Exploring the Importance of Stillness and Mindfulness in Leadership

This is a rebroadcast. The episode originally ran in March 2020. Jacob Hess, Carrie Skarda, Kyle Anderson, and Ty Mansfield are the authors of The Power of Stillness: Mindful Living for Latter-day Saints. In this interview they discuss where mindfulness and meditation fit into the gospel and how we can better approach our service and our practices with the balance of mindfulness. Jacob Hess, PhD, is a clinical psychologist and a mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) instructor trained through the Center for Mindfulness at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Carrie Skarda, PsyD, is a psychologist in private practice. She has provided individual and couples therapy with particular interest in attachment trauma and mindfulness, and has studied and practiced mindfulness and formal meditation for over ten years. Kyle Anderson, PhD, is a professor of Chinese and Asian Studies, currently an administrator in Global Learning, International Partnerships and Initiatives at Clemson University, and came to mindfulness meditation through his studies in Asian literature. Ty Mansfield, PhD, is an assistant professor in Religious Education at BYU, a certified mindfulness meditation teacher, and a practicing marriage and family therapist specializing in mindfulness-based paths to emotional, relational, and spiritual thriving. He and his wife, Danielle, have five children and live in Spanish Fork, UT. Links The Power of Stillness: Mindful Living for Latter-day Saints Jesus: The Perfect Leader, by Spencer W. Kimball The Council for Sustainable Healing Read the transcript of this podcast Get 14-day access to the Core Leader Library Highlights 5:40 Jacob was exposed to meditation in graduate school and began to see where it fit into the gospel tradition 7:00 Backgrounds of the authors 9:00 Definitions of mindfulness and what it means to Christians and to Latter-day Saints: compassionate presence in the moment 11:10 Christ was meditative and present in the moment 12:25 Being busy vs. mindfulness 14:00 Looking for words in our own tradition: reverence, peace, stillness, pondering 15:45 Advice for a busy leader: Christ had a practice of punctuating his doing with non-doing; the rhythm of action and pausing is already built in to our practices 19:40 It’s not the gospel that people struggle with, but an impoverished experience of it 20:55 David O. McKay quote: “I think we pay too little attention to the value of meditation, a principle of devotion. In our worship there are two elements: One is spiritual communion arising from our own meditation; the other, instruction from others, particularly from those who have authority to guide and instruct us. Of the two, the more profitable introspectively is meditation. Meditation is the language of the soul.” 22:10 Example in a ward council: not praying as a to-do, but sitting with the Savior 23:30 Clarity and priority come through pausing between action 24:25 Centering the attention on the inspiration in the moment and not on the calendar: Am I interruptable? 26:20 The Savior was interruptable in his task at hand and could pivot to what was most needful in the moment 28:35 The Savior was willing to build in his time with His Father, the foundation of His work 29:35 We can meditate on the person in front of us by giving them our full attention in that moment 31:30 The order in which the Savior did what he did: communion with the Father, surrounding himself in community, then going out to minister 33:45 C.S. Lewis (in Mere Christianity): “It comes the very moment you wake up each morning. All your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job each morning consists simply in shoving them all back; in listening to that other voice, taking that other point of view, letting that other larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in. And so on, all day.