Work mindfulness tips:

Our jobs pay the bills, occupy many of our waking hours and can even sometimes give our lives meaning. They can also be a source of significant stress caused by tight deadlines, long days, and difficult conversations. No matter what your job, work can provoke anxiety - and mindfulness can help with that.

We’ve gathered 5 mindfulness tips that you can use at work if you’re feeling a bit overwhelmed by it all.

1. Slow down to speed up

This might seem a bit unconventional as you may not think that slowing down and being conscious can have such an effect. Being in a panicky rush leads to bad decisions and it is a misuse of energy. Instead, pause, focus on listening, stroll rather than run, and generally take your time when at work. Effective leaders, workers, and entrepreneurs slow down and reflect to make the best decisions and then take action. They slow down to speed up, that’s a mindful way of working.

2. Make stress your friend

Your beliefs about stress clearly affect how it impacts your health and well-being. Mindfulness can help you achieve this change in perception. The next time you’re facing a challenge at work, observe your responses and then switch your attitude by responding to your stress positively rather than negatively. By viewing your stress response from this perspective, you can see your upcoming problem as a positive challenge. A small change in attitude can literally add years to your life and improve your productivity and achievements in the workplace. So, if you want to make stress your friend, begin changing the way you think about it.

3. Cultivate humility

Humble people have a quiet confidence about themselves and don’t feel the need to continuously remind others of their achievements. Humility may seem counter to our culture of glorifying those who make the most noise about themselves. But humility is great since no one enjoys being around those who continually toot their own horn. Mindfulness reduces activity in the part of the brain that generates the “narrative self”, as it helps you practice to be more connected with your senses and your “present self”. Your attention widens and you can see how much others contribute to your everyday successes.

4. Use mindful reminders

Being mindful means to remember! Although many people who’ve read about or undertook training in the mindfulness practice do appreciate the benefits of a mindful living, they unfortunately keep forgetting to be mindful. By forgetting your mindfulness practices, you are not fully present or open to opportunities and choices around you. You can’t be creative, plan something new or respond appropriately to work related tasks. By using some form of reminder, you can be mindful again.

5. Be a single-Tasker

Nobody can multi-task as good as they think they can. So, single-tasking might just be the way to go! When you’re multi-tasking, you may feel more productive, even though in reality you are being unproductive since your brain is madly switching from one thing to the next and often losing data in the process. To overcome this, you can keep a time journal of what you want to achieve in a certain amount of time. Work out when you’re single-tasking and when you’re multi-tasking. Take notes of what you have achieved in that time block and how mindful you were.

Over time, you’ll find yourself habitually growing, rather than having a fixed mindset, leading to greater success and personal mastery than before.