ALL ABOUT MINDFUL WORKING

What is mindful working?

The term mindfulness is not unfamiliar. Mindfulness has evolved from a somewhat esoteric Buddhist idea developed around 2,600 years ago to a modern-day mainstream therapeutic construct. The American Psychological Association defines mindfulness as a moment-to-moment awareness of one's experience without judgment. In this sense, mindfulness is a state and not a trait. Mindful working is the practice of mindfulness at your workplace despite all other factors that might threaten to break your internal state of neutrality.

How to develop mindfulness?

Mindfulness can be developed through a variety of disciplines and practices, including yoga, tai chi, and qigong, but a majority of research has shown that one of the best and easy-to-adapt method is mindfulness meditation. In 2010, Hoffman et al. conducted a meta-analysis of 39 studies that explored the use of mindfulness-based stress reduction and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy. The researchers concluded that mindfulness-based therapy may be useful in altering effective and cognitive processes that underlie multiple clinical issues. Mindfulness meditation self-regulation practice?that focuses on training attention and awareness in order to bring mental processes under greater voluntary control and thereby foster general mental well-being and development and/or specific capacities such as calmness, clarity, and concentration.

Why do you need to adopt Mindful Working?

The question here should be ‘why haven’t you yet adopted mindful working?’ instead of ‘why do you need to’? The fast-paced lifestyle we live in, constantly asks us to be on our toes and more. And amidst the need to manage deadlines and submit projects we forget about ourselves and let the stress of it all get the best of us.

We do not even realize how quickly our workplace becomes a breeding ground for stress and anxiety. We’re told that it is normal to experience stress at our workplace but we’re not told to what extent. The threshold between stress and chronic stress hence often blurs and we keep categorizing it as a normal experience. Research done by the American Institute of Stress, about 80% of people report feeling stress at work, 77% of people experience stress that affects their physical health, 73% of people have stress that impacts their?mental health and 48% of people have trouble sleeping because of stress. It can also contribute to health conditions such as depression, obesity, and heart disease. Compounding the problem, people who experience excessive stress often turn to unhealthy ways of coping, such as overeating, smoking cigarettes, or abusing drugs and?alcohol all of which have a slew of underlying issues.

The practice of mindfulness brings about change from the inside out, it is based on self-care during the best and worst of times. Hence, to support and make an attempt at avoiding the major drawbacks of losing yourself due to work and stress or both, an immediate need to adopt a mindful working style is the need of the hour.?

How to be Mindful at Work?

Here are a few easy tips for you to imbibe that will help you be more mindful at work:

1) Take one step at a time

We often try to juggle between different things and try to multitask, which often causes a lay back in all our other projects. Try to focus on the task at hand and avoid taking up too much on your plate.

2) Practice mindful meditation or exercises ?

Mindful exercises train your brain and body to adjust better and think clearly. The more mindful exercises you do, the easier your brain finds it to drop into a mindful state, thus optimizing your brain function. It must not always be possible to find a corner to sit and meditate for 30 but you can always adopt quicker techniques such as a breathing exercise which can be done sitting on your desk.

3)?Be consciously present

Mindfulness is, above all, about being aware and awake rather than operating unconsciously. Pay attention to what you are doing and if you feel unable to do so, take a minute to acknowledge that and then get back to your work. It doesn’t only mean paying details to your work but yourself too.

4)?Take regular breaks

A?well-known productivity study?found among a group of employees, the 10% who were the most productive had an ideal work rhythm of 52 minutes of work time followed by a 17-minute break. Researchers say that’s because the brain naturally works in high activity for about an hour and then switches to low activity for a short period. Hence giving yourself a break is important to be mindful at work.

5)?Track phone usage

We tend to burden our brains with unimportant information by overindulging in social media. Try to minimize or keep a check on your phone usage, give yourself a complete break, leaving yourself with just your thoughts

6)?Plan beforehand

Plan about your day keeping your goals in mind in advance and try to follow them to the max so that your productivity matches your potential and you feel a sense of satisfaction at the end of your day. Planning will also help you face your fear of doing the unknown as it leaves very little place for the same.

7)?Have well defined developmental goals

Cut out all the indecisiveness about yourself and your work to the extent that you can. You can only become more of yourself when you start shedding the skins you have picked up from others. Plan, adapt and move ahead.

Relationship with Work

David Whyte, an Anglo-Indian poet and philosopher whose writing is based on “the conversational nature of reality” says that “work among all its abstracts, is actually intimacy,?the place where the self meets the world”. In his book ‘The Three Marriages: Reimagining Work, Self, and Relationship’ he talks about the need to commit to yourself before you can commit to others which as easy as it seems is the toughest “The third marriage to the internal self seems to be to someone or something that in many ways seems even less open to coercion or sheer willpower than an actual marriage or a real job”. Work is the transformation of the inside into the outside. The outer forms of togetherness, like a real marriage or relationship, appear to have life and vitality only when the mystery and intimacy of the connection is kept alive in the physical here and now; in the way our hands touch another or touch our work. We survive and our work survives through the willingness to remain the life-long apprentice, through the humiliations and abasement of the lover, through the care and confidence abilities learned and then applied to the materials and conversations that make an everyday marriage and an everyday work real, and especially through the heartbreak and satisfaction of the parent, watching those imaginings go out into the world. A lack in your bond with the inner self has the ability to ruin all that you have made with the outside world, your work, your relationships, your future, and the worst, you yourself. He says “if we are involved in the outer world in ways that betray our conscience or deeply?held beliefs, then even simple internal questions can become very difficult to ask”.

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