Using Mindfulness To Navigate Uncertainty In Business

Ketan Gajjar: Hi there. Good afternoon. Kem Cho from Apnu Amdavad . Welcome to the Recruitment Curry Show. We live in a fast pace environment, and we are especially on 24 7. So today we are gonna be talking about using mindfulness to navigate uncertainty in business. Welcome to our show Ketan Dattani.

Ketan, good afternoon from Amdavad . 

Ketan Dattani: Good afternoon. Thank you for having me. 

Ketan Gajjar: Oh, it’s a pleasure. So Ketan, you obviously you are someone who practices mindfulness and then obviously you work out regularly, you attend so many events and then obviously you manage a recruitment business.

How it is, you’re switched on 24 seven. And today we want to hear from you, your thoughts on starting with, what is mindfulness? 

Ketan Dattani: Sure. So mindfulness, it’s, it is personal and it means different things to different people. For me personally, it’s being aware of the present moment, being aware of my surroundings and actually being fully engaged in the now.

And I use mindfulness to create certainty in my life and clear the noise and actually focus on the task at hand. Don’t try and look too much forward. I certainly don’t look back unless I’m looking at the lessons that have been learned. So I incorporate it into my, as I say, into my daily life.

And I, and throughout the day and people aren’t even aware that I’m doing breathing techniques, et cetera. So it’s something that’s very personal, but it keeps you in the now and keeps you focused on what’s present. It also allows you to adapt very quickly to change. It creates a mental agility.

And it just, I remain calm in all situations because of the mindfulness that I practice. 

Ketan Gajjar: Totally. Of course it starts with being, or being self aware. And then one thing that, that I you know, learned from reading it and, practicing it a bit is being self aware and then, focusing on on your life, especially starting with breathing.

Like you mentioned that, just as if you want to live in the moment, focus on your [00:02:00] breath. Breathe and breathe out. 

Ketan Dattani: Totally. So I, yeah, just to get into the zone, I take three deep breaths and I’m fully focused on the breath going in and the breath going out. Ideally, I take the breath in for the for the nose and then out through the mouth and as long as possible.

And then it gets you into the zone of, it completely puts you in the, not in the moment. And you remind yourself, what’s happening now, rather than you say that it just gives you a more sort of a proactive approach react rather than as opposed to reactive. 

Ketan Gajjar: Exactly. And, especially in, in, in business and lives, we either, very well connected to the past or always end up thinking about tomorrow or the future.

Take care. Which ultimately leads to anxiety. I’m sure, a lot of us go through this especially when working in recruiting and then, you put forward the candidates for the interviews or, will they answer my call? Will they not, will they turn up for the interviews? Will they not?

And then, you have to remind yourself that I can do things which are in my control and starting with being self aware 

Ketan Dattani: completely. There’s not just in business just in life in general, it reduces stress, it, it increases your productivity, being mindful and actually spending even in times of stress, taking a couple of minutes out and grounding yourself and re, rethinking situations, it just increases productive.

And it just gives you, you make better decisions, right? Rather than rush decisions. And what I tend to do, if it’s something I’m unsure of, I’ll write it down or I’ll leave it in drafts and revert back to it after I’ve done mindfulness. And quite often, my response will be different after I’ve practiced mindfulness.

Then I don’t actually send something. If I’m unsure and I go within and reassess and how would I be if I was a recipient of that? How would I take it? Because sometimes messages can be misconstrued over email as opposed to verbally or in person So again, I use it as I say Equally importantly, it increases patience as well.

As a father of four I have to be patient. My, my life is full on both at work in the office and at home. And most importantly, as a result of mindfulness, it gives you a better sleep. I sleep very well for seven hours, unbroken. And I, I meditate just before I go to sleep, do some breathing exercises.

First thing I wake up in the morning, I may do a bit of journaling before I start exercising. So it’s just incorporated into my day. And when I first started practicing mindfulness about five years ago, prior to that, if someone told me about the stuff I was doing now, I would have thought they were crazy in all honesty, because it doesn’t, it, it sounds nuts really.

