Living Mindfully in the Digital Age

In a digital world, we suffer from a wealth of information and a poverty of attention. Distracted by the constant feed of brain stimuli, we forget what it means to inhabit our lives. We look without seeing as we multitask through the day, depriving ourselves of the gift of being present.

Listening to Jon Kabat-Zinn, Daniel Goldman, Richard Davison and Sharon Salzberg, thought leaders in the field of mindfulness, I shut down my phone to shut off the world and listen deeply to wisdom shared by Arianna Huffington, Jewel and others at Wisdom 2.0's Mindfulness in America Summit.

Be Here Now is my favorite mantra yet it it the lesson I am prone to forgetting. Even harder to master is the Buddhist core of compassion practice, to begin by being compassionate with myself. We are here also to care for our selves.

Eileen Fisher, fashion entrepreneur, shared her corporate culture mantra: "Self care is our civic duty, so we can show up for work as our true self."

Arianna Huffington, founder of Thrive Global, trains companies to build a corporate culture around principles of sleep, mindfulness, gratitude and technology. Her belief that the more we take care of ourself, the more productive we are, encourages us to take as much time as we need to refuel.

In a sleep deprived America, sleep is the keystone of productivity which makes for more effective leaders. In a world where we always have to be "on" to succeed, it is amazing to read Jeff Bezos explain in an annual report why the quality of his sleep is beneficial for Amazon shareholders.

Declaring an end to our day by putting our phone to bed at night,  Huffington suggests, creates sacred space in our lives.

The mindfulness movement has gone mainstream, with Parliamentarians from 30 countries recognizing that for mindfulness to thrive in a polarized world, people must be healthy enough to do the interior work needed to create a better world.

Cultivating self-awareness, recognizing things as they are, we are conscious of being so much bigger than we think we are, in purpose, wisdom and courage.

Waking up to our own humanity with compassion, we can transcend our small self to dissolve the boundaries of other-ness for we can only heal the issues between us when we realize that we are all in this together.

Mindfulness is more than just a state of being, it is an intentional practice of creating positive change. Bringing purposefulness and intentionality to the present moment changes our brain, puts us in a "flow-ready" state and awakens us to show up and be present in our own life.

The quality of presence, what comes through us in that moment of awareness and attention, gives us the ability to respond to what comes up in real time.

Awake and alive, we have the power to change our habits, our thoughts and our reality.