E60. The Authentic Power of Mindfulness for Leaders: A Conversation with Samantha Amit |Part I|

Our latest conversation with Samantha Amit, creator of the Mindful Leadership Online Program and the Conscious Leadership Digital Program, has been an eye-opener. Samantha, who has coached leaders in tech and finance across 30 countries, sheds light on how mindfulness can revolutionize our lives and leadership skills, and manage stress levels. She shares her own journey with mindfulness and how it helped her strike a balance between her personal and professional life.

Samantha introduced us to her unique ACT model of Achieve, Collaborate and Thrive for fostering mindful leadership. She emphasized the significance of taking a pause from our hectic lives to reflect and introspect. Listen in to learn how a simple 30-second introspective break can bring us back to the present moment and amplify our mindfulness. Samantha highlights the power of practices like taking three deep breaths or simply asking ourselves how we are doing.

We also ventured into the practice of mindfulness throughout the day and within our workplaces. We discussed strategies such as mindful walking, practicing gratitude, and living in the moment. She also shares a profound definition of mindfulness from a book she co-authored with Jonathan Passmore. Tune in to grasp how to embed mindfulness into your daily routine and why it requires regular practice.

Visit LinkedIn: @samamit

Sam’s website: @ask-your-coach.com

Sam’s Leadership Program:@https://ask-your-coach.com/mindful-leadership-program/

Visit Sam on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/Samanthaamit

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hi there, welcome to Conversations where we seek to advance your leader in team excellence by discussing relevant topics that impact today's organizations. Welcome to the show. Today we have Samantha Amit, the creator of the Mindful Leadership Online Program and Conscious Leadership Digital Program, growing resonant, resilient, adaptive, high-performing leaders, teams and companies. Samantha is based in Israel, coaching and training leaders from tech and finance in 30 countries and 6 continents to act, achieve, collaborate and thrive, which we're going to talk about today. Sam is co-author of Mindfulness at Work, the practice and science of mindfulness for leaders, coaches and facilitators, together with Professor Jonathan Passmore. Sam is an MBSR, mindfulness-based stress reduction practitioner, studied at Bangor University in Wales and Reifman University in Israel. Welcome to the show, samantha. How are you today?

Speaker 2: 1:05

Thank you so much, Katie. I'm really excited to be here together with you, especially because we also know each other from the past.

Speaker 1: 1:12

Yes, we do as we learn and grow, and team coaching. Right, right we're in the world that are coming to us from today.

Speaker 2: 1:24

So my accent is South African, which you may notice, and today I'm in Israel. On any one day, I may not be actually overseas, but in one day I can be in six or seven different countries, virtually Virtually.

Speaker 1: 1:42

It's amazing that the virtual world has opened up for people doing. Like doing our kind of work and other work. Although I do still love to step into a room. I love virtual because it's easy, but I still have energy that I can gain from being face to face, right In a room.

Speaker 2: 2:06

Absolutely, absolutely. So I work with leaders in companies which they can't always meet, and the teams or cross teams in, let's say, india, switzerland, us, some other places in Europe, and so they get together, but not often enough, right? Yeah, well, that sounds like fan-span-span-span. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 2:32

Well, today we're going to talk about something that you're pretty passionate about and a topic that I believe that everybody should not just know about, but maybe learn a few easy techniques that we can take away not only for ourselves as leaders, but also as we work with our clients and whatnot. So we're going to talk about mindfulness, and so when we think about mindfulness it's a word that I know that I hear a lot, but I don't necessarily know what mindfulness is in the broad sense. So is that something that maybe you can bring to light for us?

Speaker 2: 3:13

today. Yeah, yeah, thanks for asking. It's interesting because you know I've been working with mindfulness for so long now and because it's become so popular. I actually think that everybody knows what it is and it's true, people have heard about it but they don't really know what it is.

Speaker 2: 3:31

So, in simple terms, you know there is let's just take a picture of the iceberg right, if we use that a lot in leadership, so like the Titanic, with the Titanic, okay, they didn't see what was underneath the water, and so as human beings, we have such a vast inner experience and what goes on with inner? So mindfulness is a lot around actually learning about our inner experience, being present to our inner experience, so whether that's our thoughts, our feelings, our sensations in our body. So the practices all help us to connect with ourselves, because whenever we stress out, it's often because we separated right, we separate from ourselves, and then that leads to stress. So it's about our inner experience, but then it also expands out and zooms out to the outer experience and what's going on around me, and so it's actually so fascinating.

