One Encounter, One Opportunity. Make service meaningful. Be Your customer's hero.

Practice: Give. Take. Transform.

This is a short guided practice that I consider to be martial arts training for emotional resilience. Exercise attention and feeling capacity as though it’s a muscle.

We continue to explore the learnability of service and the (perhaps unexpected) methods you can you to develop the service mindset.

Service is natural and yet every aspect of it is learnable. Understand the mindset that assures success, growth and fulfillment in service.

My quest to understand the state of mind that leads to a love of service is fed by questions like this… What does it consist of? Where does draw its energy from? How can it be acquired by others? What makes it resilient? What disrupts it? What kinds of mental conditioning prevent someone’s receptivity to it? […]

This superpower will allow you to resonate with and skillfully communicate with others. It does this by changing how you habitually respond to people when they are “being difficult”. Develop emotional intelligence, resilience, compassion, understanding, and even joy in the face of your greatest interpersonal challenges.

What happens when you collect information openly, fearlessly – and with the beginner’s mind.

Mindful leadership coach and service champion Clifton Carmody tells us what happens when you shake off fear-based management styles that and tap into the possibility and profitability of conscious business principles in the service sector. We also reveal important strategies for service professionals that have been locked out of their sectors by COVID and are struggling to find work (hint: it has to do with the power and universality of service).

Strategy and quick practice to consistently drop into greater self-awareness throughout the day – have more calm, focus and authority over your emotions throughout the day. This is basically the essentials of mindfulness packed into 10 minutes or so.

Why are beautifully-recovered service experiences often considered the best ones? Because service isn’t technical, it’s emotional. Learn how to recover well and use disasters to build customer loyalty and happiness in surprising ways.

Originally published here for the Institute for Organizational Mindfulness. All service roles require trust, but not in the way you might think. It’s the kind of trust that keeps you both emotionally clean and connected to the true value of your work. In dealing with customers and clients, you can bring your best, most professional, […]

A game-changing in-the-moment mindfulness practice that will allow us to meet the reactions we have with the kindness and support of a good friend.

A guided practice that will set up your service mindset to meet the challenges of work and life with more energy, patience and capability.

Originally published here for the Institute of Organizational Mindfulness (IOM). For both your own fulfillment, and the people you serve, what’s a better service trait than the love of making others happy? Well, the first mistake you can make with this is a tendency towards “outcome-orientation”: the frustration from things not turning out how you […]

Learn how our self-sacrificing tendencies can ultimately compromise our service game. This episode hopes to disrupt the myth that good service somehow needs to involve a constant outward flow of our energy into “helping” others. Bring care to yourself that truly fills your service tank – starting from the moment you open your eyes.

Originally published here for the Institute of Organizational Mindfulness. “Never let ‘em see you sweat.” I have very distinct memories of one of my mentors telling me this and urging me to laugh at myself more. Thanks to a terrifying combination of clumsiness and perfectionism, I was a young service professional that was prone to […]

The Celebration Mindset Pt. 1 – Taking Resilience to the Next Level

Originally published here for the Institute of Organizational Mindfulness. A true person of service lives and works in constant readiness for celebration. I can see this principal getting misinterpreted by my former bar and restaurant colleagues as something to the effect of bartenders doing shots with the clientele. But you’re onto something here: real success […]

The Best Way To Handle Mistakes in Service? Be Your Own Yoda

Originally published here for the Institute of Organizational Mindfulness. Service is full of mistakes. You’re dealing with endless highly-individual needs, unpredictable particularities, a minefield of emotional triggers that clients will readily punish you for ever-so-slightly feathering an insecurity of theirs. You’re also juggling technical demands and chances are you have the precision of a flesh […]

The Power of Asking “What is this really costing me?”

Originally published here for the Institute of Organizational Mindfulness. No service professional likes being run around. We retrace the same task for people who asked for one thing but needed another, we get absorbed by the endless questions of anxious clientele that aren’t even willing to listen to the answers. We carry the water of […]

Mindful Sales is Service At The Same Time

Originally published here for the Institute of Organizational Mindfulness. Having worked in the restaurant industry for most of my professional life, I’ve taken for granted how unusual it is. Even though its product has a certain universality to it (facilitating some of the most fundamental human needs like food, comfort, and social connection), there are […]

When You’re Selling Transformation, You’re Serving

Originally published here for the Institute of Organizational Mindfulness. Many that find success and fulfillment in the sales role probably know that they are doing a lot more than selling. On its own, the word “sales” mainly implies a simple monetary exchange: provide a product/service to a customer in exchange for money. What makes that […]

Heroic Acts of Service

Originally published here for the Institute of Organizational Mindfulness. Periods of great difficulty are always a great time to reflect on what service means to us and the ideas we may have accumulated about it that may need to be revisited. I’m thinking back to an inspiring discussion I recently had with restaurant-owner Albert Bitton […]

Good service requires the people serving to feel valued, engaged and, well, like dignified human beings. And to always have opportunities to practice service on each other. This is a very important discussion with service coach and author Neal Woodson. Service professionals looking to bring more mindfulness and inspiration to their work and leaders that want to elevate their team’s culture and effectiveness are sure to gain a lot from his wisdom.

