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The final day of Dreamforce began with a mammoth session ambitiously entitled "Reimagine Everything". From Al Gore talking about climate change to Neil Young and his radical new music project to Eckhart Tolle on the “Power of Now”; the last session was undoubtedly an impactful and memorable one for everyone in the audience.

 

For me the absolute highlight was hearing Arianna Huffington speak about the theme of her book “Thrive”. Such a wonderful leader, Arianna has revolutionised journalism with The Huffington Post but her abilities extend so much further than that. Everything she said was a memorable quote and I was busy tweeting them all out until suddenly she sat down cross legged on the stage and asked everyone to just be in the present, ignore their devices, close their eyes and connect with their inner peace. So I stopped too and it was liberating!

 

 

 

She learned this lesson some years ago after she collapsed from exhaustion, hitting her head as she fell. The stark “wake-up-call” made her realise that we all need to reconnect with ourselves and take time out and she urged us all to learn from her experience rather than have the same “wake-up call” ourselves! She made the powerful observation that we take better care of our smartphones than we do of ourselves - always watching that little battery icon and worrying when it begins to get low. I have done nothing but worry this week at Dreamforce about where I can re-charge my battery. Really?

 

Arianna provided us with 3 simple steps to try and follow :

 

  1. Every day take 5 minutes to find some inner peace and mindfulness, focusing only on our breath, de-cluttering our minds and finding some clarity in our day
  2. Every day try and have 30 seconds more sleep than the day before, and have a “sleep sponsor” - a friend or loved one who can support you in that
  3. Banish your devices from your bedroom (apparently even Tim Cook, the Apple CEO, doesn’t sleep with his iphone next to his bed!)

There were so many powerful points but the lasting message was we can achieve so much more if we take better care of ourselves and reconnect with ourselves and our surroundings. Pointing to our own CEO, she said, “we can all obsess with winning more market share...or we can create new markets” as Marc Benioff, who himself has been meditating for 25 years, did 15 years ago when he innovated an entirely new platform for delivering software and gave birth to the cloud computing market.

 

The point is that innovation, art and creation comes from a place of inner wonder that can only be achieved in a state of mindfulness. Indeed, Steve Jobs said that when he meditated he was able to “hear subtler things.”

 

Most poignantly, she described the way we all constantly worry about emptying our inbox which is akin to people in a sinking boat constantly bailing water out in vain. Our culture of burnout she said was “the disease of our civilisation” and that working 24/7 was the cognitive equivalent of coming to work drunk! Quoting Bill Clinton, she reminded us that “the most important mistakes are made when we are tired”.

 

These simple lessons are so important and ones that I will take back to our FemmeForce community at Salesforce.  But before I go and take five minutes away from my desk and my devices I will leave you with a comment from Eckhart Tolle.

 

“Be fully in whatever you are doing - that is success”

Why not join us on our APAC Essentials tour where we will be bringing the best of this year's Dreamforce to a city near you in November and December? And, you can watch the Dreamforce highlights online at Dreamforce Live and re-live the experience yourself:

 

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