COURAGEOUS LEADERSHIP

Evolving the Corporate Machine with LOVE!
By Shirley Moulton - Founder, The ACADEMi of Life, NYC


“Businesses have become the most powerful and influential institutions on earth, rivaling any government or nation state. But public distrust of business is at an historic high; many employees and customers are disconnected from the companies they work for or buy from; suppliers feel squeezed; communities often organize to keep certain businesses out. With overworked employees and burnt-out executives, it is no surprise that there are calls for Love to have a greater place in our lives, in business and work.”

My new venture, The ACADEMi of Life (www.theacademioflife.com) hosts an event in NYC on May 12, 2010: An Evening in Conversation with Kevin Roberts, CEO Worldwide of Saatchi & Saatchi, a person I consider a courageous leader. He is passionate and unafraid about discussing the role of love in business and believes that the responsibility of businesses is to make the world a better place.

Roberts is truly a fearless, authentic leader who likes ideas and loves inspiration. And hates the word “but”. He’s constantly provocative and restless. He has an international reputation for an uncompromisingly positive, inspirational leadership style, and an extraordinary ability to generate ideas and emotional connections that accelerate value. Kevin is also the originator of Lovemark thinking, a methodology on how to evolve brands into a product or service that people adore. He authored the best-selling business book ‘Lovemarks’ which was published in 18 different languages.

Roberts was the keynote speaker at our annual Women Presidents Organization Conference a few years ago and over 600 women declared him as one of the best speaker we've ever had (and we've had some of the best, Malcolm Gladwell, Gary Hamel, Jim Collins etc.)

“I consider him inspiring and transformational and his message is essentially about the power of love and truly connecting with people, some of whom happen to be our customers, our employees, our suppliers our community and our shareholders. He is an experience not to be missed and you can learn more about him and his work at www.saatchikevin.com However in my opinion nothing you read can truly describe his impact.” – M. Goodfriend

Join us and experience his impact! http://bit.ly/dC2PVs


“Humans live by their emotions. That is how we make decisions and how we run our lives, whether it’s around a family dining table or a corporation’s boardroom table. The greatest emotion is Love and because business is part of life, business needs Love.” Kevin Roberts, CEO Saatchi & Saatchi

WORLD MEDITATION DAY

Making the world a better place, one breath at a time
By Shirley Moulton - Founder, The ACADEMi of Life, NYC


Meditation is enjoying a renewed surge of popularity, penetrating the public consciousness as never before…it’s mainstream.
So what is meditation? “Meditation is a discipline that prepares one to engage in the world with greater accuracy, flexibility, and authenticity. It is not a quick fix but a discipline that, when cultivated, can provide ongoing and powerful support for the practice of a fulfilling life.”

Meditative practices are being taken up in corporate America (Google, Apple, AOL, Saatchi & Saatchi, Raytheon, Deutche Bank, Hughes Aircraft, Target, Cargill, Aetna, Genentech, General Mills) and is being declared as a 21st century management tool. McKinsey Managing Partner Michael Rennie, an avid meditator, who has studied the beneficial effects of meditation in corporations, heads the McKinsey’s Performance Leadership Program which uses meditation practices to release the desire for authenticity, dignity and real human connection within a critical mass of individuals in a given organization. Corporations are realizing that after arranging meditation classes for their staff, they have reduced stress levels, are less irritable, more focused, more productive, happier overall and have sharpened intuition.

Meditation is also being taught at YMCAs, hospitals (a foundation run by Donna Karan, donated $850,000 to NYC’s Beth Israel Medical Center to test whether meditation and yoga can enhance the traditional medical treatments for cancer), the military, in medicine to make doctors better, at Harvard Law School to help law students become better negotiators and in public schools to reduce the stress levels of students (the goal of the David Lynch Foundation, is to bring meditation to one million schoolchildren in the classroom).

When we meditate we create stillness. Stillness is where inspiration, creativity and solutions to problems are found. The more we practice meditation we are able to move beyond our active minds and emotions and discover great depths of lasting peace, contentment and serenity…the joy of being. From this place of joy we are able to create “fields of grace” allowing our interactions with others to be more loving, compassionate, authentic and fulfilling. With time, we become better people and the world becomes a better place.

So, to bring lasting peace and love to our world, we declare 11/11/11 World Meditation Day and at 11:11 am/pm on that day for 11 minutes, our goal is to have 1.1 million people meditating to either the Joy Of Being meditation http://bit.ly/lKjcm or any other meditation of your choosing. Eleven minutes of pure bliss. Let’s begin the practice today on 11/11/09 and start to build our meditation community and we will do it again on 11/11/10 until we get to our big day: 11/11/11.

Join our meditation community and movement on Facebook at http://bit.ly/67xaqB