Mindfulness At Work

Imagine you are in a situation at work, racing against deadlines, short notices, fraught with anxiety, flaring tempers, loud voices, and clashing egos all over the place, yet again.

You have dealt with this many times before and have seen the results. Work output is shoddy, no one is happy, not you, not your colleagues, not your boss, no one. 

But this is life, and unfortunately, things don’t go according to a script written by you.

You cant change people or the situations that you are dealing with. What you can change is your attitude and your response to the stimuli.

Your response and its effectiveness is a direct result of the degree to which you are mindfully aware. Which will, in turn, define the outcome.

According to Padma Shri Awardee Dr. KK Aggarwal - National President Indian Medical Association & President Heart Care Foundation of India, "Mindfulness means living in the present and giving preference to it over the past and the future".

In Dr. Aggarwal's opinion, mindfulness should be a way of life, workplace included. 

“We should adopt mindfulness breathing, mindfulness eating, mindfulness progressive muscular relaxation, and mindfulness reading at the workplace. Through this, we can focus on the object of concentration and we do not get diverted by our motor or sensory senses,” he stresses.

Once we imbibe mindful practices we can master our senses better.

In the absence of mindfulness, there is reactivity: anger, withdrawal, depression. When you employ mindfulness, you can manage expectations, conflict, projects, communications, and relationships to get the result you want. It promotes a realistic, objective view of reality. 

Mindfulness also helps you accept that you might not get what you want. It promotes a realistic, objective view of reality. 

Dr. Rakhi Anand, Clinical Psychologist at Lybrate describes mindfulness as being consciously aware of one’s own thoughts and experiences aiming at focusing your attention on the present experiences and accepting it without judgment. 

“It can be thought as a basic human ability to be fully aware of where we are and what we’re doing, and not overly reactive by what’s going on around us. It includes techniques such as meditation, relaxation exercises, yoga etc.”

Mindfulness at Work 

Mindfulness can help you navigate relationships and expectations to get the results you want. More importantly, mindfulness helps you accept that you might not get what you want.

Cultivating a formal or informal practice of mindfulness that fits your lifestyle is very helpful. It could be something as simple as connecting with a sense of inner peace while waiting for your morning coffee, to sitting in a deep meditative state based on a formal school of teaching, whatever catches your fancy.

According to Dr. Anand, a lot of research has been done on the benefits of mindfulness and it has found to be useful in every setting.

“Mindfulness techniques help to reduce stress, anxiety, understand oneself better, maintain attention/focus and also reduce intrapersonal and interpersonal conflicts. All this benefits the employee at the workplace to work efficiently and peacefully by increasing their concentration level and decreasing stress,” she avers.

 Two Ways to be More Mindful at Work

1) Formal Meditation Practice

Mindfulness is cultivated through using various meditation techniques. 

Meditation is a mental exercise that fosters concentration and mindfulness. You can consider it as your retreat, where 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.

A simple technique to meditate at work is:

• 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.

It can be done for any amount of time from 5 minutes to 20 minutes at work. It will help you relieve stress, strengthen 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

Not everyone has the bandwidth to cultivate a formal practice. In the absence of which, cultivating a Moment-to-moment meditation practice works equally well. 

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.

Employ these simple techniques to remind you to pause, take a step back and reset. 

• Follow the bell: 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
• Observe 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.

So play around with different techniques and see what works for you!