In the legal sector the law of attraction doesn't favor those job applicants who use the term "content" to describe themselves. That business, essentially built on adversarial relationships, favors aggressive strivers who are always pushing toward fresh achievements. Ironically, that might eventually be getting in the way of their long term success, if hired.
Last night in the second session of a five-week course at the Shambhala Meditation Center, New Haven, Connecticut, we learned that contentment or being satisfied being in the now or present can enhance performance. Led by the Center's founder Deb Drexler, the group saw how paying attention to what's going on in that nanosecond provides the clarity to assess the situation and choose the best, at the time, courses of action.
Of course, this seems counterintuitive. From high school on the ambitious are conditioned to continually scan the horizons, their memory banks, and the best thinking of futurists for what had happened, what might be taking place in the nation across the ocean, and what could play out three months from that. The message is: The now is worthless.
For centuries athletes who must stay in the zone or present and creatives who must open themselves to flow have disproved the wisdom of being everywhere but the present. In addition, the greats among trial lawyers, as we saw during the O.J. Simpson criminal trial, hang out only in the now, taking in every word, every facial expression, and every bit of body language. You bet, they play to all their audiences, particularly the jury.
The winning strategy for job applicants may be to conform with conventional expectations of persona and language during interviews. But once in, they can develop the mindset of contentment.
Law students and lawyers in the New Haven Metro area can try out paying attention to the now or mindfulness free of charge at Shambhala. There are open houses, with meditation instruction, on Wednesdays at 7:30 P.M. and on Thursdays recovery meetings, also with meditation instruction, beginning at 7:30 P.M. weekly. All that unfolds at the Shambhala Center, 85 Willow Street, with plenty of free parking across the street. Those with nostalgia for life in Manhattan will find themselves climbing three long flights of stairs to seek out enlightenment.
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