Career Chat // Mindfulness & feeling good at work // Friday 1 July

[believeinme]

I get this way when I'm doing work I enjoy.  

[Renstar]

Hi @believeinme yes yes yes - that's right, when we are doing something we love we are often just in the moment.

That is an act of mindfulness and it's brought on by what pscyhologists call 'flow'. 

This guy discovered it... Mihály Csíkszentmihályi,!

and yes when you're at work being in flow is amazing ... i'm in it right now!

I guess people struggle when not at work and all the problems of life start flooding back ... does that also happen to you?

Thanks again for chatting 

[believeinme]

I did mindfulness yesterday in the middle of a meltdown I was having for being overcharged for something.  Because of my mindfulness I realised that I was wrong and that they were not overcharging me, but I was so far into my meltdown that I kept it going.  This happens at work sometimes, too.  I notice that I'm freaking out and not acting mindfully, but I just have to keep it going.  How can I stop?  

[Renstar]

Hi @believeinme

Firstly well done, you’re living consciously and that’s better than most people, most people live in a reactionary way without any insight into their own behaviour.

So as far as I can tell you’re already living mindfully, and of course you mention you have a mindfulness practice which is what gets you observing your own behaviour and being able to make decisions about it.

So, well done!!

What you’re not yet (but getting there!) used to is stopping the melt down or stopping once you’ve observed yourself. And can I say that’s a problem for most of us … how do we return to the mindful state when we’re in meltdown?

Great question.

I would start by saying that when you’re in meltdown you’re in your head so no mindfulness going on there – you need a plan.

Try to consciously take evasive action; take a short break from the situation, count to 10 or 100 whichever you need, let the voice in your head be stronger than your emotional reactions to the situations ("Stop!  Stop and breath!").

One thing I do to bring me back is say … "check me out having a meltdown" … it puts me in the position of curious observer and then calms me down. The more I have practiced being the curious observer (a mindfulness/positive psychology term) the more I have been able to come back into the moment more easily.

But it takes practice and when I’m upset it takes even more practice … clearly the answer is to be mindful all the time and not get into those states but … that’s for the Dalai Lama, not me yet!

Practice is the answer @believeinme ... practice being mindful all the time, be the curious observer of your own life and limit those reactions opting instead for flow responses ...

We've gone full circle!

What do you think?

[Former-Member]

Good morning,

I find being mindful at work a struggle. Thankfully I have a window and there is a tree and some bushes and sometimes I can see birds, more often I can hear them.

In meetings I sometimes push my feet in the ground and wiggle my toes. I eat chocolate. Take a phone call outside and feel at the moment the cold and the wind. It's a bit like the toolbox things we talked about before?

When I do enjoyable work, I put on my headphones and listen to classical music - that gets me in the flow and time flies, unfortunately there are not that many opportunities to do this for me anymore.

My therapist said I have to do my grounding exercises regularly every day, so that I can use them when I have flashbacks. I have not started that yet. I will set a reminder on my phone a few times a day to practice that. I guess that is mindfulness too?

That's me all over and out, I'm just hanging in there for the weekend now, my head is pounding and my mood is low. I think I'll go and make a nice cuppa tea now, surely that's mindfulness?

Have a great weekend x

[Renstar]

Hi @Former-Member I do love reading your posts ... I know you're off but I thought i'd comment anyway.

You know you hit the nail on the head, for all of us practice is key. Your therapist asking you to practice your grounding techniques when you're not upset is excellent because neural pathways will have been created and will be ready to be used just when you need them most (the alternative is to use your fight/flight response which invariably makes you more anxious!). And of course, this technique becomes a part of your toolbox 

Here's another alternative ... have you tried being the curious observer ...?

Just observe everything ... rather than react to it.

Try it for 10 minutes, see what you think.

The premise is that  as the curious observer you hold no judgement about what's going on.

... oh there's john going off his nut at me ... there's my boss strorming around because he didn't meet KPI's ...there's brenda making a coffee ... and here's me just wathcing it all happen.

No reaction necessary. Just observe and then respond mindfully ... it's important to note that you're not supressing anything because you're not judging it and hanging onto feelings about what you're observing, you're merely watching it and forming a mindful response.

You can learn to do this ... as it guarantees less stress!

I'm not saying it's easy but, it's an excellent way to live!! And also the basis of mindfulness.

Something to strive for anyway

Have a great weekend too x

[Renstar]

Now you know I love my research

... and I’ve found an article which supports the curious observer model I discussed today in a work context …

It's Good et al. / Contemplating Mindfulness at Work, 2016.

Hey i know it's Friday and nobody wants to read research!

But it directly informs today's topic so here goes ...

