Wednesday 26 June 2013

Why Meditation can lead to good Leadership

There are many types of meditation available for us to explore and in fact the practice of Meditation is many thousands of years old. It has progressed its way through a variety of cultures, religions and philosophies. Essentially it has little to do with religion but more to do with the development of a sense of spirituality and self awareness.
We can begin the process for ourselves very easily by accepting the need and the advantages of reflection. Reflection is a practice which we can develop on a regular basis. I always advise clients to use this practice as a key component in leadership development. Mostly and tragically we seem to be too busy to spend the time each day with ourselves and to review the day's activities. It is not a complicated process but it is one in which we need to be relaxed, be on our own and to be enjoying our surroundings-we should be in a place of tranquility. Driving our car from the office to our home is NOT such a place. A park, a beach or just a quiet place in our home or garden is usually very suitable.
In the process of reflection we can look back at the key activities of our day. We should approach these activities with humility and certainly without judgement. We can calmly reflect on what we have learnt about ourselves and about others in the course of this reflection-remembering it is not about judgement and not about our ego. We should practice the art of being impartial.
The more we practice reflection in this kind of environment then the more we will develop a healthy perspective of ourselves. We can learn much about our nature and our approach to life. From this we will see how we can develop our wisdom and in so doing we are then on the path to great leadership of both ourselves and ultimately of others. When this is done with no self-interest then the results can be profound.
I am sure that we all have much to learn from our reflections and in particular from those reflections on what we call our mistakes. If we only could see the value in learning from these mistakes via reflection rather than by denying them then we would live in a much better World.
In our next blog I will detail the steps and the processes to achieve this but largely it should be up to each one of us to determine our way forward in the development of this art and practice.