OUR jobs settle the bills, hone our skills and learn new ones and give our lives greater meaning and purpose.
But the workplace can be fast-paced, competitive and stressful. It demands that we perform at our best, be productive and get along with colleagues, management and clients. While powering through may work from time to time, one of the healthiest ways to stay efficient is to take a step back and practice mindfulness to recharge and regain focus.
In recent years, a number of large corporations – Google, General Mills, Intel, Goldman Sachs, AstraZeneca, Aetna, Procter & Gamble, Nike – have been championing mindfulness training. Whether or not your company does, there are simple ways to lessen the impact stress can have on your mind and body.
What is mindfulness?
Most of the time, our minds are wandering – we’re thinking about the future, dwelling on the past, worrying, fantasizing, fretting or daydreaming. But this can negatively affect our productivity, health and well-being and lead to more reasons to worry.
One way of stopping this pattern is to practice mindfulness – concentrating our attention exclusively on the present in order to focus the mind and avoid distractions. The term is often used interchangeably with meditation, which brings us back to the present moment and gives us the tools we need to be less stressed, calmer and kinder to ourselves and others.
A job can be a source of significant stress which becomes only more consuming with email, intra-office chat tools and social media invariably competing for our attention. When we constantly flit from one task to another, the quality of our work can suffer. By practicing mindfulness, we can train ourselves to become more focused.
By learning how to concentrate more effectively, communicate more compassionately and manage our frustrations, we can dodge numerous common issues that lead to dissatisfaction on the job.
Even without a formal meditation practice, there are simple steps to aid you in staying present: turn off pop-up and push notifications; answer email during dedicated periods of time, rather than constantly throughout the day as soon as it pops into your inbox; finish one task before you begin the next.
S.T.O.P.
When you are experiencing a tough moment, a mindfulness exercise known as S.T.O.P. can be helpful.
Stop. Just take a momentary pause, no matter what you’re doing.
Take a breath. Sit in an upright but relaxed position and focus on your breathing. Pay attention to how it feels, listen to the sound of your breath and feel your chest expand and contract. Do this for at least one minute.
Observe. Regain your concentration by zeroing in on your surroundings right now. Look at the people near you (if it’s culturally appropriate). Really feel the ground and the sensation of your feet on it. What objects are around you? What sounds can you hear? What smells are there?
Proceed. Having briefly checked in with the present moment, continue with whatever it was you were doing.
Mindful meetings
It can also be useful to set guidelines aimed at cultivating a more mindful environment at the office, especially during meetings. “Meetings can be an incredible waste of time when people aren’t really listening,” says Janice Marturano, founder of the Institute for Mindful Leadership, in an interview with The New York Times. “If one eye is on your phone while you’re in a meeting, you’re not really there.” To stay present, Marturano suggests some simple rules:
No phones or computers allowed at meetings, whenever possible.
If you need a note taker, have one person act as secretary and distribute the notes afterwords.
Give everyone present the opportunity to speak, uninterrupted.
Disgruntlements
Even for those who make mindfulness a habit, disillusion is bound to arise at work. Colleagues may disappoint us, promotions may elude us and deadlines may pile up. Rather than fight the situation, approach it with equanimity.
“These are opportunities for reflection,” says Marturano. “Can you formulate a question around it? How does it feel in your body? Be open and curious. Where else do you feel that? Can you pause before you react?”
During difficult dialogues, listen to what the other person is saying instead of getting in a stew. “Rather than approaching that conversation as an opportunity to change someone’s mind, see if you can create the habit of trying to understand,” says Dan Harris, author of “10 Percent Happier”. “You’ll feel better, and the encounter will go better.”
Leave work at work
Be more judicious with technology when you’re not at the office. Try not to check your email continually when you’re at home. This will help you be more present with friends and family and also more refreshed when you arrive at the office.
A simple exercise called R.A.I.N. can help you be attentive to present thoughts, feelings and behaviors as well as learning to be more attuned to your own needs.
Recognize. Acknowledge what is happening, just noting it in a calm and accepting manner.
Accept. Allow life to be just as it is, without trying to change it right away, and without wishing it were different somehow.
Investigate. See how it feels, whether it is making you upset or happy, giving you pleasure or pain.
Non-Identification. Part of being mindful means not judging your thoughts and feelings as right or wrong, as this can often lead to low self-esteem. Such thoughts and feelings will pass. They don’t define you.
Mindful leadership
For executives who manage teams or organizations, mindfulness help them stay honest, make hard decisions empathically and inspire confidence.
“Mindful leadership is about embodying focus, creativity, clarity and compassion in the service of others,” says Marturano. “It’s about an individual’s ability to more often influence for better, and less often influence for worse.”
One of the most important aspects of mindful leadership is simply treating people with respect and dignity. Even if you have to give people bad news or make difficult choices, strive to do so in a way that is kind and empathetic. “The reality of business is the reality of business,” says Marturano. “But you can make people feel respected and treat people with compassion.”
But even without a formal mindfulness program in the workplace, anyone can exhibit mindful leadership by bringing self-awareness, emotional regulation and empathy to their interactions with colleagues. “It’s about not being a jerk,” says Harris.
Why companies need mindfulness practices
Improve focus: Boost mental processes including attention, decision-making, and coordination.
Increase productivity and quality of work by engaging an employee’s full attention.
Reduce stress: Give people a break from their stressors by shifting focus back to their physical reality.
Reduce negative thinking: Help put a stop to cycles of negative thinking and rumination.
Promote calm: Aim to achieve a state of alert calm through conscious attention.
Build emotional intelligence: By focusing on our emotions, we can become more in tune with others.
Increase workplace happiness: A mindful workplace has decreased stress and improved job satisfaction.
Lead to better communication, awareness of employees’ roles and job satisfaction. These can protect employees from burnout and even reduce health care costs.
Boost creativity: Reduce fear of judgment, which increases self-expression and creative thinking.
Improve motivation: Allow a person to focus on their goals and visualize outcomes more clearly.
Meditating at work can be a great way to ground yourself and get a short, beneficial break in the middle of a chaotic workday. View it as an opportunity to press the reset button. And if you don’t feel like meditating, there are plenty of other ways to practice mindfulness at work.
Mindfulness is not a benefit experienced by just employees. Management and leadership also gain from such practice because it helps them develop a greater sense of awareness, clarity and compassion, and they in turn lead their company or team with those qualities. And research shows that mindful working results in an upturn in productivity and a downturn in stress-related illnesses. In short, everyone’s a winner when the work culture embraces and incorporates the power of focus and awareness.
