Tag Archives: business coaching

7 reasons Mindfulness Meditation Can Increase Business Revenue

 

Mindfulness Meditation, is not just for Buddhists and monks: mindfulness meditation unlocks the power you have within to take your business to the next level.

Mindfulness Meditation for your business

When you, meditate, you strengthen your intuition, spirituality, awareness, and most importantly, your own sense of self.  As many successful entrepreneurs know, reduced stress  is the foundation to creating the business and lifestyle you want.  If you are not removing your limiting beliefs and constantly working on your vision, you are limiting your own growth and the growth of your company. You are the lid!

As a leader or an Entrepreneur there is no better way to overcome obstacles, rise to the top or be creative with out first quieting the noise in your head. When you become still you tap into your creative power by connecting to your source. During, meditation, you experience that peace that surpasses all understanding that the bible talks about.

When you forget about all the things you have to do and just focus on the life inside you by witnessing your breathing, you move closer to becoming conscious and understand your purpose. Being quiet and still allows you to listen to instructions from the  higher power who guides you. It is said that it is easier to guide a horse in the direction it is running in; so when you fall into line with what God wants you to do for his Kingdom then your business and your life become less of a struggle.

Reasons Mindfulness Meditation works

The reasons we, meditate , are as varied as the many ways there are to meditate. In the West, most people are drawn to, meditation, to quiet the internal chatter of the brain and to reduce stress. Meditation, is indeed, a very effective stress reducer, but its benefits—sometimes mysteriously hidden—are far more bountiful. The actual act of, mindfulness meditation, can be as simple as sitting quietly and focusing on your breath while repeating silently a mantra—a word or phrase.

There are countless traditions and no singular “correct” way to practice, meditation. Find a practice that you like and stick with it for a while. Notice how you feel as you go about your days. If you find that you have more patience, feel grounded and better able to respond to stressful situations, and are more in touch with your intuition or “gut feelings,” you are enjoying the many benefits of meditation.

I, meditate, by finding a quiet place in the morning as I drink my coffee. I listen to a, guided meditation, tape on topics such as “activating consciousness”, visionary me meditation, “the law of attraction” etc. as I listen I clear my mind by mentally repeating a centering thought and witnessing my breathing.

At the end of my, mindfulness meditation, I am  relaxed,  totally open and creative. I usually write some deep insights after my, meditation, sessions and I get answers from God and the Universe to questions I ask. This is the perfect way to become a visionary and an innovative leader.

 

MINDFULNESS-MEDITATION

1: Mindfulness Meditation is good for our Physical Bodies

Scientists gathering data on, mindfulness meditation, have found that a consistent practice of meditation not only boosts the mind, but it also bolsters the body. Studies shows that, mindfulness meditation, can help reverse heart disease, reduce pain, and support the immune system, better enabling it to fight disease.

The mind-body connection between stress and disease is abundantly apparent as science is finding that meditation can lower production of the stress hormone cortisol. This means meditators are better able to adapt to stress in their lives.

2: Mindfulness Meditation is good for Our Relationships

Paradoxically, while, mindfulness meditation, helps us tune in and turn inward to our true essence, it also helps us detach from our own egos to connect with others in more meaningful ways. Couples counselors have found when they assign their clients meditation, the couples become less angry, more self-reflective, and more loving.

When we become aware of—and honor—our interconnection with other beings, we are able to recast our perspectives, see our worries in a different light, and embrace gratitude, which is the heart’s memory. The bible teaches that we can’t change others only ourselves and when we, meditate, we tune into who we really are.

Our ancestral legacy is a brain that is primed to focus on negative experiences and has a tendency to get stuck in conditioned patterns of thinking, returning again and again to thoughts of anxiety, depression, and limitation. So in our relationships we tend to focus on what we do not have instead of what we do have.

As you, meditate, on a regular basis, you develop what is known as “witnessing awareness”—the ability to calmly and objectively observe a situation, notice when you are being triggered, and consciously choose how you want to respond. The ability to be present and aware is extremely valuable in every relationship.

benefits of meditation

3: Meditation helps prolong our lives

When you, meditate, you strengthen your intuition, awareness, and most importantly, your own sense of self.  Yogis and doctors both agree: meditating—even just a few minutes of deep breathing—relaxes the brain, reduces anxiety, and decreases depression. We say we can’t afford the time to meditate, but the truth is we can’t afford not to.

