A Guide To Change For Everybody: Open Mindedness and Meditation
This chapter is from the book “Next For Me: A Guide to Change for Everybody” from the founders of Next For Me.
Mindset has a lot to do with how we approach challenges and how adept we are at creative thinking. Having an open mind is both a “way of being” and a technique that can be employed when thinking about your new endeavor. What may have worked for you in your career to this point isn’t necessarily going to work in your new reality. It’s easy and more comfortable doing things the way you’ve always done them, but doubling down shouldn’t be your default if your old ways of approaching a task aren’t working. Open mindedness allows you to zoom in and out of focus or even clear your noggin out entirely. Now is the chance to open your mind (and your heart!) to new tactics and strategies.
Mindfulness and Meditation
Mindfulness is more than a lifestyle buzzword or the latest workplace wellness trend, it’s a way of observing and appreciating what is right in front of you, good and bad. And meditation allows you to take what you’ve observed, and put it into a broader context.
In meditation, you acknowledge thoughts, but don’t hang onto them. As a result, eventually your mind opens to what is here, now. The author and founder of the San Francisco Zen Center, Shunryu Suzuki called it “Beginner’s Mind,” where everything is possible.
If you’ve tried meditation before, you may recall that the first few times you had a hard time quieting the thoughts swirling around your head. It’s only with some practice that you learn that having those stray thoughts isn’t a failure, it’s human nature. With practice comes the ability to take notice of the thoughts, and without judgment let them go.
There will be many times in your experience when noisy thoughts will intrude. They can make it hard to tackle the day to day tasks at hand. They lead to self-doubt and catastrophic thinking about solvable problems. Being open and sharing these thoughts can actually be the best way to quiet them.
Read: Knowing What You Stand For
Do the exercise: Identifying Your Core Values
This chapter is from the book “Next For Me: A Guide to Change for Everybody” from the founders of Next For Me.
