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About 10 years ago in 2009, I spent about 10 weeks in Cape Town, South Africa. As part of my MBA program at the Kellogg School of Management, I went to do a study-abroad program at the University of Cape Town. My initial intention of that study-abroad was simply to ESCAPE from the excruciatingly cold winter of Chicago to the warm weather of Southern hemisphere.
My life was pretty simple and amazing in Cape Town. I took a couple of classes in the morning and went to the beach or explore the Cape Town for the rest of the day. On the weekends, I’d go explore the beautiful nature of the areas around Cape Town. Looking back, that 10 weeks in Cape Town was full of many “first” experiences. One of them was my very first encounter with mindfulness in the most unexpected way.
One of the classes I took at the Graduate School of Management in UCT (University of Cape Town) was about leadership, taught by Professor Kurt April. I went with a very typical expectation for any leadership classes you could sign up in business schools, only to be surprised by class after class. Earlier in the course, the professor brought in an instructor instead of a lecture. This instructor gave us three pieces of raisins each and asked us to “experience” the raisins using all our senses by seeing them carefully, smelling them, tasting them, touching them, etc. Everybody in the classroom had the look of “What…
