6 Powerful Reasons Why You Should be Practicing Mindfulness in Your Workplace

Jon Kabat-Zinn is an American professor of medicine. He is also the founder of the famous Center for Mindfulness in Medicine and the Stress Reduction Clinic. On the topic of mindfulness he once stated:

 “Mindfulness means being awake. It means knowing what you are doing.”

If you analyze the quote for a few moments, particularly in the light of how you function in your daily routine, you will realize that most of the time, you aren’t aware of what you are doing.

While working on your office project, giving team members a presentation about an upcoming project, or having lunch, the chances are high that you do most of these things mechanically.

Your body may be physically present and on task, but your thoughts may be elsewhere. They may be on another task, like what to have for dinner. Or maybe all the reasons why you didn’t snag that promotion, your pilling up expenses, and a million other thoughts.

With such a scattered level of focus, you should not expect to do anything properly —or effectively for that matter— nor should you expect to yield great results.

If that’s how you’ve been working, this lack of focus is the cause of your diminishing productivity. It’s also may be why your boss now constantly calls you to the office for a “talk” about your output. And if you run a business, a lack of focused attention may be why your business is struggling to make profits.

A lack of mindfulness is the root cause of most personal problems. That’s because when you’re not completely awake and aware of your tasks, it’s impossible to get into a state of flow. When you cannot get into a state of flow, you cannot be effective, productive, or involved enough to enjoy your task.

The good news is that:

No matter how scattered your focus and work productivity may be right now, you can improve it by cultivating mindfulness. Mindfulness can make your life easy and beautiful. It can help you skyrocket your work productivity.

To help you understand all that and more, let’s discuss some of the benefits that come with practicing mindfulness at the workplace in detail.

The Benefits of Practicing Mindfulness at the Workplace

Mindfulness should be your go-to state of mind while at the workplace because:

#1: Mindfulness helps keep you emotionally happy and physically enthusiastic

Many companies across the globe, including Target, Atena, Google, Nike, Apple, Ford, and Adobe, now offer their employees mindfulness-based meditation and exercises while at the workplace.

Do you know why?

It’s because these and other organizations and businesses are increasingly becoming aware of the fact that mindfulness can help employees become emotionally, peacefully, and physically engaged with their work. This, in turn, improves overall workplace motivation, fulfillment, and productivity.

Studies conducted by Ellen Langer, a professor of psychology at Harvard University, show that ruminating on painful past experiences increases stress and unhappiness.

When you practice mindfulness, worries and stress quickly exit your body and mind because the minute you reconnect with the present moments, which is the essence of the present mindfulness, you let go of the need to worry about the past and future.

When you stop stressing over what happened or what may happen, you become open to connecting with and embracing the moment that is. This acceptance of the present moment relaxes you and promotes happiness and peacefulness throughout your body and mind.

Whenever your workload feels too overwhelming, and you don’t know how to meet work deadlines, or when worries of losing your job invade your mind and take your awareness hostage, practice mindfulness.

Once you anchor yourself to the here and now, you will realize that this moment is what matters, which will instill in you a very profound sense of inner calm.

#2: Mindfulness can increase your involvement in your work

• Do you often struggle with feeling disconnected from work projects?
• Do you hate your work/job?
• Has your workload started seeming more unbearable?
• Have you started loathing the fact that your boss never appreciates your efforts?

If you can relate to this, you need to realize that being this way only does one thing well: it creates more resentment within you, causing you to loathe your work even more.

While your feelings may be valid, if you endeavor to engage with your work more, every likelihood is that all these ill sentiments will fade into the ether, and you’ll end up enjoying your work-role more.

Mindfulness can help you do this because it enhances your ability to focus on the moment that is and the task at hand.

As you let go of the urge to rehash the past or stress/worry about the future, you concentrate better on the present and everything about it. You pay more attention to your work, focus on the details, thereby becoming more engaged in it. As your involvement in your work improves, so does your excitement about it. When you work with greater enthusiasm, it helps you be thankful for your job, which helps you like it better.

#3: Mindfulness can improve your performance and productivity

A lack of focus (because of physical and mental distractions) and failure to work with zeal or zest does affect productivity negatively. Luckily, if you often struggle with saying no to distractions in your environment, you can use mindfulness to take charge of the situation.

Mindfulness regulates the brain centers in charge of your level of focus. As you become more mindful, it becomes easier to battle distractions like a pro, which helps you focus better on your work and meet project deadlines with ease.

Moreover, as you nurture mindfulness, you take things one moment at a time, focus on the task at hand, and engage in it enthusiastically. This enthusiasm can greatly improve your performance as well as your productivity.

So if you keep at it, you can greatly see a great improvement in how much you get done within a typical workday or workweek.

#4: Mindfulness can help build and improve your E.Q.

Your I.Q. is a measure of how intelligent you are, yes. However, numerous studies have repeatedly proven that your Emotional Quotient or E.Q. —also called Emotional Intelligence or E.I.— is the greatest determiner of fulfillment and success in life.

E.Q. is your ability to understand and manage your emotions as well as those of others so that you can connect with, lead, and influence people. Mindfulness can enable you to understand, accept, and manage your emotions better, which improves your E.Q.

In my books you will note when you start becoming calmer, more focused, and more in control of your emotions, it helps you become a better team manager. It also makes you more aspirational, something that can motivate those under your charge to work smarter by utilizing their strengths to achieve targets.

Besides improving your E.Q., mindfulness can also enhance your communication skills, productivity, and help you make strides in your career.

#5: It can help reduce anxiety and depression

In the hectic lives we live, anxiety and depression are common. Unfortunately, these two conditions can hinder your work performance.

Studies have proven that mindfulness can help relax your brain, promote calmness throughout your body and mind, and stabilize the brainwave irregularities that cause stress, anxiety, and depression. As you overcome these problems, you feel happier and content at work, which skyrockets your career satisfaction and growth.

Use these reasons to fuel your motivation to start being more mindful at work. Take the first step and slowly make mindfulness a habit because this one habit will take you far in life, as you will learn in the next article.

What next?

• For the next 5 days, split up your working hours into 45-minute sessions that you can be focused 100%.
• Between the sessions, put a 5-minute break where you can dedicate to wander in thought and another 2-3 minutes to write down what you have achieved in the previous 45 minutes.
• Once the 7-8 minutes have lapsed, go back to the next 45-minute session where you work mindfully.
• Make sure you are mindfully focused on your work and see how much more you can get done.
• Immerse yourself in work both mentally and physically and be present in everything you do, then record how you feel after every session.