The Need for Mindfulness, Reflection, and Inquiry in Our Busy World

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Can a mindfulness practice help us at work? In a season focusing on how we learn through experience, I wanted to make sure that we heard about some of the social science that supports the practices. My guest on this episode has lived a fascinating life and has so much wisdom to share on this topic.

Lindsey Cameron is an assistant professor of management at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on the future of work and mindfulness. In addition to being a professor, she is also an experienced practitioner and teacher of meditation.

Key Topics:

01:24 Caring about individual stories: These individual stories link to a much broader social structure - Lindsey’s career journey;

05:02 The capacity to reflect: One of the core practices of learning through experience is the capacity to reflect;

09:27 Wisdom traditions and practices: Discovering and exploring wisdom traditions and practices despite an atheist upbringing;

16:03 The power of place: Place is not just held by the work setting itself but in all the small details we add to it;

19:22 Mindfulness practices: Why, how, and when reflection mindfulness practices, especially at work, can make a difference;

27:23 The future of work: Maintaining forward momentum and agency by crafting a narrative around oneself;

34:09 Being a less conventional presence in a conventional space: We all have a role to play in creating spaces that matter;

36:15 Mindfulness as an individual practice: Mindfulness practices were never meant to be done alone, they have always been practiced within some sort of community.

Additional Resources from Lindsey

Website

Helping People by Being in the Present: Mindfulness Increases Prosocial Behavior

Harvard Business Review: Research: When Mindfulness Does — and Doesn’t — Help at Work

About Learning through Experience

How can we learn from the experience we have to create a future that we want? This is the realm that much of Dr. Heidi Brooks’s work explores. As we navigate through life, she invites us to cultivate the capacity to learn through experience, and to apply the wisdom gained to co-create a future that is worth fighting for.

In season one of the Learning through Experience Podcast, Dr. Heidi Brooks focused on one of the most impactful ways to learn through experience: learning with mentors. She spoke with some of her mentors and they reflected on what brought them to where they are today in their own work, life, and play.

But in a podcast that proposes that learning can not only happen through conventional exposure to concepts and theories but also through what we experience in life, this second season is all about the HOW.

How do we learn through our own experience?

Dr. Heidi Brooks talks to artists, authors, professors, and even yoga instructors about four practices you can lean on to learn through experience. These four practices are: How to challenge your perspective, how to stretch yourself and build range, how to direct your own learning, and finally, the importance of reflection.

I hope you follow along and join us for season two of Learning Through Experience.

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