Until you start practicing. And I almost forced myself to incorporate it into my life. Now I don’t know how I could do without it. It just elevates me in all areas and I’m just constantly looking for to either learn or to add value and in all situations and it’s due to mindfulness that I have that and I don’t react or certainly I don’t make wrong decisions or quick decisions for the wrong reasons. 

Thanks again to mindfulness. 

Ketan Gajjar: Totally. I don’t, you mentioned a very important point there in terms of reacting to situations or, you’ll receive an email then, you have this urge to react. And then one thing that I’ve learned through mindfulness is acceptance of the situation, as is that, it has happened.

There are things that you can do, which are in your control. And a lot of times we have this urge to give it back that, Oh, I’m going to do this right now and I’m going to react. So one thing that, that, I’ve learned from mindfulness is, accepting the situation.

Taking a step back, breathe in, draft your email, put it in the drafts and then, review it or, take the action later on when you’re in the right frame of mind, you don’t want an eject reaction. And that’s, I think one of the biggest benefits of mindfulness. And then you highlighted that five years back, if somebody told you, you’d laugh and you, you accepted this.

And then, because the clear benefits that you outlined, one is a sound sleep. 

Ketan Dattani: Most definitely. And also I was practicing more during the lockdown because just because of the uncertainty that was happening, the whole moving business to, to, to the virtual Everything was alien, no one knew how to react and just doom and gloom everywhere around me.

And I really I’m very lucky. So I live on directly behind a golf course. So the golf course was closed and I spent a lot of time myself, my children, my dog. My wife, we spent a lot of time, there’s lakes there, it’s going up onto the sort of hilly area and just spending time with myself and really analyzing life, analyzing my business, analyzing what, what I want to do with the future, how I can break it down and do compartmentalize things and how I will meander through the uncertainty that all of us were facing.

Ketan Gajjar: And that’s another great point you highlighted is, we spent a lot of time. In the outer world thinking about what’s happening online or, scrolling through our timelines, on, on different platforms. Again, the another thing that mindfulness teaches is, look inward, spend time with yourself on your own, in nature wherever possible, give some time on an average day, for yourself be it by walking, running, walking out, meditating.

There are so many modes of mindfulness. And it directly leads to, the most important factor that you mentioned is a sound sleep because all people these days, the struggle, obviously sleeping because of lots of thoughts going in the background. So the biggest benefit that I have experienced is a sound sleep.

And it needs a lot of work to be done. And, you mentioned about working out how do you dedicate your time towards mindfulness, working out, meditating, all those things. So how can, one integrate mindfulness in daily lives? 

Ketan Dattani: So look, there’s going to be trade offs, right?

So in 2017, I actually stopped watching TV. During lockdown, myself and my wife, we watched a couple of box sets, but barring that, I don’t watch TV. I will spend that. It was a trade off. And in fact, my, everything that I see on TV, specifically the news, was just negative. It was just for negative images, negativity, negative.

And you actually feel completely lost. You feel more hopeless rather than it wasn’t positive, right? So that’s worth that. So I’ve got that extra two, two and a half, three hours a day where I sat on the sofa watching TV. I’ve got that time now. Once the children are in bed, I’ve got me time and also I start my day very early.

So I wake up around my alarm is set for 5 a. m. every morning, but about 4. 40, my body clock will get me up. Even then, first thing I’ll do some breathing exercises. I think to myself, four things I’m grateful for that happened yesterday. Then Again, all this stuff I’m telling you if you’d have told me I would be doing this a few years ago, I would have really laughed at you.

But then I now, have a cold shower, a completely cold shower, walk my dog go to the gym and I’m back home about, about, about sort of five minutes later. quarter past seven in the morning, which is my wife’s already got the children up. Then we’ll help get them ready school drop. And then I go to the office.

