Mindfulness Briefly: Why You Should Advocate Mindfulness in Your Organization
It will pay off in unexpected ways
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“Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it. Always work with it, not against it.”
— Eckhart Tolle
An organization first and foremost consists of individuals, human beings. To make a sustainable change we must consider every single person. Simply put, if every person is happy, the organization is happy and performance improves on all levels. Easier said than done, of course.
But there are ways. There is an innumerable amount of studies that show the diverse benefits of practicing mindfulness such as increased emotional intelligence, self-regulation, and resilience. In short: Mindfulness makes for a better, more balanced, and happier life.
Information overload is making mindfulness increasingly important!
The world around us sometimes seems overwhelming. We are all increasingly flooded by streams of information. And when we do have one of these rare instances of not taking in any new information we tend to think about the past or the future in some way. We give our brains no rest. This makes it hard to focus on what’s important. In work and life.
We cannot make the world less hectic, but we can change how we perceive the world around us and how to deal with it. Mindfulness helps us to accept our circumstances and ourselves.
It helps us to center ourselves and to focus on the essentials and to not be distracted. It helps us to become aware of what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, and thus to make better decisions.
Enjoying every step of the process is key
Organizations and people have goals. And these are important, as they give us a sense of purpose and direction. But we should not make our happiness dependent on the achievement of any goals. For a good life, we should be enjoying the process towards these goals as much as reaching them.
Some goals require just 10 steps, others 100 and others may be a million. It does not matter. The idea of mindfulness is to be mindful at every one of these steps. That is to be aware of and to give every step, every task and every moment at hand your undivided attention.
This way we can live in the present and simply enjoy the journey. This, like any new skill we learn, takes practice.
The mindfulness movement is reaching our organizations
Many companies such as Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Nike report the success of integrating mindfulness programs in their company culture. But that may not be enough.
In the end, it’s the individual that has to take responsibility. This is why I am convinced that if we can make mindfulness part of our organizations’ DNA it will pay off in many, even unexpected, ways.
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