The beginning of a new year in virtually every country in the world carries with it both a review of the past and predictions of future accomplishments. At CIMBA, I always enjoy this time of the year, when we take the time to look at past steps and missteps in the development of our leadership system. One of our most interesting missteps centered on the relationship between mindfulness, meditation, and the notion of self-awareness and its importance in personal intentional change. Our original thoughts had placed meditation and mindfulness as sort of "next steps," activities to be undertaken at some point after embracing the systemic demands of personal intentional change. We now see mindfulness as being fundamental to self-awareness and its enhancement, with self-awareness being the key to successful and sustainable personal intentional change. Much of this thinking was inspired by our interactions with Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz and Prof. Yi Yuan Tang. But the person responsible for bringing together and then focusing the relevant research on mindfulness for us was Prof. Daniel Siegel. Prof. Siegel's 2007 work, The Mindful Brain, provided a vehicle for seeing and understanding that mindfulness research was rapidly moving beyond its primary initial focus on the practice of meditation. Many of you will recognize Dan Siegel the author, but in contrast to many who are writing "brain" books (more than 250 were written and published last year, with an additional 300 slated for publication this year), Prof. Siegel is Harvard-trained, a clinical professor of psychiatry and co-director of the Mindful Awareness Research Center at UCLA. He also founded and directs the Mindsight Institute there.

Upon the foundation constructed by Prof. Siegel, we came to realize that our students, and particularly our undergraduate students, enjoyed a state of mindfulness brought about by the fact that they were living out of their comfort zone here in Italy. By both understanding and taking advantage of their mindfulness, we made significant, relevant changes in our approach to leadership development through our personal development coaches. At the same time, we saw the importance of explaining the operation of the brain's mirror neurons as students prepared to travel throughout Europe and would thus encounter a multiplicity of novel cultures and languages. It is this combination of insightfulness brought about by the brain being in a mindfulness state and empathy brought about by the brain's mirror neuron -- the brain's capacity for both insight and empathy -- that Prof. Siegel refers to as "Mindsight" in his new book Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation, scheduled to be released on 12 January 2010.

Prof. Siegel had been scheduled informally to come to Asolo in June of last year. He was attending an important meeting in Florence and had agreed to make an effort to come up and meet with us. The primary reason he was unable to come to Asolo was very easy to observe when we finally met up with both Dan and his wife Caroline at our Neuroleadership Summit in Los Angeles in October. While Dan was a scheduled keynote speaker at the Summit, he was everywhere and involved in everything. Dan Siegel was as visible at the Summit as David Rock and I, who were supposed to be the Summit co-sponsors. I am very confident that Dan impacted the conference in Florence in much the same way, leaving no time for a diversionary trip to Asolo. Our loss then, was certainly our gain in October.

At the Summit, Dan introduced us to the notion of "mindsight." As co-editor of the Neuroleadership Journal (I encourage each of you to go to www.neuroleadership.org and order your copy; while there, you might want to become a member and join the some 500 who have already made that decision), I had the pleasure of reading a detailed summary. I realized its similarity and direct applicability to the core notions founding our leadership development system, a fact made even clearer in the foreword to Dan's book written by Prof. Daniel Goleman. Goleman perhaps says it best: "Our ability to know our own minds as well as to sense the inner world of others may be the singular human talent, the key to nurturing healthy minds and hearts. I've explored this terrain in my own work on emotional and social intelligence. Self-awareness and empathy are (along with self-mastery and social skills) domains of human ability essential for success in life. Excellence in these capacities helps people flourish in relationships, family life, and marriage, as well as in work and leadership."

In understanding what mindsight is, I encourage you to consider the essence of CIMBA's LIFE, Genesis, and Leadership Competency workshops: the importance of tying together emotion and cognition. While traditional development often centers on advancing cognitive skills, the success of the application of those skills is very much dependent upon one's ability to call up the appropriate emotion and its behavioral manifestation. To better see the connection, to understand the importance of the integration of cognition and emotion in successful personal intentional change, consider how Prof. Siegel himself defines mindsight. "Mindsight is a kind of focused attention that allows us to see the internal workings of our own minds. It helps us to be aware of our mental processes without being swept away by them, enables us to get ourselves off the autopilot of ingrained behaviors and habitual responses, and moves us beyond the reactive emotional loops we all have a tendency to get trapped in. It lets us 'name and tame' the emotions we are experiencing, rather than being overwhelmed by them. Consider the difference between saying 'I am sad' and 'I feel sad.' Similar as those two statements may seem, there is actually a profound difference between them. 'I am sad' is a kind of self-definition, and a very limiting one. 'I feel sad' suggests the ability to recognize and acknowledge a feeling, without being consumed by it. The focusing skills that are part of mindsight make it possible to see what is inside, to accept it, and in the accepting to let it go, and, finally, to transform it."

This book will provide a very strong prediction for the direction of the CIMBA leadership development system moving forward. In addition, I am confident that ABC readers will find it personally beneficial in tackling those New Year's resolutions. I cannot imagine a better way to begin a new year and a new decade.

Happy New Year!