The role of Mindfulness in the Development of Resilience in Entrepreneurs - Part 2

Just with resilience we all have a different capacity for stress tolerance and we can learn to manage our stress - or at least our perception of stress in our lives. Resilience and stress are in extrinsically linked and are thought to be the main causes of burnout at work. So why are so many of us feeling more and more drained, lacking in resilience and reporting higher levels of stress than ever before?

Well for many of us juggling work, career, family, friends and a whole raft of other commitments is becoming more and more demanding and can feel rather overwhelming. When the body feels under threat we will perceive ourselves to be stressed. When we are stressed we struggle to make sound decisions, remain clear and ultimately perform. In today's demanding and fast paced world, we are spending more and more of our lives trying to "achieve" and in striving to achieve more and more we are often feeling more under "threat". The key problem here is that we are not balancing our emotional well-being with the things that "sooth" us. Things that make us feel safe, protected, cared for, content and happy. This lack of balance can result in us struggling to effectively regulate our emotions and can play havoc on our day to day resilience and mental health. It is therefore not surprising that the mindfulness movement has exploded.

Mindfulness as an approach, idea and practice has seen an enormous surge in popularity garnering mainstream appeal and gaining considerable academic interest. Kabat-Zinn's MBCT and Barnard and Teasdale's MBCT are the most commonly used by those seeking to practice, theorise or research the concept of Mindfulness. Mindfulness is not only a topic of interest for academics but has been acknowledged as relevant for work and business. The Mindfulness Initiative (2016) launched a new publication "Building the Case for Mindfulness in the Workplace" presenting evidence for the case for mindfulness on the premise that it has shown to improve most work related outcomes.

So what is Mindfulness?

Mindfulness is an "awareness that emerges through paying attention on purpose, in the present moment non-judgementally to the unfolding of experience moment by moment (Kabat-Zinn, 2003).

Not too long ago, most of us thought that the brain we were born with is static- that after a certain age, the neural circuitry cards we were dealt are the only ones we can play moving forward. Fast-forward a decade or two, and we are beginning to see the opposite - the brain is designed to adapt constantly. World renowned neuroscientist Richie Davidson found through her research that even short amounts of mindfulness practice (30 minutes per day) can intentionally shape the plasticity of our brain in ways that can be beneficial. Following an 8 week MBSR course there are four key areas of the brain which appear to re-wire themselves to become more effective: the grey matter of the hippocampus which is responsible for learning, the pre-frontal cortex responsible for emotion regulation, the fight or flight response via the amygdala and the anterior cingulate cortex which can result in distraction and mind wandering all change and develop their neural pathways for the better.

But mindfulness doesn't come without its critics. There is however concern that popularised western versions of mindfulness practice are radically different from the values and assumptions of the indigenous psychologies of Buddhism from where these practices came. Referred to by some critics as the McMindfulness movement, they argue that the nature of mindfulness practice could present a number of issues. The most dangerous threats being: deracination (uprooting from the Eastern Spiritual discipline), instrumentalisation (using mindfulness to achieve outcomes such as profit, productivity), secularisation (practicising mindfulness in a non religious & non sacred setting). These issues raise challenging questions around the utility of modern mindfulness practices but we need to weigh up the risks v the benefits. We cant afford not to.

We are building work cultures which are often counter-productive to the kind of environment that fosters health and well-being. It is simply not enough to offer employees a mindfulness programme and put the blame for stress firmly at the individuals door. There is the risk that mindfulness is being readily offered as a "self-help" tool for said individuals to enable them to privately manage their stress without the providers of such training i.e. the organization, taking any form of responsibility and blissfully marching on regardless without making any genuine attempt to explore the systematic causes of stress in the first place. The good news is that there are authors out there who think that modern mindfulness taught well and which stays true to the ethical roots of the practice is stealth Buddhism.

A timely discovery...

Well I know we all dread that something that really gets to you, something that you cant shake off and something which challenges your very identity and everything you stand for. My "hit you in the face" moment came shortly after 2 of my best achievements in my life to date and at a time when to all those looking on - I had essentially made it! Sadly, as a result of a long term toxic work relationship which despite trying I couldn't improve, I was diagnosed with PTSD. It's amazing how much of your very soul can be eroded if someone tries long and hard enough to destroy your confidence. To this day I don't fully get that this was the thing that got me, but it did and it was big... Essentially, I completely drove off the cliff of healthiness. When you experience trauma your brain is in constant threat mode. Essentially I had to learn to re-wire the brain and a chance meeting at a BBQ gave me the tool to do the job. From speaking to a mindfulness practitioner over supper and subsequently enrolling on his mindfulness course, the techniques I learnt literally helped me to come from a dark place and regain my happiness. I do now believe that some higher order put mindfulness in my path when I needed it most - it often happens this way. Mindfulness helped me to regain perspective, develop self-compassion for myself and allowed me to stop ruminating in the past and thinking too much into the future. Being able to live for the present is truly liberating.

Mindfulness helped me when I needed it most and in moving on to study mindfulness and writing a book on Mindfulness for Well-being, this has since allowed me to spread the word and help others. In Part 3, I share the fascinating results of my research on a group of local Jersey entrepreneurs and report back on the role that mindfulness can play in the development of resilience.