Mindful Wellbeing and Performance

This course is for individuals seeking to learn and practice mindfulness - to cultivate important mental and emotional skills - and to become more effective performers.

We welcome teams of any size to this public course - or we’re happy to provide a dedicated training at your convenience, and at no additional charge.

To train your own team, organization, or clients - or create an in-house mindfulness program - check out our new Mindful Workplace Facilitator certification and Train-the-Trainer options.

To unlock low-cost, on-demand corporate training, coaching and practice anywhere in the world, please check out our Enterprise Membership, Training Site License, and Turn-key Corporate Mindfulness programs.

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About Science-based Mindfulness

Mindfulness reduces stress, anxiety, distraction, bias, conflict and burnout - as it strengthens our awareness, attention and emotional control. It is a unique system of brain management that shifts us out of auto-pilot, and gives us intentional control of our thoughts, feelings and emotions.

Think about how valuable these unique skills can be for supervisors, managers and executive leaders - and how they can change the game for you, your team and your organization.

Mindfulness Rewires the Brain

Our brains have been programmed over 2 million years to survive in a world that no longer exists. We’re hard-wired to constantly scan for threat, and to unconsciously react with negative assumptions, anxious thoughts and compulsive behaviors. Our default is to fear change and uncertainty, ruminate in the past, worry about the future, and be obsessively self-absorbed, unconsciously biased, and lost in imaginary scenarios.

Mindfulness interrupts these unconscious patterns - and over time, can entirely rewire the networks that govern our default mindset, traits and behaviors. These are unique capabilities of mental and emotional control.

Mindfulness Unlocks Extraordinary Performance

Mindfulness is practiced by the world’s highest performing individuals and organizations, including the U.S. Olympics Team, the U.S. Navy Seals and Special Forces, world-class athletes and professional sports teams.

It’s been incorporated into the leadership curriculum at the world’s top business schools, including Harvard, Wharton, Stanford, London School of Economics and INSEAD - and is a mental fitness routine for many accomplished business leaders, including the CEOs at 7 of the 10 most valuable companies, worldwide.

For high-performing individuals, mindfulness isn’t a woo-woo, feel-good way to get in touch with the universe. It is a rigorously science-based system for physically managing the brain towards even greater personal and organizational achievement.

About Mindful Wellbeing and Performance

Science-based mindfulness is a process of neural training that produces remarkably positive outcomes in wellbeing, cognitive performance, and emotional intelligence. Over the past decade, it’s been incorporated into the daily training regimen of the world’s most elite organizations, including the U.S. Olympics Team, the U.S. Navy Seal Teams and Special Forces, Formula One Racing, the American Association of Neurological Surgeons, and dozens of professional sports teams.

Personal performance starts with our mental strength and physical wellbeing. The world’s most accomplished athletes, entrepreneurs and business leaders - including the CEOs at 7 of the 10 most valuable companies in the world - now practice mindfulness meditation. Why? Because it is powerful force-multiplier for personal health, happiness, performance and productivity.

About the course

The Mindful Wellbeing and Performance Certification (IOM-MWP) helps individuals and teams navigate the new normal of volatile change, complexity and uncertainty. It is a comprehensive introduction to the nature, science and essential mindfulness practices that relieve chronic stress and anxiety - reduce the impact of information overload, digital distraction, unconscious bias, conflict, exhaustion and burnout - and give us the mental space and emotional strength to thrive.

Each week’s lesson and daily practices work together to strengthen an important skill, or solve a specific leadership challenge.

Course Components

The Mindful Wellbeing course includes:

• A live 90-minute master class
• Pre-and-post course assessment
• 8 weekly self-study lessons
• 8 weekly progress exams
• 8 week series of daily video practices
• 8 optional coaching sessions
• A comprehensive final exam
• Membership access to IOM research, information and tools
• Unlimited 24/7 phone, text, chat and email support

Graduates Earn:

• IOM-MWP Certification
• IOM-MWP  Digital Badge
• Free annual recertification
• SHRM and HRCI recertification credits

Course Outline

Week 1: Introduction to Mindfulness

Three decades of research have confirmed that the mind can physically change the brain and body - and mindfulness proves it. This class provides an overview of the nature, science, hands-on practice, and application of modern mindfulness.

