Living the Full Catastrophe

Lately I have been reading an excellent, old book titled Full Catastrophe Living. The book was written by Jon Kabat-Zinn. And it is all about mindfulness and meditation.

As I was reading, I was struck by how similar mindfulness is to leadership. A concept which certainly applies to our discussion here on this blog. If you are an entrepreneur, you need to be a leader. Even if the only person you are leading is yourself!

As I have said before, I think leadership is largely about effective living. Which is why Full Catastrophe Living has struck such a chord. Mindfulness and meditation are also, very much, about effective living. So, I figured I would send along a passage from the book.

Kabat-Zinn writes, "To cultivate meditative awareness requires an entirely new way of looking at the process of learning. Since thinking that we know what we need and where we want to get are so ingrained in our minds, we can easily get caught up in trying to control things to make them turn out "our way," the way we want them to. But this attitude is antithetical to the work of awareness and healing.

The author continues, "Awareness requires only that we pay attention and see things as they are. It doesn't require that we change anything. And healing requires receptivity and acceptance, a tuning to connectedness and wholeness."

And, here is the particular passage I would like to point to, "Non of this can be forced, just as you cannot force yourself to go to sleep. You have to create the right conditions for falling asleep and then you have to let go. The same is true for relaxation. It cannot be achieved through force of will. That kind of effort will only produce tension and frustration."

What most caught my eye was creating the right conditions, and not being able to force things. I have found this to be very important when it comes you entrepreneurship. We cannot force things. But, we can always be paying attention, to ensure we create the right conditions.

Stay tuned because, over the next couple weeks, I will be discussing a couple of other gems from this legendary book.