Why Mindful Individuals Make
Better Decisions

Natalia Karelaia, INSEAD Assistant Professor of Decision Sciences | July 23, 2014

Mindfulness is practiced in board rooms from Silicon Valley to Wall Street. But just how

much does it improve the quality of your decision-making?

Five years ago when I introduced mindfulness to my MBA decision-making class it was

perceived as something completely esoteric; there were maybe two or three students who could

relate to the concept. Today, not only have most of them heard about it, many are practicing it.

More and more corporations are offering mindfulness training to their employees. It’s being

incorporated into negotiation techniques and leadership manuals, in fact every area of business

where strong decisions are required.

While it’s generally accepted that mindfulness helps decision-makers to reach conclusions,

there’s growing evidence the positive influence goes much further, impacting the way decisions

are identified, made, implemented and assessed.

Close analysis of the latest mindfulness research, with Jochen Reb, Associate Professor of

Organisational Behaviour at Singapore Management University, for a chapter in the upcoming

book Mindfulness in Organisations, suggests that mindfulness techniques can have a positive

effect on all our widely-recognised stages of the decision-making process.

1. Framing the decision

Mindfulness can assist in being proactive and identifying when a decision should be made:

clarifying the objectives, generating options, avoiding irrational escalation of commitment to a

previous bad decision (the sunk cost bias) as well as recognising the ethical dimension of the

choice to be made. Research shows that people who are more mindful are also more aware of

their ethical principles and make decisions aligned to those values. This links mindfulness with

authenticity.

Before making any decision, mindful individuals take time to pause and reflect and listen to their

inner selves assessing their own values and objectives. Decision-makers who fail to link

decisions with their major goals may find their choice takes them somewhere they don’t

necessarily want to be.

Natalia Karelaia, INSEAD Assistant Professor of Decision Sciences | July 23, 2014

Mindfulness is practiced in board rooms from Silicon Valley to Wall Street. But just how

much does it improve the quality of your decision-making?

Five years ago when I introduced mindfulness to my MBA decision-making class it was

perceived as something completely esoteric; there were maybe two or three students who could

relate to the concept. Today, not only have most of them heard about it, many are practicing it.

More and more corporations are offering mindfulness training to their employees. It’s being

incorporated into negotiation techniques and leadership manuals, in fact every area of business

where strong decisions are required.

While it’s generally accepted that mindfulness helps decision-makers to reach conclusions,

there’s growing evidence the positive influence goes much further, impacting the way decisions

are identified, made, implemented and assessed.

Close analysis of the latest mindfulness research, with Jochen Reb, Associate Professor of

Organisational Behaviour at Singapore Management University, for a chapter in the upcoming

book Mindfulness in Organisations, suggests that mindfulness techniques can have a positive

effect on all our widely-recognised stages of the decision-making process.

1. Framing the decision

Mindfulness can assist in being proactive and identifying when a decision should be made:

clarifying the objectives, generating options, avoiding irrational escalation of commitment to a

previous bad decision (the sunk cost bias) as well as recognising the ethical dimension of the

choice to be made. Research shows that people who are more mindful are also more aware of

their ethical principles and make decisions aligned to those values. This links mindfulness with

authenticity.

Before making any decision, mindful individuals take time to pause and reflect and listen to their

inner selves assessing their own values and objectives. Decision-makers who fail to link

decisions with their major goals may find their choice takes them somewhere they don’t

necessarily want to be.

http://knowledge.insead.edu/leadership-management/why-mindful-individuals-make-better-decisions-3479

Finding Meaning in Your Career

Finding Meaning in Your Career
Pan Pan, Founder and Managing Partner, Pantèra Ventures (INSEAD MBA ’03J) | July 24, 2014
Working backwards from where you want to be can give you purpose.
Most people are not working in a job they are passionate about all of the time. In fact, according
to a recent Financial Times column by Lucy Kellaway, having passion for one’s job can be
dangerous. One should at best care about and enjoy one’s job. But even the best jobs can get
mundane and routine and it is up to the individual to make his/her career continuously challenging,
interesting and fulfilling.
In today’s world, stable career paths are disappearing; there is the added challenge of how to
manage one’s career to keep one’s self relevant and competitive in the job market – while trying
to find meaning on that often chaotic, bumpy path.
Keeping your goals in mind
One way to approach this is to work backwards. In fact, two of my favourite professors[1]
recommend this approach. You look towards the end of your career and life and think about the
“end game”. Where do you personally want to be and what do you want to have? What would
you like to have accomplished? What kind of impact would you like to have made? What legacy,
however small, would you like to leave behind?
Instead of thinking only about your current job and the next moves, focus on the big picture and
think about your values and what is important to you – especially in terms of contribution you
would like to make – and to whom and why

