Mindfulness At Work: How To Have A Successful Mindfulness Practice In The Workplace

No one wants to go into the office full of dread and anxiety. Many people do, though, and that can lead to a ton of negative effects on their health. But, you don’t have to let the workplace stress you out. There are tools you can implore to help to navigate all these obstacles. Things like integrating a mindfulness practice into your daily life are great, but it can be truly impactful when you utilize a healthy mindfulness practice during your workday.

But how do you do this, and why would you even try to do that?
Well, in this guide, we will look at all those questions, as well as some strategies you can integrate into your day easily so that the anxiety and stress of your workday will dissipate. Along with this, you will find that you are calmer and more focused, which will lead to improved job performance.

Interpersonal and Professional Benefits of Mindfulness

Most of us that have looked into mindfulness know of the emotional and cognitive benefits you can garner from imploring a successful mindfulness practice. Things like reducing the negative effects of a trauma like stress and anxiety can impact emotional states like depression and even more severe mental health conditions.

Then there are the cognitive benefits like enhanced focus and the ability to ignore negative emotional distractions. All of these are helpful in a stressful workplace. But along with those amazing benefits of a consistent mindfulness practice, there are a few more that can be useful in a workplace mindfulness practice:

Interpersonal

Both in your personal life as well as your professional relationships there are some key components to having successful interpersonal relations. By building a mindfulness practice into your daily work life, you might see improved communications with your coworkers and bosses.
This improvement is thanks to a mindfulness practice improving things like your stress responses, understanding your emotions and others' emotions better, and elevated levels of empathy. These changes will inevitably help you have a better ability to resolve conflicts.

Professional

Mindfulness practices are great for having better relationships, and when you do this in the workplace, you will also see many benefits to your professional well-being. With more focus and better communication skills, many find that they are less stressed, and less stress makes the workplace a happier place for them to be.

Mindfulness Through the Day: Tips to Make It A Habit

The biggest thing is consistency, and that means that the easiest way to make a mindfulness practice easy to incorporate into your workday is to make it a part of your daily life. So we thought we would give you a few tips on how to make that mindfulness practice a habit!

Here are our tips:

• Schedule Time – You need to make a concerted effort to include your mindfulness practice in your day. So scheduling the time can be very beneficial. It can be a short period. For instance, setting aside 15 minutes a day to do some sort of mindfulness practice like meditation can be a great way to build a habit.
• Take Action – That brings us to our second tip. You need to choose a mindfulness exercise that works for you. There are a ton of great options. These range from mindfulness journaling to breath work, all the way to Yoga. There are a lot of options. If you want to make a mindfulness practice part of your life, you might want to try a few until your find the one that feels right.
• One Mindful Activity – Then, you can look at activities you do throughout the day and choose one that you want to do mindfully. For instance, maybe you try mindful eating. This would mean that when you eat, you will take your time, and really use your senses to enjoy your meal. Take in everything from the texture of the food, and think about the work it took for you to be able to enjoy the food (from start to finish). Other options might be mindful showering or driving. Any activity can be done with mindfulness.

Workplace Mindfulness: Why It’s Important!

Like any aspect of your life, the workplace has a unique set of challenges and obstacles when it comes to your mental and emotional states. After all, you spend at least 8 hours of the day dealing with people you don’t know well and, this can lead to plenty of opportunities to misunderstand things they say and do.

There is also the fact you have to deal with a ton of rules or codes of conduct while navigating a management structure that can lead to a lot of issues. Not to mention you have to corral certain emotions as they are deemed inappropriate in the workplace. This can all lead to a lot of stress and anxiety, which a good mindfulness practice can help reduce greatly.

Mindfulness Strategies To Use At Work

So now that we have looked at the benefits and reasons that one might employ a mindfulness practice at work, we should look at ways you can do this. So here are a few strategies we think might help you get started with your workplace mindfulness practice:

Try a Metacognitive Approach

If you are walking into a situation that you would typically find yourself being reactionary, you can try to step away from that situation. No, not physically, but rather in your mind. Take in the situation, and be present physically, but observe it without changing it to fit your narrative. This can allow you to be open and reduce the chance of you being provoked to be active in an aggressive manner.

Observe & Acknowledge Emotions

Much like the metacognitive mindfulness practice, you can step away from the situation and really observe your feelings and emotions. You cannot diffuse your stressful situation if you don’t know the feelings you are feeling. So naming them and really looking at the cause of these feelings can help you be in the present, which is exactly what a good mindfulness practice does.

Listen Mindfully

Many times, conflicts and interpersonal communication fail because one or both parties do not actively listen. One mindfulness practice you can employ is to allow the person you are talking with to finish their thought completely before you come up with a reply. Often, the minute people start talking, we are already thinking about what we are going to say, and this devalues what the other person is saying. It also detracts from our complete understanding of what they are trying to say.

Employ Breathing Techniques

There are amazing and calming effects on our minds when we stop and take deep breaths. It can be as simple as utilizing breathing techniques before meetings or conversations. This is a great mindfulness practice that is easy to include in your day and has a big effect on your day.

Final Thoughts

We spend so much of our days at work and that means a great deal of our stress lives in this realm of our lives. But, if you can include a good mindfulness practice, you might find that you have a happier and healthier life. By including mindfulness exercises or simple breathing techniques, you might find work is easier to handle. Removing this stress and anxiety can affect every aspect of your life, and we hope some of the tips help do just that for you.