When we tell ourselves we don’t have time to exercise, or meditate, then we will make time for sickness and depression. During most of our waking lives, our minds are engaged in a continuous internal dialogue in which the meaning and emotional associations of one thought triggers the next.

We hear a snippet of music and suddenly we’re thinking about the first time we heard that song with an old boyfriend or girlfriend and how that relationship ended. If we’re still holding emotional pain over that ending, those feelings may bubble up and then our mind may veer into criticism, self-pity, or worries about the future.

Meditation, is one of the best tools we have to counter the brain’s negativity bias, release accumulated stress, foster positive experiences and intentions, and enjoy the peace of present moment awareness. A large body of research has established that having a regular, meditation, practice produces tangible benefits for mental and physical health, including:

Benefits of Meditation

  • Decreased blood pressure and hypertension
  • Lowered cholesterol levels
  • Reduced production of “stress hormones,” including cortisol and adrenaline
  • More efficient oxygen use by the body
  • Increased production of the anti-aging hormone DHEA
  • Improved immune function
  • Decreased anxiety, and insomnia

4: Mindfulness Meditation Reduces Stress and Burnout

What role is more stressful than the role of a Leader? None, as a Leader you are responsible for the lives of your employees, families, and your commitment to your community? Chronic, unmanaged stress can make you sick and accelerate aging. As many scientific studies have found, prolonged stress can contribute to high blood pressure, heart disease, stomach ulcers, autoimmune diseases, anxiety, cancer, insomnia, chronic fatigue, obesity, depression, and accelerated aging.

In, mindfulness meditation, your body releases stress and reverses the effects of the flight-or-fight response—that ancient instinct we all have to either run from perceived danger or take it on in battle. Intended as a short-term protection mechanism, fight or flight causes our body to speed up our heart rate, increase our blood sugar, suppress our immune system, reduce insulin production, pump out stress hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol, and reduce the blood supply to our digestive organs.

All of these reactions happen so that our body can focus on either running away as fast as it can—or staying to fight. Although few people reading this face daily threats to their bodily existence, many live in a prolonged state of fight or flight, generating stress in response to bad traffic, criticism from a spouse, or a disagreement.

Regular, meditation, dissipates accumulated stress and cultivates a state of restful alertness. There are many compelling studies showing the power of meditation to relieve stress and promote inner calm. For example, a 2011 study published in the Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine Journal found that full-time workers who spent a few hours each week practicing mindfulness meditation reported a significant decrease in job stress, anxiety, and depressed mood.

The reason, meditation, is so popular amongst successful individuals is it helps release stress, lets go of excess thoughts and expand awareness. As you dive deeper into your, meditation, you see people, events and circumstances as they really are, not as they are perceived to be. It allows you to have an internal Locus of control.

That means that you don’t react to external stimuli but are proactive with action plans and goals. It also means that as challenges arise in your, business, you will not get overwhelmed; but face those challenges calmly and efficiently.  As an Entrepreneur Leader, meditation, allows you to turn your failures into successes.

 

buddhist-meditations

 

5: Meditation Enhances Your Concentration, Memory, and Ability to Learn

As researchers have found, meditation, can help you tap into your brain’s deepest potential to focus, learn, and adapt. While scientists used to believe that beyond a certain age, the brain couldn’t change or grow, we now know that the brain has a quality known as plasticity, enabling it to grow new neurons and transform throughout our lives.

Meditation, is a powerful tool for awakening new neural connections and even transforming regions of the brain.  A recent study led by Harvard University and Massachusetts General Hospital found that after only eight weeks of, meditation, participants experienced beneficial growth in the brain areas associated with memory, learning, empathy, self-awareness, and stress regulation.  In addition, the meditators reported decreased feelings of anxiety and greater feelings of calm. This study adds to the expanding body of research about the brain’s amazing plasticity and ability to change habitual stress patterns.