So it doesn’t even infringe on my day, my exercise, my mindfulness. And throughout the day as well, I do breathing exercise. I’ll be in the office and I’ll do some breathing exercises. And those around me wouldn’t even be aware unless they asked me. And I’ll certainly share because I feel that, anything I’m learning, By me telling you, I’m actually from a selfish point of view.

I’m learning twice, aren’t I? So I’m still on a journey, and I feel the more I learn about for mindfulness, there’s more to learn, so it’s and the more I practice it, the more there is to learn. And the more I practice it, the more benefits there are in my life. Not just in business, but also spiritually, emotionally, family, relationship, everything like this, all areas I benefit from.

And it takes very little of my time every day, right? It’s just being fixed and it takes me away from procrastination. I used to procrastinate a lot. You mentioned about scrolling. There were times I used to scroll and scroll. It  would be 2, 3 o’clock in the morning. And I’m looking at funny cat videos and I’m, like it was just totally pointless crawling and you’d wake up tired, you’d wake up groggy, you’d be unproductive and again, mindfulness completely alleviates all of that time wasting.

For me personally, 

Ketan Gajjar: yeah, and then, you covered about trade offs. The biggest trade off is that, you make yourself a priority. And then that’s the starting point. Because the more you look at the outer world, about who’s doing what, or, what’s happening out there.

Less of the time that you have for yourself. And, irrespective of what part of the day, you incorporate this into, morning, afternoon, evening there’s always time. If you’ve got time to do something else and then you always got that half an hour, you don’t need a lot of time.

You start with, walking, running, breathing, whatever works for you. And then, 

Ketan Dattani: You don’t even need half an hour. You could do it for five minutes. It’s really, you could, everyone can incorporate. And that’s what I would propose. If someone’s new to mindfulness, actually do it for a very short period of time.

Just allow yourself to be in your thoughts and focus. And when you first start doing it, your mind will be rushing here, there and everywhere, right? So it’s just bringing yourself back and focusing on your breath. And and really, honestly, it could take five minutes. And that five minutes makes the whole day go better.

And I would urge everyone to even try it. Just to see how it is. And it’s simple as focusing on your breath, four seconds in, four seconds out, try and do that three, four times. And it just changes your whole your sort of mindset. They’re all also exercises I do in terms of mindfulness, but to start with, yeah, it’s just focusing on your breathing.

Sorry.

Ketan Gajjar: You work out and obviously you lift weights as well. Do you think mindfulness and lifting is interconnected and it improves your focus as well? In your day to day life. 

Ketan Dattani: Healthy mind, healthy body, right? So it’s all part of, you’ve got to look off the, for me it’s again, an integral part of my life and I don’t just do a lot of cardio as well swimming running, cycling, but even during that time, I could be listening to podcasts.

I could be listening to mindfulness stuff and it, it is integrated. It is actually, it’s. It’s all part of the same thing. It’s not it’s not two separate entities, my mindfulness and my exercise, they go hand in hand. I got to look after my mind. I got to look after my spirituality and I got to look after my body.

And as you alluded to a bit earlier it’s there’s so many so much stuff going on in the world and social media will give you a picture of the world. That’s picture perfect. And you will look at your own life and start analysing and thinking why don’t I have that? Why aren’t I doing this?

And why is he got this or she’s got this or why aren’t my children like that? It’s about ultimately mindfulness is looking at yourself from inward and also competing against yourself and listening to your inner voice and your inner critique and also bettering yourself every day. So it could be more incremental, basically, tomorrow you want to be a better person than you are today, whether it be meditation, spirituality, mindfulness, helping others, whatever it is, adding more value, small incremental gains.

lead to huge gains over a long period of time, right? So I am my competition. You are your competition. And exactly tomorrow than you are today, you’re winning. 

Ketan Gajjar: Totally. Totally. And the bottom line is, you want to be focused. whatever part of life you are, personal or business, that you want to enhance and then everything starts with, starting being self aware, accepting the situation.

