Elevating Laurier Leaders: Mindfulness

May 13, 2019

Good morning everyone and welcome to our second Elevating Laurier Leaders event.

I am Dr. Deb MacLatchy, president and vice-chancellor at Wilfrid Laurier University and it’s my pleasure to host you at this breakfast.

This four-part series is a first for Laurier, bringing together our alumni to build a supportive community of women from diverse industries and backgrounds.

Today’s session focuses on mindfulness and in a few minutes, we’ll be hearing from an expert on the topic – our very own alumna Nina Purewal – who is a BBA graduate from 2003.

Nina is the author of the bestselling book Let That Sh*t Go and the founder of Pure Minds, a company that brings mindfulness workshops to the workplace.

I know that I am excited to learn from her today and I hope that you are too.

I’m sure in this room I’m not alone in saying that as a busy professional, my day can be filled with to-do lists and meetings and it can be difficult to find that moment to pause and take moments for ourselves.

We often say we don’t have time for mindfulness.

Time to focus on the important things, to actively listen to others, and to make well-informed decisions.

For myself, I find that proximity to water helps me pause and regain focus.

Water centres me – especially being near a lake or the ocean.

Sometimes when things are stressful, I also watch multiple episodes of the original Star Trek.

Although I suspect that doesn’t really count as practicing mindfulness.

Everyone here will have similar techniques for bringing calm into a hectic day, whether it’s spending time with a pet, taking a walk, or sitting quietly outside.

Today Nina will talk to us about the importance of making space for mindfulness and how mindfulness can improve our work and lives.

Finally, she will give us some techniques for quieting our internal chatter and channelling more focus in our day-to-day activities.

I hope that after this day we will all leave with a tool kit that will bring more intention to our work and lives.

I would now like to welcome Nina to begin her workshop.