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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
The one habit that can improve almost every leadership skill
There is a simple practice that can improve nearly every component of leadership excellence and it doesn't require adding anything to your busy schedule. In The Mindfulness Edge, you'll discover how a subtle inner shift, called mindfulness, can transform things that you already do every day into opportunities to become a better leader. Author Matt Tenney has trained leaders around the world in the practice of mindfulness. In this book, he partners with neuroscientist Tim Gard, PhD, to offer step-by-step, practical guidance for quickly and seamlessly integrating mindfulness training into your daily life—rewiring your brain in ways that improve both the ‘hard' and ‘soft' skills of leadership.
In this book, you'll learn how mindfulness training helps you:
- Quickly improve business acumen and your impact on the bottom line
- Become more innovative and attract/retain innovative team members
- Develop the emotional intelligence essential for creating and sustaining a winning culture
- Realize the extraordinary leadership presence that inspires greatness in others
The authors make a compelling case for why mindfulness training may be the 'ultimate success habit.' In addition to helping you improve the most essential elements of highly effective leadership, mindfulness training can help you discover unconditional happiness and realize incredible meaning—professionally and personally.
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Seitenzahl: 434
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016
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CONTENTS
Cover
Praise for
The Mindfulness Edge
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Preface: A Note on Best Enjoying This Book
Introduction
Everything Begins in the Mind
You Can Rewire Your Brain for Leadership and Personal Excellence
What You'll Find in This Book
Notes
Part 1: How Mindfulness Training Rewires the Brain for Leadership Excellence
Chapter 1: The Shift that Changes Everything
Beginner's Mind
The Attitude of a Beginner Is Essential
The Shift That Changes Everything
Changing Our Default
Review Questions
Notes
Chapter 2: Making an Immediate and Direct Impact on the Bottom Line
How We Unconsciously Affect Gross Margins and Expenses
Uncovering Our Cognitive Biases
The Illusion of Control Bias
The Status Quo Bias
The Logic Bias
The Reaction Time Bias
Mindful Self-Awareness and Better Decisions
Mental Agility
Quick Impact and Great Potential
Review Questions
Notes
Chapter 3: Organizational Climate Change
The Power of a Positive Emotional Climate
The Leader Drives the Emotions of the Team
The Emotionally Intelligent Leader
A More Emotionally Intelligent Brain
A Training Regimen for Emotional Intelligence
A Human Approach
Review Questions
Notes
Chapter 4: Fueling the Fire of Innovation
The Archetype of an Innovator
Resilience in the Face of Opposition
Empathy
Empathetic Design
Review Questions
Notes
Chapter 5: Developing Extraordinary Leadership Presence
Staying Cool Under Pressure
Fearlessness
The Most Important Aspect of Leadership Presence
Review Questions
Notes
Chapter 6: Why Mindfulness Is the Ultimate Success Habit
Two Life-Changing Discoveries
The Study of Happiness
The Ultimate Success Habit
Review Questions
Notes
Part 2: Developing the Ultimate Success Habit
Chapter 7: The Perfection of the Present Moment
Beginning to Practice in Daily Life
The Brain Is a Habitual Machine
The First Step to Unconditional Happiness
A Win-Win-Win Paradigm Shift
Review Questions
Notes
Chapter 8: The Power of Sitting Still
Seamlessly Integrating the Training into Daily Life
A Beginner's Guide to Sitting Still in Mindfulness
An Intermediate-Level Guide to Sitting Still in Mindfulness
Spilling Over into Activity
Review Questions
Notes
Chapter 9: From 4 Hours to 4 Minutes: Mastering Emotions for Optimal Performance
Returning to Cool: From 4 Hours to 4 Minutes
Mindfulness of Emotions: SCIL
A Ride on the River of Emotions
Review Questions
Notes
Chapter 10: The Wisdom of True Excellence
Things Aren't as They Seem
An Incredible Discovery
You're Not What You Think
Wisdom versus Knowledge
The Interplay between Stable Awareness and Wisdom
Review Questions
Notes
Chapter 11: Extraordinary Leadership Presence and the Final Piece of the Puzzle of Unconditional Happiness
Pain Is Inevitable; Suffering Is Optional
A Taste of Liberation
More Fully Enjoying What's Pleasant
That Darn Wisdom Again
The Root Cause of Suffering
Review Questions
Notes
Chapter 12: Advanced-Level Training
The Best Movie Ever
Brutal, Compassionate Honesty
Investigation of Phenomena
Fearlessness
Managing Change
Seeing Opportunities No One Else Sees
Just Listening
The Power of Doing Nothing
Review Questions
Notes
Chapter 13: The Foundations of Wisdom: Physical Training for Character
The Foundations of Wisdom
Foundation of Wisdom 1—Integrity
Foundation of Wisdom 2—Skillful Communication
Foundation of Wisdom 3—Wise Consumption
Foundation of Wisdom 4—Generosity
Foundation of Wisdom 5—Kindness
Your Personal Core Values
Review Questions
Notes
Chapter 14: Discovering Incredible Meaning at Work and in Your Time away from Work
A Purposeful Paradigm Shift
Saving the World on Your Way to the Bathroom
Review Questions
Afterword
Appendix: Introduction to Neuroscience
How We Study the Brain
What Can We See in the Brain?