And then the biggest thing that I’ve also observed is being patient with the results because, it is on a slow burner. You invest in mindfulness today, invest in it. That is yourself, your time. And if you’re going to expect a stock change. tomorrow or in a week I think you’re accepting too much.

You’re expecting too much from from that. 

Ketan Dattani: Your mind is a muscle just like the gym, right? So if you go and do a session in the gym, you’re not going to be ripped in a day, are you? So it’s a long game. 

Ketan Gajjar: It is a long game. You have to be patient with the result and, at the end of the day, trust the process.

Doing it for four days and then, thank you. It’s not working out for me. Let me just try something else. 

Ketan Dattani: Yeah, absolutely. You’ve got to trust the process. You’ve got to trust the universe and sometimes you have to learn to get out of your own way. Don’t hinder yourself. 

Ketan Gajjar: Oh, yeah.

Yeah. And then I’m sure we are all you know, what’s predicts of ourselves compared to anybody else and then which is where the self doubt. And then imposter syndromes, lots of other things come up as well. And then that’s where you start practicing, like you mentioned, even journaling is a form of, mindfulness, you are actually putting out your thoughts.

Ketan Dattani: You put it down on pen to paper. Yeah, indeed. In general, I journal so many aspects of my life. It may look like gibberish, but I revert back to it sometimes periodically just to see how far I’ve come and what changes I’ve made and what changes I can make moving forward. But yeah, it really helps me. And again, it’s something I was, would have a year and a half ago would have thought is a bit odd to write down your thoughts and stuff like that.

It wasn’t very I’m a business owner and I need to keep things inside and, it’s really they’re just putting things in paper, then compartment to breaking it down into sizable chunks, mini goals. And it’s all part of mindfulness. Absolutely. And 

Ketan Gajjar: I think, the other important point that you just mentioned was, I’m a business owner and should I be journaling?

Should I be putting down my thoughts on paper? Because, it’s oh, I have a team to lead and I’ve got a business to manage. Is it childish? Is it? Something that a business owner would do do whatever works for you. I would say, 

Ketan Dattani: absolutely. So me personally, like I, I, I’ve never journaled before.

And in fact, in the UK, there was, I remember in school, there was a, there was the secret diary of Adrian mole or something. And this was a guy that was journaling his life through school. I’m talking probably in the late seventies, early eighties. And that was my only kind of, exposure to someone journaling and that was my negative connotation of journaling because I don’t know if, do you remember Adrian Moe? 

Do you remember that secret diary of Adrian Moe? 

Ketan Gajjar: No. 

Ketan Dattani: But basically, so that, that’s what I thought journaling was, right? writing down your thoughts on what you’re going through. And then it was a book. So you’d read this guy’s day to day life. And I thought that was what journaling, journaling is a lot more than that.

I do graphs. Journaling could be, you could even write, do coloring, word searches, things that take your mind away from what’s happening in business. And then when you go back to what’s happening in business. So even on my lunch breaks, I would do Sudokus and crosswords. This is all for me, part of mindfulness.

Ketan Gajjar: Yep. You want to detach as much as possible and, come back to reality as well. And again, we were talking about we passed now early on and, before the LinkedIn live. And then, I was only there for five days, but it’s intense. And what you’re taught is just as to focus on yourself and then be self aware life is changing every fraction of second.

And then the most important thing that that you learn out of it is that this tool shall pass. Absolutely. So you have to 

Ketan Dattani: assess, is life happening to you or is it happening for you? 

Ketan Gajjar: Yeah, exactly. And you want to make sure that, you live in the present as much as possible.

And the technique is to, for me, it was, focusing on the breath like you mentioned as well. For someone else it’s something else, maybe you spend an hour walking in the woods or, you lift weights or you run, but whatever works for you. But detached from what you’re doing from doom scrolling and then just, 

Ketan Dattani: sorry.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And then if you take, cause sometimes I used to think look, if I take 30 minutes out. I’m wasting 30 minutes of time that I could be doing business development or other stuff, but that 30 minutes that I take out makes the next three hours. I could do what I would have done in, I could do in three hours what I would have done in six hours.

