Managing Our Monkey Mind
Become a better leader by leading with your whole self.
I had one of those magical moments in London recently when someone completely surprises you.
I was on the bus, on the way to a morning meeting, when the driver had to change and just before he got off he turned to his passengers and, as if it were a sermon, he said, “Hey people. Get off your technology and be more positive”. Everyone looked up over their masks and paused for a moment, and then he was gone. We took a new breath and came back down into our bodies and I had a reality check that set me up for the rest of the day.
We need to be grateful for these mindful moments when life presents them. We also need to cultivate them.
Because when life gets difficult we disassociate from our bodies and we need to find a way to reconnect to being inside.
When we face a challenge, when any of our fears or insecurities are provoked, it’s very easy for us to go spinning off into a mental realm, no longer in contact with the here and now. Our survival brain hijacks the system and puts us under a spell of anxiety and a narrowing of perspective. It fixates us on what might go wrong, or what has gone wrong, not on reasoned solutions or mitigations.
Our mind goes into overdrive, and like a tired hard drive, it needs a reboot.
When exactly this happens, and what triggers it, is different for all of us but experience suggests it happens much more regularly than many of us acknowledge.
And when it does, when we get stuck in that mental realm, our life energy becomes fragmented or suppressed as we battle through this psychological environment of fear that we have, ultimately, created for ourselves.
It’s not possible to be in to the here and now when we’re not connected to our senses. And it’s not possible to make good decisions if we’re not in the here and now.
The way we can reconnect with a more creative, spontaneous, flexible resilience is to drop below these spiralling cognitive thoughts and shift into our felt, visceral selves.
Cultivating the practices that work for you to do this can mean the difference between success and failure, it’s that important. We either get caught up in cogitation or we move things forward.
Mindful practices sit at the heart of our quest to help managers and leaders lead from a place of greater equilibrium, awareness and confidence. It’s the foundation stone of becoming a thriving leader, in fact.
That bus driver doesn’t show up every day, so what can you do to ensure you’re regularly enabling yourself to connect with your whole self?
Find out more about our 8-week How To Thrive… programmes here.