Many other studies provide evidence for the value of, meditation, in improving the ability to stay focused in world filled with increasing distractions and demands on our attention. For example, research conducted by the UCLA Mindful Awareness Center showed that teenagers and adults with ADHD who practiced various forms of meditation for just eight weeks improved their ability to concentrate on tasks, even when attempts were made to distract them. In the world of the Entrepreneur Leader, the ability to focus when you are pulled in so many different directions is extremely important to your success.

 

6: Meditation Improves Your Creativity and Problem-Solving Skills

We each have an estimated 60,000 to 80,000 thoughts a day—unfortunately, many of them are the same thoughts we had yesterday, last week, and last year. The mind tends to get stuck in repetitive thought loops that squeeze out the possibility for new ideas and inspiration.

Meditation, is a powerful practice for going beyond habitual, conditioned thought patterns into a state of expanded awareness. We connect to what is known as the field of infinite possibilities or pure potentiality, and we open to new insights, intuition, and ideas. And as we meditate and focus on our breathing, we stop this continuous cycle.

 

7: Meditation Decreases Anxiety, and Insomnia

The emotional effects of sitting quietly and going within are profound.  The deep state of rest produced by, meditation, triggers the brain to release neurotransmitters, including dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, and endorphins. Each of these naturally occurring brain chemicals has been linked to different aspects of happiness:

Dopamine plays a key role in the brain’s ability to experience pleasure, feel rewarded, and maintain focus. Serotonin has a calming effect. It eases tension and helps us feel less stressed and more relaxed and focused. Low levels of this neurotransmitter have been linked to migraines, anxiety, bipolar disorder, apathy, feelings of worthlessness, fatigue, and insomnia.

Oxytocin (the same chemical whose levels rise during sexual arousal and breastfeeding), is a pleasure hormone. It creates feelings of calm, contentment, and security, while reducing fear and anxiety.  Endorphins are most commonly known as the chemicals that create the exhilaration commonly labeled “the runner’s high.” These neurotransmitters play many roles related to well being, including decreasing feelings of pain and reducing the side effects of stress.

 

15 Benefits of Executive Coaching

The goal of, executive coaching, is the goal of good management: making the most of an organization’s human resources.” –  Harvard Business Review Organizations that embrace the culture that their employees and leaders are their most valuable resources, invest in the development of these resources.

There are four commonly used tools for improving human performance: 

  • Coaching,
  • Consulting,
  • Training, and
  • Therapy; and there are important differences between them.

Just as it is important to know when to hire a consultant; it is equally important to know the when and why for using a, Life coach.

Why hire a Life coach?

  1. You would like to improve Personal transformation
  2. To develop the future leaders in your organization
  3. Lead change to create high performing, results driven organizations
  4. Help managers learn how to be coaches to their employees
  5. Create an organizational culture that value learning, and  continuous improvement.
When to Hire a Executive Coach for Executive Coaching
  1. You want to fine-tuning your vision for your business;
  2. You want to empower and motivate your staff;
  3. You want to improve the communication and listening skills of your managers and help them become more confident
  4. You want your leaders and managers to gain competence in the soft skills domain.

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Benefits of Executive Coaching

Executives identified fifteen significant benefits of, executive coaching, as a leadership development tool. They are:

  1. Continuous one-on-one attention that facilitates growth
  2. Expanded thinking through dialogue and powerful questioning from a coach.
  3. Self-awareness – including bringing light to blind spots.
  4. Personal accountability for development – A coach can hold you accountable for work you promised to do between sessions.
  5. Just-in-time learning.
  6. Sustained interpersonal skills development.
  7. Consistent, long-term development that gets embedded and becomes part of your routine.
  8. Identify executive strengths and development needs
  9. Leverage existing strengths and improve performance
  10. Create an Executive Strategy with an Action Plan and  accountability to help executives stay on track
  11. Adopt and/or reinforce executive leadership competencies crucial to the organization’s culture.
  12. Positive and sustainable behavior changes
  13. Develop leadership skills and practices; learn coaching skills they can implement.
  14. Enhanced career planning and development with an action-oriented plan
  15. Create greater work/life balance.

