“A HeartMath^® IHM study showed that when a mother placed her attention on her infant, she became more sensitive to the subtle electromagnetic signals generated from the infant’s heart. The infant’s heart signal was clearly detected in the mother’s brainwaves.

Mysteries of the Heart

“It is not commonly known that a baby’s heart develops and begins beating in the fetus before the brain is formed. Or that the human heart possesses a complex energetic system that processes electromagnetic information that research shows can be detected up to three feet outside the body.

IHM’s research shows the heart produces 40 to 60 times more electrical amplitude than the brain. The heart acts like a director, and much of the rest of the human body follows its lead.

‘The heart puts out a powerful, rhythmic signal that the brain responds to,’ IHM Director of Research Dr. Rollin McCraty has explained. ‘In a way, we could say that the heart and brain ‘talk’ to one another, and together they set the rhythms for the entire nervous system and body.’

The heart also sends signals about how we feel. As we experience emotions such as happiness, sadness, love and fear, that emotional information is encoded in signals from the heart and projected around us.”

Christiane Northrup (a pioneer in Women’s Health) also cites studies that the baby’s cells can be detected in the mother’s blood for as long as 27 years of age after birth. This gives credence to why mother’s can also sense things in their young adult children. Incredible!

Whether it is the blood or the heart, there are biological reasons, not just emotional, as to why the mother/child connection is so strong. Happy Mother’s Day!

© Copyright 2012 Sage Leadership Strategies, LLC All rights Reserved.               www.sagelead.com

Have a teen home for the summer? Give them a little light reading, a push and some inspiration: Check out Tina Wells’ tips on starting a business as a teenager.

While you are at it, also check out the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) – it’s an invite-only nonprofit organization geared toward young entrepreneurs. It promotes entrepreneurship as a solution to unemployment or under-employment providing tools, mentorship and resources that support each stage of the business’s development.

It’s never too early to start. All it takes is an idea, rock solid commitment, creativity and a lot of perspiration.

Here is a fun video by Martin Boroson that introduces meditating in a simple and easy way. Whether you are an advanced meditator or have never meditated, take 5 minutes to watch this clip and sink back into your skin.

Meditating is particularly good for people who are busy, stressed or already successful. Meditation is a vital skill for the leader of the 21st century. It enables you to stay in the moment to best identify where your attention should be placed deliberately versus reacting to what shouts the loudest.

In an age of relentless competing attention, rachet it down. Just for today.

Enjoy.

© Copyright 2012 Sage Leadership Strategies, LLC All rights Reserved.               www.sagelead.com

In my last post, I discuss Asana, the company. Founders, Moskovitz and Rosenstein are contributing to the global shift occurring on the planet right now that espouses we are interconnected, transitioning from me to we.  They are living their belief that they can turn a profit in a way that does the least harm and actually contributes to social good.

They believe groups create larger contributions to the world than individuals. They operate from the premise that all problems are solvable if we work together. “While corporations are excellent vehicles for collecting resources and making money to build better services, they are also excellent vehicles for creating joy and alleviating suffering.”

This sounds like Buddha in business attire.

Rubinstein says, “As a collective, co-creators do great things vs. human resources who extract things…. companies [should be] a means to an end to create joy on earth.”

Finally, they espouse a radical concept and departure from traditional corporate speak: Transparency of being – “let people be who they are…” don’t make them have to switch modes when they come to work.

What if you worked for a company that supported all of who you are? What if our corporate culture shifted from exploitation to working partnership to create life nurturing goods and services versus selling us things we don’t really need or want?

I heard a financial analyst the other day give an overview on his view of the economy. “We have been living beyond our means for 30 years.  We now have to lower our expectations.”

This we know. The real question is, can we come together as a nation, as a world and think differently about how we make money and about how much money we really need? Afterall, whatever you make, you can’t take it with you when you go.

© Copyright 2012 Sage Leadership Strategies, LLC All rights Reserved.               www.sagelead.com

Asana – not just a yoga pose but a company!

Dustin Moskovitz and Justin Rosenstein founded Asana to enable teams to accomplish their goals more effectively. They do this by leveraging technology to form a collective memory, a “source of truth” as they describe it. They facilitate self organization so others see the information – and have a more immediate way of acting on it. It’s like a fluid project management system.

Do you suffer from continual partial attention? Their objective is to facilitate optimizing your energy with what is most important at any given time.

These entrepreneurs embody and apply what they know to be true:

• Powering through things and driving yourself is not what makes you most effective.
• Doing sprints, with rests in-between is more effective (as described in Loehr’s and Schwartz’s The Power of Full Engagement).
• In order to do creative work, it is important as an individual and as a company to understand your energy patterns and work with those in a deliberate way.
• It is possible to be in sync – work in harmony with a higher spiritual mission and be a business and a successful company.

Company practices that support these beliefs:

• They have a company chef to make good, nutritious food, in order to maximize energy levels.
• They align their people with a mindfulness practice – to pay attention to what they are doing and how they are doing it.
• Every Friday they have a TGIF where they share one thing they are excited about and one opportunity to put more attention to.

Food for thought….

© Copyright 2012 Sage Leadership Strategies, LLC All rights Reserved.               www.sagelead.com

Sherry Turkle speaks wise words when she says, “Always-on/always-on-you devices provide three powerful fantasies: that we will always be heard; that we can put our attention wherever we want it to be; and that we never have to be alone. Indeed our new devices have turned being alone into a problem that can be solved.”  …versus a mystery to be explored.

