You most likely picked up this book because you need to find a better, more solid, and more productive way to function. Whether you are a leader in the corporate world, a burgeoning entrepreneur, or a staff member within a business large or small, I created this book for you. To simplify things, I refer to situations from the perspective of the business manager. However, the habits, theories, practices, and examples speak to everyone in the working population, whatever your role might be.
While technology has taken us to new heights, it has also been the demise of many formerly viable businesses. These days you have to have a solid foundation while being flexible enough to shift how you do business instantaneously when necessary. To develop the strength to maintain, alter, or even restructure your business when required, it must be based on incredibly strong roots. “Outings” of businesses or individuals who lacked integrity and were rooted in lies have been growing. The world no longer has patience for unyielding greed, flagrant irresponsibility, or rigid doctrine.
When your business interactions are rooted in a foundation of integrity, creativity, and diversity, like a tree whose roots run deep, it can bend in the wake of pending storms. Integrating mindfulness practices and raising the consciousness within your business is the right thing to do. It also strengthens its energetic imprint on the earth, bolstering the planet’s chances for survival.
What Is a Good Morning Mind?
The Good Morning Mind sets your energy for the day. It starts in the direction of delightful, delicious expectation and expands upon that energetic intention throughout your day and into the rest of your life. It is a reprogramming of your attitude from a “no” or “not today” intention to an enthusiastic “yes, yes, yes” response to your life. There will always be bumps in the road, but experiencing them from a “yes” mindset will take you from seeing yourself as a helpless victim to knowing that you are a powerful victor. With the Good Morning Mind, you are integrating your heart into the equation. Although you can’t change difficult people or situations, you can change the way you perceive them. Therein lies your freedom.
I look forward to taking you on a journey of discovery that goes beyond what your mind can currently comprehend. I have broken down the essential requirements for a successful business into nine habits. When you cultivate the Good Morning Mind and integrate the behaviors and practices that I outline for you, your business relationships can flourish, and your business can soar to new heights. The nine habits spell out the acronym BE PRESENT. At the core of each habit is a solid commitment to living in the present moment. This takes discipline, courage, and a willingness to explore all of yourself—both what you embrace as good and what you condemn as harmful.
What Exactly Is Mindfulness?
Mindfulness has become a real buzzword, especially in the world of business. But what exactly is it? I find the word to be a bit of a dichotomy. If the act of mindfulness is the act of quieting the mind, then why do we call it mindfullness? Isn’t it the opposite?
I suggest that the mind is always full. Our challenge (or opportunity) is to get comfortable with its fullness; in time, our relationship with it will shift. We will be able to get to a place of quieting even in spite of it.
In a nutshell, mindfulness meditation is a mental practice that involves focusing your mind on your experiences (bodily sensations, thoughts, or feelings) as they arise in the present moment. Thoughts pass through the mind constantly. They are often repetitive, focusing on regrets about the past or issues that could arise in the future. They are very often fear-based. Getting lost in yesterday and tomorrow, we miss out on experiencing life in the present moment. As we practice mindfulness, which is simply sitting quietly and observing our thoughts, we start to cultivate the witness-self. This self is the watcher of the thoughts. In the same way that you sit and watch a movie, your witness-self is able to watch your thoughts as they arise. It sees them come and go as if they were clouds passing through your mind.
Cultivating Curiosity
As your witness-self develops, you become more and more curious. You are able to watch the drama around you unfold as you are living it. As you play your role in the performance of your life, another part of you is able to detach and neutrally observe it. This neutrality comes from your commitment to non-judgment. It requires setting an intention to feel compassion first and foremost for yourself. Once you experience this compassion, you will naturally find yourself feeling it towards others. You will experience firsthand the realization that your external harshness and judgments are rooted in your own self-criticism. Once you commit to self-love, life starts to fall into place.
Ultimately, as you develop your wise observer self, you start to have a dialogue with it. You are able to choose differently, to step away from the drama. Although currently you may not find comfort in stillness, there will likely come a time when you will welcome it. You will start to experience how good it feels simply to sit in silent observation. You can feel the life force coursing through your veins. There is a freedom, a liberation, in simply sitting, observing, and being totally present.
An Exercise in Mindfulness
Before you begin, I encourage you to turn off your phone and create an environment in which you will not be disturbed. Find a quiet, relaxing place to sit with your spine straight and your back erect. I usually have pillows to support my back, and I cover myself with a couple of comfortable blankets. If you wish, you can set a timer. If you have not practiced meditation in the past, you may find that you only want to sit for five minutes. If you find you can only last two minutes, so be it. The more you practice meditating, the more you will be able to increase the duration. Above all else, be sure not to judge yourself. The fact that you are making this commitment is enough.
Now close your eyes and simply observe your breath. Feel the cool air just below your nostrils as you breathe in. Feel the warm air that is exiting your nostril on each exhalation. Continue doing this, simply observing. You will likely find that thoughts enter into your mind. When you notice that you have strayed from observing your breath, simply note it: “Oh, I was just thinking about …” and then go back to observing your breath.
Once you feel ready to leave the meditation, take a moment to repeat the word “yes” to yourself. As you do so, imagine a white light filling your heart. See your heart opening, and see that light expanding to fill each cell of your body. Then see yourself having an awesome day ahead, as if you are experiencing it in the present moment (like a movie). Imagine yourself feeling joyful and laughing, enjoying your work or play, and having wonderful connections with your coworkers, friends, and family. Imagine experiencing all that you desire easily and effortlessly manifesting in the day ahead. If you are to do this each morning when you awaken, you will probably find that you are energetically clearing pathways towards a better day.
In the evenings, before going to sleep, I encourage you to do the same. This time, during the “yes” mantra, observe the day you just had in your mind’s eye. Reflect on the experiences and all that you are grateful for. Re-experience everything that brought you pleasure. It could be as simple as tasting a succulent orange or smelling a freshly brewed cup of coffee. You can feel grateful for your functioning umbrella or for the fact that your car got you to work on time. Your appreciations don’t have to be big, but be sure to seek out things that you are truly grateful for. Doing this exercise before going to sleep puts you in an energetically positive space to support a good night’s sleep.
You may not like sitting in stillness. In fact, you may have resisted doing this short meditation. That’s just fine. Don’t give up. (For years, I resisted, and I did not enjoy meditating.) I encourage you to keep reading and trying, even if only for a couple of minutes each day. The discomfort and frustration that you may feel will be well worth it in the end. As we progress through the book, I will provide you with additional mindfulness tools and techniques to assist you in further cultivating your meditative mindset.
Realizing Resistance
The first step in cultivating the Good Morning Mind is to see your resistance for what it is. I spent over twenty years as a writer and producer in the self-empowerment world. In 1999, I got a job at Nightingale-Conant Corporation, which at the time was the world’s largest publisher of motivational audiobooks. I was surrounded by mindfulness experts and was privileged to work with outstanding teachers like Jon Kabat-Zinn, Dr. David Hawkins, and Gregg Braden. They had all mastered the art of mindfulness and constantly reminded me of its benefits. I knew that sitting in stillness would bring me a greater sense of calm, nonreactivity, and clarity. But for over fifteen years, I could not bring myself to do so. My mind fought it every step of the way.
However, as I started the “yes” intention, allowing and anticipating good things to come my way, the opportunity to practice mindfulness arose. It started in 2013, when I headed to the Oneness University in Chennai, India. They offered a one-month introspective process known as the Deepening. I heard about it years prior when I produced a couple of audiobooks with metaphysical teacher and healer Ron Roth. He had been to India and had visited the founder of Oneness University, Shri Amma Bhagavan. He was so altered by his experience there that he sent his entire staff to the program and constantly spoke of Bhagavan’s powerful work. The desire to attend someday had been planted in my brain, and for years I kept bumping into people who had attended. They attested to the fact that it was the most transformational experience they ever had. I knew that one day I would experience it myself.
