Essay Sample on Mindfulness and Neuroleadership

Mindfulness can be defined as the awareness of present individual thoughts, actions as well as emotions. Right mindfulness also known as right mediation entails bringing back consciousness of a person from the future or the past into the present time. Recent research indicates that mindfulness meditation enhances attention as well as the self regulation which play an essential role in stress regulation, improvement of performance and individual well-being. People often think that the idea of mindfulness has been in existence emerging from the Buddhist tradition. According to Buddhists, mindfulness has several impacts on different aspects of human experience (Williams, 2013). However, going by the fundamental physiology of mindfulness, there is clear indication that any discussion concerning learning, human change, politic, education, social issues as well as leadership often end up revolving around mindfulness. Mindfulness is the exact opposite of mindlessness which is the cause of several cases of human suffering. Neuroleadership means putting into practice findings from neuroscience into leadership field (Mrazek, 2012). According to the recent research, it is believed that neuro-leadership helps in bringing neuroscientific knowledge and ideas into the field of leadership development, education, management training coaching as well as consulting. Therefore, there is a lot of relevance of mindfulness in the context of neuroleadership.

Research indicates that spending a little time to apply mindfulness, helps in improving cognitive skills like decision making, working memory, objectivity, functionality as well as enhanced reaction time (Moses, 2016). Leaders, who are known to practice mindfulness, are reported to have workers who show little sign of emotional fatigue. In an organization where mindfulness is being practiced, employees can maintain a good work-life balance since their leaders have empathy as well concern them. Additionally, employees can speak the truth thereby achieving higher performance. Through mindfulness, there is always increased focus, attention as well as reflection when it comes to the process of decision making leading to the enhanced consciousness of judgment and assumptions thereby influencing the judgment that is being arrived at.

Mindfulness mediation is touted has the new tool that can be used for psychotherapy, educational curricular and as well as the intervention for the disenfranchised youth leading to widespread of excitement. Mindfulness is associated with helping to cultivate empathy, self-regulation as well as intentional focus but at the same time act as non-invasive as well as empowering the young people (Moses, 2016).

Mindfulness deliberation is being pushed forward as the potential new clinical, social and educational intervention for young people or youth, propelled by new discovery from neuroscience concerning the benefits of developing brain via meditation convergent with new data on developmental neuroplasticity. Despite still being marginalized while in some cases controversial, there has been implementation of secular programs with enhancing attention of social-emotional learning among children as well as youth so as to intervene from the problems of incarceration and poverty (Siegel, 2017).

The culture of mindfulness is known to be highly reliable as a result of giving attention to the daily operation. Through increased attention given to the day-to-day task, mistakes, as well as trends are identified in appropriate time, discussed and suitable decision-making arrangements are put in place to offer the best solution to the problems. In recent times, many organizations have been demonstrating business skills and innovation by incorporating employees so that they can promote the use of mindfulness to help in developing a good relationship between the business owners and the employee. Moreover, various governments have been encouraging the development and incorporation of mindfulness programs for their staffs in public sectors to help them combat stress thereby improving the effectiveness of the task they are undertaking.

Being mindful when undertaking various tasks help people to address stress such as long hours of work, excessive workload; poor management practices as well as autonomy that the employees' posses over their job (Moses, 2016). Therefore, the mind needs a break after every 90 minutes to help in maintaining calmness and clarity that help to make good decisions, enhance creativity as well as overall performance. Mindfulness helps leaders to effectively manage challenges that come with tight deadlines that workers have to adhere to. In the context of neuroleadership, mindfulness enable leaders to see the challenges that their employees are facing, thereby giving them a break that helps them to maintain a clear mind and later on do their best when they resume their duties.

Mindfulness plays a vital role in stimulating the cognitive ability when there is increasing pressure on staff as well as the employees. Additionally, being mindful helps people to become good time observers and manage the uncertainty of job insecurity. There are several scientific evidence that supports impacts that come with mindfulness within various sectors in the world. Mindfulness enables people and companies to respond effectively to challenges rather than reacting. Many organizations have witnessed the reduction of anxiety, job absenteeism and increased enhanced association within the team as well as attention from workers. Mindful practices that have been incorporated in different leadership include conscious listening, breathing meditation and mindful eating. Such activities can be practiced anywhere and any times whenever an individual feel overwhelmed or stressed (Rock 2010).

