How mindfulness became my secret weapon as a CEO

Mindfulness used to mean a few minutes of breathing at the end of a yoga class and maybe the occasional attempt at meditation. In the past, I didn’t have time for anything more. At least, I thought so. I was a budding entrepreneur, knee-deep in scaling Better Me into something big. And it meant waking up to 200 unread Slack messages. If a blog post told me back then that mindful practices—layered consistently over time—would become one of my core leadership tools, I probably would have laughed and opened another tab. If you almost did the same, stay. Because what I’ve learned since then is how mindfulness helps you stay steady when things get messy and lead people without burning yourself out in the process. WHAT MINDFULNESS ACTUALLY IS Jon Kabat-Zinn, who first introduced mindfulness into mainstream Western medicine, defines it as “paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally.” What you’re essentially doing is training your attention. And right now, attention may be one of the scarcest leadership resources we have. 2024 Gartner research shows that 75% of leaders feel overwhelmed by their responsibilities. More broadly, the APA’s 2024 Work in America survey reported that 67% of employees experienced burnout symptoms. And the trend isn’t reversing anytime soon. When your brain is overloaded and exhausted, your attention span naturally shrinks, your focus gets fragmented, and important things start slipping through the cracks. Senior women tend to have it even worse. According to the 2025 Women in the Workplace report by McKinsey and Lean In, women experience burnout at rates about 10 percentage points higher than men in similar leadership roles. THE BRAIN SCIENCE BEHIND OVERWHELMED LEADERSHIP When you stay under pressure for too long, your brain triggers a stress response—cortisol spikes and blood flow is reduced to your prefrontal cortex. That is the part of your brain that handles strateg