Mindful Leadership in 2026

5 MIN READ

From 1,000 Days of Calm to 3,001 Days of Courage

Today, on March 2, 2026, I crossed a threshold I could barely imagine when I first downloaded the Calm app in December 2016: 3,001 consecutive days of daily mindfulness meditation.

When I wrote “One Thousand Days of Calm” back on August 31, 2020, I celebrated three years of showing up for myself every single day; today, I honor more than eight years of that same quiet, consistent commitment. What began as a response to a moment of immeasurable grief has become the steady undercurrent of my life, shaping how I lead, love, and serve my community in and around East San Jose.

Meditation as Leadership Training

Three thousand and one days of practice have given me a toolbox I now reach for in every arena of my life: presence, patience, emotional regulation, and the ability to pause before I respond. 

This daily discipline has nurtured a growth mindset that allows me to see challenges as invitations to learn rather than reasons to retreat. It has also softened my heart, helping me stay open and grounded enough to do something I never thought I would do: run for public office for the first time as a multiracial woman of color in East San Jose. 

With every sit, I rehearse the kind of leadership I want to embody: reflective, rooted in values, and responsive rather than reactive.

Returning to Consulting and Community Work

Mindfulness has also been my compass as my professional life has evolved and expanded. After serving five years as the Executive Director of a 13-county-wide nonprofit coalition, my practice has helped me return to consulting with clarity about my purpose and boundaries, rather than slipping back into familiar patterns of overwork and burnout. 

The same daily ritual that once helped me survive deep sadness and stress now helps me design a sustainable life: one where I can consult, run for office, and continue to advocate for my community without losing myself in the process. As a multiracial woman of color in an under-resourced area of Santa Clara County, meditation keeps me connected to my lived experience and the intersectional identities I carry, so I can speak and act from a place of authenticity rather than assimilation.

A Pillar: Youth Mental Health

As I step into this new chapter, focusing my efforts as a consultant, candidate, and volunteer on serving East Side youth, I continue my decades-long mission of tackling mental health as one of my three personal pillars and core goals. The same tools that have helped me navigate anxiety, grief, and uncertainty over 3,001 days are the tools I want our young people, families, and educators to have access to as well. 

In East San Jose, the youth mental health crisis is deeply intertwined with systemic inequities, cultural stigma, and a lack of accessible, affirming resources. Mindfulness alone is not a fix, but it can be a powerful complement to community-based care, culturally responsive services, and strong school systems. My meditation journey has taught me that healing is both personal and collective, and I carry that lesson into every policy conversation and every decision about how our public schools and institutions can show up for our students.

A Call to Acknowledge, Accept, and Adapt

If you are reading this, my invitation is simple and follows a common theme that I’ve talked about since 2019: Acknowledge, Accept, and Adapt. I invite you to:

• Acknowledge your intersectionalities.
  Notice the many identities you hold—race, culture, gender, class, language, ability, immigration status, and more—and how they intersect to shape your lived experience in schools, workplaces, and communities. Meditation can create the spaciousness to see these layers clearly and to honor the wisdom and resilience they carry, rather than pushing them aside to fit someone else’s idea of who you should be.
• Accept that you are already enough to lead as a “little l” leader.
  You do not need a title, a campaign, or a formal role to lead; you need presence, courage, and a willingness to act in alignment with your values. Mindfulness can help you quiet the inner critic, listen to your intuition, and remember that leadership begins in everyday choices: how you show up in a meeting, how you advocate for a young person, how you support a neighbor.
• Adapt to the moment and let go of what does not serve you.
  Over the past eight years, I have had to let go of perfectionism and the belief that I have to carry everything alone. Meditation teaches us to notice what is rising, what is clinging, and what is ready to be released, so we can free up energy to become the leaders our communities need right now. We are already enough as we are right now, not someday when we feel “fixed,” but in this imperfect, evolving moment.

Three thousand days of calm have become three thousand days of courage, and I am still learning, still listening, still practicing. I hope that you will find your own way into the practice—not to become someone else, but to become more deeply yourself, for the sake of the communities you love.

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AdvancED Tip: Read “Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less” by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang. Find more book recommendations in my Bookcase.