There is a wonderful organization called Wisdom 2.0 whose mission is to create a global community of people dedicated to living with deeper wisdom, compassion and awareness in the digital age. MRG recently attended the Wisdom 2.0 Business conference—an event dedicated to supporting mindfulness, wisdom and innovation in business.
This is important to us because we believe that the key to achieving our highest levels of effectiveness and wellbeing lie in the practices of wisdom, courage and compassion in a mindful workplace. As the world becomes increasingly hectic and complex and as expectations continue to rise, we are committed to helping build practices that develop individual and collective wisdom and insight.
We’d like to continue the conversation by sharing some of the thoughts and ideas explored at this event.
The Mind
How can our presence of mind shape the work we do?
“The surface of the mind is like the turbulent surface of the ocean and the deeper, knowing mind is like the bottom of the ocean – always still and quiet and always, always there.” ~Bob Roth
“Our minds have run way ahead of us and left our hearts behind. Mindfulness is a way of rebalancing heart and mind.” ~Nihal Mehta
Practice and Transformation
The change we seek begins with us – start the ripple from where you are.
“There is no social transformation without personal transformation.” ~Deepak Chopra
“A leader is a symbolic soul of a collective aspiration or longing to unfold potential. The leader embodies the dream and acts as the agent for transformation.” ~Deepak Chopra
“Decisions have a sense of rightness when everyone in the room is heard.” ~Eileen Fisher
“Our task is to read things that are not yet written on the page.” ~Steve Jobs (who, btw, was not actually at the conference)
“If we accept this [a world where there is such gross disparity between the rich and the poor] as a tolerable condition, we have already lost.” ~Casey Gerard
Awareness
How would we change our approach to our work, indeed our lives, if our intent was to have a positive impact rather than to make a good impression?
“Our motivations are not always fully pure. There is a lot of gray and we don’t often examine the gray. We are masters at justification and compartmentalization.” ~Rasanath Das
“We get so stuck in assumptions without even realizing how much we are using these assumptions as filters.” ~ Sharon Salzberg
“Liberation is the understanding of the truth that is so powerful that there is no turning back from it.” ~Casey Gerald
“The anchor of wisdom is self-awareness.” ~Eileen Fisher
The quote about making assumptions that create automatic filters is so powerful that I have to remind myself everyday to keep this quote in my observations.
“A leader is a symbolic soul of a collective aspiration or longing to unfold potential. The leader embodies the dream and acts as the agent for transformation.”
This quote reminds me of the book “Dream Manager” by Matthew Kelley. Through the cultivation of wisdom a leader can tap into his/her highest aspirations as well as those of the organization and help people reach their highest potential.