Opinion Party | The Marketing Podcast

Opinion Party: the marketing podcast
brought to you by BAV Group & IRG 

Season 2: Episode 12
The Focus Factor:  Why Slowing Down Accelerates Results with Ashley Wray
 
SUMMARY
In our season finale, Laura Jones (Global CEO, BAV Group) welcomes mindfulness expert and executive coach Ashley Wray to challenge the myth that corporate wellness programs automatically create mindful organizations. Drawing from her journey from journalist to meditation expert, Ashley introduces her concept of "microdosing mindfulness" as an alternative to forced company-wide initiatives. 

She shares her powerful "Three Ps" framework—it's not personal, it's not perfect, it's not permanent—which helps leaders foster psychological safety and team flow. The conversation reveals how mindfulness practices deliver measurable business impact through enhanced creativity, improved team dynamics, and better decision-making. Ashley concludes with a guided meditation demonstrating how accessible these techniques can be for marketing professionals seeking better focus and innovation.

LINKS

TAKEAWAYS
  • Mindfulness = awareness of thoughts without attachment
  • Internal self-compassion creates stronger leadership
  • "Wellness washing" undermines authentic brand integration
  • Burnout prevention drives corporate wellness investment
  • Leader self-reflection builds psychological safety
  • "Three Ps" framework provides practical mindfulness approach
  • Intentional meeting breaks improve team performance
  • Connect mindfulness to existing habits for sustainability
  • Present moment awareness enables flow states
  • Small daily moments outperform occasional wellness events

CHAPTERS

00:11 Challenging the Corporate Wellness Myth

04:56 Corporate Leaders and Mindfulness Challenges 

06:46 The ROI Question in Mindfulness 

11:43 The Three Benefits: Compassion, Creativity, and Trust 

13:04 Wellness-Washing: When Brands Misuse Mindfulness 

20:30 Post-COVID Shift in Corporate Mindfulness 

23:54 The Cost of Burnout and the Value of Team Flow 

25:57 The Three Ps: Not Perfect, Not Permanent, Not Personal

29:23 Microdosing Mindfulness in Daily Work Life 

31:12 Connecting Sports Performance and Business Leadership 

33:00 Guided One-Minute Meditation Experience 

36:11 Tips for Starting a Mindfulness Practice

 
Opinion Party: the marketing podcast
For season two, we asked twelve marketing leaders from a world class set of organizations to join host Laura Jones, Global CEO of BAV Group, to talk marketing myths, trends, data, and opinions. Filmed live on site at the Institute for Real Growth Summit in Cannes, summer 2025. Find us at https://www.theopinionparty.com or wherever you get your podcasts.
 
Season 2 of Opinion Party: the marketing podcast is brought to you by:
BAV Group, the world’s leading authority on data-driven branding.™️
Our strategic consulting services transform brand growth into brand = growth. Whether you need to analyze, transform, or grow your brand, our team provide solutions based on 30 years of proven methodology and results. Learn more at https://www.bavgroup.com

Institute for Real Growth
We inspire CMOs to increase their personal, business, and societal impact by driving more Humanized Growth. Learn more at: https://instituteforrealgrowth.com
 

CREDITS
Host & Executive Producer: Laura Jones
Executive Producer: Ketzirah Lesser
Production & Still Photography: Bronac McNeill Photography & Film
Co-director, Camera, Sound, Edit: Natalie Barrass
Photos © Bronac McNeil Photography & Film

Creators and Guests

Host
Laura Jones
CEO on a mission to transform data-driven branding one bit at a time. Enthusiastic yogi, girl mom, Girl Scout Leader and change maker.
Guest
Ashley Wray
Performance and Leadership Coach | Mindset Coach | Meditation Expert | Wellness Educator, Speaker & Facilitator for Leadership and High-Performing Teams
Producer
Ketzirah Lesser
Exec. Producer, Opinion Party || Executive Director & Chief of Staff | BAV Group

What is Opinion Party | The Marketing Podcast?

The marketing podcast where we interrogate marketing's most deeply held beliefs through data and expert insights.

Brought to you by BAV Group

Find us at https://www.theopinionparty.com

Opinion Party is brought to you by:
BAV Group, the world’s leading authority on data-driven branding. ™️

Our strategic consulting services transform brand growth into brand = growth. Whether you need to analyze, transform, or grow your brand, our team provide solutions based on 30 years of proven methodology and results.

Learn more at https://www.bavgroup.com.

