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®É¶¡: Fri Oct 28 20:01:14 2011

http://www.lohas.com/content/mindfulness-workplace

MINDFULNESS IN THE WORKPLACE

Submitted by Anonymous on Mon, 10/24/2011 - 14:00
I recently had the opportunity to present at Naropa University in Boulder
with Google¡¦s Chade Meng Tan who has a job that I wish I had. He gave me his
business card and his job title is Google¡¦ Jolly Good Fellow (which nobody
can deny). Really! He is one of the earliest engineers hired by Google and
his job description is "Enlighten minds, open hearts, create world peace". I
had a chance to speak with him about his role and his goals. The guy is a
real gem - funny, unassuming and very approachable.

How did you come up with your job description?
One of the unique work policies at Google is the ¡¥20 percent time¡¦. This
means that throughout your work time at Google they allow employees to work
20 percent on anything that they want. One day I went on a walk and decided
that I want to work on world peace through compassion.

That is great. Many people have dedicated their lives to this cause. How does
yours differ?
My approach is a little different since I am an engineer and hardwired in
logic and practicality. I want compassion to be a part of modern day living
in the U.S. I believe that in order for this to take root it needs to have
proven positive results.

Wouldn¡¦t we all? Do you have an example of this?
In 1927 Harvard created the fatigue lab and wanted to study exercise to prove
exercise is healthy. At the time this was thought of as nonscientific and no
one would support the funding of the research. The only support they got was
from the Army. The study had some amazing results and found that a fit person
is a fit person is physiologically different from an unfit person. Today
health is universal and everyone knows the following: 1. Everyone knows
health is good. 2. All know how to get fit and information is available and
accessible. 3. People can do it at work. 4. It is completely integrated into
society. My goal is to apply the same principles to meditation.

That would be great! There are plenty of people who are stressed at work don¡¦
t you agree?
Yes indeed. At Google people wear stress as a badge of honor to show how
strong they are and how much they can endure. I want to change the concept of
stress reduction to a model of success. I want to create this to be customer
focused and the by product will be world peace.

So world peace is a bi product and not the focus?
Yes mindfulness leads to emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence, if
properly trained, leads to inner peace, inner joy and compassion.  All 3 are
 needed. Inner peace alone will not do it. You must have all 3 at a global
scale.

How do we implement this?
At Google we have the motto launch early and launch often. Some other
engineers and I sat in the room trying to figure this out. We created the ¡¥
Search Inside Yourself¡¦ initiative and a building authentic relationship
course and empathy course. This helped create the Google University.

Impressive! What does the ¡¥search inside yourself initiative¡¦ teach?
The search inside yourself initiative focuses on attention. A calm and clear
mind creates the foundation. How this is done is through mindfulness. Moment
to moment non judging attention. A study was done on the brain. The amygdala
is part of the brain that contains our emotions. If you perceive a threat
your amygdala takes over. People with mindfulness training can downgrade the
amygdala take over. When meditating we are calm and joyful. This joy is non
energetic, is highly sustainable and subtle therefore takes a quite mind.
This inner joy can be called on demand. Happiness is not what we pursue but
what we allow.

And what do we do with our attention?
We create what I call ¡¥high resolution perception¡¦. This causes subtle
changes in process of emotional perception. We can experience the detection
of emotion and create the option of choice. This leads to emotional mastery
and develops confidence. Body emotional awareness increases empathy. Empathy
reflects others emotions in and on my body and therefore I can view the
emotional process. Emotions are physiological processes, and recognizing that
allow us to change from ¡¥I am angry¡¦ to ¡¥I am experiencing anger in my body
¡¦. The emotion is not a part of being. Kindness and goodness are mental
habits. Compassion fosters habit of helping others. These are trainable. If
you want to be happy change your interactions with others. What you think you
will become.

How do you bring this to the corporate world?
We must bring science and statistics to it. We need to own the knowledge and
be customer oriented and meet people where they are in order to have it be
applied to daily life easily.

How can it be communicated in business to those who don¡¦t believe in the
theory or think it is too strange?
There are 3 things that need to be implemented to be affective. The first
thing is the correct language. Language is extremely important. We cannot go
beyond the current level of expertise of people or it will be over their
heads. At Google ¡¥deeper awareness¡¦ training has been reworded to ¡¥high
resolution perception¡¦ training. This is much more acceptable to employees
and human resources department. Remember human resources is coming from a
place of caution and risk prevention for the company. Therefore you need to
have empathy for their point of view in order for them to support a
companywide initiative. Secondly, we need to use the minimum affective dose.
If we overdose we will push people away. We teach people a simple 2 minute
meditation exercise. This is about the same amount of attention time that my
12 year old daughter has for this so I think it is a short enough time for
people to practice. Thirdly, is to get an appropriate instructor. You need
someone with a deep practice who owns the science and provides credibility
and speaks the language of the audience. Saving the world will fail as a
goal. But if you work on mindfulness and compassion it will be a byproduct of
the end results.
--
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