Are you be ‘Mindful @ Work’

Its 31st March, the peak of year-ending work pressures. The reporting managers just lined up multiple deliverables for the day. An email notification from a colleague pops up on your screen, causing your eye to gently dismiss it. Your friends have been goading you to see a new video that they have shared on Whatsapp, your phone is buzzing. But you’ve decided not to check the messages as of now. It can wait. And then there are potential vendor around (like cajobportal.com) vying for your attention too.

What’s happening now is keeping you away from what’s happening now. Attention is like a phantom limb. Our attention span has eroded. It’s time to be ‘Mindful @ Work’

The world is buzzing and many things are happening. You are not aware of the world around you but more sadly of your inner self too. Humans can think of 60,000 stories and feel 300,000 emotions every day, how many of them are you aware of?

In the recent past, JWT -- one of the world's largest marketing-communications brands -- forecasted "mindful living" as one of the "10 trends that will shape our world in the times to come." Quickly on the heels of that report, the Huffington Post ran an article indicating that FOMO (fear of missing out) was being replaced by a desire for JOMO (joy of missing out).

Any article about mindfulness in the workplace rests on a paradox, as it’s an attempt to explain using language a technique that is based entirely on silence. In fact, the quickest way to understand mindfulness is if you stop reading right now, close your eyes and for the next five seconds focus as hard as you can on the next thought you're going to have.

If you did this, you may have noticed that the mind quickly becomes silent. Mindfulness doesn’t really get more complicated than that. It is best defined as ‘non-judgmental awareness of your own present experience’. This means simply observing and accepting your thoughts, emotions and physical sensations without reacting to them.

Mindfulness describes a moment-to-moment awareness of your thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations. It’s a state of being attuned to what’s going on in your body and in the surrounding environment—being in the present moment without thinking about the future or what happened in the past. An essential component of mindfulness is acceptance. Whatever you’re thinking and feeling at that moment is neither right nor wrong. You notice it, and accept it, and move onto the next moment without getting caught up in judging what you’re thinking or feeling.

Interesting, you might be thinking, but how can that actually benefit you?

A study by industry association Assocham titled ‘Preventive Healthcare: Impact on Corporate Sector” stated that over 42% of employees in the Indian private sector suffer from depression or general anxiety disorder due to demanding schedules, high stress levels and performance-related perquisites, said a. When quizzed on sources of stress, Indian employees rank unclear or conflicting job expectations, (40%), inadequate staffing (lack of support, uneven workload or performance in group) (38%) and lack of work/life balance (38%) as the top three reasons according to Towers Watson’s Global Benefit Attitudes Survey

But were they really? Stress is often misconceived, and in fact mindfulness shows us that it isn’t actually stress that’s the problem. Stress is inevitable; anything that creates a demand on an organism is a stressor. Technically, someone asking you to pass the salt at dinner is a stressor. What makes stress a problem and leads to absenteeism or burnout is the way we react to it.

To understand this, it's best to look at what's actually happening in the body when we're stressed.

Your body has an autonomic nervous system responsible for involuntary activities like heart rate and respiration. It includes two interrelated ‘strands': the PNS (Parasympathetic Nervous System) and the SNS (Sympathetic Nervous System). The SNS is responsible for your 'fight or flight' response. When activated, your body secretes hormones like adrenaline and cortisol, diverts blood to the limbs, dilates the pupils and increases the heart rate. We have evolved this response to survive, and it served our ancestors well when they encountered a hungry tiger in the jungle.

The SNS isn't picky. Whether it’s a tight deadline, or a colleague’s negative comment, anything that you perceive as a threat to your body/identity. The initial stressor is the 'first dart'. The second dart comes when we replay the first dart in our heads, thereby releasing the same chemicals all over again and creating a cycle of reaction and stress. This cycle builds on itself until the body can’t handle any more and we have a ‘break down’, usually accompanied by a good cry. In fact, recent research shows that tears actually carry stress chemicals out of the body to help us feel better.

What if we could reduce these stress hormones is by activating the PNS ourselves. The PNS is responsible for rest and recovery. Inward-attention meditation increases parasympathetic activity: a study based on heart rate variability. When activated, it releases serotonin and acetylcholine, which automatically relaxes us and reduces levels of cortisol and adrenaline.

Mindfulness meditation is clinically proven to activate the PNS and while the exact mechanism is still being researched, it may be related to stopping the incessant thought patterns that perpetuate the slow drip of stress hormones

We’re all human, and we all react badly to workplace stress at times, even if we practice mindfulness. However, the more we practice the more resilient we become. This is in part because mindfulness meditation literally rewires our brains. Meditators have a thicker insula and prefrontal cortex (brain areas responsible for complex cognition and emotional regulation). The tangible signs of this are truly extraordinary: increased concentration and creativity, an improved immune system, enhanced creativity and considerably more resilience and happiness. This inevitably leads to reduced absenteeism, improvements in interpersonal relationships and higher productivity.

Mindfulness meditation excites as it provides you with a skill that allows you to take personal responsibility for your own wellbeing, whether at home or at work.

I end with a quote by Lord Buddha

“The mind is everything. What you think you become.”?—?Buddha

So what would you prefer, SNS (Sympathetic Nervous System) or PNS (Parasympathetic Nervous System)?

It’s time to be ‘Mindful @ Work’

Thanks & Regards

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