CREDITS: Season II
Hosts: Laura Jones
Executive Producer: Laura Jones & Ketzirah Lesser
Production: Bronac McNeil Photography & Film

Laura Jones: 00:116

Nowadays, much every company has some sort of corporate wellness program in place. Are these programs actually mindful? I'm not really sure, but I know someone who is. Joining me today is Ashley Wray, mindfulness meditation expert and executive coach, and she's going to help us unpack what it really means for companies to be mindful. I'm Laura Jones, and this is Opinion Party, the podcast where we dispel the most pervasive myths in modern marketing.

Laura Jones: 00:41
Welcome to the party, Ashley.

Ashley Wray: 00:43
Thank you for having me. I'm very happy to be here.

Laura Jones: 00:45
So, Ashley, we met one year ago at the Institute for Real Growth, and your presence and your energy immediately drew me in. If I remember, you were leading a meditation in the morning, hundreds of chief marketing officers, really powerful people with big jobs, big responsibilities. You could not even hear a pin drop. And to this day, I hear all of them, I hear them, I read them in the WhatsApp chat that continues, and they still quote you because you're so quotable and so memorable. So, I just want to say meeting you has had a profound impact because for once I've felt like there is someone in this room that gets what it's like to have big feelings and just understand that emotions and vibrations are a really important part of us and we can bring that into our work.

Laura Jones: 01:47
So, I just want to say thank you for that.

Ashley Wray: 01:49
Well thank you. That's really kind. Thank you very much. That makes you very happy.

Laura Jones: 01:53
Yeah. So, tell me a little bit because this is not always what your career was, correct?

Ashley Wray: 01:58
That's right. So, I am very grateful to work in mindfulness and well-being now. And I had a very different life. In the past I was a journalist covering murder trials. So, it's often the joke from murder to meditation and that I deeply prefer talking about mindfulness, self-compassion, self-awareness, empathy, and doing it in a way that is accessible and isn't intimidating.

Ashley Wray: 02:26
Because most people, when I tell them what I do, they immediately go to, I know I need to. I know I should. And need and should are so full of self-judgment. So how can I maybe take those journalism skills of synthesizing information and making it accessible, do that in the world of meditation? So, I really love being in this world.

Ashley Wray: 02:46
And I love being in this community of leaders and helping leaders bring this into their daily life, whether that's professional or personal or both.

Laura Jones: 02:56
What are some of the assumptions that people make about mindfulness, just presence, self-awareness, talking about judgment? What are some of the assumptions people make that you just wish you can tell them you have no idea?

Ashley Wray: 03:13
I like to start with always saying I'm teaching this because I'm also seeking it. I'm not perfect. I've not perfected this. It is a continual practice. I don't think you all of a sudden become perfectly aware and perfectly mindful.

Ashley Wray: 03:28
It is consistently evolving. You're consistently learning to re-embody things that you're learning. So outside of that, I think one of the biggest myths or things that I see people believing or hear people believing is in meditation I have to sit with no thoughts. I keep having thoughts so I must be doing it really bad. And actually, that's not true.

Ashley Wray: 03:48
The point of meditation is not to have no thoughts. So when I was teaching last year and you probably heard me talk about this that if we reframe meditation and look at it as an opportunity to sit and maybe witness our thoughts and not get hooked into them or pulled into them and not get carried away with whatever story we're telling, how can we not end up way out here when actually we're here in this present moment? So how do we learn to return to ourselves again and again? Which sounds so simple and it sounds so easy, but it takes constant practice. It takes constant remembering.

Ashley Wray: 04:24
I was talking about this yesterday when I was speaking on stage again here that meditation and mindfulness is this act of remembering. We're not cultivating anything new. We're coming back to this ability that we have to be aware that so many of us have lost. So, meditation is not this practice of sitting with no thoughts and clearing your mind. It is being okay with all those thoughts, learning to come back to yourself again and again.

Ashley Wray: 04:50
And it is difficult. Most of our thoughts are negative. So of course we don't want to sit with that. It's way easier to pick up our phone or turn the TV, open our laptop, whatever. Whatever would I do to distract?

Ashley Wray: 05:02
But sitting without distraction is in itself difficult.

Laura Jones: 05:07
So difficult. So, so, so difficult. Especially in the business world. So many of the clients that you work with have high pressure, high stakes positions. Athletes, executives, you've been to some of the biggest conferences in the world with some of the most impressive people.

Laura Jones: 05:28
Yet I'm sure that a lot of them all share common challenge with shutting it off. What are the things that you see the most and what are some of your techniques? I know you've got a lot of great ones to really help people start along this journey.

