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Archives | Serve to Be Great

What a Homeless Man Taught Me About Success

As I stepped out onto the street in downtown Philadelphia, I felt invigorated by the cool, crisp morning air. My senses were extra alive that morning. I had just spent most of the previous three hours sitting absolutely still with my eyes closed at a mindfulness retreat led by my good friend and mentor, Michael Carroll.
We had a short lunch break from the retreat. I was heading back to my hotel to grab a bite of the food I had packed.
Due to my heightened senses, everything seemed to glow with beauty in the bright morning sun. The gentle breeze, although chilly, made me smile.
About midway between the retreat center and my hotel, I approached a large man wearing a green winter coat who was sitting on the sidewalk in front of a MacDonald’s.
It appeared as though he had slept outdoors. It also appeared as though he had too much to drink the previous night. He still smelled of alcohol and he had some dried vomit on the front of his green jacket.
I greeted the man with a smile as I approached. He returned my greeting and he smiled, too.
After exchanging a few words, he asked, “By any chance would you be able to get me a hamburger from MacDonald’s?”
This article originally appeared on the Huffington Post.  To continue reading, please click here.
Huffington Post, Matt's Insights, Mindfulness, Personal Development, Success In Life

3 Great Questions for Being a Superb Conversationalist

“Oh no! Another networking reception?”
Do you ever feel this way when you think about the next social event where you’ll be a room full of people you don’t know and expected to “network”?
Do you think, “Not another hour of, ‘So, where are you from?’ and “What do you do?'”
Are you starting to yawn and nod off in boredom, and look like the baby above, just imagining such dull conversation?
In a recent article I wrote for Huffington Post, I share three simple questions that can transform your conversations at mixers, networking events, or even meeting someone while on an airplane. In fact, these questions can even be asked to invigorate conversations with people you’ve known for years.
Image credit – weronikamitchell.com
Communication, Huffington Post, Matt's Insights, Personal Development, Success In Life

Five Tools for Mastering Fear

Of the many unpleasant emotions we can experience, fear may just top the list.

But fear is more than just physically unpleasant. Fear can also keep us from pursuing the things in life that really matter — like following our dreams, and developing and taking care of important relationships.

I have good news though. We can be free from the grip that fear often has on us.
Fearlessness is trainable!
1. How experience reduces fear.
I used to be very afraid of getting up in front of people and speaking. I would get sweaty palms and my stomach would be so tied up that I wouldn’t be able to eat. I would experience so much tension in my neck and shoulders that I would almost always have a headache by the time I had to speak or shortly thereafter.
Each time I spoke though, I noticed afterword that it wasn’t that bad. This is a trend I’ve noticed throughout my life. Things I fear are never as bad in reality as I make them out to be in my mind.
So one element of training for fearlessness is to simply push ourselves to do things that we fear so that we have more opportunities to develop the wisdom that the things we fear are always worse in our minds than they are when we actually experience them.
As I continued to get up in front of audiences and speak, my fear continued to diminish. Now I speak all the time in front of groups ranging from 10 people to 1,000 people, and there is no longer any fear associated with doing it.
2. Practicing investigation of our inner worlds.

This article originally appeared on the Huffington Post. To continue reading, please click on this link – http://www.huffingtonpost.com/matt-tenney/success-and-motivation-_b_5479147.htmlhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/matt-tenney/success-and-motivation-_b_5479147.html

Huffington Post, Matt's Insights, Mindfulness, Personal Development, Success In Life

You Don’t Need a Title to Be a Leader Who Makes a Difference

Image of man serving pancakes - links to video
I was recently in Salt Lake City, Utah, when I heard a story that inspired me deeply.
The story reminded me how meaningful and impactful our lives are, and how we can make a difference no matter what our current position is in life.
I share this story in the video below.
Enjoy!
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If you haven’t seen the free sample chapters of the highly-acclaimed book, 
Serve to Be Great: Leadership Lessons from a Prison, a Monastery, and a Boardroom, please click here.
Matt's Insights, Personal Development, Servant Leadership, Serve to Be Great, Success In Life, Videos, VLOG

Search Inside Yourself

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For years now, Google has offered a mindfulness-based program, called Search Inside Yourself, as a way to help some of the smartest, most talented people in the world perform even better and simultaneously increase their levels of happiness and well-being (which also has been shown to improve performance).  The focus of the program is to improve emotional intelligence.
Search Inside Yourself creator, Chade-Meng Tan (known as Meng), is an engineer by training who decided to reverse engineer high levels of performance.  He knew that emotional intelligence has been shown in numerous studies to be the single greatest predictor of high levels of work performance and leadership ability (in fact it is twice as important as the next most important ingredients), even among tech employees (4 of the top 6 competencies of star performers in the tech sector are emotional competencies).  He also knew that mindfulness practice is arguably the most powerful method there is for developing emotional intelligence.  Armed with this knowledge, Meng, along with a group of leaders in the fields of mindfulness, emotional intelligence, and leadership development, created a mindfulness-based emotional intelligence training program.
In Search Inside Yourself, Meng provides us all with access to essentially the same training that is provided to Google employees who go through the course on Google’s campus.  He breaks the training down into three components: attention training, self-knowledge/self-mastery, and creating useful mental habits.  Attention training, he says, is the basis of all higher cognitive and emotional abilities.  We then use our trained attention to create a “high-resolution” perception of our own cognitive and emotional processes, which enables deep self-knowledge and self-mastery.  Finally, to help us out while we’re training our attention and gaining self-mastery, he offers very helpful, evidenced-based tools for developing useful mental habits, like kindness.
Although the summary above may sound a little technical, and Meng does cite quite a bit of scientific research to support claims made for the benefits of mindfulness, the book is extremely easy to read and very enjoyable.  Meng is so logical, and he has an excellent ability to break down complex ideas into simple, step-by-step methods for practice.  He also has a tremendous sense of humor.  I found myself smiling a lot while reading the book, and even laughing out loud a couple of times.