When that day came, I was both enthusiastic and cautious. Unlike some of my friends, I never had a burning desire to visit India. But because I had heard so much about this program, I welcomed the experience. On the third day of the retreat, we were instructed to meditate in the center’s massive and exquisite temple. It was difficult to close my eyes. Just taking in the physical beauty and energetic magnificence of this extraordinary portal was overwhelming. And let’s face it: I was terrible at sitting in stillness. Whenever I tried to meditate, I’d last no more than five minutes before jumping up to complete a task that popped into my head. Sound familiar?
An Introduction to Causeless Joy
The first time I attempted to meditate at the temple, I heard a loud, obnoxious cackling sound. It grew louder, and then it started coming from multiple sources. I opened my eyes only to see that the sound was coming from some of the meditators. They were laughing. They sounded like a bunch of rabid monkeys (not that I’ve ever heard rabid monkeys, and I hope I never do!). As I sat unable to focus on quieting my mind, a volcano of anger began to build inside of me. Just as it was ready to erupt, a clear, commanding voice in my head spoke, “Girlfriend, that so-called ‘annoyance’ is an outer reflection of your monkey mind. Get over it!” I laughed to myself at the clarity and perfection of that message. It was true. As I eased into the message, I was able to take myself and my inability to concentrate much less seriously. To my amazement, I later learned that those cackling meditators were experiencing bliss—causeless joy. I had no idea that joy could be so annoying! I’ll be sharing a great deal more about causeless joy in the pages that follow. Suffice it to say that you can begin to experience this benefit once you implement mindfulness and the nine habits of the Good Morning Mind.
The Door Opens
The seed of experiencing mindfulness that was planted in India was cultivated in an even more profound way a year later at the Dhamma Pakasa Vipassana Meditation Center in Pecatonica, Illinois. Soon after returning from India, I was instructed by a dear friend and metaphysical teacher, Bharat Kalra, to attend the silent ten-day vipassana retreat. Despite all of the emotional and spiritual work that I had done in India and for decades prior, he informed me that my energy centers were imbalanced and that mindfulness practices would help to remedy the situation.
Taking his advice, I attended the retreat. India was a piece of cake compared to this. People ask, “How could you remain in silence for ten days?” The silence was easy; sitting and observing my crazy brain and all of its tricks, traps, and repetitive spin cycles for twelve hours a day was my greatest challenge. After spending ten full days in this regimen, spending one hour a day is easy. It’s all relative!
One Moment, Many Perspectives
To clarify how mindfulness functions, here is an example of the workings of your mind as you integrate it into your daily routine. Recently I recorded the audio version of my previous book, 8 Ways to Declutter Your Brain. Prior to cultivating mindfulness, I would have been reading the manuscript and simply reacting to input from my engineers. My mind would have wandered into some fear of what might come to pass tomorrow or regrets about what happened yesterday. While I would have completed the task, I would rarely have actually been present and fully committed to the moment. But after practicing mindfulness for several years, I was able to be more present.
Having cultivated the witness-self, I was also experiencing the moment from a variety of personae. I was relating to the message on the manuscript in front of me as the reader of my material. At the same time, I was wearing my producer hat and editing the performance (for example, “I’m speeding up here, and I need to repeat the last two sentences and slow down”). I was also wearing my observer hat as I watched the interplay between my performer and producer selves. The witness-self exists in each moment and sees the whole picture from a wider lens of knowingness.
To be clear, I wasn’t always in the present moment during the two eight-hour days of recording. Even with the cultivation of mindfulness, our consciousness tends to move in and out of the present. Few can sustain it until they reach the state of enlightenment.
There were, however, key moments when I was in the zone. I was so present and tuned into the message that I made no errors and it flowed effortlessly. The sentiments I expressed were heartfelt and deep. I anticipate that those segments will prove to be the most powerful.
Imagine being able to cultivate a work environment in which your staff frequently experiences being in the zone. Creativity and innovation would flourish, and a sense of greater harmony would prevail.
