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Mindfulness and Careers

Well, sorry that I’ve been a little lax in the posting lately. It’s not that I don’t have anything to say (anyone who knows me will confirm that!) but it’s been a combination of being away for the last two weekends and fighting off what is either a low grade cold or my first bought with seasonal allergies.

Recently, I’ve been at two great professional presentations: one on the role of motivation in career development (through the Association of Career Professionals International – New England) and just yesterday one on mindfulness and resiliency in your professional life through the Career Counselors Consortium of New England. (this is not even mentioning the great time I had performing and seeing friends at the New England Folk Festival last weekend). I’d like this time to talk about the resiliency presentation as it’s freshest on my mind right now.

It was a three part presentation. The first was with Anne Jolles, a resiliency personal life coach who’s just written a book called Rise and Shine Anytime. While I can’t repeat her entire presentation, she reiterated the basic premise that we as individuals are bombarded with input from outside ourselves and the incessant, chattering voice in our head. Our issue in our modern world is not the ability to get information, but to be able to dicern what information we really need and will serve us, and them how to process only that information.

The second point was that we need to be able to see clearly what is actually in front of us, what it actually is, and to know what we can affect and what we can’t. While this seems so easy and obvious, as she said, the issue isn’t doing it, the issue is remembering to do it at the appropriate time.

The second part was a mini chair yoga session lead by Olivia Miller. As one who has been doing yoga for years, I personally liked this, but I wished she had linked it more to the audience (namely how career professionals can incorporate it into their practice).

The final presentation was on Mindfulness and Career Development from Dr.  David Blustein, a professor or Counseling Psychology and Career Development at Boston College. Blustein talked about his experience in meditation (what he calls “a gym workout for the mind”) and and had us do a quick 5 minute meditation and then reflect upon it. We then had a discussion about how we can bring some of these techniques to work with our clients.

Readers of this blog will know that I’m very tuned into people bringing all of their lives into the career process. I encourage everyone to really look at their lives to find out the truth about it, and not just what you want to see. Once you have that information, you can then make well thought out decisions about next steps. I’ve found that the spiritual/mindful side is one that most people don’t look at for what their reality is there.

Have you looked at your core and do you know what’s there?

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2 Comments

  1. Maureen

    First time I’ve been on your blog. Sounds like the presentation by Anne Jolles was great. The chatter is “ego” and focusing on what is in front of us is being in the “Now”. Eckhart Tolle’s book on that subject is a great expansion on the points she makes.

  2. Ken Mattsson

    Maureen,

    You’re right on that. I’ve taken in some of Eckhart Tolle’s work, but have a lot more to read and see about his presentation.

    Granted, I didn’t do Anne justice in my review, as it was just the highlights. I’m also trying to incorporate that more into my work, or I should say, find a new way to explain how I’ve been incorporating it. Seems like you’re doing similar work.

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