What would it mean to not be heard? How in control are you of where you place your attention? What does it mean to be alone?

Turkle’s written a book that explores how we are alone together. Technology’s promise is to support our lives by making the daily tasks of work and life easier.  This should free us up for more discretionary time – to create and be more present to ourselves and each other. It has the potential to bring us closer together. This is all good stuff. The problem is not with the technology but can be with us, the users, and how we interface with it.

Instead, sometimes we use technology to have little-to-no boundaries around our work/life. If not kept in-check, we can be addicted to our mobile devices – when we feel or have a fleeting thought, we express and update our social media status, with little mindful processing or editing inbetween. We can interface with ourselves and each other in ways where we want predictability, efficiency – to wrap things up fast, neat and tidy. We want to hit the delete button on our humanity function so we don’t have to deal in the ambiguous realm of what it means to be in true relationship. It can be emotional, messy and unpredictable. Technology gives us a feeling of being in control and a sense that we have a quality of communication and depth of connection that is not possible in sound bites over the air waves.

Technology has it’s place but it should not replace face-to-face human relationships or real voice-to-voice dialogue. Looking into the eyes of your neighbor or co-worker is not the same as skyping them.

We can’t truly connect with others unless we are connected to ourselves. Solitude allows one to reflect and get to know themselves. This requires a deep, quiet listening. It facilitates a processing where we come to explore, discover and understand what we really think and feel about our lives. We hear our own voice versus allowing it to be obliterated or swayed by the din of social media.

When we have this connection within ourselves, we can be more present and connect with others in deeper and more meaningful ways.  When we don’t have this reservoir to draw from within, we look for it to be filled on the outside. A void within can never permanently be filled from outside and a danger is we can end up living someone else’s life versus aligning with our own.

I’ve come across a number of blogs recently where the blogger talks about feeling alone and his/her community of readers then say, “we love you.” Having a virtual life does not replace a real life in flesh. It seems spending REAL time with people is a lost commodity amidst mobile devices and constant social media chatter.

So, I invite you, on this day in spring (in the Western Hemisphere), to go outside and feel the grass beneath your toes, smell the bursting flowers and hear the birds chirp, and have a sit down. Soak in the sun or sit under the eaves in the rain. Just take it in and reflect. When you’ve sat a spell, go down the street to your neighbor or down the hall to your co-worker and have an old fashion conversation. Look into their eyes and ask about their day. Now, how do you feel? What additional information or insight did you receive?

© Copyright 2012 Sage Leadership Strategies, LLC All rights Reserved.               www.sagelead.com

In case you missed it, the Wisdom 2.0 Conference was held in March. It is the third of such conferences that bring “together people from a variety of disciplines, including technology leaders, Zen teachers, neuroscientists, and academics, to explore how we can live with deeper meaning and wisdom in our technology-rich age.

“The conference addresses the great challenge of our age: to not only live connected to one another through technology, but to do so in ways that are beneficial to our own well-being, effective in our work, and useful to the world.”

It’s founder, Soren Gordhamer talks about the danger of feeling disconnectedly connected. We live in a largely extroverted culture that seems to be on steroids in the current climate of social media. When you are constantly on, you can never really be on from the inside out and are in danger of burn out or overexposure. This reminds me of a guy, Dan Pearce, who blogs, Single Dad Laughing. Recently, he posted that he had over 4 million followers but felt lonely.

Feeling lonely means being cut off from people and connotes a desperation. It is not the same as being in solitude. The latter means you are by yourself but suggests a getting in touch with something deep inside yourself that you can only do when separated from people. Much can be revealed and learned when we bask in our solitude. Solitude revives and renews us. It brings us back to our vulnerability and our humanity. Solitude is a precious and underutilized – dare I say – tool – in today’s technologically-driven society.

Checkout the Wisdom 2.0 site for archived videos of insightful speakers – and then unplug, just for a while to absorb the thoughts.

© Copyright 2012 Sage Leadership Strategies, LLC All rights Reserved.               www.sagelead.com

Got Mindfulness?
Join the Quiet Revolution.
Pay Attention.

Start here now. Do your part to save the world – starting with you.

You can’t lead your family or your business to something you don’t possess.

Here is a great talk by Congressman Tim Ryan talking about how mindfulness practice has impacted his life and his work.

© Copyright 2012 Sage Leadership Strategies, LLC All rights Reserved.               www.sagelead.com

Many spiritual teachers espouse: if you can’t live in the moment and are always searching, you will never be happy. This logically makes sense – and I know this experientially.

Tara Brach tells a great Indian myth that generates keen questions to ponder:

What is within you today that makes you happy – or just laugh outloud?

How many moments have you been present and said this is enough?

Is the present moment what you have been looking for?

When have you said this is the center, meaning, preciousness of my life…this is what counts?

Savor it all. Just for today…

© Copyright 2012 Sage Leadership Strategies, LLC All rights Reserved.               www.sagelead.com

In 1974 Arthur C. Clarke predicted we would be communicating with each other from a computer on our desk. He said it would revolutionize the way we relate to one another. He even predicted we could work from anywhere.

Now that the internet, cell phones, apps, texting, etc. have realized his vision, what do you think the world will look like 38 years from now?

Will we have chips in our heads or our entire life history on a ring on our finger? How will technology continue to change the way we work and live?

What are the implications for our relationships?

What’s your prediction?