Reclaim mental space in your daily life

Adapted from Aligned: Connecting Your True Self with the Leader You’re Meant to Be

How do you reclaim mental space in your daily life? Start by finding ways to refuel. We all recharge differently, besides the basic needs of proper food, sleep, and exercise. What gives you energy? One of my clients learned to take breathers between meetings, allowing herself to sit down for a few minutes and have a coffee on her way back to the office. Or perhaps listening to music for a few minutes works for you. Or stepping out of the office to walk and clear your head. Or talking to a friend.

An effective way to refuel and reclaim mental space is to suspend the past and the future and stand in the present moment. This ability to bring yourself back to the present is known as mindfulness. Mindfulness and other forms of meditation have been scientifically shown to be among the most effective techniques to reclaim that headspace. This is why many tech firms in Silicon Valley often start meetings with a few minutes of silence. It gives everyone in the room a chance to clear their heads and focus. But like anything else, the ability to stand in the present at will is a skill that requires practice. Google started nudging its staff to attend mindful meditation training as early as 2007, and the practice has now spread far beyond Silicon Valley to traditional Fortune 500 companies such as Goldman Sachs and General Mills.

Think of it as cerebral downtime, like a mini-holiday for the brain. Your energy settles into calm.?

This downtime pays off: a refreshed brain has been linked to higher attention, motivation, memory, and productivity—all of which feed performance. Cerebral downtime also facilitates perspective and creativity: your unplugged brain is better able to make lateral connections that then bubble up to the surface of your consciousness, with inspiration seemingly coming out of the blue. Put simply, meditation helps rebalance attention away from your over-taxed frontal cortex and its analytical, linear, rational thinking towards your more intuitive self. Some studies have suggested that cerebral downtime is essential to staying connected with ourselves and with others, affirming our own identities and helping to understand human behavior. In other words, it is essential to cultivate alignment with oneself and promote emotional intelligence.

Meditation has been shown to result in profound changes in brain structure over time, strengthening areas associated with emotional control, memory, introspection, attention, and abstract thought. When your brain takes a break, it does not stop working. Instead, it allows many mental processes to take place—just as essential physiological processes take place while you sleep. It makes space for the more intuitive part of your mind.

Place your hands on your lap, close your eyes, and focus on your environment for a few minutes. Really focus. Can you feel your feet planted on the ground? The back of your chair pressing against you? The palms of your hands on your legs? What sounds do you hear? What do you smell? Focus on your breathing. Every time you notice you have been distracted by thoughts, gently bring your mind back to the sounds and smells around you. Practice taking a few moments to anchor yourself in the present, paying atten- tion to what’s around you, and you’ll open the door to your intuition. If you haven’t used it in a while, it may feel skittish and unpredictable, like a wild horse ready to bolt. It may take a little time before you’re able to clear your mind and find a silent inner space. But if you keep practicing, it will help you stay aligned with yourself.

Being aligned means becoming more of yourself, and transcending the limits that once held you back.?Get your copy of Aligned now!