Using mindfulness practices for greater self-awareness and self-improvement: Rabbi Marc Margolius, Senior Program Director, Institute for Jewish Spirituality – Episode #201

Gov Innovator Podcast

When we think about what skills leaders need to be successful — such as making good decisions, regulating their emotions and stress, and forming strong and healthy relationships with others — an important foundation for those skills is mindfulness. Our guest today has deep expertise in helping people cultivate self-awareness and mindfulness in order to (to paraphrase his own words) help them become the person they’re meant to be in the world, hopefully growing towards that day by day. Rabbi Marc Margolius is the Senior Program Director at the Institute for Jewish Spirituality. He hosts IJS’s daily mindfulness meditation sessions and teaches an online program called “Awareness in Action” designed to cultivate character through mindfulness.

Rabbi Margolius presents the three step process used by IJS:

• First, adopt a stance of non-judgmental curiosity by observing one’s own mind and reactions. This can be done by simply pausing.
• Next, be aware of having the possibility of choice, realizing that we have a range of options in responding to a stimulus.
• And finally, choose the value or set of values that one wants to use in responding.

Together, these steps can help us to have a response rather than a reaction. The approach draws at times from Jewish spiritual practice, but it can be useful for anyone, whatever one’s faith background or connection (or not) to a religion.

A transcript of our conversation is available here.

Related resources: An article co-authored by Andy Feldman and Rabbi Margolius in Government Executive on the value of mindfulness practices is here. The magazine also interviewed the co-authors for their podcast, available here.

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