If your world is anything like mine, you’ve been spending a lot of time in Zoom meetings, phone meetings, and reaching out to friends and relatives via Facetime over the past few months. Instead of making a meaningful connection with the person on the other end, we sometimes leave one of these online encounters frustrated, empty, confused, and exhausted. Body language, tone, and expression can be hard to gauge and responses can sometimes be hard to navigate when we don’t share physical space. Developing effective listening and communication skills are more important than ever before.
Making a true connection with others requires us to take our mindfulness or meditation practices off of the cushion and into the world. We have to use those same skills that we practiced with ourselves and apply them in our communications and relationships with others. Your work might be teaching in a classroom, managing your own company, making products in a factory, or caring for people in a hospital and the skills learned through the mindfulness practice will apply. This is why I love the tips that our Founder and CEO, Annamarie Fernyak, put together for you. At Mind Body Align, we do our best to live out our mission and core values every day and we hold each other accountable to them. Our successes have been achieved by putting these tips to work and sharing mindful communication as a team- creating a safe space for us to live and work. As someone who continually strives to learn more and to communicate better with my team and my family, I hope you will find them just as valuable as I did and will put them to practice in your work and life.
– Jen Blue, Operations Director, Mind Body Align
Download the Mindful Communication infographic here.
Mind Body Align’s President is Jennifer Blue. No stranger to small business, Jen is a community leader, an entrepreneur, and a published author who has led several successful startups. Responsible for overseeing the creation and implementation of all programs and events offered at the historic Butterfly House, home of Mind Body Align, as well as overseeing all operations for the company.
Jennifer has worked alongside entrepreneurs and visionaries in various industries and positions over her 30-year management career. A Mansfield, Ohio native, Jen returned to Ohio after living and working in Louisville, Kentucky, as well as South Florida. She studied political science at Otterbein College and the University of Louisville. Adventure, creativity, and new challenges are “musts” in her life; these drives have led Jen to work as a freelance writer, chef, and abstract artist.