My name is Maria Gonzalez and I'm the author of Mindful Leadership, the Nine Ways to Self-Awareness, transforming Yourself and Inspiring Others. Every single one of us has the potential to be a mindful leader, and before you think that, that doesn't apply to me, let me give you a definition of. To me, a leader is someone who's in a position for any period of time to influence another person.

That includes absolutely every one of us, whether it's a child, someone that's retired, a business leader, a prime minister of a country, every single one of us, every single day has the opportunity to influence another. So that essentially defines leadership. But what is mindful leadership? Well, mindful leadership is actually a choice.

It is the choice to be mindful. And what does that mean? It means that we have chosen to be present and to be aware. That's what mindfulness is. It's simply the act of being natural, but being fully there in that moment. Being aware of everything around you and being present with whomever it is that you're interacting.

In mindful leadership, I talk about nine ways of being a mindful leader, and I'm gonna describe each of them for you, just to give you a sense of how possible and probable it is that you will be able to achieve this. The first is to be present. To be present is really just to be in this moment, to be in a moment where if you're with another person, you are fully.

If you're listening to something, you're completely listening. If you're walking down the street, you're just walking down the street. The second is to be aware. Being aware is knowing exactly what's going on within you and around you. What that means is if, if you're having a particular emotion, you're aware of that and you're aware of how that emotion is impacting any kind of interaction that you're having.

It also means that you're aware of how other people are responding to you or how they're reacting. The third is being focused. Being focused means that you are able to concentrate on whatever it is you wish to concentrate on for as long as you wish. The fourth is to be calm. Calm refers to just being in a state of being relaxed, being comfortable in your own skin.

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