Why Practicing Mindfulness May Improve Your Career
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Finding focus can lead to a longer and more fulfilling professional life
In its simplest form, mindfulness is the practice of freeing your thinking from distractions and negativity. It’s a way to train yourself to pay attention to the present moment with calm self-awareness and acceptance.
This specific kind of mental discipline can be enormously helpful within a work context. For those holding positions of high-stakes responsibility, practicing mindfulness can increase performance and reduce the health-impacting side effects of stress.
Being mindful means answering tough questions
Perhaps it’s time for a career reckoning. Effective mindfulness can give you the strength to look reality straight in the face and make some difficult decisions. Focus on your professional life, ask yourself where your career is going, and answer honestly:
Are you doing what you love?
Is what you are spending the most time doing getting you closer to your life goals?
Do you feel rewarded by the amount of time you spend working and is it in balance with the rest of your life?
For all its press coverage and popularity, being mindful is simply a version of the time-honored act of introspection.
Mindfulness encourages results-driven action
One of the tangible results of training yourself to be more mindful is the ability to maintain sustained attention for increasing amounts of time. That level of focus allows for uninterrupted planning and clear-eyed problem-solving.
Mindfulness practices can develop your mind in the same way exercise develops muscles. Some standard methods are meditation "drills" that focus attention on bodily processes such as breathing or movement, and those that center thinking on a personal issue or challenge. Simple “calm down” methods can also be instrumental in preventing minor disturbances from escalating.
The myth of career-limiting mindfulness
Decades ago, suggesting a meditation break in the middle of a busy workday would most likely have been met with amusement, if not outright disbelief. In exceptionally competitive industries, the results of practicing mindfulness — calmness, gratitude, and inner peace — seem to lay in direct opposition to what was perceived to be necessary to get ahead.
But today, many companies offer mindfulness programs as part of their employee health plans because of their evidence-backed outcomes. Mindfulness has been credited with lowering aggression, moderating emotions, and encouraging the type of big-picture thinking that creates great leaders. And essential to the bottom line, mindfulness training has been proven to decrease the health conditions that raise employee healthcare costs.
Rather than being regarded as “a new-age trend” or “the latest fad,” mindfulness training is now widely accepted in corporate America.
Thinking your way to better health
The proven byproducts of even a limited amount of mindfulness training can be broadly categorized as psychological, physical, and interpersonal.
Now that medical science has backed up the sizable toll stress takes on the human body — high blood pressure, heart disease, insomnia, depression, and anxiety, among many others — stress-relief interventions have become essential parts of wellness initiatives. The stress-reducing qualities of a typical mindfulness exercise can bring almost immediate physical and mental relief.
Its power lies in its ability to lower adrenalin, decrease the fight-or-flight response, and usher in relaxation, calmness, and clarity.
Elevating performance with mindfulness training
One of the most immediate payoffs of mindfulness, if practiced consistently and correctly, is increased mental stamina. Focused thinking can be energy-begetting, not energy-consuming. The practice develops the brain’s ability to process information and complete routine tasks more quickly.
Increased mindfulness is correlated with expanded creativity, self-confidence, and resilience. And programs have been known to encourage work-life balance, reduce burnout, and increase staff retention rates.
Improving relationships by boosting EQ
Mindfulness training also has the potential to raise emotional intelligence (EQ), a critical aptitude for both company leaders and employees at every level. The self-awareness it promotes is the first component of emotional intelligence — and the basis for developing all other emotional intelligence skills.
The practice of mindfulness opens the mind to new ways of framing challenges and dealing with difficult relationships. It also promotes compassion, an essential quality for leaders.
Something else to keep in mind about mindfulness
One of the main drivers of personal and professional unhappiness is feeling no control over one’s circumstances. A diminished sense of agency can cause a person to stay in a psychologically draining or unsatisfying job much longer than is healthy.
Taking the time to learn mindfulness can help clarify the next steps and build the confidence necessary to move on to better things.
Carrington Legal Search is celebrating 20 years in business: we were in the trenches with our clients during 9/11 and 2008. We partner with our clients to identify leaders and mission-critical talent to shore up and grow companies even during the most challenging times. We are here for you! To make our nationwide network work for you, get in touch at 512-627-7467 or email carrie@carringtonlegal.com.