When it comes to dealing with our inner selves versus our outer circumstances, being proactive means different things for each of those aspects of ourselves. While the inner work includes practices of gratitude, mindfulness, and nonjudgment, the external or physical work includes demonstrating non-reactivity and emotional maturity so that no one is traumatized by the experience. While the inner processes that you go through will be no one’s business but your own, your external responses to what’s happening have the potential to affect everything and everyone around you, and then ripple from there and affect everyone they may come into contact with for the rest of the day (at least). Your choice is simple: react without checking yourself or respond wisely.
So how do we get better at responding rather than reacting, and what can we proactively do to help our bodies, minds, and emotions to get to a place of calm and peace no matter what our external circumstances look like? Being proactive will lead to the healthy habits, which will help lead to the dissolution of unhealthy habits, which in turn makes you healthier overall. When your physical body is healthy, your mind becomes healthier, and your emotional state becomes more balanced. Daily exercise helps to release toxic emotions that have built up, and this frees up any blocked energy you may have residing within your body. That in turn makes everything flow more effortlessly, including creative energy and emotional energy, which will then also be easier for you to process.
It is all connected, so your decision to be proactive about your overall wellbeing is like another step on your journey and has the potential to open all kinds of doors for you. And, like so many things we talk about here on the Mindful Leader Blog, much of the work begins from within. How do you get to an understanding of life that makes sense to you and allows you to treat every person and circumstance as an intentional and purposeful piece of your existence?
Here are a few ideas to help you on your journey.
Learn to give purpose to your pain. Life is painful sometimes, and others can cause us pain sometimes, too. However, wallowing in the pain doesn’t help anyone to heal or move forward. Sometimes, it feels like the garbage just keeps hitting the fan, with disasters and chaos happening in some aspect or many aspects of your life all at once. “When it rains, it pours,” right? Yes, but usually you’ll find that some of the events may be interconnected and understanding things from another level can help you to forgive who you need to forgive while also taking something from the experience itself that you’re actually grateful for. Think about it from a big picture perspective. Will this matter in a year? Five years? How would your future self like to remember it? How much of that memory do you have control over in the moment? And what can you learn from this experience, both in the short term and the long term?
“When it rains, it pours.” This is true for the so-called negative events, but it is also true with positive events and so-called “good luck.” It’s important to take ownership not only of the “bad” or painful parts of your life, but also of your positive manifestations. Those fun coincidences where you get something you didn’t know you needed right when you need it? Sometimes it seems too weird to be true, but these types of things happen all the time and we notice them more if we’re paying attention.
You are always attracting what you’re sending out emotionally, so the next time you get that perfect parking space or get to cut to the front of the line at the grocery store, remember that you helped to co-create that experience. It isn’t just luck; it’s your attitude and happiness attracting more positive experiences to your life, and you should take credit for all of it, not just take blame for the negative and attribute the rest to something else. This is equivalent to giving away your power because it puts something outside of yourself in charge of your happiness, and that is your responsibility. But it’s also your responsibility to appreciate and show gratitude for everything life gives you, and to take responsibility for your part in attracting it to you. This in turn attracts more of the things that make you feel that way into your life, so don’t be afraid of that responsibility. Taking responsibility also means taking credit when credit is due.
Plan ahead but remain flexible. If someone on your team has a suggestion or idea, it’s always best to take it into consideration honestly, so don’t be too rigid in your plan as a mindful leader. However, a plan to get to a milestone that is one step closer to a specific goal can guide you and keep you on track as you move through your journey. This isn’t just helpful when it comes to leadership, but it also comes into play within life in general.
Getting stuck on the details or being too rigid or controlling about the methods by which something is accomplished could be detrimental to the project or organization as a whole, which is where the flexibility aspect comes in. Someone may point out a part of the plan that doesn’t serve everyone the way another idea might, so going for the win-win-win is typically your best option. Sometimes this goes differently than you may have originally planned, but this is where keeping everyone’s best interests at heart and remaining open comes into play. What are the options or ideas that will benefit everyone? If these types of ideas haven’t revealed themselves yet, give it a little time and revisit the topic later.
Practice acceptance and nonjudgment (not to be confused with gullibility). One of the most painful things for any human being to experience is feeling judged by other human beings in a negative way based on limited or no information, or even lies or gossip. If this has ever happened to you, then you will understand how uncomfortable it feels to be judged this way, and it’s important to remember this so that you don’t feel inclined to do it to another person. Our differences should be celebrated, but for now they are still feared too often, so acceptance is our next logical step toward celebration.
Also, nonjudgment doesn’t mean that your discernment for subtleties just flies out the window; on the contrary, this nonjudgment practice can help you to refine your discernment and understand things on much deeper levels. This means you will be able to discern between people who are typically sincere and people whose ethics and values don’t align with yours. Kindness shouldn’t be mistaken for weakness, so if you can sense that someone isn’t being entirely truthful or is maybe taking advantage of your kindness, then this will be your indicator to pay attention and see if there’s anything to it. Depending on the situation, coming right out and asking some questions in a nonaggressive manner can work wonders, especially if you’re dealing with a case of people jumping on some kind of bandwagon and the person being judged or gossiped about is harmless and innocent.
Being proactive rather than reactive means developing positive, healthy habits for yourself and within your own daily life and routine, and then helping the people you lead to develop those same types of habits for themselves, based on what works for them. When you’ve been doing inner work for a while, you begin to recognize what might help someone else in their situation, so share what you learn and help those who need it, especially if they come to you for advice. Coach your team, help them to take charge of their own lives, both internally and externally.
As a final thought, this journey is a process no matter who you are or what your circumstance might be. Everything is a process, a journey, because there is no actual destination. We’ll never get “there” because our desires and goals are always growing and evolving as we are, so don’t be too stuck in one way of thinking or doing something. Sometimes turmoil appears to help guide us toward a better way, and this may not always be an easy process or journey because of the way people resist change. So keep an open mind, and your team will follow your lead based on the behavior they see from you, making the entire process less dramatic but more educational and memorable overall.
Thank you so much for joining us here on the Mindful Leader Blog! I hope you’ll join us again next week to learn about how to manifest your external experience by focusing on taking care of your inner landscape.
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