Ashley Wray: 05:44
So, I love that you mentioned that because when I first started, I was quite intimidated by these people, by these athletes, by these big brands and logos that I've known my whole life coming into these companies and realizing everyone is just human. We're all human. We're all trying to figure it out. And when I'm speaking at events maybe I'll ask a question. Does anybody have any questions or are there any thoughts?

Ashley Wray: 06:06
And nobody wants to answer. Nobody wants to ask. And then they'll all line up one by one by one and ask the same question. So actually, it's quite a unifying experience. It's quite a human experience to all feel a little bit unsure, little bit insecure, a little bit uncertain if am I doing it right?

Ashley Wray: 06:24
Is this the best way? What I notice in the corporate world, not so much the sport world, is what's the ROI of this thing I'm doing? And when's that ROI going to kick in? And even after I talk about that, there's no immediacy, there's no, you know, three twenty-minute sessions and it'll click. People will still ask, but what's the secret that you're not telling me?

Ashley Wray: 06:46
When will it start to work? So, I liken it to going to the gym. You don't go to the gym three times and have abs. It's consistency. And that's unfortunately not a sexy answer.

Ashley Wray: 06:55
That consistency and showing up for us again and again, it starts to wear off, you know, if we're not committed to it for a deeper purpose, for an intrinsic reason. I think what I've seen with people is when they're intrinsically motivated, maybe something's happened in their life or they're very stressed or they've had a big life change, when we're intrinsically motivated to sit and really commit to a practice, it's a different pull than I want that ROI of that thing that I read about. And it's not wrong. Neither approach is wrong. There's different reasons people come to meditation.

Ashley Wray: 07:29
So that's one unifying thing I see is this comparison because it's so internal. So, you and I can be sitting here meditating together and I could open my eyes and you're sitting there and, Uh-oh, she's doing such a good job. I'm totally doing this wrong. I screwed up. And maybe two seconds later I close my eyes, and you open your eyes and you're thinking the same about me.

Ashley Wray: 07:51
We don't know each other's internal experience. I think that's why people get quite nervous to ask questions. I'm the only person in this group that maybe their leg fell asleep or their foot hurts or I'm thinking about lunch or I'm planning an email. But actually, it's happening to everyone. And so, what I really like to do is normalize that human experience.

Ashley Wray: 08:07
Realize that's not wrong. It's okay. That's part of the experience. And then once we've done that, maybe we feel a bit more safe to drop in. And maybe once they've heard some of the businesses I work with or athletes, oh yeah, I guess if they do it, maybe I could try it.

Ashley Wray: 08:21
I guess if, yeah, that person I really respect is doing it, I'll give that a go. And so, you've heard me talk about, you know, three different areas of reframing meditation that if we think about meditation perhaps it's an opportunity to practice self-compassion by coming back to ourself again and again and again. So, when we get hooked with a thought the moment, we become aware is the moment we become aware that we are unaware is the moment we become aware again. So, realizing, uh-oh, I'm supposed to be sitting here and my mind's out here. Well, you've just become aware again.

Ashley Wray: 08:54
So that in itself is the practice. So, when we realize that moment, we can choose to judge ourself. I'm so bad at this. I knew I shouldn't have sat and did this meditation. This is so stupid.

Ashley Wray: 09:06
I'm awful. Or I'm going to come back to myself and I'm going to come back and I'm going to practice kindness. So, I often give this analogy of a bicycle wheel. Think I you probably heard me talk about this before. So, in the center of our bicycle wheel, we have our focal point and maybe that's my voice or maybe that's your breath.

Ashley Wray: 09:25
Okay? We're breathing, we're breathing, we're listening and then our mind goes out here that spoke on the bicycle wheel. Uh-oh, my mind has wandered. I'm supposed to be over here. And when we get to the tire, that's that moment of awareness.

Ashley Wray: 09:37
Okay, I can stay out here or I can come back. And the reason that's important is because maybe in ten minutes we're going to have 200 spokes on that bicycle wheel. We're going have 200 thoughts, maybe 300 thoughts. So, if we simply think of meditation as an opportunity to practice self-love and self-compassion 300 times in ten minutes, that's a lot easier than sitting and thinking, have to have no thoughts for ten minutes. We're just going to practice self-compassion.

Ashley Wray: 10:05
Then the next thing we move on to is maybe there's 200 spokes on that wheel and maybe next time it's 100 spokes on the wheel. Maybe it's 70 spokes on the wheel and you're creating a little bit of space. And in that space, we get moments. And it's proven now that when we're in a relaxed state of mind, we can tap into innovation and creativity, which is incredibly important for marketeers. So, all those CMOs like, oh, another way to access innovation and creativity?

