being mindful at work

Being Present to the Power of the Now

Jon Kabat-Zinn, international expert in mindfulness and its positive effects on mental health, provides some important insights about being present in-the-moment. Jon, author of Wherever You Go, There You Are, presented on Mindfulness Monthly, and focused on mindfulness for living each day. His emphasis was on the fact that mindfulness meditation is not an end in itself but a preparation for, or conditioning for, everyday living.

He argues that through mindfulness we develop the capacity to cope with everyday life and its challenges and demands – whether emotional, physical, economic or relationship-based. He urges mindfulness practitioners to avoid the temptation to pursue the ideal meditation practice or the achievement of a particular level of awareness as a goal in itself. He argues that the “Now” is the practice ground for mindfulness – being open to, and fully alive to, the reality of what is. Being-in-the-moment can make us aware of the inherent beauty of the present and the creative possibilities that are open to us.

Dropping in on the now

Jon suggests that we “drop in on the now” as a regular practice to keep us in touch with what is happening to us and around us. This involves being willing to accept whatever comes our way – whether good fortune or adversity, joy or pain.

He maintains that being present entails embracing the “full catastrophe of human living”- the theme of his book, Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness. This means accepting whatever is unfolding in the moment, whether “challenging, intoxicating or painful”. It also means not seeing the present through the prism of our expectations, but through an open-heartedness. As we have previously discussed, so much of what we see is conditioned by our beliefs, unless we build awareness of our unconscious biases through meditation and reflection. Being mindful at work through short mindfulness practices can assist us to drop in on the now.

Taking our practice into the real world

Jon challenges us to take our practice of mindfulness into the real world of work, family and community. He expresses concern about the hatred and delusion that is evident in so much of our world today – a state of intoxication flowing from a complete disconnection with, and avoidance of, the human mind and heart.

Jon urges us to do whatever we are able, within our own realms of activity, to treat ourselves with kindness and compassion and extend this orientation to everyone we interact with – whether in an official/work capacity or in a personal role interacting with people such as the Uber driver, the waiter/waitress, checkout person or our neighbour. We are all interconnected in so many ways and on so many levels – as an embodied part of the universal energy field.

Jon reminds us that increasingly science is recognising the positive benefits of mindfulness for individuals and the community at large. He stressed that neuroscience research shows that mindfulness affects many aspects of the brain – level of brain activity, structure of the brain and the adaptability of the brain (neuroplasticity). Mindfulness also builds what is termed “functional connectivity” – the creation of new neural pathways that build new links to enable parts of the brain to communicate with each other. Without mindfulness practice much of this connectivity remains dormant.

As we grow in mindfulness, we can become more present to what is happening now in various spheres of our lives, become more aware of latent opportunities and creative possibilities and more willing and able to extend compassion, forgiveness and kindness to others we interact with. We can progressively shed the belief blinkers that blind us to the needs of others and the ways that we could serve our communities and help to develop wellness and happiness in others.

____________________________________________

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

Image source: courtesy of SalvatoreMonetti 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.

Changing Your Mindset

Shamash Alidina, co-author of Mindfulness at Work for Dummies, suggests that one way to be mindful at work is to change our mindset. In discussing how to grow mindfulness in a work situation, he identifies two key aspects that relate to our attitude or mental state – self-acceptance and a growth perspective.

The acceptance mindset

Accepting things the way they are in the first instance is a fundamental aspect of mindfulness. Diana Winston reinforces the concept of acceptance in her definition of mindfulness:

Mindfulness is about paying attention to our present moment experiences with openness and curiosity and a willingness to be with what is.

This means being in the moment with “what is”, accepting what you cannot change, and taking steps to address what can and should be changed. Fundamental to this mindset is self-acceptance.

If we have made a mistake or overlooked something that should have been addressed, instead of “beating up on ourselves”, we can accept the situation and our role in the outcome and move forward. If something “unfair” happens to us, we have the choice of carrying resentment and consuming wasted energy, or accepting the reality of what happened, however painful. This radical acceptance does not mean agreeing with what has happened but accepting reality as it is, accepting the things that we cannot change.

