Mentoring through Mindfulness

The Good Life

So, what is the Good Life? How much does career success matter? Are you more likely to find your own Good Life treating work as just a job or as a career or even a calling? Does what Buddhist philosophers call Right Livelihood – aligning your personal values with your work – provide a key? Do ancient Greek, Roman and other seekers after the Good Life have insights that might be useful? What does current social and psychological research show on the best way to seek your own Good Life?

Learning techniques to calm the mind and provide clarity in thinking can be invaluable in this search. The in-person meditation and mindfulness courses and private consultations I have developed are well tested in the workplace and highly regarded. They can not only help deal with stress and work and home life pressures but also give an insight into what you might think of as valuable in cultivating your very own Good Life. And I can speak from some experience in high pressure, high profile professional roles.

Professional Journey

I have experienced the pressures of performance at an elite level professionally in Australia fronting ABC TVs 7.30 Report (then called Nationwide) and Channel 7’s Today Tonight (as State Affair) and my own Drive Time afternoon current affairs programme for ABC Metro Radio in Perth as well as ABC Radio National’s breakfast Daybreak in Sydney.

For five years I was Media Adviser to the former Liberal Senator, Chris Puplick, President of the NSW Anti-Discrimination Board and subsequently Communications Strategist and Senior Adviser to Margaret Wilson, the first woman Attorney General, Minister of Labour, Justice (Public Law), State Services (Governance) and Treaty of Waitangi Obligations and leading Cabinet Minister in Helen Clark’s Labour Government in New Zealand.

I have acted as a communication consultant with corporate CEOs, Cabinet Ministers, heads of government departments and agencies, guest lecturer at Edith Cowan, Murdoch, Curtin University and the University of Western Australia as well as guest speaker at national and international conferences.

I also presented the highest participant ranked ‘Survival in the Spotlight’ Media Skills and Strategies workshops for the Executive Development Program for the Senior Executive Service for the WA Public Service Commission over another five years. I have also been more briefly Publicity Director for the WA Film and Television Institute and Editor of the Sydney Star Observer.

And over the past 15 years, I have provided meditation and mindfulness with some of Australia’s most significant corporations and public agencies amongst over 80 such clients, including:

This wealth of professional experience in dealing with the many ups and downs of professional life, of the way they interact with or can undercut personal life, has given me insights which clients tell me have been of immensely use to them.
Mentoring in not about being told what to do by your mentor. Rather is about awakening or further developing your own emotional intelligence as well as analytical skills to better resolve professional or personal dilemmas in your own way so that such experience gives you a further resource of problem solving and perspective useful in further challenges.