Ashley Wray: 10:30
Of course, I'm going to try this. So, we have compassion. We have innovation and creativity. And then we have this ability, the more that we come back to ourselves, the more space we're creating within ourselves, the more we're witnessing our thoughts and not getting hooked by them, we can start to learn what we want to trust, what we want to follow. We're starting to learn our intuition, if you like the word intuition or God or the cosmos or the universe.

Ashley Wray: 10:53
Whatever we credit that voice, the moment to, we learn to trust ourselves more. And I noticed that out of those three, the compassion, the innovation and creativity, and the trust, those are quite fundamental within teams. And as leaders and as humans, those are great skills. But in my experience, my self-compassion, my internal voice quickly becomes my external voice. So, the kinder I am to myself, the kinder I am to others.

Ashley Wray: 11:19
As a leader, that's pretty important. Being able to tap into innovation and creativity and ideate, that's a really big gift for anyone, whether you think you're in a creative place or not in your work. We're all creative inherently in some way. And learn to trust ourselves and trust others, that psychological safety, we have to foster that first within ourselves. And that word trust is something that keeps coming up in business.

Ashley Wray: 11:43
So, I find those three areas, you know, we could do an hour conversation of each of them individually. That was a very long answer.

Laura Jones: 11:51
I love but that's kind

Ashley Wray: 11:52
of the exploration of the simplification to remove those blocks from people and thinking they can't do this thing.

Laura Jones: 11:59
Can we do that? Can we have an hour-long conversation on each of these? Yes. I mean, you need to come back I for

Ashley Wray: 12:06
would love that.

Laura Jones: 12:07
And to Opinion Party because yes, yes, all of that. That gym analogy is so powerful for so many reasons. That comparison, as you were telling that story, I am in any name, any type of workout class that was the fad at the moment, and you're always wondering, Am I doing this right? You're looking to your left, to your right. Should I stand in the back?

Laura Jones: 12:28
Because what if people don't want what if I mess up? What if people don't want to see me? And instantly, in those moments, those are all the thoughts you're actually talking about from a meditation perspective. That is really, really helpful. So, you work with a lot of companies, and I think it's very easy for us as marketers to jump to the execution, to say, oh, okay, we've got this insight about people.

Laura Jones: 12:52
Let's do a campaign about it. Do you have an example or a situation where maybe a brand has approached you and you don't have to name names, and you help them to reframe or take a different approach?

Ashley Wray: 13:04
Yeah. Yeah, I find it very curious and I know we'll get here, but I started my first company in meditation in 2011, and it was this weird hippie woo woo thing that didn't exist. And now the word mindfulness is used so often. I'm seeing the word compassion used more, which I adore that that word is used more. But mindfulness, like, what does that even mean?

Ashley Wray: 13:24
I just want to slap it into my marketing. I want to throw it on a brand. Well-being, wellness, you know, all these different words are integrating into our everyday life in a normal way that maybe wasn't normal ten years ago, fifteen years ago. So, I think it's I would liken it to like greenwashing, maybe we'll call it wellness washing, that perhaps there's a lack of understanding of what these words mean. And so maybe I'll explain mindfulness is a meditation.

Ashley Wray: 13:51
You know, you can sit and do a mindful meditation, but it's also a way of being. So, we sit in a formal meditation practice, a mindfulness practice as a meditation, or we live mindfully with present moment awareness through the day. Again, easier said than done. So, I've worked with brands before where they've wanted to integrate mindfulness into their product and market it that way. Mindful this, mindful that, cue whatever verbiage after.

Ashley Wray: 14:15
And I've worked with them on understanding how do we integrate this in a way that is authentic to you and your product. So that requires an investigation and reflection of what are the brand values already inherent within the brand. Because if we go too outside, if we're using words like meditation and mindfulness and your audience, those words don't resonate, that's too big of a leap, that's too big of a stretch. It's not going to land in the way that maybe it will. But oftentimes if it's too abstract, it's hard to wrap your head around and it give the same return or the same effect they're hoping for.

Ashley Wray: 14:51
So, going into companies that often requires what are the brand values? What are the words you would associate with this product? Is one of the values joy? Is it playfulness? Is it slowing down?

Ashley Wray: 15:04
Is it whatever? There's so many words that you can use. So how do we attach mindfulness to a word like joy? What would a synonym be of mindfulness or well-being that's authentic to a word like joy? What about slowing down?

