Practicing mindfulness and actively acknowledging your gratitude in life has the ability to literally shift your energy at a molecular level. Sit down and make a habit of acknowledging, everyday, the things that you’re grateful for and watch the shift that this practice has on all aspects of your life.
Now, apply that energy, that conscious thoughtfulness to your business practice. What if when leading your team, you looked at each of your teammates with that same sense of gratitude. What would happen then? If you opened your eyes and were really seeing each and every one of them; not for the people you wanted them to be, but for the people they were. Not for the gaps in their performance, but for the contribution they are making.
The paradigm would shift from a perspective of insufficiency to one of abundance and the energy in the room would change.
Early in my career, I was given some advice from a seasoned media sales professional that reminded me to always smile when I was on the phone with a potential client. Odd as it might have seemed, even though the person on the other end of the phone obviously could not see me, the smile would generate enough positive energy, that it would attract the other person in a way that would generate a platform of possibility.
In some ways, this practice of acknowledging and documenting your gratitude on a daily basis does the same thing. And I would argue, it goes even further then that. There’s a chance that when you commit to acknowledging your gratitude during the course of your day, you will be actively and consciously looking for those things to be grateful for and therefore you will be changing your view of the life that is in front of you.
Applying this practice to a business and it’s leadership seems on the surface to be incongruent with business goals and objectives, yet remembering that our economies have shifted in such a way that creativity, innovation, and human resources are the commodities of our future, embracing these whole-hearted, energetic changes, will undoubtedly bring more success and fulfillment and definitely impact the bottom line.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXDMoiEkyuQ