Mindful Framing

Have you ever seen yourself as a leader, the boss of your life? Wouldn’t be great to coast stress-free through your personal, family and work responsibilities and goals?

Those who lead successfully their life and businesses rarely display stress despite everyday challenges and overwhelming agendas.

To become a truly effective leader with the right mindset, learn and practice how to control your time, actions and spaces.

Focus on one thing at a time

How can you efficiently concentrate on something when your phone is vibrating, and your e-mails are stockpiling?

The key is time blocking. To time block, you section your day into segments of activities. For instance, just between 8-9 am and 4-5 pm you might answer e-mails (then leave them untouched for the rest of the day).

This simple approach will substantially increase your available time for focused work without continually shifting gears, keeping you and your goals on track. Tomorrow will come, and the remaining messages will be answered.

Some benefits of time blocking include:

Increased focus on tasks
Balanced workload
Task prioritization
Bolstered sense of accomplishment

Work at your peak energy hours

Many people nowadays are able to have flexible work hours. If freedom of time is your case, it’s worth noting whether you are more productive in the morning, afternoon or evening.

Some people thrive when they dig in first thing upon rising. However, some may prefer to enjoy a workout, relaxed coffee, and breakfast with their family before answering calls and handle requests.

Be mindful of your life’s overall values and when you accomplish at your best.

Create and maintain boundaries

When you head home at the end of a long workday, it can be all too easy to stay in overdrive. Instead of indulging in a movie with your kids and being in the moment, you might be tempted to start worrying and acting on your to-do list.

See yourself as a leader who needs to get things done but with the ability to define when, where and with whom to accomplish them. Create boundaries for yourself and others, not just for focused work but also for well-deserved downtime. Often, if someone knows that you are not available after a specific time of day, respect for your boundaries will be formed.

When the space and time of everyone are acknowledged, teamwork and creativity improve. Some problems require solo work, while other tasks can only be achieved through cooperation and convergence of the minds. Let’s be surprised when closing and opening these gates of creativity.

Avoid wasting time

We want to please others, to help others, to work in teams, but we waste precious time without a well-defined purpose when meeting with someone to accomplish a task.

Have you ever sat through a meeting while you know that you would be more productive if you could get back to your desk?

Meetings are the prime example of a time-wasting activity. Meetings are helpful when there is a powerfully clear agenda with an eagle-eye focus on targets. But in reality, meetings can often pull people off track with conflicting agendas, either behind the scenes or in the open.

If you do have a meeting, do your best to keep it short and sweet. In essence, you want to get in, express crucial points, get feedback and decide next steps.

Say ‘no’ often

“The difference between successful people and very successful people is that very successful people say ‘no’ to almost everything.” Warren Buffet

See yourself as a leader, a natural born achiever. But control your desire to be everywhere and everything to everyone because it will not help you attain quality leadership.

Remember, it’s okay to opt out. American hedge fund manager, James Altucher, gave this golden piece of advice, “If something is not a ‘Hell Yeah!’ then it’s a no.”

Give yourself permission to prioritize and stick to only that which will serve you best. Keep in mind, you can only give and be productive if your energy is not depleted.

Only if you are in control of your life you will be able to avoid unnecessary stress. A highly effective leader values time, defines boundaries and acts when the iron’s hot. Keep your mind sharp and focused but find time to go home and discover the smoothness and refreshing feeling of a cool iron.

Do you feel as though life moves too fast? If you sense your to-do list nipping at your heels, you’re not alone.

It can be all too easy to be swept into the momentum of day-to-day affairs and no longer feel in charge. But there is hope. Let’s discover the 6 essential drivers behind the mindset of the leaders in creativity and productivity.

Be Aware

Countless peer-reviewed studies, notable authors and teachings of ancient cultures show that being mindful and aware of stressful thoughts and situations is a key element of a creative and productive life.

In 2017, the American Psychological Association, conducted a stress survey and found that the most common stressors for Americans were politics, money, and work. Identifying the internal and external drivers of your stress is essential to achieve mental, emotional and physical wellbeing.

Mindfulness may not be a magic pill that will optimize your life in one go, but with time and a self-reflecting and mindful lifestyle, you can alter essential traits of your personality.

Be Contextual

Life is complicated. We live in an interconnected and rapid changing world. When assessing any thought or experience, we ought to take into account the social, cultural and political context. Context means to take a step back and observe ourselves and our surroundings within our environment, such as our mood swings, workplace or family dynamics.

Not an easy proposition, but seeing things in perspective is an indisputably vital way to tame our thoughts and inspire calmness. Our modern era calls for a different mindset not necessarily relevant just a few decades ago.

To gain this situational perspective, we require a mental framework that we can carry with us at all times – a practical way to see ourselves in third person. One approach is mindful framing, where you visualize being the director, producer and screenwriter of your own life. Rather than be pulled waist deep into the mud of anxiety, you can use your mind’s eye to see yourself in a movie set, in the context of your own thoughts and environment.

Be Here for Yourself

Whether you choose to day dream, be creative, be mindful, socialize, work or relax, one thing remains the same: You.

Ensure in every moment that You are in charge, not a marionette or mindless robot. You should invest quality time in self-reflection. Find solitude by skipping passive activities, such as watching shows, scrolling news feeds, and overindulging in social media.

Spend time with yourself, in silence, doing ‘nothing.’ Be careful though, your mind will try to take over and lead you into stressful thoughts, avoid them by being aware and assessing the context of the moment. Over time your mind will start delivering creative ideas and a sense of calmness essential to cope with every day’s life challenges.

Be There for Others

Often, we believe the more we do for others, the better. We may even connect what we do to our inherent social value. Sadly, the endless strive towards mastering superficial engagements creates frustration and confusion.

Just being there, open and available to others provides immense support. People notice within seconds our social status and essential cues about our attitude. Let’s just be authentic, be in the moment and show empathy.

Take a new job, for instance. At the beginning of your new role, you will inevitably struggle to keep up with all the different tasks. You could spend all day answering every email that enters your inbox, or you could spend time learning about the company’s culture. Identify how individuals and teams, their personalities and networks are driving work streams.

Instead of barely skimming through a ton of superficial engagements, you can be more effective by focusing on a few in-depth interactions.

Be in a Flow State

Given a choice, would you prefer to receive electric shock therapy, or be alone with your thoughts?

It might sound like a silly question. But a study conducted at the University of Virginia discovered that participants would rather subject themselves to electric shocks than dealing with their minds.

When we eliminate distractions and allocate time to a focused task, either work or leisure, time passes much faster and we are much more productive. We are in a flow state.

In his best-selling book Flow, the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi observed that to achieve a flow state requires the five C’s of the flow mindset:

Clear goals
Centered on the task at hand
Choosing the right opportunities
Commitment
Challenging yourself

Be Stress Free

It might seem natural to avoid stress by distracting ourselves with work, leisure and digital or social engagements than face our thoughts. And in some ways, it’s not our fault. There tends to be a culture of productivity and hyperactivity that tells us to avoid boredom at all costs.

We may even feel that doing nothing is lazy and unproductive. But nothing is further from the truth.

Ever notice how you feel more clear headed after a vacation? Well, our brains need vacations daily, not just a few weeks out of the year. Manfred Kets De Vries, an INSEAD Professor of Leadership, explains that allowing the brain ‘downtime,’ enables us to improve our mental health, incubate new ideas and reduce stress.

Our world moves at lightning speed, and in some ways, there’s nothing wrong with a healthy dose of fast-paced drive. But having a mindset able to allocate downtime throughout the day while keeping productive bursts of energy generates better results than steady pressure at work.

By learning and practicing how to deploy these 6 mindset drivers you train your mind to relax and clarify your thought processes. You are entering a new mental space; you are becoming the fearless leader of your mind.

creativity

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