Realistic Ways to be Mindful at Work

Mindful working means being focused and aware in the workplace. Mindfulness can help to reduce stress and conflict in the workplace whilst increasing resilience and emotional intelligence. It can also play a huge part in improving communication in the workplace by limiting distractions.  In this way, mindfulness can help increase productivity, curb mistakes, and even enhance creativity.

How can you be more mindful?

Focus on your breathing

At work sometimes we can forget to focus on our breathing. As you must know, breathing important. Focused breathing is quite simply bringing your focus to your breath. It can be done anywhere, not just in meditation or yoga and can be great to do whilst you are at work. Focused breathing can help you stay in control and limit stressful situations by quite literally breathing the stress out.

Take a relaxing lunch break

Taking a relaxed lunch break can make the difference between a stressful day and a mindful day. You could even try to practice mindful eating. Mindful eating involves eating slowly without distraction. Whether it be every day or just once a week try eating by yourself, in silence.

 Focus on one task at a time

Just do one thing at a time. This is particularly important when you are feeling overwhelmed. Multi-tasking actually limits productivity and increases stress. A great way to get started is to write your to-do list the day before - blocked out, so you know when each task should be done, leave some room for interruption. This will make your work feel more structured and leave a lot less time for decision making in the morning before work and a lot less room for multi-tasking. Give yourself permission to focus…on just one thing. If you feel yourself wandering off to another task, that’s ok just re-centre and come back to that one focused task