The Invisible Energy of Presence
Ultimately, I believe that mindfulness enabled me to create a product that was much more focused and dynamic. When you are totally committed to the present moment, there is an invisible energy that draws others to you. This happens because of your heightened awareness. For example, when I teach preschool children, when I am present with them, they feel it. When they speak, I hear them and respond accordingly. When sadness arises in one of them, I am more connected and immediately respond. I am able to note it and address it so that the child feels seen, heard, and loved. Ultimately, I believe that on the playground of life, whether we are aged three or 103, each of us wants to be seen and understood. When we are, we feel a sense of safety and calm.
At the workplace, when you cultivate mindfulness and present-moment awareness in your organization, there is a greater sense of calm, safety, and well-being among your staff. The energy of the environment shifts from fear-based reactivity to love-based proactivity.
Cultivating the witness-self ultimately provides you with a more balanced and objective perspective on situations as they arise. At times, it almost feels as if you are watching the movie of your life unfold in slow motion. You are able to adjust and step away from reactive knee-jerk choices into more conscious ones.
I hope you are beginning to see how mindfulness and the cultivation of the witness-self can hugely affect your experiences in the workplace. Imagine an entire staff, all of whom have cultivated the witness-self and are committed to raising their own consciousness. Calmness would prevail, along with a sense of deep purpose and altruism that is not forced, but natural and organic, as each employee grows in compassion and self-awareness.
Beyond Meditation: Introspection
While many business mindfulness programs focus on meditation and calming techniques, the mindfulness that I am speaking of here goes a step further. It’s about cultivating a culture of deep inner integrity and introspection. It is about evolving yourself and your business into a completely new paradigm. It’s about doing the emotional work along with mindfulness practices. If we practice meditation and present-moment awareness, but we are not willing to look at the ways in which we trick ourselves and those around us, we will only reach a certain point in our evolution.
This book is about making a massive shift toward self-accountability and having the courage to look within ourselves. It is about making a choice to own our part in the dramas of our lives and to stop claiming to be victims of external circumstances. To get to this state, you have to be willing to do the challenging inner inventory. The awesome thing is that the more you do, the more you will attract others to you who are also committed to their own personal growth.
You Are Not Your Thoughts
As time passed, and the more I integrated my mindfulness practices into my personal growth regimen, the more I was able to cultivate the neutral witness-self. I could view the role I was playing in the drama of my life from an impersonal stance. Then one day, my teacher in India shared a lesson: “You are not your thoughts. Just as the air you breathe is part of the atmosphere, the thoughts you think are part of the thoughtmosphere.”
How life-altering that statement was! I realized that I had labeled myself based on the feelings that I had and the thoughts that ran through my mind. I believed that I was the anger that I felt; I was the shame that welled up inside me. I believed I personified every unkind thought that I had about myself and others. Once I realized that I was more than those thoughts or feelings, I truly felt liberated.
Who Are You?
What if, after being on this earth for so many years, you realized that you are not who you think you are? You are not the body you carry or the mind that reacts. You are not the personality who has disdain for some and deep love for others. In fact, you are not even the thinker. It is the machine called the mind that is thinking and producing the illusion of a thinker. You are the witness. You are the watcher whose task it is to build a greater sense of compassion and understanding for yourself and others. Your job is to observe the triggers in your life as they occur, then feel into the emotions that arise in response, resisting nothing. Simply feel into them. Then watch as the emotions guide you on your journey towards deeper love and understanding.
Watch Stress Melt Away
Much of the stress you experience comes from your attempts to resist your feelings as they arise. You often want to repress them and stuff them inside. As the witness-self becomes more aware, you are able to view situations and your responses to them with more compassion and neutrality. Instantaneous shifts in consciousness, though possible, are rare. As I have mentioned, there were several stages in this journey that took me to the place where I experience myself differently.
I look forward to taking you through a myriad of steps that propel you out of misguided self-perceptions and into the Good Morning mindset. Cultivating a Good Morning Mind and bringing it to your business will exponentially increase productivity, relationships, well-being, and your bottom line. The workplace will no longer be a drab place that you have to tolerate for forty hours a week so that you can earn a paycheck in the hopes that someday you’ll be happy. It can be the place that fosters personal growth, builds solid relationships, and nurtures innovation that is beyond anything you could ever imagine.
