Mindfulness at work: How to apply it [7 Tips] [Stress-reducing]
How can you apply mindfulness at work? Here you can read why it is so important and how to apply it. Read on for the tips …
Contents of this page:
Why mindfulness at work?
Suppose you are working at your desk for an hour. In that one hour a number of things happen:
- The phone will ring about 5 times.
- You will be asked about 3 times.
- A joke is made twice.
- A colleague answers the phone 4 times and speaks in your presence for a total of 15 minutes.
- You answer the phone yourself once and talk for about 5 minutes.
- You are greeted once by a colleague who enters and tells you what his weekend was like. This will take 5 minutes.
- You will receive a popup notification from your email and / or a notification on your phone 5 times.
These are more than 10 stimuli in an hour , while you also just have to focus on your tasks! And if a working day has 8 hours, all those stimuli have a debilitating effect on you. Mentally, you are being hacked, without seeing it coming from the outside.
That’s why the mindfulness principles, such as monotasking and breathing, are so welcome at work. Let’s see how to apply this …
Mindfulness exercises at work: Techniques & tips against all those stimuli
Below are the mindfulness exercises that you can apply at work. If you first want to know what mindfulness is exactly, you can read it here.
1 – Get up every 25 minutes
Sitting at a desk for longer than 25 minutes at a time unnecessarily diminishes your ability to focus. If you get up for a while and do the dishes, you are back at full thinking speed when you sit down at your desk again.
2 – Stretch (by getting up every 25 minutes)
There is a second reason why you have to get up every 25 minutes: to stretch. Sitting is the most damaging activity for your back, because your back is made to move.
That stretching is also a mindfulness activity because you suddenly notice your body and feel your body.
But what kind of stretch movements can you make? Here you will find the best back corrective stretch exercises that are very mindful and ‘yogaful’.
3 – Touch something and move your body
Mindfulness doesn’t necessarily have to do with adopting a ‘meditative position’ and sitting still. You are also doing mindfulness when you are moving with your body, dancing, jumping and touching people and things.
4 – Make your breathing deeper
Often we automatically have shallow breathing. Notice this and direct your breath to your stomach by taking a deeper breath. This has a direct effect on feelings of stress.
5 – Organize a standard walking lunch
Make it a habit in your company to all take a walk during lunch. Walking is not only mindful, but also very healthy for your body.
6 – Feel yourself being carried by the ground
We sometimes forget to ‘ground’. Simply bring your attention to your feet and how the ground supports your feet. This immediately makes your energy calmer and stress-free.
7 – Have a formal mindfulness moment
Does your company have a quiet room? Then you can also start doing formal mindfulness or meditation techniques. Use these 84+ exercises for that.
On your luck!