Parents With Careers

Parents with Careers empowers working parents on their journey of working parenthood through workshops, a blog, education and resources.

The Power of Mindful Re-centering

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It’s been almost 4 months since my last blog post. While I’ve written down ideas and thought about my business, I haven’t actually sat down to write a post. I let the time go by and didn’t think it was a big deal – I had a lot to do and I had to control my own stress pressure valves and decide where to focus my energy. The list of to-do’s piled up: work, errands, Girl Scouts meeting planning, family time…all important things that needed to get done.

But something was missing. There was a source of energy that wasn’t be renewed. I get a lot out of writing these blogs: personal reflection, knowing that what I write impacts people in a positive way, and a mindful re-centering around what I believe and what I want to model for my daughters. This not only impacts me and my family positively, but I notice that I bring a different energy to work through this mindful re-centering practice.
It’s okay to be so wrapped up in life that you lose focus on a few things or let some things slide for a bit. Yet it’s not okay to keep going forever without stopping to mindfully re-center. Inertia is a powerful force, and if you don’t remind yourself to take that pause, you’ll keep going forever without your internal guiding map. There is movement in stopping. 

So what do you do when you stop? Here are some suggestions on how to get the most movement from this pause:

  • Meditate. There are a volume of studies that show the power in meditation. The beauty of it is that you don’t have to sit for an hour saying “om” to reap the benefits. There are many great guided meditation apps that can help you leverage the power of meditation in as little as 10 minutes a day. I love the app Headspace (thanks to the co-worker that suggested it to me). Find what works for you and add this important practice to your day. It makes a difference.
  • Do a self-assessment on how you’re living up to your values and personal vision. If you’re not quite sure where to go, writing what “grounds you” from a personal values and vision perspective is a good place to start. After you write your values down, give yourself a letter grade. Write down the justification for those grades. For anything that is not an “A”, ask yourself what you could do to get yourself there; then prioritize what you want to work on and when. Save the paper, and revisit it at regular intervals.
  • Create a personal dashboard. In my book What Families Can Learn from Corporate America I talk about the importance of family goals. I also believe a guide of personal goals is important. We use dashboards in Corporate America all the time to help make sure we’re focusing on value-added tasks. Why not incorporate this practice into our personal lives as well?

As life goes faster, more technology keeps us always “on” more, and productivity demands increase, the practice of mindfully re-centering will become increasingly important. Don’t let inertia carry you too far away from your intended destination.