How Mindfulness Gives You an Edge at Work
Mindfulness can help you navigate relationships and expectations to get the results you want. Perhaps more importantly, mindfulness helps you accept that you might not get what you want.
Mindfulness is all about being in the present moment, without judgment. But it’s also about having a good mindset—one that embraces compassion, kindness, and gratitude.
This article, originally published on mindfulorg website, Explore technique for being mindful at work.
Two Ways to be More Mindful at Work
To find a sense of balance that offers these benefits yet also fits into your lifestyle, it helps to cultivate both formal practices, like meditating, and informal practices, like connecting with a sense of inner peace while waiting for your morning coffee.
1) Formal Meditation Practice
Mindfulness is cultivated through meditation. Meditation is a mental exercise that fosters concentration and mindfulness. A meditation session is a retreat. It can last for a moment, or 20 to 30 minutes, a month, or more. During your retreat, you pull back from the ongoing hum of day-to-day living to train your mind, refuel, reflect, and perhaps most importantly, get in touch with your most expanded awareness.
For those who are not familiar with the mindfulness or insight meditation practice, here is an instruction from my book, Managing Expectations, about the core technique:
Find a comfortable, relaxed, alert posture—head, neck, and spine naturally aligned.
Rest your hands and arms comfortably.
Sit with your body balanced and stable, lips slightly apart, a subtle smile.
Feel the sensations of your body.
Take note of your breath. Just notice the sensation of inhalation and exhalation wherever it is most prevalent for you—at the nostrils or in the rising and falling of the chest or abdomen.
Notice thoughts, feelings, sensations, sounds, sights, smells as they occur.
Greet everything that occurs with a friendly accepting attitude, bringing your attention back to the breath.
If you get “lost,” carried away, or distracted: as soon as you realize it, come back to the body, the breath, and begin again.
This is a technique for formal practice—sitting down for a fixed time and dedicating five, ten, 20, or more minutes to meditating. This is an exercise that relieves stress, strengthens your concentration and mindfulness, and makes it more likely that the results will seep into the rest of your day—including your work.
2) Moment-to-Moment Techniques
Moment-to-moment meditation takes the practice into the normal day’s activity. You can practice for brief moments during work sessions, meetings, lunch, bathroom breaks, etc. Make it subtle and let it become integrated into your life so that it enhances your ability to completely attend to your work in the most effective way.
There are many moment-to-moment meditation practices. Here are two you can try. One is very concrete and the other, subtler:
Wait for the ring: Whenever the phone or your computer rings or pings take three conscious breaths before responding. A conscious breath is one that is felt and observed.
Notice your wandering mind: Whenever you realize that you have been off on a mental journey or in a waking dream state, take note of your experience in that moment of awakening, take a conscious breath, and carry on. For example, imagine being at a meeting or in a class, you are daydreaming or caught up in thinking about something, and are called upon to comment on what was just said. What does it feel like in that moment? Recognize the difference between being awake and asleep, experience the feelings that come up, and note your response.
The main point is that mindfulness is a foundation for effective work and optimal performance and that mindfulness can be enhanced and cultivated by practicing formal and informal meditation.
Here at InBloom, we are helping leaders have a better understanding as to what their wellbeing looks like, holistically. We do this within a partnership with the Global Leadership Wellbeing Survey. This is the first step of our Leadership Wellbeing Coaching journey. Email us!