Mindfulness for Staff

Mindfulness – the buzzword of staff wellbeing, but how easy is it to achieve?!

The idea makes sense, but how easy is it, in practice, to divert your busy mind to exclusively concentrate on one thing?

In my experience, mindfulness is not often achieved on purpose.  Almost as though, the harder we try to reach that desirable state of calm focus, the more our minds resist and throw at us all the other things we should be thinking of (including what might happen next in that boxset you’re currently binging and the lyrics to that Alanis Morrisette tune you haven’t heard for at least 8 years).  However, when you aren’t trying, you suddenly realise how engrossed you have been in the colour of the leaves on the trees you’re walking past – or how the last hour has just whizzed past without a single thought appearing to take hold, as you were just in flow with the activity you were doing.

If you’re lucky, sometimes, when trying to be mindful, you may experience mindfulness.  But I’d very surprised if it happens every single time.

Mindfulness, like meditation, has been come to be considered as an activity when it actually describes a state.  Funnily enough, they both describe the same state.  The state of the “Ego” having dropped away and a oneness (lack of separation) with whatever is at hand being experienced.  This is the most natural and normal state and it doesn’t require any effort to experience it.  However, it does appear as though understanding the Ego/alternative can help.

As implied in the Rumi quote “your task is not to seek for love, but to find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it” – the same can be said for finding that state of mindfulness.  It’s understanding what stops us from experiencing mindfulness or meditation that can take us there.  Rather than seeking that state.  

I have written numerous blog posts on the Ego, which I’d like to invite you to browse.  However, to tie up this article nicely, and to make it work related, I’d simply describe it as the following:

The Ego is the part of us that believes that things need to be a certain way in order for us to be okay.  So it is always on the look-out for things that appear urgent, important or both.  Often with additional commentary on the potential consequences that could arise, if these urgent and important matters are not dealt with in a prompt and effective manner.  In the workplace, these are very easy to find.

The truth is that we are always okay, but the Ego has us operating with fear of consequences snapping at our heels.  We might get things done, and it might even appear as if we’re organised – but is it really how we want to live and work?  Or would we rather be able to acknowledge situations as they are, acknowledge that we are still okay and see that the situation is providing an opportunity to learn and grow – then go about whatever needs to be done from that perspective?

Have a look around your workplace.  How many people are caught up with a mind full of things that could go wrong, versus how many deeply know that they are okay.  Is this a switch you’d like to see in your company?  Rather than encouraging the activities of mindfulness and meditation, how would you like to provide the understanding that allows it to happen naturally?