A Leap of Faith
To fully receive the gifts that the Good Morning Mind offers, you have to be willing to open your mind and heart and take a leap of faith. Some of the stories I share will be a stretch for your logical, skeptical mind, but I can assure you that they are true. And while your monkey mind may wish to dismiss the practices I will offer, I strongly encourage you to give them a try. They worked for me and for many of the people I mention in these pages.
While I look forward to taking you with me on a journey of discovery that goes beyond what your mind can currently comprehend, it is my intention to meet you where you are on your consciousness-raising journey. Each habit chapter will be structured as follows:
1. At the beginning, I will provide you with a profile or emotional inventory survey to help you determine where you are compared to where you would like to be. Doing so provides you with greater clarity to support you in your initiatives.
2. Each habit chapter will include a trigger anecdote: a story about a disturbance in the workplace that can be remedied through Good Morning Mind insights and practices.
3. After each trigger situation, I will provide three response scenarios based on one’s level of consciousness or emotional positions: the perspective of the mind (reactive, victim, ego, resistant); the wisdom of the heart (trusting, proactive, self-accountable, open, and possessing inner integrity); and the awakened perspective of the witness-self (preactive, surrendered, responding in absolute faith, and committed to organic altruism). To explain each of the three states:
• When you respond to any situation with the voice of the mind, you tend to be highly reactive. By “mind” here I mean the fight-or-flight, reptilian part of the brain. When you respond from this part of your psyche, you are defensive, reactive, and acting from a place of fear. To be clear, I am not maligning the reptilian brain. It is valuable and necessary for functioning, but it is overused. Centuries ago, when you were living out in the wild, you needed it to survive. Originally it was meant to be fired up when, say, we were being chased by a lion. This is no longer the case. Nonetheless, with all of the stressors we are trying to overcome in present society, many of us are frequently caught in the reptilian brain’s fight-or-flight stance. For many of us, our adrenals are overworked because we remain in this defensive stance throughout a good part of the day. We are burnt out because we don’t feel safe. We don’t feel heard or understood. We are looking for solace outside of ourselves, but everyone else is so lost in their own fears that they cannot be present for us.
In fact, nobody could be present in a way that would calm our fears. You need to develop an internal messaging system that does this for you. Cultivating the internal nurturer (the Good Morning Mind) will calm the reptilian brain. Until that time, when responding from the reptilian brain, you are led by your ego. You often feel angry and victimized. You see yourself as innocent and blame the other for your demise. You consciously or unconsciously put up an energetic wall of protection, keeping your heart and mind closed. An adversarial environment is created, and tension builds in the workplace.
• When you respond from your heart, you are more contemplative, because you have started to cultivate the witness-self. You are dissociating yourself from the reptilian brain. You can watch the drama unfold, and in doing so, you have greater insight into your responsibilities in the interplay. Although your ego may be reacting to a degree, you are able to step back and witness its dance in a more neutral and non-judgmental way. You are less reactive and more proactive. You hold yourself in higher esteem, and as a result you are willing to be accountable for the roles you play in your dramas. You trust that all will be resolved. You find a compromise, or you are willing to agree to disagree.
• When you have cultivated an awakened state in yourself, you respond from the guidance of your witness-self. You have reached a state of complete surrender. You are not attached to being right. You have absolute faith that all will work out for the highest good of all involved. You have developed a sense of altruism, not from a place of “I should …” but from an organic understanding. In fact, you often act from a place of what I will call preactivity. In your present-moment awareness, you are able to hear that still voice of guidance from within, so much so that you can often anticipate an issue before it manifests. While this may sound absurd, we know how animals possess a sixth sense. Sometimes dogs sense their owners’ cancer and nudge at the area in which it is sitting in the body until the owner calls the doctor to investigate. We see this trait in many animals who can smell danger and run to safety before they are pounced on by a hungry tiger. In this state, you know that you are the witness, not the individual experiencing the drama. You experience yourself as a part of a greater field of consciousness; you are focused and committed to seeing the innocence in all. This does not mean that you are passive. In fact, in many cases you are more responsive, but your choices come from a place of greater clarity and knowing.
