Mindfulness in the Workplace
Mindfulness will be like the introduction of seat belts in cars; at first no one thought they were important and now they are a safety requirement. Mindfulness may become the seat belt of mental health and one day it will be taught in schools for all people to practice.
-Diana Winston, Director, Mindful Awareness ResearchCenter, UCLA
Dhiman, S. (2009). Mindfulness in Life and Leadership: An Exploratory Survey. Interbeing, 3(1), 55-80.
Friday, April 30, 2010
Mind Your Emotions
...emotions evolved as signaling systems that need to be sensitive to environmental contingencies. Failure to switch off emotion is due to the activation of mental representations of present, past, and future that are created independently of external contingencies. Mindfulness training can be seen as one way to teach people to discriminate such “simulations” from objects and contingencies as they actually are.
Source:
Williams, J. (2010). Mindfulness and psychological process. Emotion, 10(1), 1-7.
...emotions evolved as signaling systems that need to be sensitive to environmental contingencies. Failure to switch off emotion is due to the activation of mental representations of present, past, and future that are created independently of external contingencies. Mindfulness training can be seen as one way to teach people to discriminate such “simulations” from objects and contingencies as they actually are.
Source:
Williams, J. (2010). Mindfulness and psychological process. Emotion, 10(1), 1-7.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Created
Limitations to achievement are shaped by our dominant thoughts and reinforced by our emotions.
Context is King
The manner in how we view life experiences is everything. Our views can either confine us or free us.
Lessons
There is nothing wrong with falling short of a goal. Everything is a means through bringing about creative action. The challenge is in not letting resistance and denial restrict the flow.
Self Talk
In learning new things internal criticism or negative self talk will diminish the quality of execution.
Monday, April 26, 2010
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Practice
Abhyasa is unconditional. It is the dedicated, unswavering application to what you believe in...I do believe Abhyasa is not something we earn or achieve through force of will; rather it is an innate human capacity that we awaken through practice, through our willingness.
Rolf Gates (Meditations from the Mat)
Rolf Gates (Meditations from the Mat)
Bold Action
In Harvard professor John Kotter’s book, A Sense of Urgency, he contends that a “winning strategy combines analytically sound, ambitious but logical goals with methods that help people experience new, often very ambitious goals, as exciting, meaningful, and uplifting—creating a deeply felt determination to move, make it happen, and win, now.” In other words, not all change strategies are created equal. And a good change strategy is not good enough if it isn’t supported by those whom it affects.
Source:
Astd.org
Source:
Astd.org
Saturday, April 24, 2010
My vision
My ultimate goal is to create learning engagements from which people can create professional and personal success. Educational experiences that challenge people in a holistic way, touching upon all areas of human competency is critical for creating lasting success. What good is it to learn how to be a leader without also learning how to be a better person? How well can I truly manage others if I cannot first manage myself? The compartmentalization of life is an illusion that compromises goal attainment if not addressed. What one does, in one area of life can and will influence how one performs in another. The only solution is to challenge oneself to grow in all areas of life.
Emotion is the seed of decision
It is 9:46 PM on a Saturday night and I am working on a paper on self-reflection. ESPN highlights flash in the background as I am just trying to make sense of this panorama of stimuli. Something I found to be interesting in my research was that true reflection touches upon elements of emotion. Contemplating upon the direction of our lives and even the premise upon which we create our worlds is characteristic of deep thought. How we feel about the many aspects of life are the bricks and mortar of our reality. I have never really contemplated how my emotions either facilitated my growth or imprisoned me to limiting circumstances. I have issued a challenge to myself to begin this process.
A Carl Rogers Insight
I want to talk about learning. But not the lifeless, sterile, futile, quickly forgotten stuff that is crammed in to the mind of the poor helpless individual tied into his seat by ironclad bonds of conformity! I am talking about LEARNING - the insatiable curiosity that drives the adolescent boy to absorb everything he can see or hear or read about gasoline engines in order to improve the efficiency and speed of his 'cruiser'. I am talking about the student who says, "I am discovering, drawing in from the outside, and making that which is drawn in a real part of me." I am talking about any learning in which the experience of the learner progresses along this line: "No, no, that's not what I want"; "Wait! This is closer to what I am interested in, what I need"; "Ah, here it is! Now I'm grasping and comprehending what I need and what I want to know!" Carl Rogers 1983: 18-19
The Catalyst
Education is a tool, a catalyst upon which a learner can evolve capability and vision into higher levels of effectiveness. "Personal mastery is the discipline of continually clarifying and deepening our personal vision, of focusing our energies, of developing patience, and of seeing reality objectively" (Senge, 2000, pg. 17). Learning curriculum, which emphasizes holistic growth, through a focus on the development of subjective understandings and interpersonal interaction, is most effective in accomplishing this end. Education is a mirror by which one can reflect upon the internal and external worlds in which one is immersed. Learning curriculum should encourage a balance between all parts of a learner's experience, as development in one area nurtures the growth in another.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Motives for learning
'Ideally', Jerome Bruner writes, interest in the material to be learned is the best stimulus to learning, rather than such external goals as grades or later competitive advantage' (ibid.: 14). In an age of increasing spectatorship, 'motives for learning must be kept from going passive... they must be based as much as possible upon the arousal of interest in what there is be learned, and they must be kept broad and diverse in expression' (ibid.: 80).