Ashley Wray: 15:19
Well, that's pretty mindful. And how do you associate that to a product that already exists? So, it's using the brand language instead of just dragging and dropping the word mindfulness in, dragging and dropping the word wellness in. What is authentic to that company in this moment that's not going to throw their consumers off or make the consumers wonder why is this happening? Why is this product marketing itself this way?

Ashley Wray: 15:42
Maybe it doesn't align anymore because that word is too outside of my vernacular or I don't resonate with that and this brand anymore. So, it's meant to be a more seamless approach but understanding that that can take so many forms. The word mindfulness and wellness or well-being or meditation, those are quite specific words. Those aren't going to always apply in the exact way that I think we hope they would. Does that make sense?

Laura Jones: 16:06
Absolutely. It's almost like we're using them as a shortcut in a way for deeper understanding, not only of brands, but maybe even sometimes of ourselves, which is why this myth really came about, right? Which is the entire wellness industry is kind of jumping right to that solution of mindfulness and not necessarily actually taking it back a step and saying, I mean, one of the things that I really strive to live my life by is to construct a life where I don't need to feel like I need to escape it. And that was a big shift for me because I am a little bit of a spa junkie. I love a good spa.

Laura Jones: 16:49
I love a good wellness retreat. But there was a shift once I started doing some deeper work where I realized I don't need to get away from this to feel that feeling. I could have that feeling sitting on my favorite spot on the couch. I can have it in my car, on my commute. So many I could have it right now sitting here with you, which I sort of am.

Laura Jones: 17:15
But that was a huge unlock for me. And you mentioned you started your company in 2011. Want to roll back a little bit and touch on that. So, besides all the murder, which I could totally see why you wanted to, you know, get into something else, what was that moment for you, that pivot and that shift that made you start that company?

Ashley Wray: 17:33
Yeah. So, in the moment when I was covering murder trials, I was obsessed with it. I think that I was either the best or worst dinner guest. And this was long before all the murder podcasts and things that became very popular. And I was obsessed with it, not because of murder, but because of what humans are capable of in the best and worst extremes of what our human experience is.

Ashley Wray: 17:58
And so, yes, I much prefer what humans are capable of when it comes to compassion and empathy and loving ourselves and communication. But the business truly started by accident. It started from meeting a woman on an airplane and talking about meditation and how to bring it to the West. And so, we started by making products in meditation, which you don't need anything to meditate, which I was very well aware of. So, there was that like internal battle.

Ashley Wray: 18:25
But it truly was meant to be if this is something that inspires your practice, if this tactical product inspires you to sit or if this inspires self-love, if this inspires tranquility, beautiful, we have it. But you don't need to have it. Maybe not the strongest marketing campaign, but it was honest and it was real. And so that truly sparked a deep exploration for me of what mindfulness meant and what meditation was. Because in 2011 it wasn't talked about in the way that it's talked about now.

Ashley Wray: 18:57
And I felt like it was quite inaccessible. So, when I'm teaching and trying to make it accessible and understandable, it's because I remember being nervous to ask those same questions. I remember thinking, I can't sit there with no thoughts and not move for an hour? Is that what meditation is supposed to be? And so, it became a more playful exploration.

Ashley Wray: 19:17
I spent a lot of time in India, in Nepal, in Bali, in China, and you know around Asia. And from there started learning about meditation and the different forms of meditation. So, most people think I started the business because I was very passionate about meditation, but I started it because of a serendipitous moment and then got into meditation for which I am incredibly grateful. I deeply believe in serendipity. I deeply believe that people can change our life every day.

Ashley Wray: 19:43
And when that company, when I started, why would you do this thing? You're an award-winning journalist. Why would you start this business from meeting this hippie? And then ten years later, how did you know meditation was going to be so big? How did you spot the trends?

Ashley Wray: 19:57
I had no idea. And I think people around us that love us, that want us to win, that want us to succeed, they'll always warn us like, don’t do that thing. Don't do this. Because they care. And I always thought, What's the worst that will happen?

Ashley Wray: 20:09
This will be a unique experience and I'm incredibly grateful for that. But another piece of feedback I often got was, I wish something like that would fall into my lap. And what you don't see is the years of self-doubt, of fear of the unknown, of running a business. I didn't have any entrepreneur friends. I had no idea what I was doing.