Areas of the Brain Involved in Mindfulness
Notes
Acknowledgments
About the Authors
Index
End User License Agreement
List of Illustrations
Figure 1.1
Figure 1.2
Figure 2.1
Figure 10.1
Figure A.1
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
Part 1
Chapter 1
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Praise for The Mindfulness Edge
“This is an extraordinary book! The Mindfulness Edge will help you take advantage of your greatest strategic asset: your mind. This book offers a practical path to mastering your mind—and changing your brain in ways essential for effective leadership—with one simple habit. Develop this habit and you will not only be more successful both professionally and personally, you'll be more fulfilled as well.”
—Skip Prichard, president and CEO, Online Computer Library Center, Inc.; Leadership Insights blogger at www.skipprichard.com
“I thoroughly enjoyed this valuable book. Matt Tenney and Tim Gard show quite clearly how mindfulness can transform everyday activities into opportunities to change our brains in ways that improve essential leadership skills. They also offer a practical, enjoyable path to consistently being the leaders we aspire to be.”
—Bob Hottman, CEO, EKS&H
“This is a game-changing book. Based on cutting-edge research and illuminated by real-world examples and practical guidance, The Mindfulness Edge can take your business acumen, leadership skills, and personal growth to a higher level. I have read roughly 2,000 business books and this one is now in my top 10.”
—John Spence, named one of the top 500 leadership development experts in the world by www.HR.com
“I found this book very insightful. It serves as a practical training manual for improving self-awareness, and shows how self-awareness impacts nearly every aspect of leadership. This book will not only help you to be a better leader, it will also help you to enjoy the journey.”
—Gregory A. Serrao, executive chairman, American Dental Partners, Inc.
“In The Mindfulness Edge, Matt Tenney and Tim Gard present—in an engaging and inspiring way—a practical method of ‘strength training’ for the most important ‘muscle’ in your body: your brain. This insightful book is a game plan on how to apply mindfulness training to create the self-awareness and mental agility needed for impactful leadership. This is a must-read for any leader looking to raise the bar of excellence, while also becoming happier!”
—Chris Thoen, senior vice president, head of Global Science and Technology, Givaudan Flavours Corp.
“I truly enjoyed this book! The applications and narrative herein apply not only to leadership but also to life. With readable and to-the-point information on mindfulness backed by rigorous neuroscience, I strongly recommend The Mindfulness Edge to people new to the practice and to people with a long-standing interest.”
—Tara Swart, MD, PhD, CEO, The Unlimited Mind; senior lecturer, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Sloan School of Management; and coauthor of Neuroscience for Leadership: Harnessing the Brain Gain Advantage
“I recommend The Mindfulness Edge to leaders of all types. The book offers a path to self-mastery through mindfulness training and guidance for applying that self-mastery to enhance the effectiveness of your employees and company, thereby more positively impacting your clients. The authors explain the practice in great detail, inviting reflection along the way, and show how mindfulness can be easily integrated into daily routines with a measurable impact on your home, social, and business worlds.”
—Rick Staab, CEO, InterMed
“If you want one book that dives deeply and eloquently into one of the single best ingredients for a healthy and effective brain, The Mindfulness Edge is it. Matt Tenney and Tim Gard pair up to give spot-on insights that will unleash some awesome things already hanging out in your head. Bathe your brain in this book and get ready to find a whole new you.”
—Scott G. Halford, executive educator, National Hall of Fame speaker, and author of Activate Your Brain: How Understanding Your Brain Can Improve Your Work—and Your Life
“The brilliance of The Mindfulness Edge is that it deviates so significantly from the status quo. Rather than merely add to the cacophonous volume of information and advice that overcrowds our mental faculties, this book offers practical, achievable guidance on how to skillfully embrace the chaos and complexity of today's business environment so that we can uncover truly innovative solutions on our own.”
—Martin Sirk, CEO, International Congress and Convention Association
“As the business and investment worlds tentatively shift their focus away from short-term transactions toward longer-term relationships, we need excellent leaders to strengthen this trend: leaders with the skills to align our corporations and institutions with the needs of society, the economy, and the environment. The Mindfulness Edge is a timely and practical guide for those aspiring to this task.”
—Colin Melvin, CEO, Hermes Equity Ownership Services, Ltd.
“The Mindfulness Edge brilliantly and scientifically demonstrates why mindfulness is a key ingredient in leadership. This book offers not only insight into the journey of mindfulness, but the road map, the compass, and the tour guide to get you there.”
—Chad Paris, CEO, Parisleaf
“I thoroughly enjoyed this very entertaining and highly useful read. This inspiring book brings together the sound and thorough interpretation of up-to-date neuroscience research with fun-to-read stories and suggestions for applying mindfulness practice in daily life.”
—Britta Hölzel, PhD, neuroscientist, mindfulness trainer, and author
“The Mindfulness Edge offers a fresh and highly practical approach to mastering mindfulness and creating inspiring, mindful workplaces.”
