Mindfulness at Work

Mindfulness is great but how can you stay mindful during a day at work? Despite the work that you do, there are going to be tasks that are just going to be just that little dull and will see you spiral into mindlessness! Meetings. Presentations. Those trivial tasks that just must be done! How can you remain mindful? It’s tough, but here are some ideas that might help.

1.     Set your timer to do regular body scans.
Use your phone to set a timer, every hour maybe, and when the timer goes off, actively scan your body to see how ‘present’ you are. It only needs to take 60 seconds. 
- Start with your posture. Are you sitting comfortably? Are you slumping or bent over? Do you need to stand up or been better, use your stand-up desk to change position?
- How is your breathing? Is it laboured, consistent, shallow? Take a few breaths to check it out and reset.
- Check in to your thoughts. What were you doing for the last 15 minutes? Were you being mindful or mindless? Actively return to work and be conscious to focus on the process of the task at hand. How are you doing the task? What physical motor skills are you using? What type of thinking is required? What materials do you need to get the job done? What relationships do you need to employ? What strengths are you using? Are you underusing or overusing them?
Now you’re set to go, trying to remain mindful until the next time the reminder arrives!

2.     Regular take time to do a mindful exercise
Choose that which you enjoy doing, short meditation, observation exercise, listening to music or whatever and then regularly stop working to do a mindful exercise.

3.     Aim to do single tasks.
List your tasks as single tasks. After you complete each task, celebrate (a fist pump or silent cheer is enough) and if you need to, reset before starting the next task with a body scan, setting up for the next single task.

4.     Journal
If you are not sure how your workday rolls, try doing some journaling to find out. Regularly stop during the day and record how you are feeling, are you being mindful or not? What’s going on with your thoughts? Are you comfortable, restless, or bored? At the end of the day/week, you will be able to see when and what is going on with your mindfulness/mindlessness and you can act on making some changes.

5.     Slow down!
Research has shown that sometimes slowing down your work pace, can actually speed achievement up! If we are not being mindful, our productivity decreases.  If we can slow down, be mindful, be aware and present, then we can more done and be more efficient.  So, try slowing down!

6.     Embrace stress!
Research has shown that those who believe that stress is good for them, that it motivates and inspires them, had the lowest mortality rates!  Yes, it’s true! Those who looked at stress, embraced it as an opportunity and managed it well, live longer! Whereas those who were afraid of stress, who panicked if highly stressed and managed it badly, had shorter lives! Wow! So next time you think “Oh no I’m stressed!” change your thinking to, “Oh I’m stressed, what can I learn from this and how can I use it to motivate me?” and you may live longer! Being mindful about when your body is yelling STRESS! Is how you can manage this change of thought processes.

7.     Gratitude
Being grateful is an antidote to our natural negativity bias. So next time you are thinking about how you are stuck in a job you don’t enjoy, doing tasks that you don’t want to be doing or that you are wasting your time, focus on all the things about your job that you are grateful for. Include the relationships that you are in your workspace that you appreciate. Mindfully being grateful for the good things about your work situation has the capacity to change your negativity to positivity! 

8.     Be humble!
Mindfulness is about accepting yourself just as you are, with the ability to listen and learning from others. Having a sense of humility contributes to your mindfulness.  Accept others, be grateful, be humble and you will live mindfully.

9.     Acceptance
Sometimes you need to accept what you cannot change and focus on what is within your circle of influence. Accepting yourself allows you to cut down on energy-draining self-criticism. That way you can then focus on your success and have a giggle at your shortcomings. Self-acceptance is a powerful thing!

10.  Move from the Fixed-mindset to a Growth-mindset
Giving attention to your mindfulness, not judging and being open to new possibilities allows you to take a growth-mindset approach to work. Make sure you listen to your thoughts. What is the language? Do you end the sentence “I can’t do that”, with “yet!”? Accept you have choices. Question your negative and fixed attitudes and take action!

Adopted from an article in Mindful. Healthy mind, healthy life.

Hopefully you can adopt one or more of the above suggestions to be more mindful at work! It won’t happen overnight, but it can happen with an understanding, an awareness and being proactive!

Enjoy!