The first time I learned about mindfulness was at a yoga studio in 1999. After seven years of rewarding practice, in 2006, my mentor gave me “The Power of Full Engagement” by James E. Loehr and Tony Schwartz. This is one of my all-time favorite books, in part because it helped me reach my “aha” moment.
This aha moment occurred in 2007 when I was able to merge the concepts of mindfulness with what The Power of Full Engagement teaches. This eureka effect is what resulted in my 20-hour work week. Basically, I learned that by being very focused and mindful of my energy and actions, I could work much less and get much more done… and still stay sane!
And then it was in 2017 that I learned of different companies who taught mindfulness in corporate settings to help reduce stress. I even went so far as to complete a corporate-based mindfulness training program myself! (This was before I developed Performance-Based Mindfulness.)
After I got this training, I was incredibly excited. I was ready to change the world!
I found myself surrounded by many awesome and dedicated yoga teachers or coaches/consultants who practiced mindfulness and truly wanted to help professionals. Many were very qualified mindfulness teachers – some had even been monks sequestering themselves away from the world for months to meditate and incorporate flow into everyday life.
Then I found myself at a mindfulness conference where an expert (one of people I most admire) told a room full of 200+ mindfulness instructors that “we should be pausing our meetings to grieve about deals lost or bad quarters.”
I was shocked.
I was horrified.
I could never say this at work, let alone a corporate client.
While I understood the sentiment of taking time to recognize mistakes, I knew for a fact that this type of message would not resonate with the stressed-out, overwhelmed professionals.
In fact this type of advice would have the people who need us most, shut us out.
As I explored this community, I found most of the “experts” to be misaligned with their potential clients reality. I felt like I was being told that the only way to reduce my stress was to quit my job and become a yoga teacher or a monk.
They were offering advice on how to solve problems in settings and situations they’d never been in.
The fact is, it may be relatively easy to be mindful when you are a monk living in a silent retreat; however, the mountain tops were not the setting I or my potential clients found ourselves in.
What I and many of my potential clients wanted wasn’t to become an expert on mindfulness.
I wanted to feel better and do better in the life I had.
And in these trainers, they didn’t know the realities of my stressful work life of being a sales leader. They didn’t realize it was just “easy” to completely switch it “off.” Therefore, instead of just teaching mindfulness for mindfulness sake, I decided to focus on teaching mindfulness for performance in the real world and the life we have.
To me, performance is both the process and the result of any action taken. I wanted to learn how mindfulness could enhance my performance – the results (what I created/how productive I was) and the process (how I felt while producing the results).
Many of us merely look at our results without considering the process. If we did, we might begin noticing that we’ve sacrificed a great deal (family time, our health, etc.) to be as accomplished as we are.
It was with this in mind that I wanted to create a mindfulness program that addressed both the results as well as the well-being.
I started asking myself, “Why it was so hard to both feel good and be successful?” I realized that it’s because we’ve been going about defining “success” all wrong and that the myths we’re told truly hold us back.
It was then that I decided I would build Performance-Based Mindfulness to help professionals become aware of the Myth’s. That way, together we could escape the grind and enter into the flow.
The flow of productivity and of well-being.
Performance-Based Mindfulness asks, “What did you create and how did you feel while creating it?”
At Open Deltas, we show you how to optimize both your actions and your emotions by taking mindfulness off the mat and into your life so you stop practicing it and start living it.
If you are interested in Performance-Based Mindfulness we highly recommend you start with our ‘20-hour Work Week' course. This is our flagship course which features proven techniques to drive performance (results and well-being) into actions you can take every single day to escape the Grind and enter into the Flow.
You can access it here FREE.
Welcome to your new normal.
Contact Open Deltas today to learn more about our life-changing programs.