REACTIVITY PART I: CULTIVATING EQUANIMITY WITH MINDFULNESS
Many of my clients bring up reactivity as one of their top issues to work on in our executive coaching. Often times a fast-driving impulsiveness enabled them to fuel the initial growth of their business. However, at some point this hot headedness starts feeling like a liability—either their teams struggle to trust them out of fear or they themselves find it exhausting to be reactive as their responsibilities grow over time. As Marshall Goldsmith put it, “What Got You Here, Won’t Get You There.”
When managing groups of people working toward a mission, reactivity causes unnecessary friction. Imagine doing the work you’re doing now except there’s less stress and more clarity and mental flexibility to focus on what matters most. You not only feel better but you also get more done. It’s a win-win. So how do we get there?
After working on this problem with many clients and trying several approaches, I’ve come up with a simple approach that works for most people: (1) cultivate an equanimous mind through mindfulness and (2) defuse reactivity once it’s been stimulated with focusing. In today’s post, I’ll address the first part and my next post will look at the second.
CULTIVATING AN EQUANIMOUSLY EFFECTIVE MIND
Equanimity means mental calmness, composure, and evenness of temper, especially in a difficult situation. An equanimous leader is someone who responds rather than reacts to stimuli—whether pleasant or unpleasant. They have the mental space to choose strategically rather than be buffeted by every e-mail that lands in their inbox.
Being an equanimous leader doesn’t mean zoning out. If anything, it means getting in the zone. As a leader of an organization, you’re essentially a high-performance mental athlete. You can’t let the upsetting call you just had mess up every meeting you have the rest of the day. That would be like letting a missed shot or even a lost game negatively affect every shot you take thereafter.
One of the most powerful tools for establishing this high-performance equanimity is mindfulness meditation. This is precisely why professional athletes practice mindfulness (Phil Jackson was famous for adopting mindfulness with the Chicago Bulls). When things go wrong, you don’t sweat it. You just stay in the zone and play the game you trained to play.
Essentially, mindfulness meditation is focus and awareness training. It trains the mind to focus on an object of meditation, notice when it distracted, then re-focus. It’s like training a mental muscle for focusing. When that muscle is weak, an upsetting conversation will set the mind off on hours of running around despite whatever we planned to do that day. When that muscle is strong, an upsetting conversation is observed, responded to, and then we turn our attention to whatever our priorities are.
There are a lot of apps available these days for training mindfulness. If you find them helpful, go ahead and use them. I recommend developing an app-free practice so you can customize it to your needs (e.g. amount of time you have, what you want to focus on, etc.). Below are my basic mindfulness meditation instructions that focus on cultivating equanimity:
STEP 1: ARRIVE PHYSICALLY
Arranging the body correctly is essential to meditation and it is oft overlooked because we’re so in our heads. Whether in a chair or on a meditation cushion, cultivate a relaxed and attentive posture. Straighten the back, open the chest, and place hands on your thighs. If you’re in a a chair, uncross your legs and have them at a 90-degree angle at the knees with your feet both on the floor. Relax any muscles you’re not using to maintain this posture. Scan from the top of your head down the body to the soles of your feet and relax any tension you find.
STEP 2: FOCUS ON THE BREATH
Notice the sensation of the breath wherever it stands out most to you. For some people this will be in the nostril, for others in the belly as it rises and falls. This will be the anchor or objective of your meditation. You’ll focus on this and keep returning to this sensation of breathing in and breathing out. Notice as many details as you can about the sensation.
STEP 3: NOTICE DISTRACTIONS
Inevitably, your attention will depart from the breath and wander off–perhaps to a thought or a physical sensation like an itch or a pain. Lots of people think it means they’re bad at meditation if their mind wanders off a lot. WRONG. It’s a necessary part of the practice to notice the mind has wandered off and bring it back to the sensation of breathing. If you just sat down and had no thoughts ever, you might be pretty blissed out but you wouldn’t be doing mindfulness meditation in service of improving your focus, awareness, and equanimity.
STEP 4: CULTIVATE EQUANIMITY
After you notice a distraction, you have the opportunity to cultivate equanimity with it. To cultivate equanimity, you want to adopt a non-judgmental, open attitude toward whatever arises–be in undesirable thoughts or pain or itchiness. Try to just notice it with a curiosity rather than pushing it away. Take a second or two to notice what it feels like in your body, then gently return the attention to the breath. A great way to work with physical sensations like itching or pain is to notice it and get curious about it without moving. Just let the itchiness or pain do its thing for three breaths and see if it changes. If it still itches or hurts after that, go ahead and move. Over time this mind training teaches the mind to relate to bothersome stimuli with spacious curiosity rather than reactivity.
If you want to learn more about mindfulness, I recommend the book Mindfulness in Plain English by Bhante Gunaratana.
If you want to learn more about how these and other wisdom tools can benefit you and your organization, drop me a line.
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Kan Yan is the founder of Sapient Leadership. Sapient Leadership helps purpose-driven leaders realize their visions for a better world through fierce wisdom and effectiveness.
