Neuroscience research clearly established that we act, decide and choose as a result of inner forces, often unconscious, and the brain's reactive and protective mechanisms often rule us. Research also points to the existence of emotions being contagious and viral in the workplaces, often initiated by the emotional states of leaders.

There's a price to pay for our breakneck speed to continuously improve, and produce.

In an article in Forbes magazine, professors Cyril Bouquet and Ben Bryant, citing the disastrous collision of two Boeing 747's in the Canary Islands in 1977, killing 583 people, was a case of poor attention management. They argue that two kinds of attention disorders exacerbate the difficulties companies face in economic downturns-fixation and relaxation. In the case of fixation, the leaders are too preoccupied with a few central signals or information; they ignore everything else. With respect to relaxation, Bouquet and Bryant contend that excessive relaxation follows sustained periods of high concentration. The authors argue that mindfulness can lessen the attention problems of fixation and relaxation.

The demands of leadership can produce what is known as "power stress," a side effect of being in a position of power and influence that often leaves even the best leaders physically and emotionally drained. As a result, leaders can easily find themselves moving from an "approach" orientation to their work-emotionally open, engaged and innovative-to an "avoidance" orientation that is characterized by aversion, irritability, aggression, fear and close-mindedness.

If leaders believe they don't have the time to work through all aspects of a problem they are inclined to be narrow in perspective and take cognitive shortcuts, and become more impulsive and reactive. Their actions, in effect become "mindless" and automatic.

Daniel Siegel, a neuroscientist and author of The Mindful Brain: Reflection and Attunement in the Cultivation of Well-Being, contends that a corporate culture of cognitive shortcuts results in oversimplication, curtailed curiosity, reliance on ingrained beliefs and the development of perceptional blind spots. He argues that mindfulness practices enable individuals to jettison judgment and develop more flexible feelings toward what before may have been mental events they tried to avoid, or towards which they had intense averse reactions.

David Rock, writing in Psychology Today argues that "busy people who run our companies and institutions ...tend to spend little time thinking about themselves and other people, but a lot of time thinking about strategy, data and systems. As a result the circuits involved in thinking about oneself and other people, the medial prefrontal cortex, tend to be not too well developed." Rock says "speaking to an executive about mindfulness can be a bit like speaking to a classical musician about jazz."

In the East, mindfulness developed in Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist and other traditions as a component of yoga and meditation practice, and was designed to free the mind of unwholesome habits. In the West mindfulness is an element of many Jewish, Christian, Muslim and North American aboriginal practices designed for spiritual growth.

Over the past decade, researchers and mental health professionals have been discovering that both ancient and modern mindfulness practices hold great promise for ameliorating virtually every kind of psychological suffering--from everyday worry, dissatisfaction and neurotic habits to more serious problems with anxiety, depression, substance abuse and related conditions. The exploration and practice of mindfulness has grown on a global scale. Used now in settings ranging from preschools to prisons, mindfulness, once only studied by scientists and religious practitioners, is making its way into the mainstream.

So what exactly is mindfulness?

Jon Kabat-Zinn, founder of the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, describes mindfulness as "paying attention in a particular way, on purpose, in the present moment and nonjudgmentally." Other definitions are: "bringing one's complete attention to the present experience on a moment-to-moment basis," and  "it includes a quality of compassion, acceptance and loving-kindness."

The three foundational elements of mindfulness-objectivity, openness, and observation-create a tripod that stabilizes the mind's attentional lens. This enables the mind to become conscious of the mind itself and thus become liberated from the common ways in which it is imprisoned by its own preoccupations. This is why, through mindfulness practice, we can transform self-created suffering into personal liberation. As we engage in mindful awareness practices, we have the potential to develop long-term personality traits from intentionally created mindful states. Research has suggested that these mindfulness traits include the capacity to suspend judgments, to act in awareness of our moment-to-moment experience, to achieve emotional equilibrium or equanimity, to describe our internal world with language.

Mindfulness meditation comes in 2 distinct forms: formal meditation: when you intentionally take time out of your day to embark on a meditative practice; and informal meditation, when you go into a focused and meditative state of mind as you go about your daily activities.

There are 7 key elements to mindfulness:

• Paying attention: Focusing 100% of your attention on whatever you are doing
• Non-judging: taking the role of an impartial observer to whatever your current experience is, and not judging whether things are good or bad.
• Patience: cultivating the understanding that things must develop in their own time.
• Being in the present moment. Being aware of how things are right now in the present moment, not as they were in the past, or how they might be in the future.
• Non-reactivity. Our brains are built to have you react automatically, without thinking. Mindfulness encourages you to respond to your experience rather than react to your thoughts. Mindfulness is a deliberate and intentional choice.
• Beginner's mind: having the willingness to observe the world as if it was your first time doing so. This creates an openness that is essential to being mindful.
• Trust: having trust in yourself, your intuition, and your abilities.
• Non-striving: the state of not doing anything, just simply accepting that things are happening in the moment just as they are supposed to. For people from the Western countries like the United States, this seems to be one of the more difficult components.
• Acceptance: completely accepting the thoughts, feelings, sensations, and beliefs that you have, and understanding that they are simply those things only.
• Open-heartedness. Mindfulness is not just about the head or brain, it's about the heart and spirit as well. To be open-hearted is to bring a quality of kindness, compassion, warmth and friendliness to our experience.
• Non-attachment: avoidance of attaching meaning to thoughts and feelings, or connecting a given thought to a feeling. Instead, let a thought or feeling come in and pass without connecting it to anything, observing them exactly as they are.

What are the benefits and impacts of mindfulness on leaders and the workplace?