By Elle Balchin, Rehabilitation Consultant – OT
One of the most common gripes we hear from clients is that they “don’t have time” for mindfulness at work because they’re too busy. That, my friend, is exactly the attitude that tells me that you need a bit of mindfulness in your life!
Contrary to popular belief, practicing mindfulness is not about living life in slow motion. Rather, it’s about stripping away distractions to enhance focus and awareness of the present moment. There’s a bunch of research behind us saying that practicing mindfulness improves efficiency and focus, boosts communication skills and resilience, and gives us more capacity to learn new things. We know that when we are in a panicked or anxious state we are prone to mistakes and have difficulty making up our mind – So why do I continue to hear people saying they don’t have time for it?!
Slowing down and becoming intentional about the way you spend your time and being more conscious while you’re doing it actually improves productivity, rather than slowing it down.
Mindfulness for the busy beaver:
- Start and end your day with a pause. Give yourself the mental space to slow down and set your intentions for the day – how am I feeling right now? What do I need to do today? How am I going to focus my energy right now?
- And then at the end of the day pause, and consciously leave whatever is going on at work, at work, so it doesn’t leak into your home time, leaving you feeling drained and less able to engage with the things you enjoy at home.
- Savour your morning coffee – allow yourself the time to enjoy your coffee, mindfully notice how it tastes, notice what sensations it brings to your body, turn your morning coffee into a full body experience.
- Regular check ins – ask yourself at regular intervals throughout the day, “am I being present right now?”, set an alarm if you need to! If you notice that you’re constantly not present when the alarm goes off, consider incorporating a to re-centre and bring yourself back into the now before moving forwards with your day.
- Stop multi-tasking and self-interrupting – really allow yourself to focus on one thing at a time, check out our tips on how.
