clients, one of the most difficult concepts to understand is the idea that we choose our own thoughts-they don’t just happen to us.  A major improvement in your life can happen when you are able to recognize how noise impacts your thoughts-particularly the negative ones.

Journaling

When many people think of journaling, they have the image of a teenage girl writing about her dreams or even Ann Frank who shared dire circumstances during WWII.  Ryan Holiday shares that many of the great leaders and thinkers journaled daily as a practice of reflection including Marcus Aurelius, John Quincy Adams, Ben Franklin, and Queen Victoria to name a few.  The quiet that occurs when we are journaling can lead to a deeper discovery of ourselves.  James Pennebaker, in “Opening Up by Writing It Down”  shares that just 15 minutes per day of writing can lead to deeper thinking.  Daily writing can also help you slow down, watch your mind, and hold yourself still.  Finally, journaling has health benefits that can lead to clearing your mind which include; releasing feelings and stress, increasing self-awareness, identification of emotional triggers, and letting go of unwanted thoughts.

Letting Go

Something we are never taught yet is one of the biggest struggles we face as humans is the need to let go.  Letting go of expectations about self and others and wanting things to be perfect can lead to acceptance of what is and ultimately the calm we desire.  In Brene Brown’s book “The Gifts of Imperfection”,  she invites us to let go of perfection and defines perfection as “the belief that if we live perfect, look perfect, and act perfect we can minimize or avoid the pain of blame, judgment and shame.”  Brown shares that perfectionism serves as a shield that we believe will protect us when in reality it keeps us from letting go.  When we engage in perfectionism, we need the approval of others in order to feel good about ourselves.  Letting go of perfectionism is one step towards calming the mind as we no longer energize a false sense of self.

Mindfulness

Mindfulness is being added as a practice that can grow stillness.  Williams and Penman in “Mindfulness: An Eight Week Plan for Finding Peace in a Frantic World”  share a few myths of what mindfulness is not in their book.  First, mindfulness is not a religion rather it is a way to train yourself mentally to calm the mind.  Second, it doesn’t require a specific position such as sitting cross-legged on pillows on the floor and can be done anywhere.  I have clients who practice it on planes.  Third, it does not require a specific amount of time.  However, it will require you to invest, persist, and demonstrate some degree of patience when building your mindfulness practice.  Fourth, it is not something you measure and give yourself a grade after doing as it is not something one is successful at or fails at doing. In fact, learning and growth can occur during every session.  Fifth, it doesn’t alter desire and/or drive for success, rather it allows you to see the world more clearly so that the actions you take align with what really matters to you.

This blog provided you with numerous tools that you can use to guide stillness, mindfulness and reflection as you move through 2022.  For a more in-depth discussion of stillness, please join Global IOC’s webinar and panel discussion on January 26 at Noon EST.  Zoom meeting link.

Fueling Your Body

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Most of us think about what we eat when we hear the concept “fueling” our bodies.  In fact, there are over 242,000,000 results for the topic of nutrition when researched on the internet.  Although fueling your body is about what is eaten, it is much more than that.  The concept takes in what you do on a physical, emotional, mental and spiritual level.  Fueling our bodies effectively is also a protective factor in resilience.  We can live more fully when we discover ways to fuel our bodies differently and commit to them.

Physical

The physical component of fueling your body is comprised of nutrition, exercise, sleep, and recovery.  Recovery is often overlooked because for many people it doesn’t resonate with care of the body.  Jim Loehr, in “The Power of Full Engagement” shares a  number of recovery rituals from moving away from your desk at lunch to eat and go for a walk to shutting down work at a specific time daily and committing to that time.  Other rituals can be as simple as taking time for deep breathing and meditation.  From a nutrition perspective, it is your responsibility to know your body including what foods energize it and which foods deplete your energy.  How often and how much you eat also factor into analyzing this aspect of fueling your body.  Tom Rath and Jim Harter in “Wellbeing” share “with every bite and drink we take, we make a choice.  We can select something that is net positive and benefits our health or we can choose something that is a net negative.”  This is a great way to evaluate your diet.  Next, physical exercise boosts energy levels and leads to significant increase in mood.  Finding the right exercise for you is key because if you like doing the exercise you are more likely to maintain a regular schedule with it.  Finally, we need 7-8 hours of sleep each evening.  Rath and Harter believe that sleep is our body’s way of hitting the reset button.  Most of the recent research shows that without sleep our bodies do not repair daily damage on a cellular level and our brains do not recover.  John Medina in “Brain Rules” shares that loss of sleep hurts attention, executive function, working memory, mood, quantitative skills, logical reasoning, and even motor dexterity.

