Mindfulness. It was a concept and a practice that was all around me for years, and yet, I never tried it. From my yoga teacher’s biweekly reminder to breathe for an hour, to the therapists on my team at work who facilitated a course in mindfulness for people with addictions—I heard about it, wrote about it, supported it, and never actually tried it.
Then a colleague told me to read a book about mindfulness in the workplace called One Second Ahead by Rasmus Hougaard, founder of The Potential Project. I picked up a copy of the book from the New York Public Library and took my time reading it. Truly, I renewed it 3 times. I would read a few pages, put it down, think about what I read, sit with it, and soak it in. I think I was taking the time because the wheels were really turning. After I finally finished the book, I started integrating some of the suggestions like limiting my screen time before bed, and observing my inhaling and exhaling for 5 minutes every morning. This may sound shocking but I started to see results on the very first day that I started observing my breath. It’s now been about 1 month since I started my morning breathing and here’s what’s happening.
- I can see the limits of that which I have control over and am letting go of that which I cannot own. On day 1 of my morning breathing routine, I found myself having a mindfulness epiphany. I was facilitating a meeting and the beginning of it was very chaotic—participants were distracted and several were joining late. I noticed that the meeting was chaotic. Quickly thereafter I thought that the chaos meant that I was a bad facilitator. But then I pushed that judgment aside, and just observed the chaos, without owning it or judging it. There were several people in the meeting contributing to the chaos, and I was not one of them. I had control over only my behavior. I felt this expanse of space in my head—like I had room to look at the chaos but in an open space where no thoughts about the chaos existed. It felt like an out of body experience.
- Experiences that would typically bring about negative emotions—stress, anger, aggravation—are no longer doing that. Last week I attended a monthly meeting that, for the last several months, I’ve found nothing but frustrating. This month, the meeting didn’t impact my mood. On another occasion I found myself compromising on something that would typically leave me feeling annoyed. However, this time I wasn’t annoyed. I felt okay. I actually didn’t feel any negative emotions around either of these situations, despite my track record of routinely getting irritated by situations like these.
- I’m better able to focus as I’ve stopped trying to multitask at work. I used to try to do several things at once, which just made each of those things take longer than necessary. Very often I would go to clock in upon arriving at work and while the website would load (this takes about 30 seconds), I would grow distracted. I would start checking email, or reviewing my to do list. Inevitably, I would forget to clock in. I’m now trying to repurpose pockets of time—like the 30 second pause I have to take before clocking in—to breathing. Those 30 seconds are not really an opportunity to get other things done. In fact, distracting myself actually caused more of a problem than just sitting still for 30 seconds and focusing on the first task of my day.
Do you practice mindfulness? How does it impact your professional life?