The Business of Mindfulness

I was twenty-two years working for myself a couple of weeks back - an anniversary which give rise to a pause for reflection.

First of all, it struck me how much science has caught up with what we intuitively know, feel and experience. For 2,500 years the practice of meditation has enabled people shift their mindset, take control of their state of mind. Twenty two years ago, when I started teaching people about meditation and how to do it, one of my first clients (who also happened to be amongst a group of "old clients" that I had a workshop for last September… or 21 years later!) said to me: "I'm sure what you're teaching will eventually become mainstream... but not in our lifetime!"

Yet, here we are, just twenty-two years later and, not only is it mainstream, it's everywhere... and, as a result, everyone thinks they know about mindfulness these days. And that's the problem - it's not good enough to know about mindfulness, you've got to feel it. As a friend said to me recently: "When I did my first workshop with you, I understood mindfulness, completely got it. But last week, I felt it".

Science has caught up with what we feel... first cognitive psychology got its act together in investigating conscious awareness (it took psychology just over one hundred years to turn its attention to one of its most important and fundamental questions!) and then neuroscience opened up a whole new vista for us. No longer did we need to base our neural understanding on rats' brains, mice's brains (not sure it my grammar is correct there!), damaged or dead brains. We can now see what's going on in real time and the very real that meditation has on those parts of the brain involved in conscious awareness.

But what does this mean in the so-called real world… is mindfulness practical? Is it or can it ever be a business proposition? If you’re in business, can you capitalize on it, is there an ROI? If you’re a coach, can you capitalize on it be enabling your client change their lives?

The short answer to all those questions is a resounding “YES”. But I’m not talking about the mindfulness you read about in pop psychology books, I’m talking about purposeful mindfulness or, better again, as I like to call it, purposeful focus (it takes the confusion out of it!).

When we set out mindful or properly focused minds in a desired direction you have a combination which is entirely practical, a solid business proposition (I’ve emails from some of the world’s biggest companies thanking me for my contribution to their bottom line!) and, even better again (because business people like measuring things) there is an established way to measure ROI.

Purposeful focus – mindfulness in the here and now with your purpose in mind – is the most practical proposition you will ever come across. It doesn’t just enable you achieve the desired results effortlessly, it enables you achieve the extraordinary.