Firstly the article determines that mindfulness involves the way we experience the world in contrast to how we conceptually process it (technical term meaning the way we use our thoughts to make sense of the world thoughts might be abstract, evaluative or biased towards the self (Leary, 2004; Watkins, 2016).

The practice of mindfulness allows us to attend to our interactions with the world, without immediate attempts to derive meaning from it, which are often of a habitual nature.

When you are being mindful, the elements in your mind —mental images, self-talk, emotions, impulses to act, and so on—can be observed as part of the ongoing stream of consciousness. (Good et al. / Contemplating Mindfulness at Work, 2008 p.117).

So when you are mindful you are merely observing your responses ... or as they call it your 'stream of consciousness'.

By doing this we “decenter,” as we merely attend to experiences within a wider context of awareness (e.g., to view thoughts as just thoughts); stimuli and resulting reactions to them are observed rather than habitually interpreted with positive or negative implications for the self (Brown et al., 2007).

This is my 'check me out having a reaction' thinking i discussed earlier ...

For example, in moment-to-moment contact with an angry or abusive boss, the internal experience of fear, anger, or other reactions is observed in its cognitive, emotional, somatic, and conative manifestations (e.g., awareness of one’s interpretations of the outburst, of fear arising, of the heart racing, and of a desire to appease).

Awareness of and attention to these reactions affords a degree of mental distance or disengagement from self-relevant evaluations.

Therefore producing a better chance of responding and feeling more calm.

When you get practiced at merely being the observer or the witness to thoughts and emotions as they play out, comes an ability to attend to occurrences as concrete phenomena rather than interpreting them in ways biased by personal memories, learned associations, or future projections

(e.g., “Here we go again. He is overly emotional and overreacts to everything.

I wonder what I did today to set him off. I might as well leave because this is just going to escalate.”).

You then evaluate based on a calm rational judgement rather than an emotional (fight/flight) response.

If you read through all that well done!

In a nutshell, to practice mindfulness at work:

• When at work try to decenter yourself by being a witness to yourself and what is happening around you (toughie but doable with practice)
  
  
• You will experience calm which leads to even more calm and makes step one more attainable
  
  
• Calm leads to more easily being an observer or witness when something that is anxiety-producing actually happens!
  
  
• Your new way of observing will then ensure you witness the events around in a decentred way
  
  
• Leading you to use your rational emotional responses to evaluate the situation with a more calm approach.

How does all that sound?

[Bimby2]

Thank you RenStar for your artice on mindfulness in the worlplace and in general. Informative and such

a useful tool to help control our sometimes ' racing thoughts.'   Meditation gives us this opportunity

to use mindfulness whether it's in the workplace or elsewhere. I'll keep trying to practise same. Bimby2

[Renstar]

Hi @Bimby2 ... good to hear from you.

Yes indeed meditation is a great way to quieten the mind and get the flow of mindfulness going ... do you feel like sharing about your own meditation practice?

I find meditation a really helpful tool but not everyone finds it easy to get into ... 

was it easily accessible for you when you started? has it changed your life in any way?

thanks for sharing and for any contributions ...

[Renstar]

So today’s forum topic mindfulness at work features mainly the act of being conscious at work both of yourself and your reactions and also of other’s but in an observational, non judgmental way that allows you to stay ‘once removed’ or decentred.

This is a very helpful way to be at work because you’re there for so many hours a day … imagine the alternative, everything gets you down, you have very little at work which makes you happy and you’re always reacting to certain things/people/situations …

The problem with bringing our emotional reactions to everything –rather than responses – is that we can get very sick. We can become so depleted of good body chemicals like endorphins and so full of nasty ones (like cortisol) that we begin to experience depression and workplace anxiety …

Maybe some of you can related already …

Mindfulness will provide you with a practice which if you keep at it, according to research, may activate your body’s natural healing processes. And that will lead to feeling good!

In one piece of research, it was found that;

‘mindfulness practice may engage several biological pathways, including immune and endocrine changes evidenced by an increase in antibody titers to influenza vaccine (Davidson et al., 2003)’

At work you could become the only person who doesn’t catch the flu that year ...

Some of the most original research on mindfulness by Jon Kabat-Zinn shows that:

Mindfulness practice may create a resilience resource for enhancing health, improvements have been noted in standardized mental health measures including quality of life scales, depression, anxiety, coping style, and other affective dimensions of disability following mindfulness training (Ludwig and Kabat-Zinn, 2008)

In the same study, it was shown that a low-level Mindfulness based intervention (practiced during meetings no less!!) was found to significantly decrease inflammation in participants (in the short term).

Not to mention shorter meeting times and more concentration! Amen to that!

This is what they implemented for the trial …

A Mindfulness intervention was designed as a stress reduction program to be delivered onsite that included reflective writing, sharing among participants, mindfulness instruction, yoga, and formal mindfulness meditation, with gentle background music …

I love it!!!