This self-acceptance is fundamental to a growth mindset, because it starts with the acknowledgement and acceptance that we are not perfect, that we make mistakes, and have some deficiencies in knowledge and understanding.

The growth mindset

While accepting “what is” means not fighting against the reality of our own incompleteness, it does not mean accepting what we can change. One thing we can change is ourselves – we can be open to developing our knowledge, skills, perspectives and attitudes.

This growth mindset is reinforced by the recent neuroscience discovery in the area of the neuroplasticity of the mind – the ability of the mind to change and adjust throughout our life. It means that our brains are not fixed in our childhood or adolescent years, but can change neural pathways and connections as our brain absorbs and responds to new experiences and stimuli. The starting point is openness to this possibility – a growth mindset.

A growth mindset, translated into the workplace, means a focus on continuous personal development, a willingness to learn from our experiences through reflection, a readiness to accept and seek critique of our words and actions, and openness to new experiences and challenges.

As we grow in mindfulness through reflection and mindfulness practice, we can develop both an acceptance mindset and a growth mindset. These mental states, in turn, build mindfulness – our ability to be fully aware with “what is” in the present moment.

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

Image source: courtesy of johnhain 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.

Slow Down for Gratitude

In the previous post, I discussed being mindful at work. Among, the suggested ways to be mindful in this environment were slowing down and being grateful. If we slow the pace of our life wherever we are, we can focus on gratitude and develop not only a positive outlook on life but also the resilience to bounce back from setbacks, challenges and difficulties.

Diana Winston, Director of Mindfulness Education at UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Center (MARC), maintains that mindfulness is very much about living more in the present moment. In line with this view, she explains the nature of mindfulness in the following way:

Mindfulness is about paying attention to our present moment experiences with openness and curiosity and a willingness to be with what is.

Diana provided this explanation when introducing a gratitude meditation as part of the UCLA’s free, weekly Mindful Awareness Podcasts. In this podcast she highlights the value of being grateful for the small things that make up our daily lives, from moment to moment.

Gratitude for the small things in life

It is not a big deal to be grateful for the small things in our life that we take so much for granted. We can overcome this lack of appreciation through overfamiliarity by slowing down what we are doing and expressing appreciation for the small things in our lives. This can be done as part of a meditation process or “on-the-go-slow”.

Firstly, we can focus on our senses and the wondrous world that is open to us through sight, sound, touch, taste and hearing. With sight alone, we have access to colours, shapes, lightness and darkness and the never-ending variety of the sky, the flowers and trees, the birds and the animals we encounter in nature.

With hearing, we can access a very wide variety of sounds, the nuances in people’s voices, the chorus of birds and the buzz of life around us. Recently, I was playing a game of tennis against a young man who was deaf and his sister, and it prompted me in the moment to be grateful for my hearing. He communicated with his sister by sign language but was unable to communicate with myself and my partner except by hand movements and limited facial expressions. His hearing impediment clearly affected his game. On reflection, I am now conscious that he could not hear the sound of the ball leaving the racquet and be able to judge the speed and distance of the ball that comes with hearing this sound. So, there is a lot to be grateful for with the sense of hearing.

On another occasion, I was playing tennis with a male partner who was becoming increasingly agitated and frustrated with losing points because of his lack of timing and coordination. The temptation was to join in with him and express my own frustration at my own lack of timing – negativity is contagious. However, for once, I just expressed gratitude that I could be playing tennis after a long layoff, that I could run and still play some good shots. I sensed, too, that my partner gained better self-control by the end of the game through the influence of my calmness and focus – positivity is contagious. If we slow down, and savour the moment and what we have, we can achieve better self-management through control over our emotions and our responses.

As we grow in mindfulness, we can more often be-in-the-moment, and develop our positive outlook on life and build our resilience in the face of setbacks, whether at work or play.

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

Image source: courtesy of dh_creative 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.

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.