Category: Mindfulness

Empowering Women to Lead

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Meet my Team!

As we are heading up to our first Mindful Leadership Workshop in Morocco, entitled “Empowering Women to Lead”, I wanted to take this opportunity to introduce you to two fantastic and powerful women: Samira Eramdani with whom I am partnering in order to make the workshop in Morocco happen and Asma Nait Ouali, a young professional women who is acting as our project manager out of Marrakech.

Creating connections and providing for a platform for exchange, learning and personal growth truly is extremely rewarding and this workshop will certainly be only the first in a series of projects and programmes especially tailored to the needs of women to be rolled out in North Africa.

Leading Self and Others

… introducing Samira:

Samira Eramdani

“Being a woman in my country as in all others is not an easy job. Women have a heavy load to carry. They are asked to be perfect in conducting their career, educating their children and handling delicate family matters. How this is done is basically left to intuition.

I personally believe that women deserve to have support and training, be able to take advantage from mentoring programmes as well as to build and participate in networks. Most importantly: women should be celebrated. I thought about this programme as a way to begin this journey in order to advocate for the cause of women by providing the core principles of leadership. I have been fortunate enough to learn myself about what it takes to become a good leader, how to organise yourself and how to stay true to your purpose in life. It’s the first step. Many others will follow! “

…. and Asma:

Asma Nait Ouali

“Having graduated with a higher diploma in networking and telecommunications a couple of years ago, I started as a young engineer in management and marketing. Now, I am working as a professional project manager while studying as a part-time student in an MBA programme. In the meantime, I am managing my family’s business, the main activity being the supply of building materials.

Over and above all that, I assume many responsibilities as the eldest daughter of the family and take good care of all my family’s affairs on a daily basis. Thanks to my humble experience, I have been able to gain some skills particularly in leadership that I would very much appreciate sharing with like-minded women peers and professionals.

I believe that there are numerous Moroccan women like me, who are willing to fill different tasks and achieve perfection in as much their professional as personal lives.

Our workshop entitled “Empowering women to lead” was implemented to mainly serve this purpose: to assist professional women in their projects by enabling them to develop multiple leadership skills that, by the same token, may help them succeed in their personal life.”

 

From my side, I am very much looking forward to this collaboration and to our first common project. Let me finish by saying: “You are the architect of Your Own Life!”

Click here to read a great article on women in management just published in Switzerland (in French).

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Mindful Leadership & intercultural Communications

Perceptions: Road Blocks or Stepping Stones

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Stepping StonesThe recent global events as well as a blog post from Dr. Milton Bennett about tolerance makes me think along the following lines: all humans have an automatic tendency to judge their own experiences.

Instead of simply noticing what is there in the present moment, unfolding and happening, we think about what needs to be changed, how things could or should be different. Something is not quite right in a way, not good enough, not what we had expected and wanted.

Often these thoughts will take us, quite automatically, down on some fairly well-worn paths in our minds. In this way, we lose awareness of the present moment and the ability to freely choose if and how to react. We  jump quickly on to conclusions, which seem to be the right ones and by doing so, trigger behaviors and actions from ourselves and others around us.

Relating to the idea of tolerance we might want to ask ourselves where our threshold lies.

  • How do we really feel deep inside us?
  • What type of experiences deplete us and which ones make us happy?
  • Where do we feel comfortable and where uncomfortable?

We can regain our freedom from automatic thoughts and reactions, if as a first step we simply acknowledge the actuality of the situation we find ourselves in, without being automatically hooked into tendencies to judge, fix, or want things to be different from the way they are.

How do we do this?

  1. Notice what is going on
  • How did your body feel in detail during the experience?
  • What thoughts and images accompanied the experience?
  • What moods, feelings and emotions accompanied the event?
  1. Explore the effects of bringing awareness to the direct experience
  • What do you notice?
  • Is your mind wandering away?
  • Is bringing awareness to the experience affecting it in a way? If so, how?
  1. Accept what is there without wanting to change anything
  2. Let go and simply acknowledge the arising and passing of emotions and thoughts without becoming entangled in the content of it.

Next time you’re confronted with a pleasant or unpleasant experience, try writing down what happened especially in steps 1 and 2. Exploring our own sensations, limits, beliefs, emotions, moods and thoughts is not easy and change doesn’t come over night. It comes with a lot of training and attention.

And of course, change starts with yourself and with how you experience and react to a situation and not with other people around you!

 

 

 

 

How to enjoy little things

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Everyday tips – what we can learn from children’s books

Enjoying the present momentDo you know the feeling: you are running around like crazy, most of the time on autopilot mode, trying to perform all the different roles that you are playing in life. At the end of the day you feel exhausted and most certainly were not able to do everything you had on your list.

The funny thing actually is that most people thought that technology would give us some time back by organizing our tasks, meetings and social life (or maybe it was more like a marketing argument). In fact it is quite the opposite, more and more people seem to have less time.

