The concept of mindfulness has come a long way in the last 50 years. What was once considered woo-woo hippie nonsense is now a standard topic in business magazines. At the same time, the concept of mindfulness is still a bit fuzzy. That’s why, in this blog, I’ll be refering more to the art of paying attention, and more specifically, mastery of one’s attention.

Mastery over one’s attention means that we’re aware of what we’re paying attention to, we know the quality of the attention that we’re brining to it, and we’re aware of the impact of paying attention to it in that way.

So to be mindful simply means to know where your attention is at any moment. If you don’t know where your attention is, then you can be said to be mindlessly going along on auto-pilot.

Leaders and entrepreneurs, like everybody else, are constantly paying attention to hundreds of different things: email, social media, employees, clients, the bottom line, expenses, shareholders, news coverage, and so on and so on.

The problems arise when they’re paying attention to the wrong things, or not paying enough attention to certain other things. And they aren’t aware of it.

A classic example is paying attention to a rumination, a train of thought that just goes around in cicles, usually about some imagined future catastrophe. We humans can easily waste hundreds of hours paying attention to those ruminative thoughts, negatively impacting our quality of life.

When we become aware of how much time and attention we’re wasting on rumination, and we try to stop, we find that we have almost no control – the ruminative thoughts just keep coming and we can’t turn our attention away from them.

That’s where these pratices can pay off. Through engaging in these practices, we start to gain control over our attention. A whole new skillset is acquired. Now, we can consciously CHOOSE to direct our attention to something else, whether that be our loved ones, the taste of our food, or creating a plan of action.

The key is that we’re now ABLE to redirect our attention, something we simply couldn’t do before.

The research on the positive impact of mindfulness practice is solid and conclusive: it improves our quality of life. And who wouldn’t want even a small improvement in their quality of life.

You can start right now, if you like. You can ask yourself, what am I paying attention to right now? Part if it will be on this blog post, but it’s likely that something else is vying for your attention. Just notice that. That’s today’s practice: asking yourself multiple times throughout the day, what am I paying attention to. There’s no wrong answer to that question, by the way. The goal of the practice is just to know, to be aware, “oh, my attention is on THIS…ok.”

It’s a really simple exercise, but the real challenge will be to remember to do it! I’d suggest maybe setting a reminder to check in with you attention on your smart phone, or else choose a regular activity, like mealtime, and check where your attention is then, so you do it three times a day.

Check back here regularly for more practices that will strengthen the “muscle” I’m calling mastery over your attention.