Mindful means being in the moment, while proactive means thinking and
working ahead. Both are important for your career, but they seem to
contradict each other. Can you be mindful and proactive at the same
time?
Losing your gut isn't just about what you put in your body, it's about what's going on in your brain, too. In a 2015 study, Brown University researchers
asked nearly 400 people to complete a mindfulness awareness survey,
which asked whether subjects agreed with such questions as "I find it
difficult to stay focused on what's happening in the present." Then,
they X-rayed the subjects' bellies to determine their degree of belly
fat. The results showed that the higher people scored on the mindfulness
survey, the less visceral fat they were likely to have. People who are
less mindful have, on average, an extra pound of fat inside their
bellies than those who are more in tune with their everyday lives and
the world around them. Eating mindfully also happens to be one of the
top weight loss tips from real people.
To
be mindful and proactive, leaders must create separate space for both
activities, says David Shanklin, managing director of culture solutions
at CultureIQ, a culture management company.
“Mindfulness is really about focus and awareness of only what’s right
in front of you, so not thinking about a million other things in the
present or incessantly trying to multitask,” he says. “The trick here is
really to be present with the future. When you are intentionally trying
to plan, you need to be present with that activity.”
Mindfulness is often misunderstood, says Megan McNealy, author of Reinvent the Wheel: How Top Leaders Leverage Well-Being for Success. “Mindfulness isn’t showing up at work in slippers and meditating at your desk,”
she says. “It’s taking the intensity we normally have and using it in
the present moment. It’s okay if you want to focus on nature or birds—we
could use mindfulness that way, too—but it’s really the intensity of
focusing on one thing instead of five others.”
Being mindful as
you look ahead is the best way to balance the present and the future.
You’re proactive instead of reactive, and it can pay off in many ways.
Better relationships
Being
mindful helps you pick up on other people’s cues, so you can notice
what someone is doing and adjust your vocabulary to meet them where they
are, says McNealy.
“Listen in the moment, and focus your entire
attention,” she says. “Most of us are scattered. If you just focus on
the other person and become immersed in the conversation, magical things
can happen. You can tap into your intuition or think of something
brilliant when you give it all you have.”
Achieving your goals
When
you stop focusing on the present time and start planning your future,
you can take steps toward accomplishing your goals, says Jason
VanDevere, founder of GoalCrazy Planners, a personal planning system.
“Stop
working for a couple of hours and make a plan for your future,” he
says. “Once you have a plan written out of what you need to accomplish
to build your desired future, you can direct your focus to the current
step that is in front of you. By focusing on the moment, you will be
focusing on getting closer to your desired future.”
VanDevere
suggests ending every day by planning out the next. “By doing this, it
will allow you to feel much more present after you leave work because
you will not be worried about what you will have to do tomorrow,” he
says. “You will already have a written plan of what you need to
accomplish and how you will do it, so you can focus 100% on being with
family or whatever you like to do after work.”
Creating stronger strategies
It’s
easy to get caught up in the urgent “fires” that happen at work each
day, says Shanklin. “One thing we see all over our data is that
organizations don’t spend enough time planning,” he says. “One method of
avoiding this is to earmark specific meetings for only strategic,
forward-looking topics.”
Planning and strategy better enable
focus, allowing you to be present with what’s most important right now.
Ultimately, that planning can actually enable mindfulness or presence in
some sense, says Shanklin.
Setting yourself up for success
“Often
we can feel a tug of war between past and present as if it’s a zero-sum
game,” says Sarah Greenberg, lead coach at the online coaching platform
BetterUp. “But the truth is it’s often a false controversy. There’s a way to be fully present and plant seeds for a fruitful future.”
You
can balance being fully present with proactively planning for the
future by forging a relationship with your future self that can
encourage you to take steps now that will pay off later. “Research
indicates viewing a picture of ourselves designed to make us look senior
has a host of benefits, including making better decisions that will
help us in the future,” she says. “Find an app that can age a photo of
you, or use your imagination.”
The best way to be mindful and
proactive is to understand what mindfulness really is, says Shanklin.
“Mindfulness is about focus and eliminating distraction,” he says.
“Whether it’s being fully focused during a one-on-one meeting with a
direct report or putting down phones and emails during a strategic
planning session. Being present is critical to being at top
performance.”
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