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What’s going on at Google?

Forbes magazine online features Chade-Meng Tan’s program at Google, called ‘Search Inside Yourself’ designed to teach emotional intelligence through meditation, ‘business-friendly mindfulness’. View an online video of Meng giving a lecture on Mindfulness.

Chade-Meng Tan is “Head of Personal Growth” at Google this really interesting article from Forbes online, provides further information about his program appropriately called “Search Inside Yourself” .. a free course at Google designed to teach emotional intelligence through meditation.

Based on the book Search Inside Yourself: The Unexpected Path to Achieving Success, Happiness (and World Peace) by Chade-Meng Tan, the course introduces ‘business-friendly mindfulness’ to train attention, develop self-knowledge and self-mastery, and create useful mental habits.

More and more organisations are seeking to implement programs and tools to encourage and support employee wellness .. after all, productive, positive and engaged employees really are your key asset. Encouraging good health (mental and physical) along with a greater awareness of others (different thoughts and different perspectives)– is vital for success in today’s competitive and rapidly changing corporate landscape.

Organisations are also well aware of the need to retain their top talent by ensuring maximum worker satisfaction and engagement, opportunities for personal creativity, team focus and office harmony.

“Instruction in mindfulness, in being able to reflect rather than react, is a genius perk to provide .. Any practice or activity that supports reflection over reactivity, encourages feeling feelings rather than acting on them, and opens awareness to what is really going on is of benefit. Slow down, notice, and savor is a great way to build mental wealth no matter where or how. It just is. All mindfulness really is good mindfulness.” (from the article Google Teaches Employees To ‘Search Inside Yourself’, by Todd Essig, Contributor, Forbes)

You can view the video of Meng giving a lecture on Mindfulness here.

And new EI research?

Article received today from CNN about organisations introducing meditation as part of emotional intelligence (EI) training.

One of the pioneers of EI research was John Mayer, professor of psychology at the University of New Hampshire, defines EI as

“the capacity to reason about emotional information and the capacity of emotional information to enhance thinking”

Meditation provides us with an opportunity to truly connect with our deepest thoughts, feelings and emotions .. and through this ‘listening’ we develop a greater understanding of the thoughts that occupy our mind stream (surprisingly not a lot of positive speak!) . People are often surprised by the language and thoughts that they constantly tell themselves .. and often realise that those thoughts are no longer valid or true.

One organisation introduced EI training to assist their employees in becoming “more open and confident, understand their own limitations and fears, and to boost their self-worth and comfort in dealing with other people”.

“Attendees get a full EI profile of themselves, which helps break down how they relate to others, their level of empathy, authenticity, and leadership abilities. This information is used to improve their communication with others. The classes also, typically, include meditation or visualization practices.”  Full CNN article here