It makes me far more productive. 

Ketan Gajjar: It goes back to that story of sharpening the X, do you want to spend, cutting the tree for eight hours or sharpen the X for, whatever, three hours and cut the tree in half an hour? And then, I 

Ketan Dattani: love the analogy.

Yeah. 

Ketan Gajjar: That’s how it is. And then the biggest part is, being, self compassionate again, start with yourself. And then, because we spend all our time, in the outer world, when obviously we should be thinking about ourselves ranging from the, it affects the mental health at the day, because, if you are distracted throughout the day if an end, obviously that leads to procrastination and then you think that, oh, I’m not doing enough because I’m distracted and because you’re distracted, you’re not doing enough.

And then at the end of the day or end of the month, when you review that, whatever has transpired and you haven’t got those results, it affects your sleep day in, day out. So it’s a downward spiral. So at the day, use mindfulness to, to your benefit, start with five minutes and then increase it from there on and whichever form that you want to, isn’t it?

Ketan Dattani: Absolutely. And you could do it at any time, you could do it. First thing, when you wake up, you could do it as you’re going to sleep. You could do it when you’re commuting. It’s something personal. that you could do. And it could, as you said, be as simple as a walk and walk in the park, going to, just taking regular time out from what you’re doing just makes you more productive.

And it is very personal. And it is something that you can do that won’t encroach on your day or actually take up much time at all. And as I say, look, commuting is a perfect time to practice mindfulness. 

Ketan Gajjar: Absolutely. Then, especially when you talk about business one factor I’ve seen it impacting is your temperament.

Like you mentioned responding to emails or, it helps you refrain from knee jerk reactions. You’re still very much controlled, very much. And you’re just settling in. And then when you’re responding to those situations, you’ve got better relationships with your with your colleagues, with your superiors, with your clients.

Ketan Dattani: Absolutely. Mindfulness for me, it’s made me not just like a better business owner, but it’s made me a better parent, a better son, a better family member, a better member of society, just better. Genuinely. I’m, I am trying to be the best version of myself. I’m not even trying it’s I’m a better version of myself than I used to be.

There’s lots of room for improvement. But mindfulness for me has actually made me, get to, if you look at the analogy, the top of a mountain is the bottom of another mountain, right? But I have, I reached certain milestones that I never thought I would. But now I’m, I’ve reached them. That doesn’t mean I’ve become complacent and I think, I’ve made it or whatever. There’s bigger goals that I weren’t even, I wasn’t even aware of previously. And mindfulness is all part of that process that makes me see things differently, makes me more composed, makes me far less reactive, and rather than knee jerk reactions as you said earlier I think through my response, I also try and.

look at it from the other person’s perspective. And why did this happen? Or, what would they want? If I was in that situation, what response would I want? Or what value can I add? If any situation, it just makes me more analytical. And I look for the best outcome for everyone involved.

Ketan Gajjar: You being composed is I think one of the biggest benefits that you highlighted and then, it leads to, compassion for yourself and, for somebody else as well. And then, directly leads to being more empathetic towards others, putting yourself in their shoes.

When responding to the situations and there’s always room for improvement, like you mentioned. So I think mindfulness has way more benefits just beyond business. Basically, if you were to sum up, it is improved relationships with yourself and others around you, isn’t it?

Ketan Dattani: Absolutely. Absolutely. And I have some sort of it’s not only that it’s just it almost gives you the, you identify potentially situations before they even occurred. You can, with free mindfulness, you can actually see the signs that this is going to happen and actually preempt it and act accordingly.

Um, your thought processes, the solutions you come up with are certainly better. You evaluate things far more ethically. rather than again, like I said, like you said before knee jerk reaction. And it just makes you, it helps me to remain composed in all situations.