You will learn:

• The psychology and neuroscience of mindfulness
• How mindfulness strengthens our brains and bodies
• The foundational formal and informal mindfulness practices

Week 2 - Reducing Stress and Anxiety

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) have named chronic stress the most dangerous global epidemic of the new century, and confirm that the workplace is far and away the primary source. This class is an exploration of strategies and practices that relieve workplace pressures, stress-related burnout, and chronic illness.

You will learn:

• The evolutionary wiring and triggers that creates negativity, chronic stress and mental exhaustion
• How mindfulness is applied to reframe worry, rumination, self-critical and depressive thinking
• Mindfulness practices that reduce chronic stress, and increases mental and emotional resilience

Week 3 -  Reducing Distraction and Attention Deficit

Information overload, workplace distraction and the addictive properties of our digital communications and social media are steadily eroding our attention spans and capabilities to do deep work. This class explores practices that physically strengthen brain networks associated with focus, concentration and attention control.

You will learn:

• The sources and science of information overload, digital distraction and workplace ADD
• How to apply mindfulness to suppress distraction, and increase attention control
• Mindfulness practices that strengthen our abilities to direct and sustain concentration

Week 4 -  Adapting to Change and Uncertainty

Our brains are wired to fear change and loathe uncertainty - yet we live in a world and workplace that is undergoing volatile and rapid disruption. How can we overcome our evolutionary resistance, and develop the mental skills to welcome and embrace change? This class explores mindfulness as a positive catalyst for change management.

You will learn:

• How change and uncertainty triggers fear that hijacks our emotional state
• How mindfulness helps us consciously navigate from the known to an uncertain future state
• Mindfulness practices that develop the mental skill to embrace change

Week 5 - A Positive and Growth Mindset

Motivation, engagement and performance all flow from a positive, "growth" mindset. But our brain needs help in recognizing and overcoming its evolved circuits of pain, fear and worry. This class explores mindfulness practices that interrupt our negative bias and reactivity - and strengthen circuits for positivity, expanded learning, and growth.

You will learn:

• How our brains get started and stuck in a cycle of negativity
• How mindfulness is applied to reframe mindsets and change behaviors
• Mindfulness practices to reconcile, change course and move forward

Week 6 - Developing  Social and Emotional Intelligence

Science has proven that self-awareness, empathy, compassion and social grace aren't immutable traits, they are trainable skills that can be intentionally developed through neural exercise. This class examines the visceral power of social and emotional intelligence, and how to strengthen these foundational inter-personal capabilities.

You will learn:

• The framework and competencies that comprise social and emotional intelligence
• How to use mindfulness to strengthen self-and-social-awareness, empathy and communication
• Mindfulness practices for care, kindness and compassionate behaviors

Week 7 - Communication and Collaboration

Mindfulness enables us to listen deeply and consciously - to pay close attention to aural tone, non-verbal cues and body language - to connect with our intuition - and to create rapport. This class introduces strategies and practices for strengthening awareness, attention control, and effective interpersonal communication skills.

You will learn:

• How to connect closely and cooperatively with others
• How to conduct an articulate and productive dialogue
• Mindfulness practices that increase intuition, attunement and rapport

Week 8 - Mental Strength, Grit and Resilience

Our volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world can be frustrating, discouraging and exhausting. But mindfulness dampens the negativity that saps our energy, reduces our stress, anxiety and worry - and gives us the mental strength to cope with difficult situations, and bounce back from adversity. This class explores practices that build our emotional stability and resilience

You will learn:

• The principles of elite performance
• How mindfulness connects us to the state of flow
• Mindfulness practices for mental toughness, grit and resilience