Principles To Re-Inspire How We Approach Modern Service

Originally published here for the Institute of Organizational Mindfulness. Ichi-go Ichi-e is a Japanese parable translating to One Encounter, One Opportunity. It’s become the slogan of the practice of tea ceremony, which for many Asian cultures is the quintessential means of practicing mindfulness through action. It reveals how doing a simple daily ritual with […]

Customer Service Rockstars Make Friends with Repetitive Tasks

Originally published here for the Institute of Organizational Mindfulness. A new job or role might start out as a love affair. But so often after the first few months, it loses its lustre. We begin to feel deadened by the repetition of seemingly menial tasks. Why does repetition do this and can we change […]

Helping Difficult Customers With Non-Attachment and Compassion

Originally published here for the Institute of Organizational Mindfulness. Start paying close attention to how you serve, and you may notice things that you don’t like so much – like how little other people pay attention. It’s easy to get frustrated, which is why two other skills are key ingredients here: Try Some Non-Attachment: […]

Mindful Service Is An Inside-Out Game

Originally published here for the Institute of Organizational Mindfulness. Expand Your Communication Skills Have you ever gone to eat somewhere and everything is “perfect”? The person serving you recommends a wine pairing with a sniper’s precision. It arrives with surgically-executed food, both of which are timed like a Swiss monorail. And yet the experience was […]

Originally published here for the Institute of Organizational Mindfulness. Charity work is so attractive because of how gratifying it feels to help people who truly need it. The problem with most of the service contexts we face in our professional lives is that we’re not necessarily helping people who seem to “need” it. And sometimes […]

Think you love “making people happy”? Well, that good intention isn’t always what you think it is. Learn the more mindful, skillful approach to bringing out the best in others. And, actually, take the pressure off of yourself and expand your idea of what “making your customers happy” needs to look like.

What personal practices and mindsets prepare you to meet the challenges of service life, prevent burnout and brave all the other challenges ahead? Hospitality torchbearer, self-cultivation wizard and generally rad dude Dushan Zaric shares more of his wisdom, plus some impactful hits from the very special live service course he’s running.

Learn how mindfulness, self-development, and our success at doing almost anything are matters of emotional mastery. And this doesn’t mean learning to feel our preferred emotions, but having the capacity for the uncomfortable ones. This episode looks at powerful techniques for observing where and how emotions are actually happening and how to support ourselves like a friend would (rather than an adversary).

How can you get the most out of your meditation and mindfulness practice? Is it just about technique or can you look at your whole relationship to your program – and you life…

What if fulfillment wasn’t some huge “ultimate aspiration”, but a natural emotional state that we can tap into at any time – all we need is the right tools. This “fulfilled mindset” can transform your relationship to your work and the effectiveness with which you do what you do.

How to find meaning in your work in a socioeconomic structure that doesn’t honor and respect your role. We look at how the service role has been tainted by society’s tendency to take advantage of the people serving them – whether it’s your clientele or your employers – and how to drop this baggage and reconnect to the growth potential that the role offers us.

A core discussion on mindfulness and service. The straight essentials to implement mindfulness into your service life and watch it transform. And a deep look at one of the most important things to understand with our practice: the struggles with mindfulness are valuable, mindful growth experiences.

How to take advantage of this time in isolation to re-pattern your thinking and next-level how you serve.

In this episode you’ll learn about how common it can be to experience shame in the service experience and techniques that determine whether it will be a great ally or a terrible enemy.

Tap into the the wisdom, humanity and academic rigor of Andy Lee, founder of the legendary mindfulness program at Aetna Health. Now on a mission to help organizations weave mindfulness into its culture, we discuss the challenges and profound possibility of these practices to transform the workplace.

Mindful service allows you to take place in social change advancing it bit by bit through service that seeks to create the world you’d want to live in.

Reclaim your understanding of love as something that is always a factor in serving in a mindful, empowered way – and the way towards racial healing.

Everything you’ve been trying to do more effectively along your mindful service journey – listening, openness, compassion, healing, avoiding righteousness, catching reactivity – is a skill that can be applied to participating in the racially just world you want to live in.

About the service skills you most need but aren’t taught. Ones I’ve gathered from years of learning and travel and my upcoming course that will distill them into practices and principles that any service-oriented person can use.

Part two of two of my epic discussion with service design visionary Joel Bailey who is who is working with large companies, institutions and public services and proving that you can bring humanity and consciousness back to service in a way that is sustainable and scalable. This is someone that understands the essence and power of service – as well as how much we’ve lost contact with it as a culture.

The first half of a sweeping two-part discussion about the radical ways designer Joel Bailey is shifting large-scale service providers from an outdated industrial age model of service-as-product into an organizational that is truly connected to the people they service – a mission made especially urgent by the COVID crisis.

Hear about how the Coronavirus opened up surprising opportunities for Tico & Susan to successfully serve their community how they’ve always wanted to through their Kombucha and fermented food company, Radiate.

I speak with Albert Bitton about his project that provides healthy meals to overworked medical professionals across about a dozen of New York’s crowded hospitals. Our conversation was a deeply inspiring look at how one service industry can provide something so important to another.

Self-Hospitality Pt. 9: You Don’t Have To Tell Your Mind How To Meditate

The resulting experience of each meditation doesn’t matter nearly as much as your mindset around your experiences. Meditation is not a state you reach, but an attitude you maintain.

In this new podcast series I’m getting field reports from amazing minds in the world(s) of service about lockdown living and the challenges and opportunities it offers service-minded people. I talk to cocktail bar industry leader Dushan Zaric about self-awareness, growth and transformation, and the power and strength found in setting a positive example.

True Service: “Important Work” is a Matter of Conditioning

One problem is that so many people think that their life truly begins after their service job ends. Their service job is a state of purgatory where they’re waiting for their real professional lives in some more noble industry to truly materialize. In a previous post, I mentioned the many people I’ve met that have […]

Self-Hospitality Pt. 8: Restore Yourself With The Parasympathetic Nervous System

The resulting experience of each meditation doesn’t matter nearly as much as your mindset around your experiences. Meditation is not a state you reach, but an attitude you maintain.

All Posts by Stefan Ravalli