An excerpt from Practice #1 – Love the Work – in Seven Practices of a Mindful Leader.


The practice “Love the work” refers to answering the call of mindful leadership and developing a mindfulness practice in order to see more clearly. This sounds straightforward. Through mindfulness, our intention is to recognize change, recognize what is, and recognize our aspirations. We should expect to encounter and have to overcome some internal resistance, which is part of the process of seeing more clearly.

For instance, reality has an irritating habit of shifting and changing, totally undermining our hopes, dreams, and fantasies. When our ideas and plans collide with reality, reality generally wins, whether it’s the reality of our aging bodies and minds, of our mercurial emotions, of upheaval in the business world, or of the shifting priorities and feelings of other people, family, friends, and coworkers.

When this happens, we may not want to admit that reality isn’t going to meet our expectations, but we create trouble for ourselves if we do not. We need to see what is, or what the military calls “ground truth.” This is what’s actually happening, the reality of the battle or situation on the ground, as opposed to what intelligence reports and mission plans predicted would happen. The ground truth is what you say to yourself and closest friends about the reality of your experience, as opposed to what you want, or what you hoped or planned would happen, or how you’d like to appear to others.

For a moment, consider your “ground truth” in these areas:

  • Your well-being, including sleep, exercise, diet, and your state of mind: What are you experiencing versus your aspirations?
  • Your work: How’s it going? What’s the reality?
  • Your experience of your core relationships: Would you say you are satisfied or disappointed, and how?

In war and in life, there are always “gaps” between our ground truths and our visions of what we expected or wanted. Naturally, we ’d like to close these gaps if we can, but first we have to see and acknowledge them. So, one important practice for loving the work is to acknowledge where you are right now, where you want to be, and the gaps between these two. Doing this requires being curious, appreciative, and warmhearted with yourself while at the same time “staring,” looking directly at what is and what you want. This is an important, even paradoxical skill and practice: acknowledging the gaps between what is (the ground truth) and what you want, while at the same time appreciating what is without trying to change it.

In Peter Senge’s groundbreaking book, The Fifth Discipline, he calls these gaps “creative tensions.” He says that one of the most important skills of leadership is staying with these gaps instead of covering them over or finding strategies to make them go away in order to feel more comfortable.
Try this: Having considered your “ground truth” in several areas, identify some of your core or most critical creative gaps. In what areas is the difference between what actually is and your vision of what you want the widest? What are some ways you might narrow or even close those gaps?

What support do you need?
What skillful conversations might be useful?
What has stopped you from closing the gaps up to now?
What might you need to accept rather than change?
What is there to learn?