Watch this insightful 3 minute video where Cory Muscara, one of my favorite meditation teachers!, shares his cognitive reframing mindfulness exercise: shifting your “What Ifs” to “What Is”. This helps us drop in and anchor ourselves to the present moment – and cultivate an attitude of gratitude.

Cory Muscara is the founder of the Long Island Center for Mindfulness. He teaches at Columbia Teachers College and the University of Pennsylvania – and spent six months living in silence as a monk in Asia. Learn more about him at www.LImindfulness.com.

If you are interested in how you learn a new habit (like meditation!) and rewire your brain, watch this 2 minute video on neuroplasticity.

While it’s a survival mechanism, stress is stressful and and when we are stressed, it becomes more difficult to think clearly, learn, and remember things.

And as a leader, you are particularly at risk because you constantly face the following four challenges that lead to stress and burn out:

• An uncertain outcome
• Something important is at stake
• Being observed or watched
• Anticipation of any of the above

Learn more about stress and how to better manage it by clicking here.

Watch this heart warming, inspiring, TED talk – When There’s More to Life than Being Happy by writer Emily Esfahani Smith.  She shares how happiness comes and goes and that serving something beyond yourself and developing the best within you — gives you something to hold onto. Learn more about the difference between being happy and having meaning as Smith offers four pillars of a meaningful life: belonging; purpose; trancendence; and story telling.

Brilliant 50 minute video of a conversation with Jon Kabat-Zinn, Daniel Goleman, and Richard Davidson moderated by David Gelles of the New York Times on October 3, 2017.

Key points

• Why 8 minutes matters
• We have an innate preference for goodness
• Compassion and kindness can be nurtured
• Mindfulness is a way of being
• Meditation is about opening our hearts, calming our minds, in benefit to ourselves and others
• Mindfulness -> attention training -> cognitive control -> paying attention to attention
• The real meditation practice is every moment of your life

CLICK HERE TO WATCH

Roselinde Torres spent 25 years observing truly great leaders at work. In this TED talk – What Does it Take to Be a Great Leader, Torres shares how great leaders see around corners, value diversity, let go of past practices, and ask three simple but crucial questions so that their organizations can thrive in the future.