Life-Long Learning and Leadership
“Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at 20 or 80. Anyone who keeps learning stays young.”
September is upon us, and with it comes the return to school for over 73 million Americans. It’s an annual reminder that lifelong learning is a proven pathway to heighten well-being, stay young at heart, and access more fulfillment.
When we learn something new, we build new neural connections that enhance brain health. The more we use our complex brain and its various parts, the more we improve its plasticity, which in turn can lengthen our life span, foster better mental health, and heighten social connection.
Yet, with all these benefits so readily at hand, many of us often feel challenged to carve out time in our busy lives to learn. We’re encouraged, however, that more and more organizations and highly engaged leaders have begun to create space and opportunities for lifelong learning and the increased well-being it can unlock for their teams.
Recently, I facilitated a leadership retreat for a group of women executives from a large, global organization, who were interested in building new skills and heightening collaboration on their teams. Our time together prompted me to reflect that perhaps other like-minded individuals might want to know more about what goes on at one of our mindful leader retreats and what outcomes to expect. Here’s the lowdown using that retreat as an example.
Creating space
First, we invite all attendees to fully clear their schedules and to completely unplug from technology for the entire retreat. Remaining “online” and available to work responsibilities can get in the way of creating the brain space and heart space to learn a new way of being.
When we stay connected to our stressors and in task mode through technology, we default to a particular area of the brain that is closely connected to emotional reactivity, autopilot, conditional habits, and self-referential thinking. Unfortunately, activating this area of the brain impedes learning, open-mindedness, play, humor, connection, and insight.
This request to unplug usually meets significant resistance, but once we clear that hurdle, we can launch into the fulfilling experience of exploring, immersing, connecting, and simply having fun.
Elevating human skills
Retreat always starts with going inward. Why? We believe the answer to skillfully navigating our volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world lies in heightened emotional intelligence and more finely tuned human skills.
Our ground zero is self-awareness, the foundational pillar of emotional intelligence from which we can then level up other skills. The other pillars include emotional management, social awareness (empathy), and relationship management. The first two—self-awareness and managing emotions—require that we go inward. Once we’ve established practical, accessible ways to dial up our own awareness and to manage our emotions or reactivity, we’re ready to use our skills externally and in service of others, for the remaining pillars of emotional intelligence: social awareness and managing relationships.
How it works
To go inward at the beginning of retreat, we offer a variety of mixed modality meditations and mindfulness-based activities designed to harness control over our attention—because as mindfulness teaches us, “what we pay attention to grows stronger.”
We teach the basics of meditation and then explore different types, including breath, body scan, walking, open awareness, sound, and compassion for self and others. Meditation expands our capacity to control attention, connect with insight, and offers enormous physiological benefits. It also allows us to notice important information that we otherwise may not.
We also explore listening and communication exercises to bring awareness to our habitual tendencies and practice new ways of listening and responding to heighten connection. Woven throughout this journey inward are mindfulness activities like journaling, hiking, yoga, kayaking, or paddle-boarding—all ways to connect the body, the breath, and the soul.
A real-world example
A key activity early on in retreat is an interactive neuroscience workshop that teaches the brain science behind the stress reactivity cycle. At this women’s retreat, participants got a hyper-interactive, real-time lesson in this cycle and the human conditional responses.
This particular retreat was held in the wooded beauty of New York’s Adirondack Mountains, home to a large population of black bears. One of these hungry, curious creatures decided to visit a cabin in the middle of the night where three retreat-goers were sleeping. The bear ripped off the screen door, entered the kitchen, and turned the house upside down in search of food.
Awakened by the noise, the three human occupants sprang into action as a bevy of stress hormones surged through their bloodstreams. In textbook fashion, each exhibited a different stress response: one went into fight mode, another into flight mode, and the third into freeze mode. Thankfully, all three escaped without harm, and the local Sheriff’s team helped the unwanted invader return safely to the woods.
At our neuroscience workshop the next morning, we had the perfect, real-life scenario to explore how our neurobiology and autopilot responses work. To say it was an “ah-ha” moment is an understatement.
After sharing the data and research on how this cycle impacts our physical, emotional, and mental health, we learned how we can use mindfulness-based practices to dial the stress response up or down in the moment. We also learned how the stress reactivity cycle takes us “below the line” as leaders, and how we can toggle “above the line” to unleash insight, inspiration, engagement, and connection.
Each retreat is also customized, of course, but this is the only one ever to include a bear. For this group, we also included a session that introduced various breathing and other somatic, body awareness techniques to manage the nervous system and reactivity—techniques that enable us to put the brakes on our hard-wired, stress reactivity cycle. Such additional workshops are offered based on the group’s needs and interests.
Practical application
At this point in retreat, we are ready to use these newly acquired techniques and skills in service of others and shift our focus from inward to outward. At this particular retreat, we started this phase with a goat yoga experience! Maintaining a challenging yoga pose with goats climbing all over you is a great, if not unusual, way to practice getting out of your comfort zone and maintain composure in the midst of chaos. It also serves as a light-hearted reminder to not sweat the small stuff.
Each of our retreat experiences is designed to teach skills that can be taken home and put to use in everyday life. To elevate our social awareness, we practice ways to cultivate empathy, understanding, and connection through listening techniques, difficult conversation methodologies, meditations, journaling, and partner exercises.
And it wouldn’t be an Inseus retreat without an exploration of the science of empathy and compassion—specifically the difference between them and the important ways we can use compassion practices to decrease our stress and elevate our own authentic leadership in life.
One of the other highlights of retreat is our Group Wisdom Circles, where attendees have the chance to deploy the new skills we’ve learned by sharing real-world issues. Here’s how it works: One person brings forward a challenging topic, issue, or uncertainty that they’d like additional support or insight on. The group explores this topic with attention, awareness, empathy, compassion, and insight using a discussion format that creates brave space and discourages advice-giving. The Inseus Wisdom Circle format is a favorite and a great takeaway to bring back to everyday life at work or at home that supports elevating connection, trust, and effective communication.
Intentional experiences
On retreat with Inseus, we are intentional about how we spend our time. There is intentional silence and alone time, intentional play time, intentional skill-building time, intentional experiential time, and intentional connection time. Evenings are social for those who want to connect around the campfire, share stories, listen to music, or stargaze while listening to the loons.
Often, people arrive at retreat with some uncertainty or even skepticism. Experience shows time and again that they leave retreat feeling lighter, grateful, connected, and empowered.
I experienced the magical unlocking at a retreat many years ago, before Inseus existed—shout out to two of my favorite teachers, Claire Mark and Quinn Kearney! And I’m honored to follow in their footsteps today and co-create these rich experiences with the lifelong learners who gather at Inseus.
Check out our free lifelong learning resources in the Inseus Library, register for an upcoming mindfulness event, or contact us to plan your customized learning opportunity today. I look forward to seeing you on the journey!
Mindfully yours,
Ashley