CATCH THESE HIGHLIGHTS
ON MINDFULNESS
[1:20]
ES: The first thing I want to talk to you about is mindfulness…Tell me what mindfulness is and how you teach other leaders how to approach mindfulness?
ALS: It’s one of my favorite topics simply because we need to focus on who we truly are, how we truly feel, what is really happening inside our minds, so that we can know where to direct our energy. A lot of time, especially now, we are inundated with stress, with anxiety, with pressure, with tension. So, how in the world do we as leaders who are leading others really get ourselves together in time to lead the others to come together as well? We have to focus. That’s really what mindfulness is. Being very mindful, very clear, very focused. Basically, it is us learning how to control our minds instead of our minds continuing to control us.
ES: Isn’t it like stepping away for a minute and looking at things objectively?
ALS: That’s a great way to look at it. Let’s imagine you’re an observer. If you think about it, we’re really just living out a movie. Even scientifically, we’re just molecules. We’re just projections. You’re a projection for me, and I’m just a projection for you and that’s just one example. With that being said, we’re creating our own world with every choice that we make. So, if we can step back and observe the choices that we’ve been making that led us up to here and how to break some of those patterns, so we can move forward with different choices to make different realms for ourselves and how we truly want to live and how we want to do our own business and our own work.
ON FOCUSING ENERGY
[3:38]
ES: You also talk about focusing energies and finding ways to relax and a lot of business leaders and a lot of community leaders really struggle in that area especially now. What are those discussions like that you have like now with business leaders that are completely stressed out, trying to figure out what their next month is going to look like because they can’t plan for the next year?
ALS: All we can really plan for is being ourselves and that’s what everyone wants anyways. That’s what I help the leaders do. We tackle mindfulness. That helps them focus. It helps them get a better idea of what’s happening inside of their minds. 90% of our thoughts are the same as the day before. We think between 50,000 to 60,000 thoughts in a day. This is a lot of yesterday. We don’t want to continue the same thing from yesterday every single day. What I’ll help my clients do is first we talk mindfulness. Where are those thoughts? Where are they now? Then we go into an esoteric realm whenever they’re open to it. It helps them more with their energy. If we can get ahead of the game with our energy, especially as leaders, we can start tackling things before they really get to us, and if we have a clear mind while we’re doing it, we can focus. We can have the foresight. That’s what a true leader needs anyways.
ON BRIDGING THE GAP
[5:26]
ES: So, you’re saying it’s a good thing to be able to clear your head a little bit from the thought process from those thoughts you had the day before and create new thoughts moving forward?
ALS: Yes. So, clear your mind. Determine what are the lies? What are the illusions we are living in? What are the illusions that we’ve taught ourselves even with how we need to work, with how we need to dress when we come to work, with how we need to interact when we’re working. Start clearing your mind and then from that point on, we start realigning. I want to be more like this today then I was yesterday or the day before, or the day before. How do I start bridging the gap? Specifically, how do I get my own energy aligned with what I truly want? So, let’s say I want to be an amazing leader at this particular thing. So, what does that feel like? What does that look like? What would I be wearing? How would I be carrying myself? How would I be feeling when I walk into those rooms? How would I be speaking? That’s how you can really level up as a leader using energy and using mindfulness specifically. We also want to remember too that we are in a very patriarchal society where it’s very male dominated. The energy is very male dominated, and it’s not really not working. How do we all, including the men, start moving into a more feminine energy where we can go with the flow a little bit better? Where we can have the foresight to sit back and relax? We do so much exercise, action, work, do, do do, do. That’s great, but what about the receiving end of it? So, now we have to learn even more how to sit back, relax, how to let things in and let the ideas come in. How to let the new visions and excitement come in, so that we know how to bridge the gap, and what is the gap in the first place.
ON GETTING STARTED
[7:50]
ES: How do you coach leaders into saying “Okay, you’re going to meditate. You’re going to refocus your energy.” When you have your clients, how do you get them to do that when it’s a concept they aren’t familiar with?
ALS: First and foremost, the clients that come to me resonate with me and my energy. So, they have some type of idea. They don’t know how deep we can go, or what direction we can take, but they know there’s a lot of directions we can take and that we’re going to take some of them. So, if they haven’t ever meditated that’s what I start with. Start with five minutes a day. Sometimes I’ll send them specific things we talk about. So, if you need more self confidence or clear some of your abundance blocks or any of these things. You can find any of these for yourself, too. I’m just a great resource. If they haven’t been meditating, it’s easy. Five minutes a day to just start meditating. Once they start building off of that, once they start seeing the benefits behind it then we can move onto other things. You don’t always have to just meditate. There’s so many secret type tools that are available to all of us that we have not been taught to use for business.
ON MINORITY LEADERSHIP
[9:24]
ES: Tell me a little more about your passion for helping minorities gain leadership positions?
ALS: There’s truly a system behind what we are working within. If you haven’t been able to fully take a step back and see the way our system works from so many different perspectives it can be difficult to know where to go and what cracks you’ve created or what you need to step over. It’s hard to know how to do those things. With minorities, women and other minorities, it’s really hard because we don’t always have the right mentors. We don’t always have the people in the family who can lead us along. We don’t always know the resources to go towards, what to wear and access certain things. We can get to a certain level in leadership and then we need more help. So, basically I don’t necessarily help people become a leader, I help the leaders fill in the gaps and the cracks so they can build that really strong foundation to get to the next level and the next level and the next level. Really what I do is help them peel back the layers of all the lies we’ve been told as minorities. I just help us peel back these layers until we can see our true power and from that we align.