Speaker 1: 4:41

Thank you for sharing. Yeah, and it sounds like when I, when I heard you say that you know you've been, mindfulness has been a part of you for a long time, you know, and now it's kind of coming to light for a lot of people. How did you start stepping into mindfulness? What did that look like for you?

Speaker 2: 4:58

Yeah, so that was about two decades ago when I had two young kids at home. I was a leader in high tech in a software company quite a big, global one and I was really great at my work. I loved it. I was like the super woman, super leader, and I would go to work lots of stress because, you know, we were navigating also different time zones, working with APEC, working with email, working with the Americas, and I used to come home at night to two small kids and I didn't have any patients left within me, and so there was such a difference between day and night, between how was it work and how was it home, and I didn't say I hated myself, but I was ashamed. I was ashamed and I suffered a lot within me.

Speaker 2: 5:59

Remember, I said mindfulness is all about, like, what's going on within you. On the outside, everybody saw this lovely, you know, people think I'm sweet and I'm, you know, I'm always smiling, so people think I'm calm and relaxed. But within I was, you know this perfectionist, trying to get everything done, and I went home and I didn't have patients for my kids. I shouted at them, you know, bathing and everything was just a chore, and so I knew something had to change, and so when I actually came to mindfulness, my life really turned around, but it took time. It's not like a magic pole. It takes time and it takes practice, and I'm going to I'd like to show one or two of the practices that I do with myself, even today, and with my clients. We'll share that today, for sure.

Speaker 1: 6:55

Excellent? Yeah, because I'm definitely and I think everybody is, because when we think about mindfulness, it's like, oh, do we have to like go through? You know a course and I know that you have some amazing courses. But I believe that when we talk before and we'll get to this later that there's some things that people can do, like you said in the moment. And your story about being a parent and working and coming home, I think that resonates with a lot of the listeners. I remember when my mom was a elementary school teacher. She used to come home and we knew she needed and she would say this I need just five minutes and she would go on the floor, she'd put her feet up on the sofa and she would. We knew that we needed to give her those five minutes so she can transition from her work to her home, and I think that that's important to be recognizing that, those positive, absolutely.

Speaker 2: 7:57

Yeah, yeah, so I like what you're saying. First, it's lovely that your mom had that practice and you have the practice of prayer, which you bring in, and it's that really easily accessible. So a lot of us actually already have practices that we're doing that are mindfulness practices, and what I say is that we need to up those. We need to actually increase even more so because life is becoming more and more demanding and complex and stressful, so it really is helpful to just have more things that we can add in. That just brings us back to present, that just brings down the stress just one little notch. Yeah, so your mom is brilliant. That was excellent, yeah.

Speaker 1: 8:46

Yeah, yeah, she's like the first leader in my life Great.

Speaker 2: 8:54

Great, wonderful, wonderful.

Speaker 1: 8:58

Well, let's talk a little bit about you. Have the ACT model Chief, collaborate and thrive and I'm really interested in learning more about that and how you use that.

Speaker 2: 9:10

Yeah, yeah. So the ACT model first of all, the acronym ACT comes about because mindfulness is an act. It's anything but passive. So some of the listeners may be a bit familiar with mindfulness. There are different ways to practice it. You can practice it through meditation, right, so you can do vipassana meditation, where you sit and you drop into silence and you do a silence meditation. Yoga is a form of meditation, tai Chi is a form of movement meditation, and there's lots of meditation practices that you can do to practice and become more mindful. So this increases your ability to be more mindful and it's actually a mindfulness practice. What I specialize in is what we call informal practices, like, for example, a practice that you would do before you go into a meeting. So let's see how this fits into the ACT model.

Speaker 2: 10:12

So the ACT model is called ACT because you need to do something. It's not passive, it's actually well, it's not easy, it's quite simple, but you need to set aside time. And so ACT stands for achieve, which is all about me and myself. And how can I achieve more? Connect, what are the things I can do when I'm in my one-on-one relationships, and the T is for thrive how we can move out of our ego, where we get hurt and triggered and upset with people and move from our me mentality to the we mentality. So that's a little bit about the ACT model and the ACT framework forms part of the book that I wrote. It forms part of also the course, the online course actually two online courses that I've created.