Ashley Wray: 20:30
Was very humbling. So, I do find that whole experience almost like a past life now. But I think it helps me to relate to C suite and executives because I ran and scaled a company and I deeply understand and love meditation. By no means did I run a company at the size of the CMOs or C suite that I work with now, but I think the human experience and the human problems are different, maybe just with more zeros and more pressure behind them. But it's the same feelings and thoughts and limiting beliefs that we all share on some level.

Ashley Wray: 21:03
So going from running that business into teaching was very organic as well. And I actually didn't want to teach or be on stages because my practice was for me. I didn't want to be that person on Instagram, you know, pitching meditation, telling everyone that they need to do this. That experience was just for me. And I had a friend say to me, you’re taking trainings around the world.

Ashley Wray: 21:27
That's kind of selfish if you don't have to share just a little bit of that learning. And maybe he was, you know, taking a bit of a jab and I thought maybe there is something there to share it and if people like it, then that's great. They can be on the receiving end. But I never thought this would be the full transition to what I'm doing in this way now. And it truly happened again through serendipity, working at TED Talks, working with speakers before they went on stage, helping them get focused.

Ashley Wray: 21:55
I talk about that a lot now that, you know, that analogy earlier of coming back to yourself again and again helps cultivate focus and clarity. And great leaders have focus and clarity. And that started to roll into working with CMOs. I think CMOs, as I mentioned earlier, really value innovation and creativity. And not saying that they're the most open minded, but in my experience CMOs are so open.

Ashley Wray: 22:22
They're so curious. And I love that value having been a journalist and being really curious and now curious about meditation. So, this whole path I'm still quite in awe of. And I think that another big turning point being Covid made it far more accessible. So, what I do now, I'm not totally sure if it would have been something people would have received pre-Covid.

Ashley Wray: 22:45
But now people really recognize, hey, we do have anxious thoughts, or we do have loneliness or how we practice self-compassion does have an impact. How we lead has an impact. Empathy has an impact. I'm not sure if those words would have resonated talking to a Fortune 100 company five, six, seven years ago. Maybe.

Ashley Wray: 23:07
But now I think people are seeking it openly and outwardly. They're proactively looking for it. And I'm grateful that I can be one of those people that gets to help facilitate that for people.

Laura Jones: 23:19
Absolutely. There's so many interesting and exciting things that just start from a spark of a conversation with someone on an airplane. And I just love that that's how your journey started out. And COVID being one of the big flash points, obviously from a people perspective can definitely see isolation, loneliness, stressing out about job loss, families, sickness, all the things. I'm curious.

Laura Jones: 23:45
You said also it was a point that corporations started wanting these programs for their employees as part of trainings. Why do you think companies started to care?

Ashley Wray: 23:54
Yeah. I think the most direct answer is there's a really high cost to burnout. Companies were losing a lot of money. Losing great leadership also loses momentum in business. And people started realizing not just the cost, but I need to protect my team.

Ashley Wray: 24:14
The people are the most important part of our business. And so now a lot of the work I do, I work primarily with C suite and with leadership to empower them to be more empathetic and compassionate leaders to not just, you know, increase productivity and output because, yeah, of course, that's a big part of it. But how do you get your team flowing in a way where there's trust, where there's strong communication, where there's healthy boundaries? And getting that team in this groove and in this flow. I mean, you know what that feels like to be working in a team that's in flow.

Ashley Wray: 24:45
Oh, my goodness. It's such a great feeling versus a team that's in resistance, in resistance not flowing together, not working together. It's start, stop, start, stop. People are leaving. People have burnout.

Ashley Wray: 24:55
Very different environments. So now when I'm going in, I'll do a lot of executive coaching. We'll do a lot of reflective exercises. And often it's the only time per month that these leaders can zoom out and reflect on how am I leading? Who do I want to be?

Ashley Wray: 25:10
What kind of leader am I? What kind of leader do I want to be? What are my values? Is that shown up in how I lead my team? And it's super it's so beautiful to see people have this opportunity for self-reflection that maybe they wouldn't have realized prior how much I guess I could just say ROI is tied to self-reflection and self-awareness.

Ashley Wray: 25:38
And one of the things I talk about that I spoke about last year and again this year are the three Ps of mindfulness. So, it's not permanent. It's not perfect. It's not personal. And these three areas how we're reflecting on how we lead or how we show up in general whether we are in leadership or not.

Ashley Wray: 25:57
So, things are not perfect and oftentimes we're striving for perfection. And then we can never feel like we can achieve it. We start to judge ourselves. What would it look like if we could just let something go and be okay with it? And where is this striving for perfection bringing us unhappiness or slowing us down or stopping us from moving forward or letting go of something?