—Michael Carroll, author of The Mindful Leader: Ten Principles for Bringing Out the Best in Ourselves and Others
“Matt Tenney and Tim Gard haven written the first really practical, neuroscience-based guide for enhancing leadership performance through mindfulness. You can start rewiring your brain now!”
—Wibo Koole, director, Centrum voor Mindfulness, Amsterdam, and best-selling author of Mindful Leadership: Effective Tools to Help You Focus and Succeed
The Mindfulnessedge
How to Rewire Your Brain for Leadership and Personal Excellence Without Adding to Your Schedule
matt tenney
tim gard, phd
Cover design: Wiley
Copyright © 2016 by Matt Tenney and Tim Gard. All rights reserved.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.
Published simultaneously in Canada.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 646-8600, or on the Web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748-6011, fax (201) 748-6008, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions.
Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and authors have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.
For general information on our other products and services or for technical support, please contact our Customer Care Department within the United States at (800) 762-2974, outside the United States at (317) 572-3993 or fax (317) 572-4002.
Wiley publishes in a variety of print and electronic formats and by print-on-demand. Some material included with standard print versions of this book may not be included in e-books or in print-on-demand. If this book refers to media such as a CD or DVD that is not included in the version you purchased, you may download this material at http://booksupport.wiley.com. For more information about Wiley products, visit www.wiley.com.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Names: Tenney, Matt, author.
Title: The mindfulness edge : how to rewire your brain for leadership and personal excellence without adding to your schedule / Matt Tenney.
Description: Hoboken : Wiley, 2016. | Includes index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015041523 (print) | LCCN 2016001068 (ebook) | ISBN 9781119183181 (hardback) | ISBN 9781119183204 (ePDF) | ISBN 9781119183242 (ePub)
Subjects: LCSH: Leadership. | Mindfulness (Psychology) | BISAC: BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Leadership.
Classification: LCC HD57.7 .T4578 2016 (print) | LCC HD57.7 (ebook) | DDC 658.4/092019–dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015041523
Dedication
To my parents, Molly and Gary, for your unconditional support.
—Matt Tenney
To Marasha, Max, and Lex.
—Tim Gard
PrefaceA Note on Best Enjoying This Book
Please don't be intimidated by the subtitle of this book, or by the fact that the coauthor is a super genius neuroscientist who has worked at leading research institutions, including Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School. The main text, which is in my voice, will not delve deeply into neuroscience and is a fairly easy and highly practical read.
Although I'll mention quite a bit of research and shed some light on the latest understanding of how we can rewire our brains for leadership excellence, the more in-depth discussions of neuroscience research, and other interesting studies, are set aside from the main text in sections called “Neuro Notes.” If you'd like to go a bit deeper with the neuroscience for your own education, or so you can sound cool at dinner parties, or just to add to the enjoyment of the book, I encourage you to read the Neuro Notes. If you don't think the extra scientific depth is necessary, you can skip the Neuro Notes and stick with the main text without fear of losing the main thrust of the book.
The Neuro Notes are written by the aforementioned super genius neuroscientist, Tim Gard, PhD. In addition to writing the Neuro Notes, Dr. Gard has been instrumental in finding the most recent, relevant research for this book. He also worked with me on the main text to help improve it in many ways, including ensuring that I didn't overstate the results of the research we cite in this book.
Dr. Gard has helped improve this book significantly. I believe that, thanks to him, you will enjoy the book significantly more than if I had written it alone and that you'll walk away with a much greater understanding of your brain and your power to change it in ways that can help you achieve both leadership and personal excellence.
Introduction
Think of all the simple activities that you already engage in every day—activities such as brushing your teeth, getting dressed, commuting to work, walking to your desk, waiting for the coffee to brew, waiting for your computer to boot up, and so on. These activities are often labeled as “downtime” or “wastes of time.”
Now, imagine that you could transform those activities into some of the most productive moments of the day, while also increasing your happiness. Cutting-edge research in neuroscience suggests that you can actually do just that.
This book is about a simple tool that can help you:
Improve your business acumen
Improve your emotional and social intelligence
Become more innovative
Manage change more effectively
See opportunities that other people don't see
Improve your leadership presence
Live a more fulfilling life
I know it may sound too good to be true, but the tool we'll discuss in this book can help you do all of the above. In fact, it gets even better.
This tool is absolutely free, and it doesn't require you to add anything to your schedule, which is likely quite full already. All you need to do is change the way you do things you're already doing every day. It takes about as much effort as taking a pill, but you can apply this tool every waking moment of your life. And, when practiced correctly, the side effects include only positive things, such as increased happiness and improved health.
The tool to which I'm referring is a simple practice known as mindfulness training.1
Everything Begins in the Mind
Over the last couple of years, during workshops and training programs I've offered, I've asked thousands of people the following question: “Would you agree with me when I say that all success and all failure originate in the mind?”
No one has ever disagreed. The question is essentially rhetorical. We know that everything we do, or fail to do, begins in the mind.
The reason I ask the question above is because it makes the next question much more powerful: “How many people do you know who take time every day to intentionally train the mind to function more effectively?”
Typically, in business audiences, only 1 to 3 percent of the people raise their hands.
