Marketing and Mindfulness

The seemingly disparate fusion of marketing and mindfulness is found in my coaching profession.  I have discovered that the art and psychology around marketing and mindfulness share several common principles, the most important one being: attending or attention. 

Mindfulness has been described as a process of bringing a certain quality of attention to moment-by-moment experience (Kabat-Zinn, 1990).  In 2002, a research team headed by Bishop and his colleagues described mindfulness as a twofold process: 1) one self-regulates his/her attention in order to recognize what is going on right now, and 2) one adapts to his/her experience in the present moment with an “orientation” that is curious, and/or open and accepting.
 
For our purposes, mindfulness involves attentiveness in observation.  This might include observing the breath and listening to the thoughts that continually punctuate the mind.  Like Bishop suggests, regulate the attention and observe.  One of the best ways to practice mindfulness is to “go to the cushion,” as one of my favorite authors, Michael Carroll, suggests.  Going to the cushion provides the space and time we need to be still, and hone our observational skills.  The cushion allows you the space and time to take more than a cursory look-see at your mental inventory.

Marketing, whether a service, product, or you, is showcasing the best of you and your service or product, after you have practiced the art of mindfulness where you have attended, observed, adapted, are open and accepting, and now “other-oriented.”  Like the flight attendant (there’s that word again), who directs us prior to take off: should there be loss of cabin pressure, the oxygen mask will drop down.  We are to use it first before placing it on a child or another who is in our care.  The premise is that if we ourselves are not attending to ourselves first, we will not be in a position to offer service to another.

Mindful marketing calls us to be real in our intra and interpersonal relations, allowing us to be both inner-focused and other-focused.  Having been to the cushion, “we commit to opening rather than closing, being rather than achieving, engaging rather than rehearsing” (Carroll, 2007).  Attending to self and other is one in the same; we do not alter our persona of who we are when in a business relationship.  Rather, marketing mindfulness invites us to openly share our creative talents and strengths in real time authenticity.