I highly, highly recommend this book.  This is the best book on mindfulness I have ever read (I’ve read almost 100 books on mindfulness), and it is definitely in my top 10 favorite books across all categories.  Search Inside Yourself has the power to help readers perform better and increase levels of happiness, and it just might help create the conditions for world peace.
Book Reviews, Leadership, Mindfulness, Personal Development, Success In Life

Magic Balloons and Building Influence as a Leader

It has been said that influence is the foundation of leadership.  I was recently reminded of the essence of influence and how to create it as I watched some rather magical balloons float up to the heavens.

I was grabbing a bite to eat on the lovely terrace outside the Terrace Café at Shands Cancer Hospital here in Gainesville.  It would be an almost 13-hour day at Shands working on our Kids Kicking Cancer program, and it was nice to just take in the view of the sky, the clouds, the trees, and the Fountain of Hope, all of which were in clear view as I ate my dinner.
Suddenly, the view changed as I noticed two balloons floating up in front of me, only 20 feet away.  I’m not sure if they were released intentionally or by accident.  Maybe it was a bit of both.
They floated up rather quickly, but I noticed as they rotated in the breeze that both balloons read, “Get Well Soon!”
Almost as if the balloons were intending to do so, they headed over towards the windows of the patient’s rooms.  And, as if to further give the impression that these balloons were somehow magical, a couple times they seemed to pause for a second or so as they floated in front of a patient’s room.
I could only imagine how nice it must have felt for a person sitting in a hospital room to receive such a lovely gift – a magical balloon that seemed to be meant just for them, wishing that they be well.
This is a gift that we can give each person we meet, which just might also be one of the most important things we can do as leaders, whether we have a title or not.
Influence is the essence of leadership.  If we are unable to influence the behaviors of others, then we are not effective as a leader.  Some people still think fear is a good way to influence behaviors, but most of us know that it doesn’t work very well, and certainly isn’t sustainable.
A very effective way to build our influence is to show people that we truly care about them.  When people know that we are committed to their well-being and success, they are much more likely to follow us.
A wonderful and simple technique for building our capacity to care for and help others is to make a new mental habit.  As you approach an interaction with another person, you can simply ask silently in the mind, “How can I help this person to be happy?”
You don’t need to immediately have an answer.  You just need to ask the question.  A way to help them may present itself while you interact, after you interact, or not at all.  What’s most important is that you set the intention for the interaction as one of service.  People will pick up on this unconscious signal that you care about them.  You might find that when people talk about you they say, “I feel good when I’m around her.” 
You definitely don’t need a title to attract people to you when they feel good in your presence.  I believe that this is the essence of truly great leadership.

What question are you asking in your mind when you approach another human being?
Image credit – http://worldwidewhether.wordpress.com/
Communication, Leadership, Matt's Insights, Personal Development, Servant Leadership, Success In Life

This Breath Is A Miracle

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All too often, we forget that each moment of life, pleasant or unpleasant, is a miracle.  Indeed, the breath we’re taking right now is a miracle.  
It’s pretty easy to get caught up in the dramas we create in our minds, isn’t it?  If the drama is exciting, we feel alive.  If it’s dull and boring, we may feel depressed.
This drama can pull us away from the simple truth that our existence in this moment is an absolute miracle.  Think of all the things that had to happen just the way they did, since the beginning of time, for you to be alive in this moment.  Think of the nearly infinite processes that are occurring in this moment allowing you to live.  The sunlight, our atmosphere, and thousands of processes in your own body are all absolutely necessary for you to be alive in this moment.
Although I think it is very helpful to reflect in this way from time to time, we can’t be thinking about these things all the time, right?  We have things to do!
Fortunately, there is a miracle that is always happening, wherever we are, in all activities – the breath.  And, luckily for us, we don’t need to think about the breath to be in touch with the fact that it is a life-sustaining miracle.  All we need to do is be aware of it.  In fact, becoming aware of the breath actually enhances our engagement in the present moment.
Simply being aware of the fact that we are breathing, we can become aware in a deep way, beyond thought, of the miracle of being alive in this present moment.  We see our personal drama in perspective and are freed from its grip.  Our mind and body become united and whole, and we are present for ourselves and those around us.
Surely, the mind will doubt that there can be any value to simply being aware of the fact that the body is breathing.  Nevertheless, I invite you to practice awareness of breathing and see for yourself how powerful such a simple act can be.
You might just find yourself smiling – aware in a subtle, intuitive way, that this moment is indeed a miracle.

This breath is a miracle.
image credit – http://centerspacepilates.com/2012/06/explore-breathing/
Matt's Insights, Mindfulness, Personal Development, Success In Life