Source:
http://infed.org/thinkers/bruner.htm
Source:
http://infed.org/thinkers/bruner.htm
Employees Are Full of Feedback
March 13, 2010 6:10:00 PM
TD Editorial Staff
ASTD.org
If you have a suggestion to make in the workplace, do you make it or do you keep your mouth shut? Many people take advantage of their right to express themselves.
Fifty-seven percent of employees say they regularly make suggestions in the workplace, according to a survey by Right Management. In fact, 27 percent of employees report that they make more than 20 suggestions per year. Another 30 percent made at least 10 suggestions per year. Only 6 percent made no suggestions at all.
The poll, which was conducted on LinkedIn and included 614 participants from all over North America, found that the most vocal employees are those in management and C-level executives.
Other interesting findings were that number of suggestions does not vary by company size and sales people were the most likely to make suggestions at 50 percent followed by those in HR at 28 percent. In addition, workers ages 55 and over were more likely to make 10 or more suggestions at 76 percent as compared to their colleagues ages 25 to 34 at 51 percent. Women, at 61 percent, were also likely to make 10 or more suggestions as compared to men, at 46 percent.
"Our findings suggest a surprising number of employees go the extra mile by making suggestions in the workplace," says Deborah Schroeder-Saulnier, senior vice president of global solutions at Right Management. "At the same time, however, in our experience there is little evidence that companies really listen to employee suggestions—or, more important, try to benefit from their perspective and enthusiasm."
She advises that companies should not only listen to their employees, but make sure their ideas are acknowledged and acted upon.
Businesses need to remember that communication is a two-way street.
TD Editorial Staff
ASTD.org
If you have a suggestion to make in the workplace, do you make it or do you keep your mouth shut? Many people take advantage of their right to express themselves.
Fifty-seven percent of employees say they regularly make suggestions in the workplace, according to a survey by Right Management. In fact, 27 percent of employees report that they make more than 20 suggestions per year. Another 30 percent made at least 10 suggestions per year. Only 6 percent made no suggestions at all.
The poll, which was conducted on LinkedIn and included 614 participants from all over North America, found that the most vocal employees are those in management and C-level executives.
Other interesting findings were that number of suggestions does not vary by company size and sales people were the most likely to make suggestions at 50 percent followed by those in HR at 28 percent. In addition, workers ages 55 and over were more likely to make 10 or more suggestions at 76 percent as compared to their colleagues ages 25 to 34 at 51 percent. Women, at 61 percent, were also likely to make 10 or more suggestions as compared to men, at 46 percent.
"Our findings suggest a surprising number of employees go the extra mile by making suggestions in the workplace," says Deborah Schroeder-Saulnier, senior vice president of global solutions at Right Management. "At the same time, however, in our experience there is little evidence that companies really listen to employee suggestions—or, more important, try to benefit from their perspective and enthusiasm."
She advises that companies should not only listen to their employees, but make sure their ideas are acknowledged and acted upon.
Businesses need to remember that communication is a two-way street.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
The Disappearing Career Discussion
March 29, 2010 10:33:00 AM
TD Editorial Staff
ASTD.org
According to a recent survey by Right Management, more than one-third of all employees (37 percent) never discuss their career development with their managers and another 30 percent have that discussion just once a year.
Why are employees so hesitant to talk about their career aspirations with their managers? Is it because they are too busy to think about their future or do they lack the skills to ask the right questions?
Although individuals should take the responsibility to manage their own careers, managers should reach out to employees to discussion career objectives because that is a key step in keeping employees engaged in the workplace.
Are your managers equipped with the skills to discuss an employee's strengths, growth opportunities, and developmental needs? If not, do you have a strategy for how to teach those skills to your organization's managers?
TD Editorial Staff
ASTD.org
According to a recent survey by Right Management, more than one-third of all employees (37 percent) never discuss their career development with their managers and another 30 percent have that discussion just once a year.
Why are employees so hesitant to talk about their career aspirations with their managers? Is it because they are too busy to think about their future or do they lack the skills to ask the right questions?
Although individuals should take the responsibility to manage their own careers, managers should reach out to employees to discussion career objectives because that is a key step in keeping employees engaged in the workplace.
Are your managers equipped with the skills to discuss an employee's strengths, growth opportunities, and developmental needs? If not, do you have a strategy for how to teach those skills to your organization's managers?
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Education is life
The notion of learning through life is hardly new, as a glance at Plato's Republic reveals. However, with the development of a self-consciously 'adult education' came the view that education should be lifelong. In what Waller (1956: 22) describes as a report without parallel, the Adult Education Committee of the British Ministry of Reconstruction concluded:
(A)dult education must not be regarded as a luxury for a few exceptional persons here and there, nor as a thing which concerns only a short span of early manhood, but that adult education is a permanent national necessity, an inseparable aspect of citizenship, and therefore should be both universal and lifelong. (1919: 55)
Infed.org
http://infed.org/lifelonglearning/b-life.htm
(A)dult education must not be regarded as a luxury for a few exceptional persons here and there, nor as a thing which concerns only a short span of early manhood, but that adult education is a permanent national necessity, an inseparable aspect of citizenship, and therefore should be both universal and lifelong. (1919: 55)
Infed.org
http://infed.org/lifelonglearning/b-life.htm
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
paralysis
To demand perfection is to deny your ordinary and universal humanity, as though you would be better off without it.
-Bayles (Art & Fear)
-Bayles (Art & Fear)
fast and slow
The artist's life is frustrating not because the passage is slow, but because he imagines it to be fast.
-Bayles (Art and Fear)
-Bayles (Art and Fear)
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