Speaker 1: 11:08

Let's talk while we're right there. Let's talk a little bit about those courses, because there are more.

Speaker 2: 11:15

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 11:16

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 11:17

So maybe, instead of talking about the courses, I want to actually give examples, if it's okay with you, of few different clients that are using the model and they're using the course as well. So, and what's changed with them? And maybe we'll drop into already an exercise. Yeah, that, if we can already practice. So, so I'm going to integrate everything together, because that's what laughs about. You know, the leaders that are coach say to me they don't have time and everything you have to make the time. So I'm going to show you how easy it is. Let's maybe do, like, actually start with something really simple, that's 30 seconds, and then maybe a bit later in the conversation will challenge people a little bit more, to do a little bit more than 30 seconds. Okay, sounds good. So the first thing we can do and, of course, if any of the listeners are driving you're going to, you can be listening, but don't close your eyes, right, right, okay.

Speaker 2: 12:23

So, the idea is to pause everything you're doing, except for, of course, if you're driving and just try and sit up straight, right, and we're going to just drop into silence and the first thing we're going to do I'll have to always close my eyes, because then I go into my inner world and then I just take three breaths, just breathing in life and breathing out tension. So it's nice to actually give an audible outbreath, so breathing in life and breathing out any tension, and one more and just simply ask yourself how am I right now? How am I? And that's it. We're going to end this small, mind-filling query. So I always like to end with a thank you. So thank yourself for taking these few seconds to drop into silence and ask yourself how you am, how you are. It's a time for introspection and also a time for healing, and when you really open your eyes and come back.

Speaker 1: 13:42

No relaxing, yeah yeah, and for me, I felt. I felt in my back. I have an area in my back and it was really present during that moment. I could feel a little bit of the pressure.

Speaker 2: 13:59

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 14:00

My back, although I was yeah. Yeah, but it's something that I probably wouldn't have noticed if I wasn't Right.

Speaker 2: 14:07

Exactly, that's exactly the point. So the fact of the matter is that we are, instead of being human beings, we really are human doings. So we walk around on automatic pilot, we're very busy doing because that's a high value, and definitely in the United States of doing, doing, doing, execution, execution. And so we don't spend enough time being and just dropping into stillness for, you know, literally 30 seconds you can just check in with yourself and you know if a child would fall on the streets, even if that child isn't yours, you would probably see if somebody is looking after that child and, and you know, you would go up and be concerned and if the mother was there, they would, you know, maybe put their, put her the mum. The mum would put her hand on the child and see what they can do.

Speaker 2: 15:03

And we don't do that to ourselves. So when you drop into that silence and you notice, like I say, something in the body remember I said, mindfulness is about noticing your emotions, your thoughts, feelings in the body and so you notice something, even like something that's maybe it could be painful, it could be you know, something, I don't know just go there for a minute and be there like befriended, breathing to that space and then carry on with your last. That's it. So simple. That's how you can actually heal yourself as well.

Speaker 1: 15:43

Yeah, and this just came to mind, and I'm not sure how like when I think of mindfulness and I think of reflection, are they one in the same or is there a difference there?

Speaker 2: 16:03

Yeah, that's brilliant. So the mindfulness is more the awareness piece. So mindfulness is simply being aware, but it's being aware with a certain quality. That's what the Course you asked me to tell you a little bit about the Course. So the Course goes into those qualities of what kind of awareness I'm bringing. Like, let's say, with the leaders that we're working, we want to help them to bring out the quality of trust we want them to be more curious and open on psychological safety. So mindfulness helps you be intentional by actually bringing that into your awareness and almost like programming your brain. I'm going to go into that meeting now. I'd like to bring curiosity into that meeting. I want to be open, I want to be listening. So first of all, being aware and then the reflection piece sits on top of that. So, for example, journaling is a mindfulness practice. So you journal and then the reflection, you start learning about yourself and through that you can great change.

Speaker 1: 17:20

I'm going hand in hand with those two. That's awesome when you work with leaders and teams and you're doing this exercise. What is the typical response if it's something that is foreign to them?

Speaker 2: 17:41

Yeah, I'm smiling.

Speaker 2: 17:43

I saw that yeah, so I do pay. I put pay everybody I work with. So I don't work with disease I don't know if you use that term in the United States. I work with people who want to radically change, who want to transform, and so they're willing to go the extra mile and put in the effort. So you do need to be courageous and you do need to know that it's going to be uncomfortable, so to push through the discomfort.