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The Executive Coaching Process

Executives claimed expanded thinking through dialogue and powerful questioning from a coach. Dialogue, fueled through powerful questions, is at the heart of the, executive coaching, process. In coaching conversations, executives, think out loud, become more reflective and gain access to their own tacit knowledge and unexplored ideas. The coach’s role is to act as a sounding board, confidant, partner, challenger and catalyst for change.

Self-awareness, including the blind spots – Case Study

Jack has excellent technical skills and has fast-tracked to a senior executive position. He was certain he was a good leader — that is, until his coach asked him questions about his team’s excitement and engagement levels. It became clear to the coach that Jack’s team was frustrated.

Jack was furious and “insulted” and he vowed never to work with his coach again. Subsequently, Jack pondered his strong reaction. He realized his coach had hit a nerve. “That’s why I reacted like that, because it was true,” he says.

Jack is still working with his coach and continues to learn and develop. He appreciates his coach’s role in helping him gain self-awareness, which means understanding his strengths as well as his blind spots. “I don’t have these kinds of discussions with anybody else,” he says. “I am on such a straight path that I can’t see what’s going on.

That’s where, executive coaching, really helps me.” Jack now expects his coach to hit a nerve from time to time. He sums it up this way: “The value to me is not for a coach to be really nice to me. I don’t need another friend. The value to me is having somebody to help me see what I can’t see.”

Executive Coaching,  acts as a mirror for Jack, providing him with honest feedback and revealing gaps so he can see himself more clearly, as well as help him to identify goals and promoting sustained action.

Personal Accountability for development

Some, executives,  use sports metaphors to describe, executive coaching.  Anne, a high Achiever, thinks of, executive coaching, as a springboard for reaching her personal best at work. “Olympic medalists have coaches,” she says.

“I want to be an Olympic medalist in, business.” Anne regards her coach as her “personal trainer.” The common denominator in, executive coaching, and personal training is accountability. You can learn proper techniques in a few training sessions at the gym, but it is easy to lose your way, by cutting corners, using improper techniques or missing workouts.

Ongoing personal training creates momentum and accountability for development. The same is true for, executive coaching. As Anne says, “Coaching provides an objective outside person to help you do assessments, set developmental plans and hold you accountable.”

Anne has invested heavily in her career, through education and hard work. She views coaching as another form of investment. She and her coach established developmental targets on day one. Now they have weekly meetings, either in person or on the telephone, to discuss her progress toward her targets and identify obstacles that are impeding her progress.

Through, executive coaching, Anne holds herself accountable for her continued success. Her bottom line: “Coaching gets me from where I am today to where I want to be” 

The professional coaching model starts with a personalized plan.

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Life coaching is Just-in-time learning

Executive coaching, facilitates what is called “just-in-time learning,” which is all about learning on the spot. Clients can practice and role play.  Jack told his coach that he wanted to “take a stand” in his next meeting, and that he wanted to come across as confident, self-assured and assertive.

Coaching provided Jack with a dress rehearsal. He used the session to develop a strategy for the meeting. He knew that thinking on his feet in front of a group of people was not one of his strengths, so he and his coach brainstormed potential questions. Jack prepared his answers and did some role playing. The next day Jack was outstanding. He called it “a powerful experience.” The coaching session had facilitated just-in-time learning.

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How Executive Coaching Helps the Organization:

  • Reduce turnover and retain top performing staff
  • Enhanced individual and organizational performance
  • Improved organizational strength
  • Perception of management as being committed to employees and their growth and success
  • Improved employee morale, more committed employees, thus greater productivity
  • Retention of high potential talent and talent magnet
  • Better client relationships
  • Positive work environment, thus greater productivity
  • Executives, learn coaching techniques which they can implement with their teams for improved relationships and productivity, as well as enhanced employee development.
  • Enhanced organizational performance
  • Positively affect organizational culture
  • Succession planning and development of key, executives
  • Reputation of investing in executives through development
  • Enhanced reputation within industry
  • Ability to recruit key talent
  • Positioned for continued growth and success
  • “Executive Coaching, is unlocking a person’s potential to maximize their own performance.”
  • “It is helping them to learn rather than teaching them. Clients say coaching brings out their best by helping them focus, break down tasks and clarify their values.” – Fortune Magazine
  • Improve the existing culture of the organization