I find this quite interesting. Everyone seems to agree that an effectively functioning mind is the root of all personal and professional success, yet very few people take time each day to intentionally train their minds. We might add knowledge through study, but we don't do anything to train how the mind actually functions. In most cases, this is because people are not aware that a systematic process of training the mind exists, a method of training that is being applied at highly successful companies, such as Google, Apple, Aetna, Intel, General Mills, and many others.
For most of us, unfortunately, the result of not training the mind is that it can be our greatest obstacle to success. It is often a source of anxiety, self-doubt, and repetitive thought patterns that limit us, keeping us from reaching our full potential.
This book offers several radical paradigm shifts. The first broad shift is that we all have the ability to train our minds in such a way that reverses the situation described above. We can transform the mind so that it is no longer our greatest obstacle to success but, rather, an incredibly powerful tool that allows us to achieve significantly greater success in both our personal and our professional lives, especially as leaders.
You Can Rewire Your Brain for Leadership and Personal Excellence
It would have been nearly impossible 20 years ago to find a neuroscientist who believed that the physical structure of the human brain could be changed after adolescence. Today, this view is quite different. In 2004, for instance, a neuroscientist named Bogdan Draganski and his colleagues showed that people who have trained in juggling for three months develop measurably more gray matter2—the switchboard substance of the brain, so to speak—in brain regions that are associated with the processing and storage of complex visual motion.3,4
There is now a whole new focus of neuroscience growing around the fact that the brain can be changed, which is referred to as neuroplasticity. One of the most promising discoveries in the realm of neuroplasticity is that we can change our brains throughout our entire lives. An old dog really can learn new tricks!
Neuro Note 0.1: Neuroplasticity
Several studies, such as the juggling study above by Draganski and colleagues, clearly show that we can change the physical structure of our brains—in essence, gray matter increases—and that brain and behavior are closely related. However, it is difficult to say with precision which of the very tiny structures that make up gray matter are changing. Animal studies suggest that these changes are due to the growth of tiny blood vessels (capillaries) that supply the neurons with oxygen and glucose, to increases in dendritic length and branching, to a growth of the number of synapses, and even to the growth of new neurons.5
In addition to increasing gray matter, training can also increase white matter, the wiring of the brain. This was revealed for the first time by Scholz, Klein, and colleagues, who found increases in white matter after only six weeks of juggling training.6 As with the gray matter, it is not clear yet what exactly at the micro level causes this increase.
If you'd like a more detailed explanation about what white and gray matter are, how we measure changes in brain function and structure, and an overview of the brain regions involved in mindfulness, please see the Appendix.
The aspect of neuroplasticity that I find most exciting is the more recent discovery that we can actually change the physical structure of the brain simply by using the mind.7 One of the first studies to shed light on the possibility of changing the brain simply by using the mind involved taxi drivers in London, England. As part of their exams for obtaining a license to drive a cab in London, they must acquire what is known as “the Knowledge.” They are required to memorize routes in an area that includes roughly 25,000 streets and 20,000 landmarks and places of interest. Acquiring “the Knowledge” can take two to four years of training.
In 2011, when Woollett and Maguire, neuroscientists at University College London, studied the brains of a group of London cab drivers before and after acquiring “the Knowledge,” they discovered a significant increase in gray matter in the area of the brain associated with spatial memory (the posterior hippocampi). No such changes have been found in those trainees who failed to qualify as licensed London taxi drivers and a control group who did not go through the training.8
As the practice of mindfulness has become more widespread, the scientific community has become increasingly interested in mindfulness training, and a tremendous amount of research has been compiled on the benefits of the practice.9 There are now numerous studies that strongly suggest that mindfulness training results in physical changes to the structure of the brain—in some cases as quickly as eight weeks—that can be linked to better leadership skills.10 In this book we'll explore how, with mindfulness training, we can literally rewire our brains for leadership excellence.11
What You'll Find in This Book
This book is based on a combination of previously separate training programs that I have offered to leaders. I understand that oftentimes the most pressing issue in an organization is the financial situation. There can be tremendous pressure to “hit the numbers” every single quarter.
Thus, we start by discussing how mindfulness training can help leaders make decisions that have better impacts on gross margins and expenses. This helps us make quick, direct impacts on the bottom line, which means we're more likely to keep our jobs long enough to make a long-term impact. Better business acumen also allows a leader to have more resources available to serve both the customer and the members of the organization.
However, as I explored in great detail in my first book, Serve to Be Great, if leaders place too much emphasis on the numbers and fail to serve and care for the people on their teams effectively, the organization will eventually fail. Without happy, loyal team members, it is nearly impossible to keep happy, loyal customers. Without happy, loyal customers, an organization simply can't exist for long. Therefore, we also need to address the leadership skills that allow us to create and sustain a culture that drives the long-term growth and profitability of our organizations.
Fortunately, there is a bridge between better business acumen and better leadership skills. The bridge is the practice of mindfulness. Mindfulness training helps us develop the self-awareness and mental agility that are the keys to better business acumen and the foundation for developing the emotional and social intelligence that allow us to serve and care for the people on our teams more effectively, and thus create sustainable, high-performance team cultures.