Perhaps it is important to you that you can tell your grandchildren you have run or started
companies and those companies have made a difference in their respective industries and
impacted people’s lives. Or perhaps all you want to do is retire on a farm in New Zealand with
your partner and fix vintage cars in your garage. The jobs you have are merely stepping-stones
to that ultimate dream.
Of course this method requires asking some core questions, especially about one’s self. And that
is part of what life is about - to search for the answers to these questions as we continue on the
journey of life.
Your goals might change
For some of us at least, it may take a long time to find the answer to your life’s purpose and I
suspect for the majority of us, the answers will change and evolve over time. I thought my
"purpose" in life was to be a pianist since I was five until I changed careers.
Nevertheless, it is important that as we progress in our career, we think about the big picture and
ask ourselves why we are doing what we are doing. Not only would this give us a stronger sense
of direction and purpose, but also more motivation and resilience in the face of short-term
setbacks. I think too many people are so busy doing what they are doing without questioning the
purpose or real meaning behind it that even when they eventually reach their goals, they feel
unsatisfied with a sense of anti-climax and immediately pursue another goal.
This is reflected in Tolstoy’s search for meaning of life when he turned 50, after he’d written his
greatest works. Despite his celebrity, having a large estate and family, good health for his age and
promise of eternal literary fame, Tolstoy succumbed to a spiritual crisis and needed to find
meaning beyond being a great writer. This avalanched his search, which he felt was “the simplest
of questions, lying in the soul of every man”, yet at the same time paralysingly profound.
Prioritise
Once you have some ideas as to what is important to you, including but not limited to the
contributions and impact you would like to make ultimately, then you can come up with a
strategy, not a specific plan, to fill the gap between where you are now and where you want to
end up. There will be multiple ways and paths of getting there but at least you will know which
general direction you prefer to pursue even if the path will need to be revised at times.
As we search for meaning in our careers and lives, a good guide to use is to face and accept
reality, use Occam’s razor and simplify. Einstein told us to make things as simple as possible, but
not simpler. We cannot change who we are and what we are given nor can we change the past.
But we can always act and live in the present to shape our future.

Pan Pan is Founder and Managing Partner of Pantèra Ventures. She has an MBA from INSEAD (’03)

Motivational Quotes

1. Life isn’t about getting and having, it’s about giving and being. –Kevin Kruse

2. Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve. –Napoleon Hill

3. Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value. –Albert Einstein

4. Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.  –Robert Frost

5. I attribute my success to this: I never gave or took any excuse. –Florence Nightingale

6. You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. –Wayne Gretzky

7. I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed. –Michael Jordan

8. The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. –Amelia Earhart

9. Every strike brings me closer to the next home run. –Babe Ruth

10. Definiteness of purpose is the starting point of all achievement. –W. Clement Stone

11. We must balance conspicuous consumption with conscious capitalism. –Kevin Kruse

12. Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans. –John Lennon

13. We become what we think about. –Earl Nightingale

14.Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do, so throw off the bowlines, sail away from safe harbor, catch the trade winds in your sails.  Explore, Dream, Discover. –Mark Twain

15.Life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it. –Charles Swindoll

16. The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any. –Alice Walker

17. The mind is everything. What you think you become.  –Buddha

18. The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now. –Chinese Proverb

19. An unexamined life is not worth living. –Socrates

20. Eighty percent of success is showing up. –Woody Allen

21. Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. –Steve Jobs

22. Winning isn’t everything, but wanting to win is. –Vince Lombardi

23. I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions. –Stephen Covey

24. Every child is an artist.  The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up. –Pablo Picasso

25. You can never cross the ocean until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore. –Christopher Columbus

26. I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. –Maya Angelou

27. Either you run the day, or the day runs you. –Jim Rohn

28. Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right. –Henry Ford

29. The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why. –Mark Twain

30. Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it.  Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. –Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
31. The best revenge is massive success. –Frank Sinatra

32. People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing.  That’s why we recommend it daily. –Zig Ziglar
33. Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage. –Anais Nin

34. If you hear a voice within you say “you cannot paint,” then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced. –Vincent Van Gogh
35. There is only one way to avoid criticism: do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing. –Aristotle

36. Ask and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock and the door will be opened for you. –Jesus

37. The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be. –Ralph Waldo Emerson

38. Go confidently in the direction of your dreams.  Live the life you have imagined. –Henry David Thoreau

39. When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left and could say, I used everything you gave me. –Erma Bombeck

