Personal Leadership: The importance of having “mini retreats”

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#Humancentricgrowth talks about personal self, team and business leadership. This week’s newsletter talks about how to achieve personal leadership through self-care.

?“Motivation is what gets you started. Habits is what keeps you going.”~ Jim Ryan

?I was taught in multiple leadership coaching sessions – the importance of taking time off for yourself is critical to be a leader with resilience. Also, the importance of putting ‘recovery’ rituals within your daily life to power on to be a better corporate athlete.

I believe a lot in this, and in fact, I even put my team through 6 modules of training last year to help them build self-care rituals so that they can be more effective and creative at work.

However, being a type A achiever, I often procrastinate for myself. ?I think advice is always easy given to other people, but most difficult when you apply to yourself.

Last week, I finally took the courage and fought the guilt of leaving my little girl during her mid-year examination and went on 3 day 2 nights women “breathe and rejuvenate” retreat. It was an intimate group of females coming together led by 2 like-minded yoga well-being practitioners who are passionate about helping women harness their best self and potential.

The retreat was set in a beautiful resort off in Batam – a 45-minute ride away. Set in an amazing comfortable villa resort facing the sea, the resort speaks of tranquillity, calm and restfulness.

We were brought through a few days of different types of yoga practice, spa rituals and meditative practices. We also had a day in silence whereby we were asked to connect with our own thoughts and to be mindful and to be present. We used these hours of silence to practice mindfulness and journal down our thoughts or intents we had for the retreat.

What were my learnings from this retreat?

1.????? The power of a “pause”.

We are occupied with multiple thoughts and actions. As a #typeA achiever, I am occupied and overzealous with the path to acceleration and achievements. Sometimes the path to acceleration and achievement can be super addictive, that you forget to pause and reflect, and burnout happens! Well, I certainly learnt from this retreat that you need to slow down to go faster. In fact, the power of “pause” can help with the acceleration path.

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2.????? Create rituals that help to fuel recovery.

Through this retreat, I recognize the importance of ‘starting small’ and learning to listen to your body. I had a few chronic body symptoms that was affecting me. My sleeping pattern was not good, and it affected my ability to be at my best attention. Through this session, I picked up few tips and approach with yoga and meditative solutions. I started putting them into my daily regime and are seeing the enormous effect on my attention, ability to concentrate and my consistent energy levels.

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3.????? The importance of aligning one’s mind, body, and soul to maximise the best potential. (achieving #flow)

I have learnt stress occurs when one’s mind, body and soul are not aligned. I have also learnt in multiple leadership trainings that when your mind, body and soul are aligned, you achieve a state of flow, and you will be more authentic in how you show up and more positive in your approach to problem-solving.

I was intentional in this retreat to find the alignment of my #soul and to feed my soul with intention, to achieve the flow that is much needed to perform. The day of silence and journalling was an amazing way in to connect with my heart/ soul and to bring alignment holistically.

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4.????? When one has the intent, you are open-minded to possibilities – that will create growth opportunities that are unstoppable. (#maximise the brain power)

When you slow down, suddenly you are more present, and you are more open to the signals around you and can interpret the signals around you. You are also more open to growth opportunities and the power of creativity starts setting in. It is also when your #superpowers start setting in. One of my strengths is ability to appreciate the beauty and excellence in things and can integrate all of them to create opportunities. ?When I slow down, I find that I was able to create more opportunities and solve problems creatively. I also begin to reframe some of the challenges and obstacles I have for myself.

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The new world of leadership now is one that is not attained through hierarchy nor ruling by fear and authority. Post covid, with future of work evolving, I believe progressive leadership is more fluid, more community like and requires the leader to know his or her purpose and know how to create the right environment for herself/himself to be at her best. They seek ‘servant leaders’ who know how to create the right inclusive environment that brings about the most authentic individuals and to enable them to perform at their fullest potential. For a leader to be able to do so, she/ he needs to start working on her inner self before she /he can give to her team and contribute to the world. This must be a reason why over the last few years, many leaderships advisory boards have been working with C-Suite leaders to have similar programs to help CEO to bring out the best in their leadership teams.

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In addition, a retreat is not one that you need to take time weeks or months off to go up a monastery and be shut off from the rest of the world. It is all about creating space for yourself to connect with your inner self to reflect, do self-work, build resilience, before you show up.? It is about carving out space daily! Perhaps one or two hours a day with some rituals is a starting point to create “daily mini retreats” to become a high performing leader! You can certainly start small and find the moments to create the ‘inner sanctuary’ to fuel oneself.

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A quote from Jim Ryan reminded me about this experience. ?“Motivation is what gets you started. Habits is what keeps you going.” ~ Jim Ryan

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We should carve out ‘daily mini retreats’ in our life! I certainly am determined to do that to bring about a positive change and not procrastinate any further??

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Siew Ting Foo is a future — focused, human- centric growth leader. She has delivered growth across diverse industries, through helping organizations re-imagining brands, businesses and organizations. Siew Ting is highly energetic, purpose-driven collaborator, who believes in harnessing people’s potential to build brands, business and people. She combines “art” and “science” in marketing and harness community to build powerful brands.