Well, here’s a story from a children’s book that I came across, which might speak to you as it did to me:

It talks about a little snail, a very slow one, which one-day was surprisingly invited for coffee by some “racing” snails. The only problem was that the meeting point with the faster snails was far away and our little friend actually very slow as it enjoyed every moment of every journey. It nevertheless decided to accept the invitation and to hit the road directly in orStorytellingder to arrive on time two days later.
As it so happens, on its way it passed through a field of fresh salad and found that it had never seen such fantastic green leaves in its life. It hence stopped to eat. Of course it became tired after a while and found a perfect place to sleep. Awake again, the snail thought: “oh no, I am going to be late” but then it simply decided to do what it always did: enjoying the present moment and not to worry anymore.
As you can imagine, in the end it arrived (obviously) too late and the party was long over. A little bug walking by wondered why the snail was looking so happy and content although there was nobody left and questioned it. The snail simply responded that it did not matter at all as it could now enjoy the journey back even more and do everything slowly as it was used to.

 

Writing this, a large smile comes to my face… we should all read children’s stories from time to time as they have so much to teach us!

We all have a choice when it comes to our own lives: either we run through it or we choose to walk through it more mindfully, enjoying single moments as they arise and living here and now.

Maybe you’d like to try this different way of living!

Some tips on how to get you started:

  1. Take your time: when you get up in the morning, instead of jumping out of your bed, stay there, warm, peacefully and smile to yourself.
  2. Being mindful of little things: taking your shower, brushing your teeth, making a cup of coffee or tea can be something enjoyable. Try being fully present and bring your mind back to what you are doing when it wanders away (as that’s what minds do).
  3. In your car: before you drive off, take a moment to notice that you’re breathing. Don’t switch on the music or your hands-free-device but focus on how you’re feeling, tuning in to your body. If your mind wanders away judging other drivers, that’s normal; simply label it as a “judgment” and bring it back to yourself, breathing and driving.
  4. In public transport: leave early enough so that you can enjoy the walk to the bus or tube station. Don’t rush, breathe and notice the colors, the smells, the sun…maybe you’ll notice something that you never did before!

Let me know how it goes 😉

Jenny

A mindful home – 10 tips

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Mindful HomeHappy New Year to all of you! I hope that you begin 2015 with a fresh look and some new energy…

Today, while reading some articles on the net, I came across Karen Maezen Miller’s blog post about a mindful home. I find it very beautiful, especially when taken figuratively and I think that we can all learn something from it. It sometimes takes a lot of willpower to build new habits!  I hence wanted to share Karen’s 10 tips here with you:

  1. Wake with the sun: there is no purer light than what we see when we open our eyes first thing in the morning.
  2. Sit: mindfulness without meditation is just a word.
  3. Make your bed: the state of your bed is the state of your head. Enfold your day in dignity.
  4. Empty the hampers:do the laundry without resentment or commentary and have an intimate encounter with the very fabric of life.
  5. Wash your bowl: rinse away self-importance and clean up your own mess. If you leave it undone, it will get sticky.
  6. Set a timer: if you’re distracted by the weight of what’s undone, set a kitchen timer and, like a monk in a monastery, devote yourself wholeheartedly to the task at hand before the bell rings.
  7. Rake the leaves: rake, weed, or sweep. You’ll never finish for good, but you’ll learn the point of pointlessness.
  8. Eat when hungry: align your inexhaustible desires with the one true appetite.
  9. Let the darkness come: set a curfew on the internet and TV and discover the natural balance between daylight and darkness, work and rest.
  10. Sleep when tired: nothing more to it.

Here’s wishing you an excellent week!

Jenny

 

 

The Gift of Mindfulness

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Happy Holiday Season

Happy Holiday Season

As Christmas is approaching and instead of rushing to the shops to find a last minute gift, why not giving mindfulness to somebody you love….?

Let me share how I came to work with and practice mindfulness:

At one point in my life, when children came into the family, my personal time became suddenly very scarce as I also continued to work full-time in positions with high responsibility involving international travel and dealing with everything else alongside. Up to that point, I had been able to manage my work-life balance quite well but suddenly without me noticing it, it changed. I did not take enough time out with and for myself anymore. This led to a heavy gall bladder incident in early 2009 where I was told that I was on the edge of burnout and that I had to stop running around.

I then saw an article about mindfulness and thought that it was very much in line with what and who I am. I decided to take up the challenge and found a MBSR teacher close to where I live and with whom I wanted to take up the journey. I actually gave it a try not knowing exactly what it was.

As a matter of fact, in a couple of weeks I rediscovered myself and wondered how I could have possibly been forgetting to take care of myself all this time. I began reading many books about mindfulness and at the same time engaged a lot in intercultural communications (which in fact is my specialization) attending courses etc. I discovered that mindfulness and the qualities of being open, non-judgmental, trusting etc. were exactly the same as what we would strive for when reaching higher levels of intercultural competence. This link (being myself a senior communications professional) struck my interest as well as the link to leadership.

freeimages.co.uk christmas images

Image Source: http://www.freeimages.co.uk

It is no surprise that I then fell on literature from Daniel Goleman and others writing about emotional intelligence as well from Otto Scharmer with his theory U. I suddenly found enormous pleasure at not only reading through all the literature on neuroscience, brain, leadership and interpersonal/intercultural communications I could get, but also deepening my own practice.

