With the hustle and bustle of every day life, it is easy to get caught up in the craziness of work and life schedules. It is important to step back and re center yourself from time to time. This not only improves your family life but will improve your work life as well. Mindfulness is a type of meditation in which you focus on being intensely aware of what you’re sensing and feeling in the moment, without interpretation or judgment. If you are a business owner, it is important to realize the benefits of practicing mindfulness in the workplace.
Below (from Travelers Insurance) are 5 benefits of practicing mindfulness in the workplace that can help your team become more productive:
1. Better Prioritization Abilities
Mindfulness may help you and your team prioritize better. Multi-tasking is really task-switching because it’s not possible for the brain to handle two tasks simultaneously. A research study at Stanford University found that multi-tasking actually made participants less able to switch tasks effectively, likely because they were less able to filter out irrelevant distractions. Since not every task has the same level of importance to your small business, being able to discern what’s most important can be a critically important skill.
2. Increased Memory
Mindfulness can help boost your working memory. Research has shown an increase in working memory among participants in an eight-week mindfulness training. That working memory can translate to productivity if employees are able to better recall training and other information useful for their work. It may even help them avoid accidents and injuries at work if they are better able to remember safety practices.
3. Reduced Stress
Mindfulness can help reduce stress. According to an American Psychological Association survey, 60 percent of respondents reported that work is a very or somewhat significant source of stress, second only to money matters. Serious health issues can arise from stress, from hypertension to cardiovascular disease. Mindfulness training, especially when practiced as a team, can help reduce anxiety and teach emotion regulation strategies to better handle difficult situations.
4. Improved Focus
Mindfulness can help improve focus. Distractions abound in the modern office. Open office concepts can mean employees need to filter out foosball matches to focus, frequent meetings may disrupt workflow, and notifications from email, texts and other social media can make it hard to concentrate. A study that looked at how participants were able to focus found that experienced mindful meditators performed better on all measures of attention and had higher self-reported mindfulness than those with no meditation experience.
5. Team Building
Mindfulness can be a good team-building activity. Practicing mindfulness can be a great way to bring a team together, by providing a team-building activity and by teaching how to better relate to one another. Whether you invite an instructor in to lead a yoga, tai chi or qigong class, or you offer a more structured meditation training program, the team can apply what they learn to handling challenges at work, being more focused and taking time to be present.
In conclusion, creating a more mindful culture can have benefits for you and your team, both inside and outside of the office. Implementing voluntary mindfulness programs in your office such as afternoon yoga or meditation could be a great way to encourage employees to take a moment for themselves and get grounded. And, with practices such as these becoming more mainstream in the recent years, you may find more of your team that not would sign up for these programs. For the full article from Travelers Insurance, click here.
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