The book is divided into two parts to make it easy to approach the topics we'll discuss:
Part 1—We'll introduce and explain mindfulness training and how it can rewire our brains in ways that help us achieve greater success as leaders. We'll discuss how mindfulness training can help leaders make a quick, direct, positive impact on gross margins and expenses. We'll also explore how mindfulness training helps us develop the leadership skills that are essential for the long-term success of our teams.
Part 2—We'll discuss how to integrate mindfulness training seamlessly into our daily lives without having to add anything new to our already-busy schedules.
We sincerely hope that you enjoy reading this book as much as we enjoyed writing it!
Notes
1.
Mindfulness training
refers to a set of practices that help one be mindful on demand and more often. The definition I use for
being mindful
is “being nonjudgmentally aware of what is being experienced—including thoughts and emotions—in the present moment.” It is an adaptation of the most common functional definition of mindfulness, created by Jon Kabat-Zinn. The definition I use makes explicit the idea implied in Kabat-Zinn's definition that mindfulness is an awareness that includes self-awareness.
2.
Dr. Gard—Gray matter is mostly made up of the cell bodies of nerve cells or neurons, dendrites (branches of the cell body that make connections to other neurons and receive signals from them), axon terminals (the club-shaped endings by which axons—another type of branch from the cell body—make connections with dendrites), and tiny blood vessels called capillaries. The gray matter is located in the outer layer of the brain (cerebral cortex) and in clusters of nerve cell bodies, deeper inside the brain (nuclei) (Kalat 2015).
Kalat, James W. 2015. Biological Psychology. 12th ed. Boston: Cengage Learning.
3.
Draganski, Bogdan, Christian Gaser, Volker Busch, Gerhard Schuierer, Ulrich Bogdahn, and Arne May. 2004. “Neuroplasticity: Changes in Grey Matter Induced by Training.”
Nature
427 (6972): 311–2. doi:10.1038/427311a.
4.
Dr. Gard—The 2004 juggling study by Draganski and colleagues was the first study to show that training really can change the brain in terms of gray matter. This study not only showed that training juggling for three months results in increases in gray matter in brain regions that are associated with the processing and storage of complex visual motion, it also showed that after not juggling for another three months, gray matter decreased in these brain areas. So you can train your brain, but if you don't use it, you may lose it. The clear link between brain and behavior in this study was strengthened by the finding that the jugglers who had a greater change in juggling performance also had a greater change in brain gray matter.
5.
Lövdén, Martin, Elisabeth Wenger, Johan Mårtensson, Ulman Lindenberger, and Lars Bäckman. 2013. “Structural Brain Plasticity in Adult Learning and Development.”
Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews
37 (9): 2296–310. doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2013.02.014.; Valkanova, Vyara, Rocio Eguia Rodriguez, and Klaus P. Ebmeier. 2014. “Mind over Matter—What Do We Know about Neuroplasticity in Adults?”
International Psychogeriatrics
26 (6): 891–909. doi:10.1017/s1041610213002482.
6.
Scholz, Jan, Miriam C. Klein, Timothy E. J. Behrens, and Heidi Johansen-Berg. 2009. “Training Induces Changes in White-Matter Architecture.”
Nature Neuroscience
12 (11): 1370–1. doi:10.1038/nn.2412.
7.
When I use the word
mind
, I'm referring to the activity of the brain. Here, Dr. Gard elaborates on the relationship between mind and brain. Dr. Gard—The mind–body problem, or the mind–brain problem, refers to the philosophical problem of what the relationship between the mind and the brain is. Two main views on this problem exist: dualism and monism. Dualism is the view that the mind and brain are of different nature and thus not identical. This view was defended by sixteenth-century philosopher René Descartes. Monism is the view that mind and brain consist of the same substance. This view knows several forms, of which the identity view is the most accepted among neuroscientists today. According to this view, mental processes and brain activity are identical, so it is assumed thoughts are brain activity and brain activity is thoughts (Kalat 2015).
Kalat, James W. 2015. Biological Psychology. 12th ed. Boston: Cengage Learning.
8.
Woollett, Katherine, and Eleanor A. Maguire. 2011. “Acquiring ‘the Knowledge’ of London's Layout Drives Structural Brain Changes.”
Current Biology
21 (24): 2109–14. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2011.11.018.
9.
In 2005, there were 75 scholarly articles published on the topic of mindfulness. In 2010, that number reached 436. In 2014, it was 1,063. So much research has been compiled, in fact, that an association has been formed to keep track of it all and support further research efforts, called the American Mindfulness Research Association (
https://goamra.org/
). The number of published articles in 2005 was based on a search in Web of Science using the query “TOPIC:(mindfulness), Timespan:2005, Search language=Auto.” The same query but with Timespan:2010 and 2014 was used for the respective years.
10.
Fox, Kieran C. R., Savannah Nijeboer, Matthew L. Dixon, James L. Floman, Melissa Ellamil, Samuel P. Rumak, Peter Sedlmeier, and Kalina Christoff. 2014. “Is Meditation Associated with Altered Brain Structure? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Morphometric Neuroimaging in Meditation Practitioners.”
Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews
43 (June): 48–73. doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2014.03.016.;
Hölzel, Britta K., James Carmody, Mark Vangel, Christina Congleton, Sita M. Yerramsetti, Tim Gard, and Sara W. Lazar. 2011. “Mindfulness Practice Leads to Increases in Regional Brain Gray Matter Density.” Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging 191 (September): 36–43. doi:10.1016/j.pscychresns.2010.08.006.
11.
Dr. Gard—The field of cognitive neuroscience is still quite young. Functional magnetic resonance image (fMRI) was first used to study brain activation in the early 1990s (Belliveau et al. 1991). The field that investigates the neural mechanisms of mindfulness, the so-called contemplative neuroscience, is in its infancy. It was only in 2005 that the brain structure of mindfulness practitioners was studied for the first time (Lazar et al. 2005), and the first studies investigating the effects of mindfulness-based interventions on brain structure are from 2010 and 2011 (Hölzel et al. 2011; Tang et al. 2010). Although what we have learned so far about the neural mechanisms of mindfulness is amazing, it is important to realize that in this very young field, much of the interpretations of the findings are speculative. Many studies don't directly relate brain findings to self-report or behavioral measures, and, because of study designs that are not optimal, it is not always clear whether the findings are exclusive to mindfulness. These problems are actually quite normal when a field is young. With ongoing research, firmer conclusions can be drawn in the future. With this note of cautious optimism in mind, I hope that you'll enjoy learning how mindfulness might rewire your brain and that you become as excited by the findings in the field of contemplative neuroscience as I have become.
Belliveau, J. W., D. N. Kennedy Jr., R. C. McKinstry, B. R. Buchbinder, R. M. Weisskoff, M. S. Cohen, J. M. Vevea, T. J. Brady, and B. R. Rosen. 1991. “Functional Mapping of the Human Visual Cortex by Magnetic Resonance Imaging.” Science 254 (5032): 716–9. doi:10.1126/science.1948051.
Hölzel, Britta K., James Carmody, Mark Vangel, Christina Congleton, Sita M. Yerramsetti, Tim Gard, and Sara W. Lazar. 2011. “Mindfulness Practice Leads to Increases in Regional Brain Gray Matter Density.” Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging 191(1): 36–43. doi:10.1016/j.pscychresns.2010.08.006.
Lazar, Sara W., Catherine E. Kerr, Rachel H. Wasserman, Jeremy R. Gray, Douglas N. Greve, Michael T. Treadway, Metta McGarvey et al. 2005. “Meditation Experience Is Associated with Increased Cortical Thickness.” Neuroreport 16 (17): 1893–7. doi:10.1097/01.wnr.0000186598.66243.19.
Tang, Yi-Yuan, Qilin Lu, Xiujuan Geng, Elliot A. Stein, Yihong Yang, and Michael I. Posner. 2010. “Short-Term Meditation Induces White Matter Changes in the Anterior Cingulate.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 107 (35): 15649–52. doi:10.1073/pnas.1011043107.
Part 1How Mindfulness Training Rewires the Brain for Leadership Excellence
1The Shift that Changes Everything
In November of 1887, two scientists named Albert A. Michelson and Edward W. Morley published a paper at a prestigious university known today as Case Western Reserve, in Cleveland, Ohio.1 The paper caused quite a conundrum for physicists of the day.
Michelson and Morley hadn't intended to turn the world of physics upside down. They were simply trying to prove that the ether existed.
For many years, scientists believed that there must be some invisible sea, which they called the ether, through which every physical thing in the universe is moving. It was a very convenient theory. It provided the foundation for the then accepted laws of motion and provided a medium for the propagation of light (at the time, light was viewed by most scientists as only a wave-like phenomenon; it needed something to “wave” through).
The ether was an extremely important element of physical theories in the late 1800s. Most scientists agreed that the ether simply had to exist. There was one significant problem, though. No one had ever seen the ether, nor had anyone been able to measure it in any other way.
Michelson and Morley devised a rather simple experiment to determine whether the ether actually existed. They theorized that if there was an ether, and the earth was moving through it, there should be a sort of ether breeze, similar to what we feel when we put a hand outside of a car window while we're driving down the highway. For instance, the earth travels around the sun at nearly 67,000 miles per hour (mph), so that breeze alone would be fairly significant.
The ether breeze, they postulated, would create substantial resistance for a beam of light and cause the light to slow down. So Michelson and Morley set up an experiment to measure the speed of light traveling in the direction of the earth's motion, through the ether breeze, versus a beam of light not traveling against the ether breeze. The experiment showed quite conclusively that there was no difference in the speed of the two beams of light and therefore that the ether almost certainly did not exist.
Other scientists soon agreed with the findings, and similar experiments were conducted with similar results. Within a short time, there was quite a bit of consternation. It appeared that the beloved and necessary ether had been proved to be nothing but a figment of human imagination.
But the problems caused by the elimination of the ether as a possible component of the laws of motion and light propagation were quite minor compared with what else Michelson and Morley discovered in their experiment. As a side effect of their effort to disprove the ether, they also noticed that the speed of light was unchanged relative to the motion of the earth.
Soon, several other experiments produced similar results. It appeared that the relative motion of the observer did not affect the speed of light. This, of course, makes no sense. It defies the extremely well established and commonsense law of motion that states that velocity is relative to the motion of the observer.
