The problem with being a leader is that you're never sure if you're being followed or chased.

—Claire A. Murray

I spent a 20+‐year career as a global COO in high stress, high performance Fortune 500 companies. Like so many professionals, decades of high stress took a toll on my health and mental wellbeing. According to the World Health Organization, stress is considered a worldwide health epidemic.¹ The American Institute of Stress links stress to the six leading causes of death (heart disease, accidents, cancer, liver disease, lung ailments, and suicide).² If you're concerned about your own wellbeing, you are not alone. The stress business is booming. And it's getting worse every year.

At the beginning of this decade, I started a mindfulness and meditation practice to help manage my own stress. Shortly thereafter, I was brought in by a venture capitalist to turn around a startup called Headspace, a now‐famous app to help individual consumers learn to meditate. It was an odd career turn for me, going from public company life to running a tech startup that featured a former monk with a “learn to meditate” training program based in Tibetan Buddhism. That unexpectedly put me on a path to go beyond a simple consumer app and into understanding more about the human brain than I ever thought possible. It also led me back to my corporate roots with a mission to help other professionals boost resilience and improve their mental wellbeing to get more out of life.

In August 2014, I founded Whil Concepts, Inc. (“Whil,” pronounced Will). The name comes from a mixture of Where are you going and whatWill you create? Whil.com was also a four‐letter URL I could afford to buy when I started the company (don't tell anyone). Our mission is to help professionals live healthier, happier, and more engaged lives. After 20 years of corporate life, I hit a wall and my health, wellbeing, and attitude began to fail in my early 40s. What I share here literally saved my life and changed the course of my career. May it do the same for you.

Whil has become the global leader in digital wellbeing training. Today, we feature 250‐plus targeted training programs and 1,500‐plus unique video and audio sessions from top MDs, PhDs, and trainers to help professionals reduce stress, be more resilient, and improve their sleep and performance. Our training system is based in the neuroscience, adult learning theory, mindfulness, emotional intelligence, and positive psychology practices shared in this book.

Whil's training apps are now used in over 100 countries by hundreds of companies like Intuit, Express Scripts, Havas, Sharp Health, Square, Harvard Business School and Reading Health. We partner with and integrate into every major EAP, LMS and employee wellness platform including Virgin Pulse, Castlight, Limeade, Viverae, and so on. We're in five clinical research studies, inducing three National Institutes of Health (NIH)–funded projects. And we're helping the world's top payers and providers to improve their members' health.

In late 2016, I undertook a seven‐city research tour with Steve Morris, cofounder of The Eventful Group (TEG). TEG is one of the top live event companies, owning some 40 conference events around the world. We met with leaders in major cities to hear their business challenges and learn more about the need for resilience and mindfulness training in business. That research culminated in a new event, The Mindful Business Conference: A road map for high performance, leadership, and culture in the age of disruption. A mouthful, I know. The event drew 250 leaders from over 30 countries. We featured speakers including Congressman Tim Ryan; U.S. Army General Walt Piatt; Howard Behar, the retired president of Starbucks; and leaders from the Seattle Seahawks; Mondelez; McKinsey; Google; SAP; Starbucks; Plantronics; Volvo; Microsoft; BASF; PeoplesBank; Harvard University; Accenture; Snap‐On; the Chicago Cubs; Intel; Harvard Pilgrim; GE; Royal Bank of Canada; Aetna; GlaxoSmithKline; the University of San Francisco; and more. We learned that resilience and mindfulness training is good for people and it's good for business.

The event sparked a fire in our clients and planted the seeds for what would become Whil's Creating Mindful Leaders (CML) Workshop. In early 2017, Whil's clients began asking for a live training experience to introduce their leaders to the importance of stress resilience, mindfulness, and emotional intelligence (EQ) skills. That led me to create a one‐day live training program, a deep dive for resilient and mindful leaders. We've now visited dozens of cities, trained over 500 companies and thousands of leaders in our live CML Workshop, and an ongoing webcast series. We've worked with over 50 industries, including advertising, insurance, healthcare, automotive, law, education, government, consulting, professional sports, technology, pharma, entertainment, retail, CPG, cosmetics, finance, utilities, oil and gas, and news. We have not yet worked with the “fake news” media.

