Meditation teaching for the modern workplace – Be like Google, Apple Nike and Target.
When you meditation teaching and mindfulness in the workplace you create positive change? Workplaces used to have typewriters, creaking doors, shoe heels, and rustling papers as the sources of the hustle and bustle in an office. We developed endless distractions like emails, gadgets, social media platforms, and other office machineries like printers, shredders, and computers through the years. This is the reason why the modern workforce is easily distracted from being productive, thus delaying operations.
In this article:
Practice Being Consciously Present
Use Short Mindful Exercises
A secret learned from my meditation teacher about multitasking.
Remind yourself to be mindful.
You won’t take too much time if you take your time
Have a different perspective of ‘stress’
Always try to be grateful
Nurture Humility
One of my meditation teaching is: To accept the things that you can’t change
Implement a Growth Mindset
We’ve come to the age where we use our concentration as a form of currency. They call it the “attention economy.” This declining ability in managing our attention has been documented to affect productivity and well-being. Research by Paul Gilbert and Matt Killigsworth showed that almost half (46.9%) of the time, we are not really in the zone with our task with our wandering minds.
This is why mindfulness at work is pushed as a practice in workspaces like Google, Apple, Nike, and Target! But that doesn’t mean that you have to be in these companies to practice mindfulness. The following are just some of the simple ways to help you get in the zone every time— even with all the distractions you have around.
1. Practice Being Consciously Present
Being consciously present starts the moment you start your day. When you are about to work, try to take a few moments to pause and decide to set an intention of making the list of tasks you have inside your head. Go over them to have a simple run-through of your expected day, don’t focus on outcomes yet. In meditation teacher training I learned that thinking of the things you need to do just before you dive into the whole scene can help you focus on what needs to be done first. Being consciously present before diving into the work scene prevents you from operating unconsciously during tasks that keeps bugging you that you’d instead do. Being mindful is not all about the functions but also of your emotional and mental state As you are doing something and heard about John’s new girlfriend or a ping from your Twitter, or a fiasco from other departments, don’t let it distract you. Remember that you can just acknowledge the thought when it comes and go on doing your task. You are not ignoring it, but rather you are aware of it, but you consciously decided to focus on your task. Good job! You can always put those things for later
2. Use Short Mindful Exercises
In case you’ve not yet encountered mindful exercises, the most common that you may find are meditative exercises which may go at least for 3 minutes. But finding a good place to do it is hard if you don’t have spaces for those kinds of practice! I’m going to give you a simple mindful exercise (trust me I’m not going to teach meditation exercise) that you can do even on your spot without even closing your eyes. A mindful practice can be as short as less than a minute: it can be as simple as savoring the smell of your coffee for a few seconds or focusing on your breathing for half a minute. You can do these on your free time or whenever you feel like you need to recharge your attention. In times of too much pressure at work, having a quick mindful exercise can be a savior. This process can help rebalance the nervous system, to tone down the fight-or-flight response and let the wise part of your brain take the lead, especially as you make reasoned decisions rather than automatically reacting to situations.
3. A secret learned from my meditation teacher about multitasking.
The secret psychology behind multitasking and getting things done on after the other is: single tasking! You can think of multitasking as having a list of varied tasks… but what really happens in multitasking is that you are not supposed to do them simultaneously! What you have to do is allot a time to do each.
For example you can do time-blocking for a task, let’s say you have three tasks. You know that Task 3 will take most of your time but you also have to finish Task 1 and 2 which are quick and easy tasks. With time blocking you can allot the first two hours for 1 & 2, then the rest for Task 3. With time blocking ahead of working you can set how you will approach varied tasks without being distracted of not finishing everything.
4. Remind yourself to be mindful.
Now, this is an excellent mindful activity at work. A Harvard University research showed that 47% of the time, people are lost in thoughts. Mindful exercises are not truly effective if it is only mentioned as an intervention. Most of the time, we have to remind ourselves to be mindful too! Doing habitual activities make our brain go into a low energy state mode. This is the state that makes us unmindful as if functioning in dream-like state. The same research mentioned above showed that functioning in auto-pilot can be harmful for one’s well-being as you are not full present and ware of the choices, opportunities and consequences around you, thus hampering creativity, innovativeness and making you so out of touch in your social environment. When you teach meditation in the workplace, a recommended activity for fighting of drifting to your unconscious self is to set a phone alarm! You can remind yourself to be mindful every hour or two. You can also try resisting opening up the pings from social media and text messages. You can try this: when your phone pings, you can take the opportunity of reacting mindfully by pausing, letting yourself breathe and reminding yourself that you don’t really have to react by opening the message. Please take it as a moment to breathe and be aware of your surroundings before going back to work. You can also apply this to the other parts of your day. Remember that you don’t have to react instantly, let yourself assess a moment and find what needs to be done. In meditation teaching this moment of pause and being aware is one of the things that you can do when you get distracted in a meditative exercise.
5. You won’t take too much time if you take your time
Really? Taking your time is within the context of mindfully doing your task— not procrastinating. Remember that resting also increases efficiency, but you do have to be mindful that you’re not resting 50% of your working time. You may have experienced being in this dilemma when you have looming deadlines or way back when you forego sleep to study for examinations. You can look back and realize how your efficiency and energy just dropped on that day. Clearly, rest can surge efficiency. If you managed to get seven hours of sleep and get to do a certain amount of work, imagine what can happen if you also have a few moment for quick mindfulness exercises during the day? Your brain can become even more efficient, focused, effective in interaction with others, and better at learning new skills. Being in a rush doesn’t always work.