For example, if you're in a parked car and a car going 20 mph passes by you, the relative velocity between the two cars is 20 mph. However, if you're in a car going 10 mph and a car going 20 mph in the same direction passes you, the relative velocity between the two cars is 10 mph. The other car pulls away at a rate of 10 mph relative to your car.
But if the speed of light were constant, it would mean that for some reason light wouldn't obey that law. If you were in a parked car and turned your headlights on, light would move away from you at 186,000 miles per second. If you and your car could somehow travel at a velocity of 100,000 miles per second in the same direction as a light beam, that beam of light would still move away from you at 186,000 miles per second.
Again, this defies common sense. In the example above, why doesn't the light have a relative velocity of 86,000 miles per second? Why would light be different from every other single thing we experience through our senses in this world?
These are likely the same questions the physicists of the day asked. The answer the scientists likely settled on at first was that something must have gone wrong in the Michelson-Morley experiment. Everything the experts of the day knew about the world, and how we operate in it, forced them to conclude that there was no way the speed of light could possibly be constant.
But one young physicist, who had been fascinated by light for years, took a different approach to the problem in the early 1900s. Although he was likely at least vaguely aware of the experiments showing that the speed of light is constant, his approach actually began in a very childlike manner when he imagined what things would be like if he were traveling on a beam of light. The result of his thought experiment was that one could never catch up to a light beam because that would result in seeing a stationary electromagnetic wave, which is not believed to be possible. Therefore, he concluded that the speed of light must be constant.
This young physicist later realized that if the speed of light were constant, there would be some very strange consequences. For instance, as a person approaches the speed of light, her mass increases, she becomes compressed in the direction of motion, and she actually ages more slowly relative to a person moving with less velocity. He realized that the speed of light doesn't change relative to time; time changes relative to the speed of light. All of these weird consequences were later proved through experiments to be true.
While everyone else was saying that the constancy of the speed of light is impossible because it totally defies common sense, our young physicist realized that both his thought experiments and other experiments suggested otherwise. He was open to the unlikely possibility that perhaps our world just might be so drastically different from how the conventional wisdom of the time suggested it was. He had to temporarily let go of much of what his training led him, and other physicists of the day, to believe. As Gary Zukav writes in the excellent book The Dancing Wu Li Masters, this pioneering physicist had to approach the issue of the constancy of the speed of light with the mind of a complete beginner.2
With this beginner's mind, the young physicist began to base all of his math on the idea that the constancy of the speed of light is not a theory; it is a fact. When he used C in his equations for the speed of light, he thought of it as being a constant. His most well-known equation is E = mc2. The young physicist's name is Albert Einstein. Today, E = mc2 is probably the most well-known equation in the world. His insights completely transformed our understanding of how the universe works and became the basis for some of the most useful physical theories in history, which later helped us build countless things we rely on every day.
Beginner's Mind
One of my favorite quotes is from a famous mindfulness teacher from Japan named Shunryu Suzuki. He said, “In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few.”3
Albert Einstein offers us a perfect example of this. When he was asked why he was so successful as a scientist, his humble response was: “The ordinary adult never gives a thought to space-time problems.…I, on the contrary, developed so slowly that I did not begin to wonder about space and time until I was an adult. I then delved more deeply into the problem than any other adult or child would have done.”4
When most scientists are children, and are asking the big questions that could change the world, they don't have the math or physics training that would allow them to translate their inquiries into something the world could use. And, by the time they reach the peak of their training, they have also fully developed into adults and have lost much of their sense of childlike wonder.
But Einstein never lost his childlike personality traits. He continued to ask naïve, childlike questions well into his adult life. When he asked those questions, though, he already had the math and physics training that allowed him to test and prove his ideas, and share them in a way that other people could understand and apply.
Fortunately for us, we can train our minds to be like the mind of Einstein. We may not be able to match his IQ, but we can train to see the world with a beginner's mind. We can train to be free from the constraints of what we already know, without having to discard what we already know.
The benefits of having such a beginner's mind extend well beyond the worlds of science and innovation. A beginner's mind is the essence of mindfulness training. In fact, some schools of mindfulness actually refer to the practice as the practice of “beginner's mind.”
The Attitude of a Beginner Is Essential
Beginner's mind is essentially a shift in attitude. Instead of operating from the position of I've already experienced this or I already know about this, we operate with an open, inquisitive attitude of Ooh, let's explore what this experience is actually like. We have a questioning attitude, such as, What's happening now within me and around me?
This attitude alone can be very beneficial in a general sense. As we've already discussed, having a beginner's mind opens up a whole realm of possibilities for learning new things, for creative approaches that can lead to breakthrough discoveries, and for seeing opportunities that no else sees.
However, we discover many more benefits when we train to apply this beginner's mind to our moment-to-moment experience, when we adopt and then sustain the attitude of What's happening now, within me and around me?
The moment we adopt that attitude, a shift occurs in our awareness. We shift from perceiving the world through the lens of the thinking mind—essentially being the thinking mind—to being self-aware, which includes awareness of the thinking mind. When we become aware of the thinking mind, we are free from it. We no longer see the world through its limited view.