We never expected the success that followed. It's been rocket fuel for the Whil team and, more importantly, changed the lives of the participants.

How to Use This Book

All of that amazing activity has led me to create this book. Consider it a personal reference guide. It's intended as a “state of the nation” to help you better manage stress, change, and disruption. Each chapter highlights approaches to transform your mental and emotional wellbeing, performance, relationships, career, sleep, and physical health. And best practices and techniques to do the same for your team and your company culture. I'll share the latest research on the key factors driving more professionals to stress out, burn out, and opt out. You'll experience actionable techniques to learn what resilience and mindfulness training is, how to do it, and immediately apply the techniques to benefit your life. You'll also learn first‐hand why the Harvard Business Review calls mindfulness the “must‐have skill for executives.”³

We Get Better at the Things We Practice Most

Our brains learn from experience. We get better at the things we practice most. Research tells us that most of us are practicing stress, anxiety, insomnia, anger, and so forth to the point at which we're becoming black belts in the wrong things. It's impacting our health, happiness, and performance. A recent report by Willis Tower Watson found that 75% of U.S. employers ranked stress as their top health and productivity concern.⁴ I'd like to help you before you hit the stress wall. I did. And it wasn't easy to bounce back.

Just like Whil's digital training apps, this book is activity‐based learning. You'll learn and then immediately apply skills to use throughout your day. I've incorporated exercises covering mindfulness meditation, reflection and planning, emotional intelligence, expert communication, sleep practices, and more. Key resources from top brain‐training experts are shared as “Pro Tips” throughout. Consider it a road map outlining the specific science‐based tools and techniques to directly impact the quality of your life and tangible business outcomes. You'll learn how to implement mindfulness into your existing routines and work processes without creating new work and what mindfulness looks like in small, practical, day‐to‐day applications for yourself and your team.

You're Not Alone and It Doesn't Really Suck. The challenges facing leaders across industries, geography, and cultures are shockingly similar. If you feel like you're experiencing life at the rate of several WTFs per hour, you're not alone. It doesn't matter what line of work you're in. There is a universal truth: It's getting harder to manage the pace of modern business and the related impact that stress is having on our lives. Once you accept this starting point, you can change your mindset from “This sucks” to “This is normal. I just need the right tools to cope and then thrive.”

Professionals Aren't Looking for Enlightenment

This book is meant to be a counterbalance to the abundant supply of hokey, woo‐woo concepts out there. There's a McMindfulness movement that's pushing sparkly rainbow solutions, healing stones, and how being mindful can put you on the path to enlightenment. In my experience, professionals aren't interested in hipster monks or mystic hokum. And we aren't looking for “enlightenment.” We're looking to lighten up a bit. There's a big difference. When it comes to improving your mental and emotional wellbeing, the right approach for professionals, by professionals makes all the difference.

It's been said that worry is the interest paid in advance on a debt you may never owe. The approaches I share in this book are an invitation to turn a new page in your life and career, debt free.

This Book Is a Call to Action. You have the opportunity to change the unhealthy and negative routines in your life. You can get back to the things you love most. You can be more resilient through the ongoing change, disruption, and challenges in your life. In fact, you have to. They aren't going away. The pace of life is only going to pick up. Commit to doing the practices in this book and get ready to be happier, healthier and more engaged in your life. This is happening.

As Yoda wisely said, “You must unlearn what you have learned…. Do or do not. There is no try.”

I hope you have as much fun experiencing the book as I did in writing it. This is my life's work and I'm happy to share it with you.

Enjoy! From one formerly stressed‐out leader to another.

Notes