6. Have a different perspective of ‘stress’
One of the most interesting research about this is looked at how the perception of stress affected health matters. The research found that people under high levels of stress who believed that stress was good for them had the lowest mortality rates. In contrast, highly stressed people who thought that stress was bad for them had the highest chance of dying. This shows that how you view stress clearly affects how they impact on your health and well-being. On another study it was found that blood vessels constricted (like those with heart ailments) in people who viewed stress was bad for them, but vessels remained open and healthy in those who viewed stress was good for them. Mindfulness is one way for you to achieve this change in stress perception. You can try the next time that you are stressed at work, notice how fast your heart rate is and how accelerated your breathing is. One thing I learned from meditation teaching is that you can just observe these and acknowledge that you may be feeling stressed and then switch your attitude— answer to your stress positively, find something good out of it than just looking at it negatively. You can try to be grateful that the stress response is giving you more energy! As your body is preparing you for your upcoming challenge, a faster heart rate its means to pump and supply more oxygen to all parts of your body. Look at it as a process is keeps your senses sharp and boosting your immune system. Looking at the stress response with this perspective, you view your upcoming stress as a time for positive encounter and recognize as your physiological processes are preparing for it. Imagine how this small change in view, attitude and response to stress can be a means to add a number of years to your life, improve your productivity, and add more accomplishments in the workplace.
7. Always try to be grateful
Now in this part is the psychology behind negativity bias. This is the reason why people are more likely to remember what you did wrong than what you did great, why people focus on the things that are going wrong than look at what’s going right. You may not notice it but having this kind of thinking and behavior every day can mean that you are adopting a very negative and unbalanced way of thinking, so the question now is, what can you do about it? The answer lies in practicing gratitude. Lots of researches has pointed out the benefits of gratitude, and with it is the positive impact on creativity, health, relationships and quality of work. It increases chance for positive experiences in both work and home. When you feel like you’re stuck in a task you don’t enjoy, the first step to counter it is to practice gratitude. You can rather think about how well it sustains you ad how you’d rather prefer it than not having any at all. You may not like office politics but you do know how good your colleagues are as a friend. Being mindful or aware of what’s doing well at the workplace helps improve resilience. It is a big help as instead of going into the pit of anxiety, you can let your mind look and be thankful of the things that is associated with your own well-being. Remember: Practice gratitude to counteract your brain’s usual negativity bias.
8. Nurture Humility
Humility in Latin, humilis, means grounded. Sometimes it is confused for timidity, but its difference is that timidity is about feeling inferior to others while humility acknowledges how you can be someone that people can depend on. Humble people are confident about themselves thing with social media. It’s really hard to post about yourself and regard it as humility, huh? But how can humility be associated in the practice of mindfulness? Remember that mindfulness is rooted in the concept of accepting yourself at the moment and being open to listening to and learning from the ideas and lessons from others. Mindfulness is also equal with the practice of gratitude— as you appreciate how others have helped you you become grateful for the contribution of others—and that is how you become naturally humble.
9. One of my favorite meditation teaching is: To accept the things that you can’t change
When you accept yourself, your past and your faults, you cut down on self-criticism that drains your energy. You’re then more able to enjoy your successes and smile at your shortcomings. This also relates to us how acceptance lies at the heart of mindfulness. Remember a task that you failed or something that you fell short at or went overboard, do you still cringe at the thought of it? Would rather not talk about it? You see, mindfulness is about accepting your present self, with all those past and the future self that you will be. Lack of acceptance can lead to a denial of something that you did wrong and it can result in negative social karma for you. But when you accept the situation, talk to the necessary people to mend things, learn from your mistakes, and move on— you practice humbleness and also tread the path to change. Ridding yourself of self-criticism, you can be able to enjoy your successes and smile at your shortcomings. It is through self-acceptance, that you can have a clear mind to allow you to work on those parts of yourself that you wish to improve. The beginning of self-improvement and personal growth is self-acceptance.
10. Implement a Growth Mindset
According to the research by Carol Dweck and team at Stanford University, people usually has one of two mindsets— you either have a growth or a fixed mindset.
People with a fixed mindset look and believe that their basic qualities, like their intelligence and talents, are fixed traits. Instead of developing these, they spend time hoping that their traits are the ones to lead them to success. They don’t strive to develop themselves, because they think that talent alone leads to success. But then they turn out to be wrong as research proved otherwise.
It was found that individuals with a growth mindset look at intelligence and talents as something that they can improve through effort. By having an outlook that they can get better. They see their innate capabilities as a the starting point, and then build on them through hard work and determination. Brain scans revealed that effort does lead to improvement in intelligence and enhancement of initial talent over time. Individuals with this mindset love to learn and demonstrate greater resilience. It is also revealed that having a growth mindset can truly result in a success in work
Mindfulness is rooted in adopting a growth mindset because as you give attention to the present moment and prevent yourself from judging your innate talent or intelligence, you open your mind to new possibilities. Implementing a growth mindset at work, means you don’t mind getting negative feedback because you view it as an opening to discover something new that you can do.
You are not afraid of taking on new responsibilities because you know that you can cope. You move towards challenges, as you look at them as opportunities for personal growth. That’s the core of mindfulness at work—believing that you can progress and grow through experience, accepting challenges, living in the moment, and learning new things about yourself and others.
The above just shows that when you meditation teaching in the workplace, you learn about how to keep your focus, nurture gratitude, humility and acceptance and eventually become a means for you to seek growth.