40. Few things can help an individual more than to place responsibility on him, and to let him know that you trust him.  –Booker T. Washington

41. Certain things catch your eye, but pursue only those that capture the heart. – Ancient Indian Proverb
42. Believe you can and you’re halfway there. –Theodore Roosevelt

43. Everything you’ve ever wanted is on the other side of fear. –George Addair

44. We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light. –Plato

45. Teach thy tongue to say, “I do not know,” and thous shalt progress. –Maimonides

46. Start where you are. Use what you have.  Do what you can. –Arthur Ashe

47. When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life.  When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up.  I wrote down ‘happy’.  They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life. –John Lennon

48. Fall seven times and stand up eight. –Japanese Proverb

49. When one door of happiness closes, another opens, but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us. –Helen Keller

50. Everything has beauty, but not everyone can see. –Confucius

51. How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world. –Anne Frank

52. When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be. –Lao Tzu


53. Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away. –Maya Angelou

54. Happiness is not something readymade.  It comes from your own actions. –Dalai Lama

55. If you’re offered a seat on a rocket ship, don’t ask what seat! Just get on. –Sheryl Sandberg

56. First, have a definite, clear practical ideal; a goal, an objective. Second, have the necessary means to achieve your ends; wisdom, money, materials, and methods. Third, adjust all your means to that end. –Aristotle

57. If the wind will not serve, take to the oars. –Latin Proverb

58. You can’t fall if you don’t climb.  But there’s no joy in living your whole life on the ground. –Unknown

59. We must believe that we are gifted for something, and that this thing, at whatever cost, must be attained. –Marie Curie

60. Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears. –Les Brown

61. Challenges are what make life interesting and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful. –Joshua J. Marine

62. If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else. –Booker T. Washington

63. I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do. –Leonardo da Vinci

64. Limitations live only in our minds.  But if we use our imaginations, our possibilities become limitless. –Jamie Paolinetti

65. You take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing, no one to blame. –Erica Jong

66. What’s money? A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do. –Bob Dylan

67. I didn’t fail the test. I just found 100 ways to do it wrong. –Benjamin Franklin

68. In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure. –Bill Cosby

69. A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new. – Albert Einstein

70. The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person who is doing it. –Chinese Proverb

71. There are no traffic jams along the extra mile. –Roger Staubach

72. It is never too late to be what you might have been. –George Eliot

73. You become what you believe. –Oprah Winfrey

74. I would rather die of passion than of boredom. –Vincent van Gogh

75. A truly rich man is one whose children run into his arms when his hands are empty. –Unknown

76. It is not what you do for your children, but what you have taught them to do for themselves, that will make them successful human beings.  –Ann Landers

77. If you want your children to turn out well, spend twice as much time with them, and half as much money. –Abigail Van Buren

78. Build your own dreams, or someone else will hire you to build theirs. –Farrah Gray

79. The battles that count aren’t the ones for gold medals. The struggles within yourself–the invisible battles inside all of us–that’s where it’s at. –Jesse Owens

80. Education costs money.  But then so does ignorance. –Sir Claus Moser

81. I have learned over the years that when one’s mind is made up, this diminishes fear. –Rosa Parks

82. It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop. –Confucius

83. If you look at what you have in life, you’ll always have more. If you look at what you don’t have in life, you’ll never have enough. –Oprah Winfrey

84. Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck. –Dalai Lama

85. You can’t use up creativity.  The more you use, the more you have. –Maya Angelou

86. Dream big and dare to fail. –Norman Vaughan

87. Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. –Martin Luther King Jr.

88. Do what you can, where you are, with what you have. –Teddy Roosevelt

89. If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten. –Tony Robbins

90. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning. –Gloria Steinem

91. It’s your place in the world; it’s your life. Go on and do all you can with it, and make it the life you want to live. –Mae Jemison

92. You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don’t try. –Beverly Sills

93. Remember no one can make you feel inferior without your consent. –Eleanor Roosevelt

94. Life is what we make it, always has been, always will be. –Grandma Moses

95. The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me. –Ayn Rand

96. When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it. –Henry Ford

97. It’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years. –Abraham Lincoln

98. Change your thoughts and you change your world. –Norman Vincent Peale

99. Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing. –Benjamin Franklin

100. Nothing is impossible, the word itself says, “I’m possible!” –Audrey Hepburn

101. The only way to do great work is to love what you do. –Steve Jobs

102. If you can dream it, you can achieve it. –Zig Ziglar

~Courtesy : Forbes - Kevin Kruse.