Ashley Wray: 26:20
And it's not permanent. That impermanence is real. It's the one thing we have in common with every single person that this is impermanent. So, the bad stuff is impermanent. This too shall pass.

Ashley Wray: 26:30
But the good stuff is impermanent. So how can you enjoy the really great moments? Being in the present moment and realizing, wow this is going to pass. I should be really present or maybe I could bring more joy and awareness into this moment. And it's not personal.

Ashley Wray: 26:46
This is the one I usually emphasize the most is what does our daily life look like when we take things really personally? Because I get it. My life is about me. I'm the center of my universe. And we all kind of think like that whether we want to admit it or not.

Ashley Wray: 27:00
But what does that mean for someone if they're not copied in on an email? They take that personally. What does that mean when they're not invited to a meeting? What does that mean when that budget's cut? What does that mean when that project gets dropped?

Ashley Wray: 27:11
Is that something I've done? What did I do wrong? What's happening here? And that starts to breed a culture of distrust. So how can we relearn that it's not always about ourselves, it's not always about us, but as leaders what is our personal responsibility of how we show up in the room, of how we enter a room.

Ashley Wray: 27:29
Because oftentimes people take our energy, our communication, personally and make it about themselves. So, it's a really beautiful exercise in self-reflection for leaders. Who do I want to be? How do I show up? What am I in control of?

Ashley Wray: 27:43
Not really in control a lot. We're in control of how we show up, how we manage our energy, how we respond, not react. So, there's so many beautiful tools that are applicable to both business and everyday life. It's not like we stop being one person at 05:00 or whatever time we finish work, and we turn into a different person. Those values and the way we communicate, the way we think are woven through every moment.

Ashley Wray: 28:06
So, this reflection and this work is quite a holistic approach. And what I'm seeing is it takes time. So that Jim analogy earlier, it takes time and that question of when's it going to kick in. Oftentimes people will reach out, Hey Ashley, I didn't fire back that email that I would have done six months ago or I didn't react this way in a conversation. Or I took a moment and paused before I said something.

Ashley Wray: 28:34
Or I grounded myself and centered myself before a really difficult conversation. That's all these little micro moments. Something you spoke about earlier of I want to go on retreats, go to the spa. How do we integrate that mindfulness and that awareness every day? Well, it can be these little moments.

Ashley Wray: 28:53
You know, when I tell companies what I do, they're like, so are you going to teach us yoga for a weekend? I'm like, No. How do you integrate it really in these baby steps through the day where then that becomes the culture? Much like we were talking about with marketing, how we don't want the pendulum to swing from non-mindfulness to over-the-top mindfulness, right, in a branding perspective. We don't want our culture to be this black and white culture of nonalcoholic communication to we're going to sit and hold hands and meditate every day.

Ashley Wray: 29:23
We don't need to do this. We need to figure out what's our middle ground. So maybe that means in a cultural shift everything I just mentioned can we respond, not react? And having a conversation about that as a team. What do boundaries look like as a team?

Ashley Wray: 29:37
What communication style do we have? So, it's these really beautiful micro moments microdosing mindfulness in this way where maybe, you know, one of the companies I work with has five-minute intervals between meetings. You're only allowed to book a meeting until five to, because that gives people a five-minute break to reflect and decompress before the next meeting. How often are people on Zoom call after Zoom call after Zoom call? I have to get it all in.

Ashley Wray: 30:03
I have to get it all in. And we take it so seriously and it's all so urgent. It can just be two minutes. It can be three minutes. It doesn't have to be twenty minutes.

Ashley Wray: 30:13
It doesn't have to be a full weekend retreat. We want to be able to integrate it in our daily life. And that's when we start to see the changes happen naturally over a period of time.

Laura Jones: 30:23
Microdosing mindfulness. I think that you're on to something. And I loved how you mentioned what I have come to call them affectionately as the three P's because I remember hearing that for the first time. It's not personal. It's not perfect, and it's not permanent.

Laura Jones: 30:42
It's so simple, and it is so beautiful, and it's so hard to practice. But I think that fourth P is probably practice. And that's why they call meditation a practice. Okay, so you've mentioned how you work with corporations. That makes a ton of sense.

Laura Jones: 30:59
Getting teams into flow, helping businesses be more profitable. When people are happy, people make money. You mentioned you work with sports teams, too. How does what you're doing in the corporate world translate to your work with sports teams and athletes?

