Mindful (self)leadership

How can we become less reactive and more resilient?
That’s a question I had been asking myself quite often. Never quite finding the answer. Until I decided to have a look at mindfulness and learned that it only takes 10 minutes per day to train your brain to become less reactive and more clear and aware.

This is where the principle of “neural plasticity” comes in. Neuroscientists discovered in the last 10+ years that we are not hardwired to be a certain way for the rest of our lives. Our brain is actually quite flexible. It only takes practicing something new for 21 days and a new neural pathway is created. The more we keep on practicing this new behavior that we have defined, the stronger this new behavior will be engraved in our brain.

Back to mindfulness.
Our brain is involved in everything we do: thinking, feeling, deciding, acting.
To be less reactive to the stresses of day to day life and in order to lead better, 10 minutes of silence per day will bring us more awareness of inner processes and of external activities without reacting to them.
To quote the metaphor that my mindfulness teacher offered: “thoughts, feelings and sensations are like a train going through the station. Be the station, not the train.”

PS: in the next few weeks I will share the 8 “mental strategies” that the mindfulness practice offers.