Mindfulness as Waking Up: Musings about How to Be Optimally Alive

Abstract

Although mindfulness-based methods can be used to reduce stress, such practices have long been intended for more profound purposes. The goal of this paper is to convey how people can learn to attend to the moment mindfully without extensive training, in ways that shift their approach to leadership, work, other people—and life. My recent research invited people to direct their attention towards “waking up” rather than training them in mindfulness techniques by drawing on the inherent curiosity and wakefulness of the human mind. Subsequent to the completion of this research project, I began exploring how leaders might work from such a model. The paper describes the difference between seers, who need deep, traditional-nourished practices, and leaders, who may benefit from less extensive approaches that instead invite them to pay attention to what lives in the moment. I use C.G. Krone’s approach to systems thinking to distinguish between these two types of leaders. I close with a case study, briefly describing one leader’s use of my work in her organization.