And not even get too excited about the wins and not get dismayed by the losses because they’re not really losses. It’s just that these are things that you can learn from and how can you do things different. And you obviously you have to, there will be trade offs as you progress in the mindfulness journey.

Certain people will. may not understand what you’re going through. But overall, if it’s making you a better person, then it’s fully beneficial, isn’t it? And it alleviates stress. That’s the main thing. I used to be very, I used to get stressed out about the littlest things. I’m really stressed out and it would affect, I’d be rat snappy, I’d be ratty I couldn’t sleep because I’d be replaying things in my mind and all this type of thing.

And mindfulness is completely, even just telling you about it, it’s like, It’s a distant memory. Now, the way I used to react to things, it’s was that even me? 

Ketan Gajjar: It just started accepting the situation and and then, things start working out for you because you don’t react. And then, if you go back to all the situations, when I say, obviously all of us is I’m sure, there were instances in our lives where we think that, Oh, if I hadn’t reacted in a certain way, Things could have been different and this is, ranging from friendships to professional relationships, everything.

Ketan Dattani: Absolutely. Absolutely. And some, and opportunities where you may have not seen them before as well. So it’s not just having a different reaction, but actually preempting opportunities. 

Ketan Gajjar: Because you’re looking at it in a different way, not, you’re not looking at it like this, because you’re calm and composed, you’ve got a better view of life than in situations that define, what’s not what’s in front of me, what’s probably a hundred feet away.

And so you have a different perspective of life, which you covered. So I think to sum it up you would say that it helps you become a better person, in all factors of life. 

Ketan Dattani: 100 percent 100 percent and we mainly spoke about breathing, but there’s a there’s another thing that I do and I do quite often is that I take a sheet of paper divided into three and then I write down how things are now in the business, how things I want them to be.

And I give myself either a 123 or five year If Sort of challenges and I’ll group them into what how long I want to achieve that within and then the middle section I will then add the dots And this is really my food. And, and it’s time you spend to yourself and it’s actually enjoying solitude, and making that time because life’s a busy, this for me, a home’s busy, my extended family, business do a lot of networking and I do attend a lot of events, et cetera. So it’s just finding these windows of time where I can spend time on myself, time on my business. And actually the answers are all within, if you, most of the answers that people try and seek or validation from outside.

You really need to start seeking validation from inside and actually listening to what’s been said to you what you’re telling yourself, and then, and also with the other thing, we’re talking about breathing. Just beyond that, if people progress beyond the breathing, it’s actually just relaxing, not just your eyes, but relaxing your shoulders, generally just, but you could be sat at your desk.

Nobody even would be, you may not be speaking for two, three minutes, but other than that, nobody would be none the wiser that you’ve actually completely realigned yourself. And then you go back at it again. And periodically. 

Ketan Gajjar: Totally. No, it definitely works. Even, breathing in, breathing out.

minutes brings you back in focus self aware that we are all more mortal beings. And now is the time not yesterday, not tomorrow. It is now. So, some wonderful tips there, ranging from, obviously helping with being self aware, composed improving relationships.

And at the end of the day start small and then, be patient and then go forth. 

Ketan Dattani: Absolutely. The mind is a muscle. Remember that. So you can’t, it’s you go into the gym once and expect it to look like almost Schwarzenegger. It’s not going to happen. 

Ketan Gajjar: Yeah, 

Ketan Dattani: definitely.

Definitely. 

Ketan Gajjar: So Ketan, really nice having you on the Recruitment Curry Show from Ahmedabad. 

Ketan Dattani: And it’s nice to speak to someone with the same name as me. I don’t think I actually know, I don’t know how to get them. So we’re talking within recruitment. What are the coincidences? Absolutely. so much. Keep inspiring.

Keep, keep up the great work. Keep doing what you’re doing and yeah, keep inspiring. 

Ketan Gajjar: Thanks. Thanks once again, Ketan. Really wonderful having you here. Cheers. Thank you.