Where is Your Mind? Finding Focus & Communicating Mindfully

When I first started in sales over a decade ago, I struggled. On phone calls with prospects, I’d stutter and stammer. While delivering presentations, I’d lose my place and fall apart.

I still remember one sales call during my first month on the job when, after delivering a long pitch, a prospect admitted to me, “I’m sorry but I have no idea what you just said.”

A few months into the gig, I wondered if sales (or any job that required me to talk to other humans) was even for me. Maybe I should just do one of those jobs where you sit in a corner cube and file papers all day. But, luckily, I didn’t give up so easily. I kept hopping on sales calls. I kept delivering awkward presentations.

My biggest shift in what would later become success in sales came from an unexpected source: studying mindfulness. As a curious 20-something, I had been trying to make sense of an increasingly complicated world and picked up a few books by mindfulness experts like Thich Nhat Hanh, Pema Chodron, and Sharon Salzberg.

In one book in particular, called In Love with the World by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, there was a line that helped me to reframe my struggles from my early sales career and that still serves me today.

During a passage in the book, Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche examines the distracted nature of his own mind. Upon doing so, he found that no matter where he was, his mind would drift elsewhere. To bring himself back to the present, he would ask himself a simple question: “where is my mind?” This queue would help him recognize that he had drifted and bring himself back to where he was supposed to be—the present moment.

I realized that every time I hopped on a sales call or jumped on stage to deliver a presentation, my mind was also elsewhere. In most cases, I’d be thinking about what the prospect or the audience might be thinking about me, rather than about the actual content I was supposed to be delivering. In other words, I was always in my own head.

But, slowly, I started to catch my mind drifting and I’d use Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche’s question: “where is my mind?” Each time I did this, I was able to get out of my own head and redirect my focus to where it belonged—in communication with the prospect or the audience.

Today, as a professional speaker and consultant, I’ve found there’s no bigger asset to my business than how I communicate. And to be a great communicator, I must have great focus. And for me, the tool I’ve used to acquire this is mindfulness.

The next time you catch your mind drifting when in communication with your clients, colleagues, or loved ones, remember Yongey Mingyur Rinphoche’s simple question: “where is my mind?” This will help you focus on being exactly where you should be—right here.

?? My wife, Pema Sherpa and I are also on Instagram. Follow @Daily.Buddhist! ??