Ashley Wray: 31:12
Yeah, I find this bridge between corporate and sport so interesting and so beautiful that in corporate, what would it look like if more leaders practiced compassion and empathy and how could that change companies and change people and change the world. And in sport, they are still businesses. They are still companies. That same notion applies. But specific with athletes and peak performance, which I think companies are also very curious about, is how do I get to this place of peak performance?

Ashley Wray: 31:41
So often athletes talk about being in the state of flow, so a hitting flow state, where time expands, maybe it slows down. And we can only get to that flow state by practicing present moment awareness. So, when I'm teaching people meditation or mindfulness, coming back to ourselves again and again, when we're in that present moment everything else is able to melt away. And as a leader I talked about focus and clarity being so important and being in that present moment allows us to find that focus and that clarity. So very similar in sport and in corporate.

Ashley Wray: 32:16
What I find so curious is they're both interested in what the other is doing. The athletes and the sports teams want to know what the big successful companies are doing. The companies want to what the athletes are doing. And it's all bridged together with that self-awareness, with mindfulness, and practicing presence.

Laura Jones: 32:33
Okay, Ashley, I'm going back to something you said, which was your friend. Your friend poked you and said, it’s selfish if you don't share this with the world. And I feel like it's selfish if I don't share your practice and your voice with the world from a meditation. So, if you would be so kind just before we wrap our party, maybe you can just take our audience through what it's like to do a one-minute meditation with Ashley Ray.

Ashley Wray: 33:00
Oh, I'd be honored.

Laura Jones: 33:01
And I'm going to meditate with you.

Ashley Wray: 33:02
Okay, beautiful. We'll keep it really short. We'll just go from head to toe and do a little bit of breathing. Okay, we will begin. So, find a comfortable seat.

Ashley Wray: 33:11
If you're sitting in a chair and you're able to put your feet on the ground, can do so. You put your hands resting in your lap in whatever way feels comfortable for you. Here you're rolling your shoulders back, rolling out your neck, and you can choose to close your eyes if you feel comfortable, or you can hold a soft gaze just in front of you. And just taking a moment here, just noticing your breath. And there's no need to manipulate your breath, just noticing.

Ashley Wray: 33:50
And maybe then noticing you become aware that your breath is starting to slow, and maybe your thoughts begin to slow. And we'll soften in from head to toe, starting by relaxing the space between our eyebrows, unclenching our jaw, noticing that our spine is straight, but the body is softened and relaxed. Maybe taking a breath into your heart center, sending yourself a little bit of gratitude for taking a moment for yourself. And a breath into your lower belly, into your hips, your knees, your ankles, your feet. And for these few final moments, allowing yourself to be truly supported in your seat, to really relax into whatever position you're in.

Ashley Wray: 35:44
And maybe deepening the breath for a few final breaths here, coming back. When you feel ready, can open your eyes, look around the room, see if anything looks different, feels different.

Laura Jones: 36:05
What a gift. Any final thoughts, Ashley, for our audience before we end the party?

Ashley Wray: 36:11
Yeah. Beautiful, thank you. I would say anyone that is interested in this or starting a practice, there's three things I usually suggest. So, if you're going to start meditating, one, I would say tie it to a habit that you've already built makes it a lot easier than building a new habit. So, for me, you know, making a French press in the morning that signifies sitting down and doing meditation.

Ashley Wray: 36:31
So that's really easy. We don't have to build new habit. The next is starting really small. We mentioned this earlier, those micro moments. It can be a two-minute meditation, five minutes, eight minutes and building your way up.

Ashley Wray: 36:43
And the third is when you miss a day because you will, because we're human, to practice self-compassion and be kind to yourself. I think that that is a beautiful overarching theme of practicing self-compassion through all of this.

Laura Jones: 36:58
Ashley, you are a true gift. This has been probably one of my most favorite parties ever. And I really want to thank you for joining. And I'm going to leave everyone with my final thought, which is what if all the voices in our heads are just opinions? Feelings aren't facts.

Laura Jones: 37:19
And it's really good to remind ourselves of that and bring us back to center. That bicycle wheel, I'm going to take that with me. So, thank you.

Ashley Wray: 37:26
Thank you.

Laura Jones: 37:27
That's all the time we have for Opinion Party. If you want more information about Ashley or any tips on meditation, we'll leave it in the show notes. As always, everyone's invited to the Opinion Party, so like, share, subscribe, and comment. Oh, and I'd probably bookmark this one too because that meditation was so, so good. I'm going to keep coming back to that one.

Laura Jones: 37:48
See you soon.