To be clear, I am not fully awakened. While I have glimpses of that state, at this time I do not embody it completely. But throughout my career, I have been privileged to work with awakened, enlightened masters. I can only speak of this state through the knowledge and insights that they have shared with me. I believe that referring to this state will inspire the desire to attain it.
Reviewing responses to trigger scenarios from these three tiers of consciousness will serve as a barometer for your current state. It will provide you with a sense of where you have come from, where you currently are, and where you could potentially be as you continue along your path of personal growth, mindfulness, and self-awareness.
4. Each habit section will end with Innovative Implementation Ideas. These are suggestions on how you might implement the habit into the workplace in a fun and creative way.
5. The initials of the names of the habits outlined in this book spell the statement BE PRESENT. As you journey through this book, your efforts to be present with all that transpires in your life lie at the core of transforming you and your business. Being present is at the heart of mindfulness. It is responsible for integrating calm, work-life balance, and all the other benefits that this system has to offer.
What It Means to Be Present
When I say that being present is at the core of each of the nine habits, what do I mean? Once we commit to being conscious, we start to see how much we live in a place of fear. In fact, I believe that most us suffer because we see the world around us through the eyes of fear rather than love. Our minds are constantly spinning on a treadmill of repetitive thoughts, most of which dwell on angst, shame, and resentment about the past, or in fear, anxiety, and anticipation about the future. If we were able to let go of past grievances and not anticipate future potential pain, we could be fully present in each moment.
When you can witness your life unfold in the present, you can recontextualize the mundane as you start to see the miracles in every moment. You are able to be connected with others on a much deeper level—you see them, and they see you—because you are not lost in your thoughts. You will experience more and more synchronicities as you shift from fear-based thinking to being present as an eager witness to the unfolding of your life.
Choosing the Right Mindset
Later I will show you how to integrate the nine essential habits into your business. To start, here is a general overview of the state of consciousness you want to be in so that you are open and receptive to shifting into the Good Morning Mind.
It starts with being intentional. While most of us begin our day willy-nilly, studies have shown that when we start the day setting specific intentions, we are more likely to attract what we set our minds to. In other words, there is a law of attraction, and intention is the key that unlocks the door from mere thought to actual manifestation.
Countless studies support this theory. One of my favorites is the water experiments of Japanese scientist Dr. Masaru Emoto. He would record images of polluted water crystals, then he would expose the water to a variety of stimuli. In one experiment, he had monks chant over a polluted pond for an extended period of time. The “before” images of the water were dark, murky, and disorganized. However, after being exposed to the energy that came from the focused chants of the monks, the water crystals became clear and organized and were rearranged into beautiful geometric shapes.
Whether you believe in the power of intention or not, you can experience it for yourself. Take a moment and think about a lemon. Pay attention to your body and any physical reactions that you experience when contemplating the lemon. You usually notice that your mouth begins to water, and you salivate as you consider its sourness.
Similarly, when you set your sights on what you enjoy and focus on experiencing gratitude, you feel more joy. You feel energized and better than you would have had you been focusing your attention on a negative or traumatic experience. As you feel good, your vitality increases, and you have additional momentum toward experiencing more of what you desire in your life. When your energy is higher, you are more likely to be productive, optimistic, calmer, creative, harmonious, and focused. Starting your day in the Good Morning way can set you on a path towards manifesting more positive and proactive experiences in your life.
Setting your intentions towards starting your day in a receptive mode gets your energetic engine running with clean fuel. Before taking any action in your day, lie in bed and say a definitive “yes.” Whenever you feel your heart close throughout your day, stop and take a moment to breathe into your heart, while repeating “yes.” See your heart opening. I find that doing this reprograms the mind from fear to trust. From this open-hearted place, more grounded and balanced decisions are made.
As you set your clear and earnest intentions and commit to being in a state of complete receptivity, the wisdom of the nine essential habits will ignite a natural appreciation within you. Ultimately, as your heart and mind expand, you will experience more intoxicating joy in your life and in your business.