The KNOWING – DOING GAP of MINDFULNESS

“Viure sans temps mort. (Live without wasted time)” – Parisian Political Slogan.

In life, we all get stuck with dead time. Its occurrence isn’t in our control. Its use, on the other hand, is. Let me talk about one such person Malcolm X (also called as Detroit Red) who was sentenced to jail for 10 years in February 1946 while he was barely twenty-one years old. 

Malcolm chose to live over dead. He found his eureka moment in the form of learning. He explored religion, taught himself to be a reader by checking out a pencil and the dictionary from the prison library and not only consumed it from start to finish, but copied it down long hand from cover to cover. All these words had never known existed before were transferred to his brain.

In his own words - “From then until I left that prison, in every free moment I had, if I was not reading in the library, I was reading in my bunk.” Use to read history, sociology, about religion, read the classics and philosophers like Kant and Spinoza.

Once a reporter asked Malcolm “What’s your alma mater?” to stay alive. His one-word answer “BOOKS”. Prison was his college. He transcended confinement through the pages he absorbed. He reflected that months passed without his even thinking about being detained. And said, “never been so truly free in his life”.

He has been called one of the greatest and most influential African Americans in history on his return from prison. He might have not realized or understood how prison made that possible in totality. However, a mix of acceptance, humility and strength powered the transformation.

Connecting Malcolm X journey into the current knowledge advantage companies who are investing billions of dollars into training programs and executive educations. The reason is not that knowledge isn’t important. It’s that most companies know or can know, the same things. Moreover, even as companies talk about the importance of learning, intellectual capital, and knowledge management, they frequently fail to take the vital next step of transforming knowledge into action. The KNOWING – DOING GAP of MINDFULNESS confronts the paradox of companies that know too much and do too little by showing how some companies are successful at turning mindfulness into action. 

The increasing gap between the way employees are being managed at work, and the way they want to be managed with varying nature of work and managing multiple dimensional, cross cultural, employees who are Paid to Think, Managing Brilliant Minds and Generation Distress with pace of change is rapidly impacting the performance of an individual at both professional and personal front on their thinking, emotions and behaviors in yielding the expected outcomes.

In 2019 the World Economic Forum identified three biggest threats facing across the world and one among them was Loneliness.

Loneliness is as toxic as smoking 15 cigarettes a day and it’s a global epidemic. For this, our changing lifestyles are the significant factors to be blamed. The current share of people living alone is unprecedented in history. In US, the average number of close friends fell from 3 to 2 between 1985 and 2004. And the number of people with zero close friends tripled to become the most common scenario. Urbanization and aspiration to grow in careers may be one major factor’s, as it weakens bonds with family and friends.

In China, as the rural population almost halved between 1980 and 2014 - loneliness rose in people who moved to cities, and in communities they left behind.

It’s not clear how far technology is to blame for loneliness…. People spend 24 hours per week online, on average. Nevertheless, there’s a heavy economic cost to loneliness at personal and professional front.

Countless surveys have been done in this area, ending in headlines like “Six out of Ten workers are miserable” and recent survey by Gallup found that 71% of American workers reported that they were either “not engaged” with or “actively disengaged” from their jobs. Digging deep into these surveys on professional front, we get to see a significant gap and emphasis on quality of leadership across industries. Unrest in India is scaling up aggressively and gaining a sharper focus is getting difficult, with individual’s cross generations are demonstrating sign of depression and becoming vulnerable. 

Calming a restless mind and cultivating Mindfulness started becoming a critical factor in the corporate world. Studying the new habits, discussing individual feelings, and creating space for improving their thinking started answering some of the leadership crisis within the organization.

Corporate's like Google, Nike and Apple love Mindfulness Training and started decoding. Fidelity Investments reports that 22% of employers offered mindfulness program in 2016 and for 2017 that numbers are expected to double. SAP, the company has recently introduced its Ambassadors of Mindfulness. This position is taken so seriously that individuals who bear the title can proudly list it on their business cards.

Increasingly many corporates started investing on Knowing – Doing Gap of Mindfulness to enhance the individual brain’s capability. The mindfulness started creating miracles with mounting scientific evidences to support a powerful mental training. It started rewiring the brain to improve productivity and increase ability to focus. 

Making Mindfulness a Habit is the best way to employ over long term with dedicated time every day. Practicing on daily basis and repeating the process often become increasingly adept at focusing on single sensation.

A quick fix approach is adopting “STOP Model”. It’s an informal way of using mindfulness to decrease stress, anxiety and loneliness in daily life is encapsulated in the acronym “STOP”, which outlines a very simple and effective method for bringing the body and mind back into balance:

S : STOP

T : TAKE A BREATH

O : OBSERVE

P : PROCEED

Seems simple yet powerful. The great thing about STOP is that you can put it into practice right away. Unlike other, more elaborate techniques, STOP is easy to use and remember: There’s no mantra required and no special posture you need. Periodically during your day, just call a quick time-out and take a deep breath. Observe what you were doing at that moment and think about how it makes you feel. Just few minutes of silence to gather the thoughts will sharpen the focus. It’s a basic act of reflection – Psychologists call it “Metacognitive Awareness”. Leads to positive and often permanent changes in your thinking patterns and physical responses.

Finding source of identifying the Knowing – Doing Gaps of Mindfulness is an art. It is fast becoming mainstream with greater acceptability and awareness. From apps to pop-ups to the boardroom, you can become Zen anywhere, anytime.

Just like “What We Think, We Become” – Gautama Buddha else “A Man Who Stands for Nothing will fall for Anything” – Malcolm X.

Sources :

 1.)    World Economic Forum – The Global Risks Report 2019

2.)    UK Government Data & Office of National Statistics

3.)    London School of Economics & Harvard School of Public Health

4.)    Inc.com – article by Marissa Levin (Founder & CEO of Successful Culture)

5.)    Helpguide.org – Harvard Health article

6.)    Positivepsychology.com – Category: Mindfulness

7.)    The Daily Mail, London (October 17, 2001)

8.)    Interpolated from statement: Gallup Poll Survey in US

9.)    Quiet Leadership Book by David Rock

10.)  The Leading Brain Book by Friederike Fabritius and Hans W Hagemann

11.)  Ego is the Enemy Book by Ryan Holiday

12.)  Wikipedia on Malcolm X