Emotional
We fuel ourselves emotionally when we accept our feelings and learn how to manage them differently.  Marc Brackett in “Permission to Feel” shares that until the 1980’s emotions were widely viewed as noise and only got in the way of achievement and success.  He adds that when we suppress our feelings, they only get stronger.  Much of the work that came from Emotional Intelligence publications in the late 1990’s, including “Working with Emotional Intelligence” by Goleman suggested that self-awareness followed by emotion management was the key to addressing emotions.  Brackett has a counter-view to that perspective as he believes that labeling the emotion being felt is essential to successful regulation of the emotion.  He has a RULER technique that begins with Recognizing what is being felt, followed by Understanding what is being felt.  Brackett encourages us to become emotion scientists seeking to understand what is being felt without value judgements followed by a desire to listen and learn from our emotions.  Next comes the Label. Historically, research suggested that people could name between three and six emotions.  Now Brackett’s list includes over 100 which individuals can explore to be more precise in naming what is being felt.  Once you have the best label you can move to a decision about how to best Express the emotion.  And finally, the emotion is Regulated.  I have been using the RULER technique with clients recently and they are experiencing greater success with emotion management when the first three steps are completed prior to trying to manage the emotion.

Mental

Fueling the body mentally challenges us to create mental flexibility and powering ourselves by focusing on what matters most.  It’s also the space where we check in on the stories we are telling ourselves.  A perfect question for this component is to ask yourself if the story you are thinking or sharing is taking you into the best version of yourself or away from it.  Mental strength also requires us to manage the noise in our lives. Shawn Achor in “Before Happiness” shares that noise is any information that is negative, false, unnecessary or prevents us from being able to reach our full potential.  He places noise in four categories; unusable, untimely, hypothetical, or distracting.  A needed skill for everyone is to build the ability to filter through all of the information received on a daily basis to determine what is factual, usable, timely and relevant.  How often do you evaluate the external noise in your life based upon these criteria?  Achor contends that if we just reduce the noise by 5% we can be considerably more successful with the endeavors we are engaged in.

Spiritual

Our spiritual fuel is a commitment to our passions and our purpose.  Are you aligned with your purpose?  It is truly when you align your activities with your purpose that deeper feelings of satisfaction and contentment emerge.  Simon Sinek in “The Infinite Game” likens purpose to “just cause”.  A just cause is “a specific vision of a future state that does not yet exist; a future state so appealing that people are willing to make sacrifices in order to help advance toward that vision”.  Another author, Jim Loehr in “The Power of Story” captures the essence of identifying one’s life mission/purpose.  He suggests that your purpose should continually renew your spirit; get you going every day; provide an indomitable force towards action; and ground you in your quiet moments.  The essential question that we are called to answer about our mission/purpose is that of legacy.  What is it that we want to be known for?  What do we want to leave behind as a testament to a life well lived?  As a graduate of Antioch University, I often reflect on our mission; a quote from Horace Mann “Be Ashamed to Die Until You Have Won Some Victory for Mankind.”  What quotes or thinking inspires you into deeper connection with your purpose?

Take a moment to go back through the list to identify areas of strength as well as areas of opportunities.  Reflect on where you would like to be more efficient in fueling your body and make a plan to integrate two or three new behaviors into your life.  Keep track of the improvements and notice when you see changes in how you feel, think, and behave.