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Mindfulness: 7 Principles of Wise Leaders

Susan Wehrley

Susan's article published in Forbes

September 16, 2019

Gut intelligence (GQ) is needed as much as IQ and EQ. It is the ability to be mindful of that ping in your gut that alerts you to pay attention. If you don’t breathe deeply into your gut and wonder what is happening around you and within you, you will likely react to your situation instead of responding to it. Reacting can mean trying hard to control the outcome you want, shutting down, or just freezing at the thought of dealing with reality.

Therefore, it is important to increase your gut intelligence by creating a superhighway of information that flows between your gut, heart and head, considering the wisdom from each one of these information centers. However, when you get a gut-alert, it can often send a signal to the amygdala part of your brain, making you believe you only have limited choices.

To increase your gut intelligence, start by becoming more mindful of that gut-alert that reminds you to pay attention. Then, breathe deeply into your gut several times. This will help send the neurotransmitters, neurons and hormones up the vagus nerve—what scientists call the gut-brain axis. It will also help to make the corpus callosum in your brain more efficient, so you are able to bypass the amygdala and reach the executive functioning part of your brain. To ensure it arrived there, notice your thoughts: Are you fearful? Or, are you more open, trusting and allowing your intuition to help you know what to do?

Being mindful of your gut-alert along with your thoughts will help you to take ownership that no person or event can make you react. It is only your fearful and judgmental thinking that causes your reaction. However, we are human, so when you react, follow these three simple steps to increase your gut intelligence and mindfulness:

• Own it. Breathe deeply and own the fear that is making you react. What is it?

• Ask it. What is your wisdom telling you to do about your situation?

• Voice it. Now voice your truth with courage and compassion.

Increasing your gut intelligence requires you to own it. This means owning the fear that caused you to react. No one can make you feel a certain way or react as you do. It is only your automatic thoughts of fear and judgment that cause you to want to control the situation by either fighting to get your way, fleeing to avoid the argument or freezing altogether.

Once you identify that you are in this mindset of fear, judgment and control, you can let it go and increase your gut intelligence. To do this, engage your wisdom and ask it, “What is the truth and how might I deal with it?” Keep an open mindset, trusting and allowing the answers will come to you in perfect timing.

Once you get that “aha” moment — that heightened awareness that tells you this is what you need to do — then, voice it! Voice your truth by asking your wisdom, “How might I speak my truth with courage and compassion?”

When you regularly practice these three simple steps to increase your gut intelligence, you will be more mindful of your fear and how to connect to your wisdom instead of reacting.

However, if you want to continue to develop your gut intelligence and become a leader who is more mindful, rarely reacts and makes wise decisions, practice these seven principles of wise leaders:

Principle No. 1: Be curious

Principle No. 2: Be conscious

Principle No. 3: Be courageous

Principle No. 4: Be compassionate

Principle No. 5: Be connected

Principle No.6: Be collaborative

Principle No. 7: Be committed

Practicing curiosity helps you to stay open-minded and just wonder about what is going on within you and around you. By being curious, you improve your quality of mindfulness of self, others and your surroundings. This automatically improves principle No. 2, consciousness. When you are being curious and conscious, you are simply noticing what is, in a neutral non-emotional way, because you say to yourself, “It is what it is. Now the question becomes, ‘How might I deal with it?’”

Once you become more conscious, it is easy to slip back into a mindset of fear, judgment and control when your wisdom guides you to face the truth and do something about it. This is when you need to take a deep breath and practice principle No. 3: courage. Courage doesn’t mean you are void of fear; it means you feel the fear and do it anyway.

But don’t stop there. In order to be courageous in an effective way, it is important to practice principles No. 4 and No. 5: compassion and connection. Compassion allows you to see the truth from a higher perspective so you can stay connected with others in a non-judgmental way. This is a way of being that contrasts with the ego that believes we are all separate, competing with one another in a way that we are better or worse.

Being compassionate and connected helps us collaborate, which is principle No. 6. This principle increases your gut intelligence because you stop telling yourself you must have all the answers, believing, “If it’s meant to be, it’s up to me!” As a result, you are committed to not only honoring the wisdom within yourself, you are committed to honoring the wisdom within others too, which is principle No. 7.

It is time leaders realize that practicing the seven principles of wise leaders will help them not only be their best self -- it will help them bring out the best in others. We do this by allowing our wisdom to guide us, not our fear. Imagine how this way of being would cause us all less stress, and help us all to be the clear, calm and confident leaders we were meant to be.

 

Susan

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