The Power of Stillness in Leadership | An Interview with Jacob Hess, Carrie Skarda, Kyle Anderson, and Ty Mansfield

This is a rebroadcast. The episode originally ran in March 2020.
Jacob Hess, Carrie Skarda, Kyle Anderson, and Ty Mansfield are the
authors of The Power of Stillness: Mindful Living for Latter-day
Saints. In this interview they discuss where mindfulness and
meditation fit into the gospel and how we can better approach our
service and our practices with the balance of mindfulness. Jacob
Hess, PhD, is a clinical psychologist and a mindfulness-based
stress reduction (MBSR) instructor trained through the Center for
Mindfulness at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.
Carrie Skarda, PsyD, is a psychologist in private practice. She has
provided individual and couples therapy with particular interest in
attachment trauma and mindfulness, and has studied and practiced
mindfulness and formal meditation for over ten years. Kyle
Anderson, PhD, is a professor of Chinese and Asian Studies,
currently an administrator in Global Learning, International
Partnerships and Initiatives at Clemson University, and came to
mindfulness meditation through his studies in Asian literature. Ty
Mansfield, PhD, is an assistant professor in Religious Education at
BYU, a certified mindfulness meditation teacher, and a practicing
marriage and family therapist specializing in mindfulness-based
paths to emotional, relational, and spiritual thriving. He and his
wife, Danielle, have five children and live in Spanish Fork, UT.
Links The Power of Stillness: Mindful Living for Latter-day Saints
Jesus: The Perfect Leader, by Spencer W. Kimball The Council for
Sustainable Healing Read the transcript of this podcast Get 14-day
access to the Core Leader Library Highlights 5:40 Jacob was exposed
to meditation in graduate school and began to see where it fit into
the gospel tradition 7:00 Backgrounds of the authors 9:00
Definitions of mindfulness and what it means to Christians and to
Latter-day Saints: compassionate presence in the moment 11:10
Christ was meditative and present in the moment 12:25 Being busy
vs. mindfulness 14:00 Looking for words in our own tradition:
reverence, peace, stillness, pondering 15:45 Advice for a busy
leader: Christ had a practice of punctuating his doing with
non-doing; the rhythm of action and pausing is already built in to
our practices 19:40 It’s not the gospel that people struggle with,
but an impoverished experience of it 20:55 David O. McKay quote: “I
think we pay too little attention to the value of meditation, a
principle of devotion. In our worship there are two elements: One
is spiritual communion arising from our own meditation; the other,
instruction from others, particularly from those who have authority
to guide and instruct us. Of the two, the more profitable
introspectively is meditation. Meditation is the language of the
soul.” 22:10 Example in a ward council: not praying as a to-do, but
sitting with the Savior 23:30 Clarity and priority come through
pausing between action 24:25 Centering the attention on the
inspiration in the moment and not on the calendar: Am I
interruptable? 26:20 The Savior was interruptable in his task at
hand and could pivot to what was most needful in the moment 28:35
The Savior was willing to build in his time with His Father, the
foundation of His work 29:35 We can meditate on the person in front
of us by giving them our full attention in that moment 31:30 The
order in which the Savior did what he did: communion with the
Father, surrounding himself in community, then going out to
minister 33:45 C.S. Lewis (in Mere Christianity): “It comes the
very moment you wake up each morning. All your wishes and hopes for
the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job each
morning consists simply in shoving them all back; in listening to
that other voice, taking that other point of view, letting that
other larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in. And so on,
all day.