The Key to Leadership is Being Present and Aware!

“In any moment, no matter how lost we feel, we can take refuge in presence and love. We need only pause, breathe, and open to the experience of aliveness within us. In that wakeful openness, we come home to the peace and freedom of our natural awareness.”  – Tara Brach

Ever feel like you can’t quite catch up, catch a break or even catch your breath? That has been a space I’ve been occupying lately in fact, I’ve set up camp here. I’ve decorated the walls with mental sketches of what it takes for me to feel productive, good, or simply enough. Lately I’ve had lots of both exciting and difficult to navigate happenings and I’ve found myself with too much to do, too much to take in, just too much. It’s a familiar, and in this way a “comfortable,” place. Yet I know it’s a place where I miss things, I miss whole conversations with family and friends (or my response is so delayed it brings a laugh or worse an eye roll from my teenage daughter), I miss taking in the beauty of my surroundings, I miss experiencing what I’m up to fully, and most importantly I start to miss my life.

As I watched an interview I did with my fellow Northwestern University alum, Dr. Jay Kumar for an episode of the GenConnectU’s series Thriving Brain called Why Are Presence and Awareness Essential for Effective Leadership? I realized that what I’ve really been missing lately is presence. ​

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