A641.7.3.RB Appreciating Your "Real Self"

What has mindfulness taught you about your lifeline, social identities, strengths, and roles?

            I've always been curious about awareness and meditation in particular because of the positive aspects that it can bring to your life. So many successful individuals report how essential it has been to their performance, so why not place importance on it like other facets of attainable factors. I never really grasped the capacity of how to process through my thoughts in order to prioritize what to meditate about so therefore it never took hold in application. After working though studies about critical thinking, creative expression, and emotional intelligence I can now see how important and interconnected these aspects are with regards to mindfulness. Being attune towards all the different aspect that spark and drive emotion will ultimately fall short of their full potential if you don't evaluate them internally before acting them out. Boyatzis (2005) states that "mindfulness is the capacity to be fully aware of all that one experiences inside the self-body, mind, heart, spirit-and to pay full attention to what is happening around us-people, the natural world, our surroundings, and events (p. 112)."

            For me personally I came from a broken home initially and was raised in several broken homes thereafter for which family core values were never stressed, witnessed, or practiced at multiple levels. These remised factors then neglected me of several key aspects for developing a proper level of emotional intelligence. There was no importance placed upon experiences because survival was the dominating factor on a daily basis. I would however characterize my upbringing as privileged comparatively speaking when evaluating global upbringings especially from those in many third world countries. Although my experiences were mostly negative, I was still was exposed to technology and other more appropriate exposures that allowed me to see goodness first-hand which broadened my horizon beyond my tangible experiences. I lacked exposure to different cultures and other ways of life so was also very limited outside a traditional poor upbringing.

            I did however sense a desire to change early on, and pounced on the chance to break away when I was old enough to enlist in the military. This was the most profound experience in my life because I was forced into a social dynamic that I completely didn't understand. Early on discipline allowed me to hyper-focus on my professional advancement for which I excelled at. With the little successes that I enjoyed at a maturing career I felt as though it was only natural to start checking the blocks of a successful young male and got married and started a family. Once I was placed in a leadership position I defaulted on the things that made me successful and demanded them in others. This started the cycle of sacrifice for me for which I completely expelled the notion of renewal because I knew nothing about it. I tasted my first sense of success as a leader and was unfortunately addicted to it like many others. I soon found myself isolated, friendless, and in constant conflict with my family. Soon after my walls came crushing down, I was in a recovery phase and fortunately climbed my way back to being a successful leader, but only after learning so many detrimental factors first hand. These failures were avoidable only if I knew how important mindfulness was at an early age.

            Since I lived so many facets early on in my professional career I didn't know how to process my place amongst them, therefore neglected the capacity to process importance. I knew of diversity and how conflicting it can be in a melting pot of individuals, but more importantly didn't know how to view or respect different individual perceptions based on the lack of exposure they also didn't experience. This is where emotionally intelligent individuals can bridge the gaps for which helps them excel in socially dynamic situations. Since I didn't behold very much emotional intelligence, several key experiences sort of blew through me because I lacked the capacity to understand the importance of them. Now as a much more experienced individual, I now see the importance of living in the current state of all perceptions and not just my own. Respecting other vantage points gives relativity to understanding conceptually your piece in contribution. Unfortunately, American pedagogy isn't aligned with the concepts of establishing a heightened sense of emotional intelligence and critical thinking at an early age because we are hyper-focused on attaining tangible results way too fast. Only until we rethink our approach towards learning and respect for other experiences will be living in a more mindfully aware society.

References

Boyatzis, R. E., Boyatzis, R., & McKee, A. (2005). Resonant leadership: Renewing yourself and connecting with others through mindfulness, hope, and compassion. Harvard Business Press.

McKee, A., Boyatzis, R. E., Johnston, F., & Johnston, F. (2008). Becoming a resonant leader: Develop your emotional intelligence, renew your relationships, sustain your effectiveness. Cambridge: Harvard Business Press.