Month: June 2018

Being Mindful at Work

In the previous post, I wrote about mindfulness at work and identified some ways to be mindful while working.  Here, I want to take this further by suggesting some other strategies, again using the article by Shamash Alidina for my inspiration:

1.Slow down

In slowing down, we can become more aware of our inner thoughts and outer environment.  If you find yourself rushing from place to place, you can slow down and engage in some form of mindful walking.  Often we are rushing, not because of a deadline, but because this haste behaviour has become habituated.  You can pull yourself up in the act of rushing around and just take a few steps at a slower pace.  You might ask yourself, “Why am I in such a hurry?”  This mindful practice can start with your behaviour when getting to work, so that when at work you are already conscious of your hurrying behaviour and more able to “slow down to speed up”.

2.Treat stress as your friend

This approach seems counter-intuitive.  Most of what you read about stress is how harmful it is to your health.  Yet there is an optimum amount of stress that improves your health, energy and productivity.  Without sufficient challenge we suffer boredom and malaise; too much stress leads to “frazzle”.   Kelly McGonigal, in her TED talk, encourages you to “make stress your friend”.  Research shows that how you perceive stress can, in fact, influence the way stress impacts you.  If you have a positive perception of stress – you see your pounding heart as energising you and getting more oxygen to your brain – you are able progressively to reduce your physical response to stress and to increase your capacity to manage it.  So, in a lot of ways, it is “all in your head”.   Being mindful, you can get in touch with what is going on in your body, and instead of panicking, you can view this bodily response as “readiness for action”.

3.Develop a gratitude bias

We hear about the negativity bias of our brains, but it is possible to develop a “positivity bias”.  Kabat-Zinn suggests that you become what you pay attention to, e.g. you can become grateful, compassionate or empathetic by focusing on these aspects through mindfulness meditation.   Being mindful of what you have and expressing gratitude for these things “has a positive impact on your creativity, health, working relationships, and quality of work”.  Instead of focusing on the aspects of your job that you do not like, you could look at what you do have that you appreciate – expressing gratitude for the fact that you have a job, that you can make a difference, have a supportive boss, have colleagues who are collaborative or have highpoints in your day when you realise that you are doing something meaningful.  You can substitute a positivity bias for a negativity bias, by frequent and regular recall of what you appreciate in your work.

Your thoughts play a large role in how you experience the world and your associated mental health and mood.  As you grow in mindfulness through the practice of being mindful at work, your thoughts become more positive and your brain becomes “more efficient, focused, effective at communicating with others, and better at learning new skills”.

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Image source: courtesy of FirmBee on Pixabay

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

Mindfulness at Work

David Allan maintains that the best place to meditate is at work.  In part, this is because it is often in a work situation that you need to be calm and have a clear mind.  The cost of being frazzled at work is not only lost time through inability to focus but also lost creativity through inability to access the “spaciousness” of your mind.  You need to calm the busyness of your mind to access this creativity.

It is also very true that we spend so much of our time at work that a large part of our day (more than a third) is consumed with thinking and doing, not just being present.  This means, too, that we are not taking the opportunity to access the full benefits of our mindfulness practice developed elsewhere on a daily basis.

David Allan found that he was able to book a relatively underutilised room for 15 minutes a day to enable him to undertake some form of meditation at work on a daily basis.  He found that this short period of conscious mindfulness practice created real productivity benefits throughout his day and served to break the work stress cycle.

Ways to be mindful at work

In a comprehensive article, Shamash Alidina suggests ten ways to be more mindful at work.  I have identified four of these suggestions below that are readily implementable:

  1. Intent to be consciously present – this entails beginning your work day with the clear intent to be present as often as you can.  This intent extends to controlling your thoughts when on-task, maintaining focus even on mundane tasks, working a little slower when the opportunity presents (e.g. after a rush to meet a deadline) and reminding yourself of the very clear benefits for work and life offered by mindfulness.
  2. Use brief mindfulness exercises – there are many opportunities throughout the working day to engage in brief mindfulness exercises.  These could entail open awareness, awareness of our senses, mindful walking or a short compassion meditation.  Sometimes in the workplace we need to engage in a brief self-compassion meditation, instead of beating up on ourselves for a mistake or for unconsciously hurting someone else with our words  or actions.
  3. Overcome the temptation of multitasking – this means consciously avoiding distactions (such as checking social media or the news every few minutes), staying focused on a single task at a time and organising your day where possible so that you can do like tasks together.
  4. Use reminders of the need for mindfulness – Shamash has some detailed strategies here that are very helpful.  Some of these entail linking a work activity to a mindfulness practice, e.g. when the phone rings, taking a deep breath and reminding yourself to be fully present to the caller.   Gradually, with regular practice, these reminders can immediately elicit mindfulness.  Some people may find a mindfulness app an appropriate reminder or an aid to mindfulness at work.
Further ways to be mindful at work

Eckhart Tolle in his talk to Google staff suggested ways that they could be mindful at work, including mindful breathing at their workstation.  Another mindfulness practice that can be employed at your desk is to occasionally focus on physically grounding yourself by ensuring that your feet are flat on the floor and your legs and back are straight.   This can be combined with mindful breathing.  If you are facilitating a workshop you could practise mindfulness through a brief loving kindness meditation directed towards one individual who may be struggling or towards the whole participant group.

Grow in mindfulness at work

If we want to grow in mindfulness through our behaviour at work, we need the strong intent to make the most of the opportunities for mindfulness that work presents.  Regular practice of mindfulness elsewhere will help to build this intent as well as consciousness of the opportunities for mindfulness at work.  Starting small with a single mindfulness practice maintained over three weeks will mean that the practice, such as mindful walking, will become embedded in your daily routine.  You can progressively expand these focused practices so that you become unconsciously competent at utilising opportunities for mindfulness at work.

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Image source: courtesy of FirmBee on Pixabay

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.