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Hindrances You Are Blind to Will Impede Your Success
Hindrances are mental states that impede success both personally and professionally. They get in the way of you realizing your full potential as a leader and experiencing personal fulfillment, and they cause great suffering. There are numerous hindrances, but the five most applicable to our topic of mindful leadership are...
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Hindrance #1: Do You Experience Attachment?
Attachment refers to the unrelenting drive to succeed, to acquire, to compete, to control and to the inability to let go. This can apply to market standing, material goods, position, status, and even beliefs. Attachment is a fixation; you become convinced that you're absolutely correct in your views and desires, no matter what they are, and then you set out to create conditions that will...
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Hindrance #2: Do You Experience Aversion?
Aversion is the fear of losing what you have, including market standing, material goods, financial resources, social position and status, and even an argument. You become so fearful of loss that you make poor decisions. As a leader, your aversion to bad news may tempt your team to withhold information or to paint a falsely rosy picture. Consequently...
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Hindrance #3: Do You Ever Experience Ignorance, Confusion, Delusion?
Together these three represent one hindrance. This hindrance is characterized by not seeing reality for what it is. Most people realize that they don't know what they don't know. However, people suffering with this hindrance believe they do know it all, and are often so convinced that they're correct that it's impossible to...
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Hindrance #4: Do You Ever Experience Envy or Jealousy?
Envy and jealousy often manifest themselves through spending beyond your means in order to buy another company, another building, a new computer system, a larger home, a boat, another car, et cetera. A leader could become envious that a leader in another company has higher compensation, believing that "if they fall behind" they will not be as well perceived by the market or their peers. They could also become jealous if they see that...
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Hindrance #5: Does Your Pride Ever Get in the Way?
Pride manifests in two ways - as superior and inferior pride. Superior pride says, "I am better than you," while inferior pride says, "You are better than me."
Those with superior pride need to win all the time in order to feel worthy. They'll go to great lengths to try to make others feel inferior - by reminding them of how smart they themselves are, how much money they have, how well connected they are, how successful their companies are, how much money they have made with their investments, or even their golf handicap. But it's all a house of cards; in reality sufferers of this hindrance are saying...
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Do What You Love and Love What You Do
One of the key contributors to experiencing happiness is to "do what you love". It is a real blessing if we can get up in the morning and know that what lies ahead is a real pleasure for us. This can refer to our work or just pleasant activities we have planned. This is almost stating the obvious. Of course we will be happy when we do those things we love to do...
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Lack of Forgiveness and Perfectionism Are Often Linked
If you forgive another person when things don't turn out positively or that person has made a mistake, it sends the message that it's okay to make an educated guess or take a calculated risk. Unless you are able to do this, creativity will dry up, and the expectation or unspoken rule will be that unless you are guaranteed a win, you need not take a chance. Blaming, particularly if done publicly, has the risk of...
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To Forgive Is to Be Impeccable
I can't overemphasize the importance of forgiveness. When you have done your best and you have fallen short, or when you were not as impeccable as you might have been, remember that forgiveness is critical. After all, you are human, and it takes great courage to accept responsibility for failures or misdeeds, to make the situation right (if possible), to dust yourself off, and...
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To Be Impeccable Is to Do Our Best Every Day, Under the Circumstances
The 9th aspect of being a Mindful leader is being impeccable in your words and deeds. Impeccability includes having integrity, being honest, and being courageous. It's a tall order. It implies behaving the same way when you are with others as when no one is watching.
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To Truly Be of Service Is a Privilege and a Pleasure
If you don't feel that your service is a privilege and a pleasure, then it is not really service. It is a duty. And it is important not to confuse duty with service. To be of service is to have a particular attitude.
Service comes deep from within and carries with it compassion. As I mentioned in last week's blogs, compassion is deep caring without attachment. The other element of compassion which is worth repeating is self compassion. Without self compassion it is very difficult to...
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