Speaker 2: 18:19

So I do have leaders that forget that I tell them this and then they say you know that was hard. I said, oh, yes, yes, it's hard, it's easy and hard at the same time, because the results don't come immediately. You have to be patient that the results come when you practice in time. It's like if you go to the job and you practice anything in life, it's how much you put in. Usually it's what you get out. So we do want that the 80, 20, the Pareto principle, where we do want to invest in the things that actually work for us, that are right for us, that we invest 20% and get 80% outcome from it.

Speaker 1: 19:07

And that makes sense. The more that it's practice because it is a practice the more it's practice, the stronger someone will be meaning to me that it will just be top of mind that this is what I do.

Speaker 2: 19:23

Exactly so that it becomes part of your structure, of your day, part of your routine. So you know, I'm very pro having a morning routine, having a night routine, having healthy habits, mindful habits that you have during the day. So there are many things you could be doing, yeah.

Speaker 1: 19:42

Let's hear them.

Speaker 2: 19:43

Yeah, so so you know the exercise that we did before that. We sat down, we dropped into silence and we asked how I am. So I have a lot of clients that have ADHD or any way. They're on their ass bum excuse my language for too many hours. So what they need to do is get up and go and get a glass of water. They get a glass of water every time they get up and they go get something to drink or coffee. They can ask themselves how am I Walk a little bit more slowly?

Speaker 2: 20:17

There's something called mindful walking. I've got a video on that on my YouTube channel. So you walk a little bit more mindfully. Instead of thinking of your next meeting, you focus on your body. So you get in out of your head, because you know too much in our head.

Speaker 2: 20:34

So for people that are thinking, thinking, thinking all the time, we need a break from it. So it's you purposely need to bring your awareness. So let's say, your awareness is there, you want to bring it? Yeah, it's there, I want to bring it, yeah, yeah, Into the body and just walking a little bit more slowly. And you know what, in the beginning you feel stupid. It does seem stupid, like you know, like almost like a robot walking or whatever, like a model walking, but whatever, like what is this, you know, and you laugh at yourself and that's also okay. But when you do it time and time again, it's actually bringing attention to yourself and taking your mind for those few seconds off the thinking brain. That's either worrying. Thinking in the future, thinking in the past, thinking what I need to do now, and you're like feeding yourself, like what's going on within me right now. Come into the present moment.

Speaker 1: 21:39

What are some of your practices Like as a practitioner, what do you practice?

Speaker 2: 21:46

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 21:46

Dang. What does that look like?

Speaker 2: 21:48

Yes, maybe. What about practice today already? Yeah, yeah, so I pray in the morning I have a short prayer where you know, it doesn't matter whether you believe in Christ or you believe in God, or who you believe in, but there is, if you believe that there is a higher power. So just bring, you know, thankfulness, bring gratitude. Gratitude, by the way, is a mindful attitude, remember, I told you that there's these mindful attitudes. That's what the course is about the quality. So I'm practicing gratitude. I bring gratitude in.

Speaker 2: 22:26

Then I woke up this morning. You know, thank you God for waking up and it's a little hymn that I sing and thank you God, thank you God for you know, for this break that I have and that I can go through my day. So I start off my day with that. So that's gratitude and grace, practicing that. And then, if I'm in meetings, I will. If I'm in meetings, I will always practice mindfulness in my meetings, like, whoever works with me gets to practice mindfulness. So I get to benefit because I practice it with them, right, and in a few minutes we can take a break. If you want, we can practice something a little bit different but similar to what we did before. So I've done that a couple of times today as well. I had a new client so I didn't scare him off the first time so I didn't practice with him. But truthfully, my clients actually asked me to practice mindfulness. Can we do that thing again? That is terrific.

Speaker 2: 23:33

Yeah. So today I went for a walk in the morning and then what I like to do is sometimes pause, because it's nice to pause when your heart's racing and then connect with your body and you feel your blood pumping and you feel your body. So it's nice just to do that as well. So I experiment all the time. I love experimenting, so I'll do that when I walk. Sometimes they'll sit down, I'll look at the view. So look at the view and you immerse yourself in what's going on around you. So, as I said, people, if you're listening and you do this already yes, you have mini mindfulness practices and you can add to that. So, for example, if I'm walking today, I went and sat at a spot where I could see the whole view of my village and there's forest all around.

