How to Stay the Course When Things Get Shaky

Last week, I presented the topics of workplace culture and resilience at a banking conference in San Francisco, an environment far removed from my mindfulness-friendly home here in Teton County. Amid the suits and seriousness, I remembered my own discomfort at the first “expert” presentations on neuroscience and mindfulness I attended, years ago. “Is this going to be too far out?” I imagined the participants wondering, as I did then. “Will I be expected to buy into impractical notions? Will people cry? Will I get anything even remotely useful out of it?”

The executives who invited me seemed understandably nervous when I checked in before my talk, reminding me to use business language. Check. They cautioned me not to get soft. Check. Coached me to use words such as “performance” and “productivity” and “success.” Check. I smiled and nodded, because science is science. It doesn’t care if you’re a banker or a nurse or a hermit. If you’re human, the message and the methods of mindfulness both apply.

I put my notes aside and sat quietly as the room filled with a few, then twenty, fifty, a few hundred bankers whose identities dissolved as their humanity emerged. Only a dozen or so raised their hands when I asked about familiarity with the topic, and yet nearly every eye was trained on my small stage for the entire hour.

I was to replicate my presentation three times so that all 800 attendees had a chance to learn about the tools that could help them weather work/life pressure in a world of distraction. But partway through the first talk, the gravity of Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse was rippling through the ranks. I expected a ghost town for session three. But I was completely wrong; the third group showed up in the highest numbers of the day. It shouldn’t have surprised me. Smart people always want to learn ways to manage the impossible.

I could do nothing to change their professional reality in an industry roiling with sudden turmoil. But I could definitely show them how mindfulness practice could help them weather the storm.

We went through the science, discussing the growing body of evidence that underscores the human brain’s capacity to grow, to build new neural networks that can fast-track us – and our behaviors, habits, and responses – to the prefrontal cortex, which is where we can orchestrate actions with skill. We did a few mindfulness practices, and I invited comments on the experience, which included observations of feeling more “at ease,” a bit less “activated.” Even “hopeful.”

I then explained that developing mindfulness as a way of facing life’s challenges will not make everything better.

The benefit is in the resilience we develop as a by-product of becoming more “mentally fit.” We bounce back from inevitable difficulties.  The practices themselves become a fertile learning ground, because while many in the room reported that they felt better after a few minutes of a guided practice (yes, it is possible to get a room of 200 bankers to meditate for a few minutes without fainting), that is not always the case. Sometimes after a practice, I feel more agitated, more annoyed, more aware that something frightening lurks. And that’s OK. That’s the point, actually.

The conference closed as many do, with the hotel lobby teeming with people delighted to see each other and also to settle in together under the common banner they carried. Whatever they were in, they were in it together. As I watched them interacting, showing authentic care for one another, I knew from experience that their culture of connection would be an invaluable asset to them as they moved forward into whatever the future markets would hand them.  

Over the course of the evening, dozens of people approached me to ask, “What do you advise now?” and “Are there more resources about this?” I gave them suggestions for books, apps, and other sources of information, and reminded them that they could trust the business case for a more focused workforce and the science itself.

“The value is in becoming aware of what is going on with you, on the inside and on the outside,” I told them, as I continue to tell myself. “That’s data. That’s the real currency.”