Liz Day, WalesOnline.com.uk:

You Buddha believe it!

This group of Welsh workers are meditating away the stresses of office life with Buddhism – and they hope their practices will make their company reach a state of Nirvana.

The Newport web and development agency Mettaengine was established in June last year by three kindred spirits, who met at a Buddhist centre.

Creative director Graham Shimell said: “We usually try to meditate together every morning – it’s a good way to start the day.”

The staff meditate three times a day in a specially-adapted shrine room, which contains a statue of Buddha, along…

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As a rule, I am not a fan of self-help books. They are often big on promises but small on practicalities; good at telling you what is possible but rarely willing to recognize that each of us has limitations. Self-help books, it seems to me, sell the lie that you can be whoever you want and have whatever you want (Can I really marry Scarlett Johansson?). However, a self-help book based on Zen Buddhist principles might be different.

The book rests on the contention that ‘embracing life’s paradoxes is a powerful skill’ (p.4). Lesser, a Zen teacher and executive coach, proposes that we explore five key paradoxes: First, ‘Know Yourself, …

Peter Bregman, strategic advisor to CEOs and their leadership teams, on the benefits of meditation, and how it can help you at work.

Recently I received a few questions about the relationship between lovingkindness and “toughness.”

1. When practicing lovingkindness, how do you respond if people around you warm to you, but misconstrue your kindness and friendliness, and then become disappointed that you don’t want a “relationship” with them?

Well, that’s an interesting question. I suppose the short answer is “kindly.”

It’s great if people are noticing you becoming friendlier and are responding. But these things can be complicated, especially when people have strong emotional needs (because they’re lonely, for example) or where friendliness is being interpreted as an overture to romantic involvement.

And sometimes we may need to look at the signals we’re …

Michael Carroll: Mindfulness meditation, at first glance, provokes a reasonable question: “why on earth would I, or anyone for that matter, sit still doing nothing for long periods of time?”

We can take two basic approaches to answering this question: we sit still for long periods of time in order to get a lot of benefits — to get a return on our investment — an ROI.

Or we sit still for long periods of time in order to achieve nothing.

Let’s take the ROI approach first. Recent scientific research seems to document that mindfulness meditation produces a wide range of positive results …

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Victor Reklaitis, Investor’s Business Daily: As you read this article, you might at the same time pretend to listen to a co-worker’s latest gripe or skim through your emails.

No problem, right? After all, the ability to multitask is critical if you want to succeed in the 21st century.

Well, the pendulum actually has swung in the other direction, at least if you talk to a new breed of leadership training providers.

For them, mindfulness — not multitasking — is the key to success. But what exactly is mindfulness?

“The simplest definition is it’s a way of being in the moment, seeing things …

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Bill George, Harvard Business Review: Ever since the financial crisis of 2008, I have sensed from many leaders that they want to do a better job of leading in accordance with their personal values. The crisis exposed the fallacies of measuring success in monetary terms and left many leaders with a deep feeling of unease that they were being pulled away from what I call their True North.

As markets rose and bonus pools grew, it was all too easy to celebrate the rising tide of wealth without examining the process that created it. Too many leaders placed self-interest ahead of their organizations’ interests …

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Dawn House, The Salt Lake Tribune: Kevin Cashman, a business coach and author of “The Pause Principle: Step Back to Lead Forward,” says economic and personal crashes can be tied to addiction for constant action.

Why is it important to step back?

In our 24/7 globally connected culture with a deluge of information and so much coming at us at once, the loss of pause potential is epidemic.

If leaders do not step back to stop momentum, gain perspective, to transcend the immediacies of life and to accelerate their leadership, we will continue to crash economically, personally and collectively.

Pause is the antidote to …

Lisa Napoli, NPR Morning Edition: A handful of executive MBA programs around the country — from Harvard to Michigan’s Ross School of Business — are teaching students Buddhist meditation techniques. It’s not necessarily about teaching spirituality, but focus. There’s no way to quantify whether learning how to be centered during a stressful business meeting is balancing the bottom lines at companies. But students say slowing down does help them be more effective.

Click on the link below to here the report (3 m 57 sec)

Buddhist Meditation: A Management Skill?

Paul Shread, Time Business: What do high achievers do before breakfast? Perhaps surprisingly, the focus doesn’t seem to be on work.

In her new book, “What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast,” author Laura Vanderkam found that many high achievers begin the day with physical, intellectual and spiritual pursuits. Starting the day with a productive or fulfilling activity can increase your energy level and alertness for the rest of the day, she notes.

Early mornings of the people Vanderkam profiles seem to be filled with activities like rising early, running, prayer, meditation, yoga, walking the dog and spending time with family, not …

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