I attended many silence retreats and found them extremely nourishing and also kept looking forward every day to my own home practice. I began living in the present moment and saw colours, smelled things that I had forgotten. I also began being different with my children, showing them more things and being more patient. I subsequently decided to broaden my horizon by learning mindfulness for children, attending the training with mindfulschools.org in the US as well as with Eline Snel from the AMT in the Netherlands. I am now on my way to become a certified mindfulness for children teacher and am practicing with my own children as well as conducting interventions with other children privately for now. Training the leaders of tomorrow is wonderful!

Additionally, I took a  jump into the unknown and am now working with mindfulness in the workplace (designing programmes and workshops on mindful leadership for women for instance), coaching individuals using mindfulness techniques as well as integrating the mindfulness approach into my communications work, i.e. mindful listening training with teams, responding to emails mindfully etc.

Mindfulness has become the “umbrella” under which I offer my services and my state of being… I find it deeply rewarding and fulfilling to work with people, accompanying them on their path of finding themselves again (not to say becoming human again). It is like the discovery of something that has been lost for a long time.

I am also now working more in-depth on projects aiming at bringing mindfulness to the formal school education sector here in Switzerland. The effects of what the leadership theory calls VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) can be strongly felt here too. Everything is in disruption, people are running around without liking what they do, feeling insecure and unhappy with less time every month.

I am now following my gut feeling and my inner guidance and although it is not easy, I feel that I am at the right place at the right time.

So, now you know it all!

Here’s wishing you an excellent Holiday Season and a Happy New Year!

Thanks for being on this journey with me and looking forward to interacting and maybe seeing you again next year.

Jenny

Wednesday

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Trigonos Wales

 

While in Trigonos, at the Mindfulness Teacher Training Retreat organised by Bangor University, one of my fellow home group participants, Lindy, shared a wonderful poem with us, that she had written during the day of silence. As this poem really expresses what a day of stillness can be about and with her permission, I am publishing it for you below. Enjoy!

 

Wednesday

A day of silence
What a wonderful day
A present to myself
A time to take back the child that was me
Stare at the trees blowing
Listen to the distant dogs barking
Think and wonder and be
A precious day for me

 

One step at a time

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Being away a full week on a teacher training retreat for mindfulness approaches organised by Bangor university wasn’t that easy as I first thought… Meeting a whole group of new people, moving out and into stillness, teaching, exchanging, enquiring and receiving feedback. Not to forget the room sharing and the tight daily schedules: quite overwhelming at times.

Now I really understand why ones own practice informs the teaching and why you cannot simply buy a mindfulness related book and start to integrate the tools right away. You can only hold the space for other people and really enable personal development and inner growth when you are connected to your own self, curious, open and non-judging.

What an intense and enriching week, where own development and insight is so closely linked with the ability to inform ones own work, i.e. for me,
integrating the tools and methods into communications and leadership development!

Trust: An Important Ingredient for Effective Communications

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Touching the stone wall
Having worked lately with various groups of people on effective internal communications and  team building it struck me again how the trust factor remains of major importance for any successful intervention.

Not only trust and confidence in the capabilities of the facilitator but also trust in team members, collaborators and most and foremost trust in the participants themselves and in their own capabilities. Obviously, this trust has to be established and participants need to be ready to listen to their inner feelings and intuitions….this sounds like an easy exercise but as a matter of fact, for many it is the most difficult  – as the most unusual – part.

As we all know, it is not possible not to communicate: our non-verbal signs and behaviour already give clues to our counterpart about what is going on (even if this often happens unconsciously), before the conversation per se has started. Being aware of how your own body behaves and moves in space and how others might perceive this, is in fact a first step towards more self-awareness and from that to trust in your own abilities and capacities. Adding empathy, curiosity and openness to others, you will have a strong basis for building relationships of trust and thus effective communications and effective intercultural communications.

Are you willing to trust and be mindful about how your own body relates to external stimuli and how you and your actions are perceived by others?

 

 

I walk down the street

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Today, I would like to share a poem from Portia Nelson with you that I find truly inspirational… I hope you do so too!

IMG_0366“I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in.
I am lost… I am helpless.
It isn’t my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don’t see it.
I fall in again.
I can’t believe I am in the same place.
But, it isn’t my fault.
It still takes me a long time to get out.

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in. It’s a habit.
My eyes are open.
I know where I am.
It is my fault. I get out immediately.

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.

I walk down another street.”

(Found on Goodreads)

We need a new model of communication!

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Theater mask Communication
Otto Scharmer points out rightly that a new model of communication is needed, involving all stakeholders and being multilateral. A link needs to be created between all actors in society and economy, consumers to producers, leaders to staff etc. Many parties should join in the conversation, breaking up silos, sharing and opening up in dialogue. Being open and transparent will enable new ideas to emerge and this new connection will be far more effective than any extrinsic, monetary motivation and bonus. Think about it! Join me for a new journey in communications: a mindful one! Jenny