Practicing mindfulness helps you to come into control. To come into balance. To protect your confidence and re-frame the conversation that you're having in your head. As a result, you can position yourself to THRIVE rather than merely survive in business.
Finding time for quiet can allow you to release thoughts that no longer serve you in an effort to make space for those that do. Because, you actually have a chance to take part in the conversations that are happening inside of your head, rather than merely reacting to them.
In this space, you can find connections between your thoughts, and your personal belief systems in your business and in everyday life. For instance, when you begin to notice limiting thoughts like "my business will not succeed," "my marketing is not good enough," or "I don't know what I'm doing" then you can pause. You can seek the root of those thoughts and address the cause -- rather than letting those beliefs run on autopilot and alter your outcomes.
You see, it's when our thoughts get out of control that our behaviors get altered. Science calls this an "amygdala hijack." Basically, your amygdala (emotional part of the brain) takes over your frontal lobe (CEO/rational part of the brain). You start acting based upon emotion, and good decision making, sound judgement and focus go out the window.
In consulting with clients, I always suggest that we set an intention for the work that we're doing together -- we must have an objective. From there, we can create a strategy and use mindfulness to work on a specific idea that helps them to tune into their own "mental abundance."
What I mean by "mental abundance" is the ability to transform those negative thoughts like we transform the breath into positive ones in order to create more abundance in our business and in our life. Or, to begin choosing our thoughts more wisely so that we don't let the negative thoughts hijack our goals for our business, take us off track from following our business plan, or leave us to wallow in negativity if a prospect says "no."
Mindfulness creates mental fortitude.
For instance, following a workshop that I taught, two different clients came up to me to share how my intention/objective for the program impacted them. "Acceptance." It seemed pretty simple.
One client was dealing with a serious health issue. It was impacting her business. It was impacting her ability to make money and put her best foot forward. You could tell that she was scared. She was wallowing in self-pity and she wasn't doing what matters most for her own well-being. Her take-away following our intention of "acceptance" was that she will never be able to recover if she didn't first accept the reality of her situation. If she doesn't recover then her business won't recover either. Without accepting it, she couldn't get better and she couldn't get back to the work that she loves.
The other client made reference to a business partnership that was very important to her, but it was suffering. She was losing someone in her life who mattered most to her due to a disagreement. You could tell that it hurt. Both financially and personally. Her takeaway was that she cannot change her business partner, she cannot undo the hurt, but she can accept her and begin to forgive. While they may never work together again, she now accepts that what her partner did is not her fault and it's okay to be the bigger woman in this case.
While we can't always control our circumstances, we can control how we react to them. This starts with controlling the mind, finding calm in the turbulence of our thoughts, and learning that there is space for acceptance, healing, and forgiveness... even if it means first accepting, healing, and forgiving ourselves.
If you are focused on the light of the present, then it becomes impossible to dwell in the shadows of the past. After all, when was the last time that you had two thoughts at the exact same moment? Replace the negative with the positive, the past with the present, the blame with forgiveness, the entitlement with gratitude, and the scarcity with abundance.
Your thoughts create your life so use them wisely to design the present and the future that you desire.
Follow Megan K. McAvoy on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Megan_McAvoy.