Figure 1.1—a top-down view of a human head—illustrates how most of us spend most of our time perceiving the world and acting in it.
Figure 1.1 The Default Way of Experiencing the World
The outer ring of the mind represents the thinking mind as a whole.5
The middle ring represents the ego, which is a creation of the thinking mind and its interactions with the world up to this moment. It is essentially a collection of conditioned habits, thought patterns, emotional patterns, and memories that make up our personal identity—a very strong sense of me.
The innermost part of the image represents awareness.
For most of us, most of the time, we operate as though we are the thinking mind and its ego, and we receive all sensory information through those filters, as represented by the arrows in the previous figure. Existing in this way is quite problematic. Following is an overview of three critical ways that our personal and professional success are hindered by operating from the perspective we see in Figure 1.1.
Not Seeing What's Actually Happening
When we operate from the perspective of the thinking mind and its ego—which some neuroscientists refer to as the default mode network (DMN), as Dr. Gard explains in Neuro Note 1.1—everything we perceive is filtered through the thinking mind and the ego. We don't see things as they actually are. We see them with quite a bit of distortion. All of our past experiences, our habitual ways of seeing, and our beliefs and opinions shape what we perceive, as we saw above with the scientists in the late 1800s, whose conditioning caused them to disregard the possibility of the constancy of the speed of light.
As leaders, one of the most critical skills we can possess is the ability to see clearly what is actually happening—to see things not in terms of how we want them to be, or how our conditioning tells us they must be, but how they actually are.
Although I'm a huge proponent of being as optimistic as possible about the future, it is absolutely essential that we be extremely realistic about where we, our team members, and our organizations actually are in the present moment. We cannot hope to have any chance of charting a path for future success if we start with an incorrect view of where we currently are. This is akin to trying to get to Paris, France, from Cape Town, South Africa, but thinking that we're actually starting from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It would be essentially impossible to get to Paris based on the wrong starting assumption.
Neuro Note 1.1: The Wandering Mind and the Default Mode Network
A large portion of the time (nearly 47 percent), we are not fully engaged in the world around us or in the task that we are conducting.6 Instead we are lost in self-generated and self-related thoughts, such as remembering our past and planning our future; our mind is wandering.7
This mind wandering comes at a cost.8 It is related to negative emotions and poor performance on demanding tasks, such the scholastic aptitude test (SAT).9 It also has been hypothesized that this habit or default mode of mind wandering biases the view of ourselves and the world around us, and indeed a recent study suggests that mind wandering is related to decision-making bias.10
In the brain, mind wandering is associated with the so-called default mode network (DMN).11 The DMN is active when we are not engaged in any task or processing of external events. It is involved in remembering the past, envisioning future events, and considering thoughts and perspectives of other people. Roughly speaking, the DMN comprises three midline regions of the brain: the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) that supports emotional processing, the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) that is related to self-referential processing, and the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) plus adjacent precuneus that are associated with recollection of prior experiences. Furthermore, the DMN comprises a region in the inferior parietal lobule (IPL), close to the temporoparietal junction (TPJ), which is related to perspective taking.12
Acting in Conditioned, Habitual Ways
Second, when we operate from the position of being the thinking mind and the ego it has created, we act based on our conditioned, habitual ways of reacting. It's as though we are plugged into the proverbial matrix.13 We are essentially programs that can react to a situation only in the way we've been programmed to react. These programs are constructed from a combination of our genetics and all of the ways the brain has been conditioned by our life experiences up to this moment.
Of course, most of us have programming that can be helpful. There are many cases when reacting based on that programming is likely to yield excellent results. One example is a highly trained doctor reacting—essentially on autopilot—to a medical emergency, allowing her programming to take over and provide the crucial help that could save a person's life.
However, we also have a tremendous amount of programming that does not serve us well. We have numerous conditioned, habitual ways of doing things. Although we might think that we are already free from our programming, as we'll explore in Chapter 2, there are many degrees of being subject to this programming, and much of the programming is completely unconscious for most of us.
In fact, people who think they are completely free from habitual, conditioned ways of thinking, deciding, and acting are often those who are the least free from their programming. They simply don't see their programming because their lack of self-awareness keeps the conditioning completely unconscious.
Often, our conditioned, habitual ways of doing things result in suboptimal outcomes in our personal and professional lives. For example, as we'll see in Chapter 2, this conditioning can affect business acumen and cause very intelligent, experienced leaders to unconsciously make decisions that have significant, negative impacts on gross margins and expenses.
This unconscious conditioning is often quite subtle, and it requires a very high level of self-awareness to recognize the programming and be free from it. Unfortunately, because our minds are untrained, we often lack the momentary self-awareness to notice even very obvious forms of conditioning.
For instance, on several occasions while entering the Jetway at the airport, I've overheard the person in front of me talking with the gate agent. The gate agent said, “Have a nice flight!” The person in front of me replied, “You, too!”
The gate agent smiled politely in each case but was quite likely thinking, “I'm not taking a flight.” The reply of the person in front of me was a conditioned, habitual-type response. Each time I've seen this happen, it appeared to me as though the person wasn't even aware that what he just said was nonsensical.