In the context of neuroleadership, mindfulness enables leader to gain trust within the team and be accepted, they must become part of what is known as the "in" group. When they are strange to the team, they will be seen as "out" group members, meaning that they will be viewed with a lot of suspicions. Studies reveal that when leaders move quickly to make changes before being accepted to be part of the "in"-group there is always resistance as well as uncooperative employees and staff. According to neuroscience, individuals who feel to be in the "in" group often are motivated to see their members win while individual from the "out" fails (Moses, 2016). When such scenario happens, there is always the production of reward response. However, when the opposite takes place, threat response occurs, but since human beings are expected to survive, they will often try to reduce threat response. Mindfulness enables leaders to gain the trust within the team, through listening as well as watching instead of blindly give instruction. Listening allows the leaders to learn from each other, how they would like to be instructed, reactions to criticism and whether introducing more competition makes them put more effort in their work.

Mind Wandering

Mind wandering can be defined as the experience of an individual thought not concentrating on a single activity or topic for an extended duration. In most cases, mind wandering occurs when an individual is participating in an attention-demanding job. Various studies reveal that the unique characteristic those human beings possess is the ability to mind wander. In most cases, the attention of people tends to shift from the task at hand and focus on activities which are not related to the function that is currently being done. It is believed that mind wandering has got advantages like increased activities but at the same time has setbacks such as an error on the task that was being done. Research reveals that people mind wander half of the time that they are awake (Mrazek 2013). The brain plays a vital role in mind wandering. It is believed that when people mind wander, their response to information within the external world that surrounds them is disrupted. The resources within the brain of an individual are shifted from processing the information needed within the immediate external environment. Instead, the information within the brain is directed to an internal world which makes people wander mentally to another place and time. Despite paying little attention to the external world during the time of mind wandering, the ability of an individual to detect unexpected activities taking place within the surrounding environment remains preserved. Therefore, this is an indication that people are quite aware of what they pay attention to or ignore the external environment even when the mind is wandering.

Human being takes an average of half of the time that they are awake to mind wander. However, the tendency to mind wander is often varied across individuals. Several factors contribute to mind wandering. For example, older people tend to mind wander less compared to young people (Moses, 2016). Additionally, individuals who are always worried or sad frequently mind wandering as opposed to those who have nothing to worry. Research also indicates people often mind wander when performing duties that they are used to compared to when they are doing a new and challenging task. Mind wandering can also be categorized into different types. Sometime people mind wander when they are bored with they are bored with whatever they are doing. However, other times people mind wander accidentally without other people noticing.

Many advantages and disadvantages are associated with mind wandering. For example, when the brain-mind wanders it always makes plans. It is believed that people are likely to make come up with a good program when they are mind wandering as compared to when an individual fantasize concerning unrealistic dreams. It is usually essential to plan for time since it allows people to efficiently carry out their daily task like completing homework, preparing to perform in an event as well as practicing soccer. Additionally, during mind wandering, people often think and reflect upon themselves. The process that allows people to think about themselves, behave as well as interact with other people around them is very important since it helps in self-identity (Mrazek, 2012). The negative side of mind wandering includes missing on what is being taught in class by students. Additionally, there are high chances that the students are going to make a lot of errors when they mind wandering when doing their homework.

Mind wandering and mindfulness appears to oppose each other concerning the capability to remain undisturbed. The mindfulness is the direct contrast of mind wandering since it entails being aware of the situation within the immediate environment while mind wandering characterizes by interruption activities being undertaken by thoughts that are unrelated to the events being done. Individuals who mind wander often tend to have mindless quality like rapid as well as an automatic response during continuous task performance, absent-minded and eye moment that indicates little linguistic properties when a task such as reading is being done. Therefore, the ability of an individual to remain mindfully alert on the activity that is being performed is directly opposite to the tendency whereby the mind keeps on wandering to the task that is unrelated to what they are doing.

Various studies conducted recently indicate that mind wandering and mindfulness can be seen as opposite sides of a coin. Mindfulness enables people to respond consciously and reflectively to the external environment. Mindfulness is the ability to respond to the environment and it is often represented by self-awareness. Additionally, when mindfulness is incorporated with cognitive behavioral intrusion, individuals gain more awareness concerning...