Speaker 2: 24:23

So what's beautiful about that is it invites in awe. You see the clouds, you see the greenery, you see laughs and awe. Actually it's not a mindfulness trait, but it's actually one of the emotions that bring in positive that. Barbara Fredrickson, if you know her work, she studied positive emotions and so awe is one of them. So what I like to do, I use mindfulness to invite in positive emotions. So that's awe, for example. Awe is like when you just sit and watch the rain or something that's much bigger than you inviting awe, and so what's nice about that? It gets you out of like the me and into the thrive part, the we, and being part of being connected with the universe. Yeah, so I can give you more examples of what I do. I'm just going to pause a minute go in a roll.

Speaker 1: 25:24

That is that is for me. Prayer is is part of my mindfulness and I love that you brought that up, but I also love the fact that there are things that people are already doing and maybe not recognizing that they're mindful.

Speaker 2: 25:41

Yeah, yeah. So one of my teachers, kelly, is John Kabat-San, and I really I have goosebumps. I can just give thanks to John Kabat-San because he's he's a mentor. He really believes in bringing in these moments of mindfulness into your day. Not everybody needs to sit on a cushion and meditate. Not everybody's ready for that right now, and if you're not, then there are many ways to practice being mindful and the the benefits of it. I mean, there's so much science today. It's totally backed up by science and evidence. So I've got ADHD, so I've just I've lost track of why I'm telling you this. Okay, what was your question?

Speaker 1: 26:29

Well, we were talking about how mindfulness practices people. They may, they are recognizing because they're already doing it.

Speaker 2: 26:38

Yes, that there are yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He is so pro also bringing it into your day and of course, he meditates, so he'll sit. I'll go through times where I'll sit and I'll meditate. Today I did a 10 minute meditation where I just lay on my floor in my office room, actually behind me right here now, because this is this is my real background. So I like to lie, put a cushion and I like to lie down and meditate. I always say I don't fall asleep, but if you fall asleep, then that's what you need.

Speaker 2: 27:19

We so hard on ourselves and we push ourselves so much. So another quality of mindfulness is non-straving. What does that mean? It means to give yourself a break and you don't have to push, push, push all the time. It's mindfulness is like an invitation. It's an invitation of being in the world, and so it's a much. It's a much better way, I think, of being in the world than you know. Like I'm a perfectionist, so my natural default is to push myself to perfect and be doing more and more. So what? Mindfulness has given me that polar strength of balancing out this. You know this drive within me to actually balance me out and say, hey, there, it's okay to take a break. It's okay to lie down on the floor for 10 minutes.

Speaker 1: 28:12

Yes, and it's okay. And when you talked about if you fall asleep, it's okay. It reminds me of when I was doing yoga, like going to yoga classes, and at the end you know, laying down, and then I'd hear myself all of a sudden a little snort like yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, so relaxed, yeah, yeah, and that's okay.

Speaker 2: 28:47

Absolutely, and I think that everybody must find what works for them. So if yoga works for them, then go to yoga, because it's we all need to move our bodies, so there's a lot of ways you can practice mindfulness and move your body. What's very interesting about yoga? For example I don't know if there's some people that are listening to us that have practiced yoga before you can be practicing yoga and thinking about your to-do list or thinking about your next meeting or planning right, while you're practicing yoga. Now, if you aren't, then brilliant. But this is what I could be doing, because I'm always like I need to be prepared. So the mindfulness practice would be coming back into the body, coming back into the body every time, like feeling those movements. So yoga is about your focus on the body and there, too, there's discomfort because you know you push yourself. In yoga, it's something also that looks like it could be easy, but it's so difficult. The moves, yes, yeah, for sure, but relaxed and strengthening.

Speaker 2: 29:59

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I actually wanted to read the definition of mindfulness from the book that I wrote with Jonathan Pascas. Oh, please do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what we wrote is that mindfulness is a state of mind, and this has been proven. People have also, like everybody has, we all have a mindfulness trait, and we want to increase this. We want to become more mindfulness. It's also a state of mind and a way of being that, when cultivated regularly which is what we've been talking about the whole way through promotes an inclusive, accepting and authentic experience of the present moment.

Speaker 1: 30:48

Be tuned for part two and conversations with Samantha, amit and mindfulness.