Practical Mindfulness...a primer

Matt Thieleman is a marketing consultant, a business coach and mindfulness leadership advocate. With nine years of various experience in marketing, communications, academics, publishing, he is able to help individuals, teams, companies large or small in bridging marketing, leadership and mindful living. 

Matt Thieleman is an #EverydayLeader.

I recently spoke with Matt on the phone. Following is a summary of our conversation.

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Tell us the story of Golden Bristle 

I started Golden Bristle in 2015 with the intention of bringing practical mindfulness tools to the business world. It’s not just meditation but other tools including ways to do self-reflection in the workplace and at home so that we can be more engaged, less stressed and just do some cool stuff. 

What is Mindfulness?

Many people would define mindfulness as 'paying attention on purpose’. But I define also what is it that we’re paying attention to. For instance we pay attention to: 

• Our thoughts. What’s going on inside our heads?
• Our bodies. What are the physical sensations within our bodies and outside of our bodies that are always there but we aren’t always attuned to? 
• Our environment. Is there a way that we can bring our awareness to all those things or maybe just one at a time but more consciously?

A second part of mindfulness is learning to accept things as they are. That’s really the difficult part. A lot of stress stems from not being able to get rid of expectations of how things should be.

“How do we stop doing the things that prevent us from living our best lives and do more of the things that allow us to live the lives we want to live?”  Matt Thieleman

If someone is doing something that upsets me and I start to ruminate over and over about it, it’s really going to bring me down. I can't really do anything to affect their behavior at this point. If I'm being mindful, however, I can say, “Okay, this behavior is upsetting to me. I can accept that and I still need to get along with my life.”

You mentioned that you help people with practical mindfulness. How do we make mindfulness practical?

There are a lot of ways that we can incorporate these moments of awareness into our everyday life. It can be as simple as finding moments to breathe, to take real good breaths. The practical aspect is if we take long deep breaths through our belly, we’re triggering a part of our nervous system that allows us to relax. It really has beneficial impacts. There's a really cool physiological aspect to it too.

As you’ve grown through your career, what did you skills did you focus on strengthening that have helped you the most? 

There are couple of things that have helped me along the way.

First, I was an athlete. I played baseball in college and then continued after. Through that experience, I both learned what it was like to be around other people in high-intensity environments. I also had to do a lot of visualization — mental visualization work — that really applies to mindfulness. I think being an athlete really set me up for this experience.

Second, my training as a marketer. My success in marketing has been driven by just my interest in people. I was fortunate that I started my career around 2007/2008—just as social media was becoming huge. Marketing is now different from what these other folks are doing so how do I take advantage of that? What it really made me do is get in the minds of the people I was talking to and that helps you develop these really core skills of mindfulness and empathy and compassion and just understanding someone else’s perspective.

It seems that optimism is one of your key characteristics as well. You created a huge huge opportunity when all hell was breaking loose in the economy in 2007 and 2008.

I was really lucky. I worked at a really well-known, well-regarded business school. I got tremendously lucky but I was so ignorant because I was first coming into my career. I had no idea that things were so dire. It was sort of a luck of ignorance I guess.

Let’s talk about your natural leadership style and the various leadership styles you run into in your line of work.

I started working with university students. I was thinking, “Okay, what are they going to need in the next 10, 20, maybe 50 years as they really become the leaders of this country, of their respective industries or businesses?” 

I started to look at the trends that are probably not going to slow down. So many of them are related to technology. Technology is advancing exponentially in a way that our human minds can't really understand. We’re going to have a tremendous scarcity of time and attention because this device that is in my pocket all the time, that I use 90% of my hours a day, is not going to be a phone for long. It could be embedded inside us, or a contact lens or something that we don’t even know about yet. Nevertheless, the world is going to become a screen. 

One thing, however, will remain constant: Human Connection. We’re made to connect as human beings. Technology is amazing. That’s a really good thing if we pay attention to it. Our future leaders need to, first and foremost, be able to connect with others. Then, they need to also be comfortable with ambiguity and really complex problems while remaining focused on what's important while all these distractions stand in our way.

One thing will remain constant: We're made to connect as human beings.  Matt Thieleman

I focus on three fundamental leadership skills, which are based on the idea of emotional intelligence. 

• Self-awareness. As we understand ourselves moment to moment, it allows us to do a whole lot more.
• Awareness of others. As I understand myself better, I can understand others better, and I can lead them better because they understand me, and I understand them.
• Focus on what's important. Knowing your mission, purpose and values, knowing how to translate these to action, and knowing now to avoid and manage distractions. 

Any final words of wisdom for other Everyday Leaders?

My advice is to understand why it is you get up and what your mission is, what your values are and live them every day. You can use your mission and values as your bedrock to come back to and it will continue to drive you towards success, however that looks for you, and whatever it is you want to achieve.

About this Series

I’m on a quest to profile 100 #EverydayLeaders doing extraordinary things. If you are an everyday leader and you’d like to chat, please reach out to directly or through The Leadership Growth Network.

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