Mindfulness in the Workplace

Feeling burned out at your job due to work-related stress? Are you emotionally exhausted for many days? Are you less productive? Do you experience a decrease in job satisfaction? You’re not alone. Did you know:

• 80% of workers feel stress on the job.
• Nearly 50% need help managing stress.
• 42% say their coworkers need help with stress.
• One million Americans miss work each day due to stress.
• Job stress costs the U.S. industry over $300 billion annually.

According to the CDC, “Job stress can be defined as the harmful physical and emotional responses that occur when the requirements of the job do not match the capabilities, resources, or needs of the worker. Job stress can lead to poor health and even injury.”

Workplace stress can lead to short tempers, lack of innovation, high turnover, gossiping rather than giving constructive feedback, burnout, information overload, diminished productivity, disconnection, unhappy customers, quiet quitting, no breaks or balance, fear of asking for help, rule bending, negating boss approval, loss of morale, lower performance, and loss of interest in the job. Not to mention, it impacts mental and physical health.

Society values competition and pushing ourselves to the brink. Burnout is not a badge of honor, but some wear it proudly. We can have a million things on our minds both work-related and stress at home, so pulling ourselves out of that can be difficult.

However, a type of stress known as “eustress” or using stress in a positive manner can help us feel motivated to take on new projects and learn new skills. So, stress isn’t always a bad thing. It’s how we address it mindfully.

The Benefits of Mindfulness in the Workplace

Mindful Emailing

Dan Ariely, a behavioral economist at Duke University, says email communication influences a quick response time, but only about ? of our emails are important and urgent. This leads to distraction and slower task completion. Mindfulness can help us discern what is necessary to reply to right now and what can be pursued later.

Response time hinders our communication style. Mindfulness can reduce misunderstandings in email communication. It’s easy to become passive-aggressive or reactive when the person is not right in front of us. Mindfulness can help us take a pause before hitting reply to that email. We try to connect with the person on the other end. We remember that they are human, not just a screen in front of us.

We can ask ourselves if our email is necessary, kind, considerate, and communicated clearly. Will the person on the other end feel hurt by it? Is this person the correct party to send this information to? Is CCing the right thing to do? Can this be shared face-to-face instead?

Simply taking a breath can stop unnecessary exchanges and create empathy. It gives us more time to proofread our work so it’s polished and polite. This creates impulse control.

Attention Training

Daunting tasks and information overload can create distraction and disconnection. It’s important to bring our attention back to the present moment rather than simply going from task to task. Dan Harris, the author of 10 Percent Happier, says, “This is attention training, and the neuroscience shows that this daily exercise can boost the areas of the brain that have to do with attention regulation. Multitasking is a pernicious myth that is preventing us from getting our work done.”

Mindfully pausing between tasks can be the ultimate game-changer as to how much we can get done in a day. It feels counterintuitive to take breaks to do more, but actually, this helps us work more efficiently and make fewer mistakes. Busyness doesn’t always mean progress.

Positive Workplace Relationships

According to Positive Psychology, “Employees who practice being mindful are therefore more likely to show greater acceptance of colleagues without reactivity.”

Coworkers are people you collaborate with, but they also make great companions. Mindfulness can create a more relaxed and peaceful environment to communicate. You can take time at the water cooler to ask questions about their lives, invite them to events, or improve overall team building. You can do non-work-related things together. This helps you feel more connected as you work together. Mindfully listen to your coworkers and make them feel like they matter. This will ease tension and de-escalate any issue. It’s okay to have fun together!

Prosocial behavior leads people to ask for help and give greater input. Ask mindful questions such as: How does this make you feel? Do you feel seen? What do you need? How can I be more supportive? Taking pauses to get that feedback is vital.

Respond rather than react. If someone takes more credit than you for a group project, try to understand it from their point of view. Where did you not address something in the project? Where did miscommunication happen? Did you make them feel valued for their effort? You don’t have to compromise on who gets credit, but you can respond respectfully. This creates a peaceful effort from everyone.

Forbes says, “Group meditation in the workplace is already being used successfully to increase collaboration, innovation, and the quality of work.” In other words, those who meditate together stay together. Take the time to be mindful as a team.

Stress Resilience

Mindfulness reduces the stress response, improves overall health, and regulates attention and emotion. This leads to stress resilience.

Stress resilience counters workplace stress. If people are less stressed, they are more likely to succeed. The stress response can exceed our ability to cope with things. But stress resilience can help us calm down, take stock of what’s necessary to complete tasks, prioritize, and perform better.

According to Brain Facts, the stress response is impacted by perception. We have power over our stress response by changing our perception. Mindfulness changes our perception by making us self-aware and present. We can perceive our workplace as positive, and therefore we are stress-resilient.

Remove Imposter Syndrome

Maya Angelou once said: “I have written eleven books, but each time I think ‘uh oh, they’re going to find out now. I’ve run a game on everybody, and they’re going to find me out.’”

Imposter syndrome at work happens when we feel like a fraud in our field or like we aren’t good enough. This is born out of negative self-talk. Mindfulness helps you not believe your thoughts. Taking a mindful approach, you detach yourself from your inner critic fueling imposter syndrome. It ends the comparison trap because you accept your authentic self and capabilities.

Imposter syndrome isn’t always the fear of failure; it is very much the fear of success. That we will be found out to not be enough for the role. Or that we have been faking it to make it.

Mindfulness helps you become assertive because you don’t listen to those thoughts. They don’t define you or your worth. Pay attention to what you do well at work and ask for feedback. Instead of hiding from the spotlight, you step forward because you know that you have what it takes.

Tolerance for Aspects of Jobs We Don’t Like

According to Harvard Business Review, surface acting is when we repress the negative feelings we have about a duty so we can survive. However, studies show that deep acting – conjuring up positive feelings about something – can actually influence us to feel better. This is when mindfulness practices can become challenging to apply when discerning how to respond to workplace stress.

Sometimes there’s nothing we can do about an aspect of a job we don’t like. Mindfulness is a route away from acting, but there may still be some acting in part. For example, customer service people may have to smile through a customer’s hostility. Mindfulness allows us to manage our own reactions. We can do this while staying in the moment. There are limits to mindfulness practices – they won’t make everything rainbows and sunshine. But they can make things tolerable. That is the mindful mission – to do what it takes to get the best results.

Mindfulness practices create support and strategies to bring a team together to stay on the same page. Validation helps employees feel less alone and find compassion for one another during a difficult duty. Mindfulness programs such as Awaken Pittsburgh’s Mindful Connections for Workplace Wellness can not only be a lifeline but a lifestyle your company can adopt to improve work performance.

In conclusion, mindfulness in the workplace offers numerous benefits, including improved communication through mindful emailing, increased attention and productivity through attention training, positive workplace relationships, stress resilience, overcoming imposter syndrome, and tolerance for aspects of jobs we don’t like. By incorporating mindfulness practices into the workplace, companies can create a more harmonious and productive environment for their employees.