The idea of mindful leadership is not exactly new. In an essay entitled “Instructions to the Head Cook,” Dogen, the founder of Zen in Japan during the thirteenth century, advised that the head cook embrace three core practices or “three minds” while leading the kitchen. These are Joyful Mind (the mind that accepts and appreciates everything), Grandmother Mind (the mind of unconditional love), and Wise Mind (the mind that can embrace the reality of change and be radically inclusive).

Research has shown that we often judge ourselves harshly and that we tend to experience negative emotions more quickly and with greater intensity than positive emotions. The nervous ape doesn’t like to be vulnerable or ask difficult questions. Reality can feel threatening. Of course, we may truly believe that loving the work and seeing more clearly is the better approach — the true path to sustainable safety, satisfaction, and success — but the nervous ape needs calming and convincing to go that route.

THREE: Illumination

“That gaze, that first sight, represents a posture toward the world. A person who is looking for beauty is likely to find wonders, while a person looking for threats will find danger. A person who beams warmth brings out the glowing sides of the people she meets, while a person who conveys formality can meet the same people and find them stiff and detached. “Attention,” the psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist writes, “is a moral act: it creates, brings

aspects of things into being.

Summarizing their own and other’s research, a distinguished group of Canadian psychologists led by Toni Schmader (Schmader, Micheal Johns, and Chad Forbes) points to three things that typically happen when people are under this threat. First, they’re stressed. Their heart rate, blood pressure, and sweating are elevated. Activity in their prefrontal cortex is often suppressed— which makes it more difficult to control attention, thinking, emotions, and behaviour. It’s harder to engage in the task at hand. Second, they’re self-conscious. The exhort themselves to double down, to disprove the stereotype. Then they monitor themselves to see if their efforts are working. Third, they try to suppress negative thoughts that, if allowed to surface, would deepen their sense of threat.

Let us look at the three central constituents of a human being: the body, the soul, and the imagination. Humans make sure that they do not starve the body. They nourish it with enough healthy food where possible. Otherwise, the body shrivels, becomes weak. The same with spirituality. Humans nourish it with good ethical practices that ensure that they make good ethical choices and hold on to values that enhance their individual and collective lives. Religions, in the widest possible dimension of the term, cater to the spiritual to ensure that the “soul” does not shrivel because of bad advice, choices, and practices.