Stress is the #1 complaint from employees.
Stress can cause physical and emotional breakdowns, directly impacting the work environment. As stress mounts, productivity and creativity suffer. Inability to mitigate stress often leads to employee turnover. Proven mindfulness stress reduction techniques address these issues, and improve overall employee satisfaction.
“3o% of people say they are “always” or “often” stressed at work.”
Here’s a link to the American Institute of Stress Work Stress Survey.
Anxiety: Emotional and Physical Impact
Anxiety consumes our brain’s and body’s attention. Everything else shuts down.
Anxiety prohibits the growth of new brain cells. And can kill off brain cells.
Too much anxiety makes our threat detection system more sensitive. Which would be great if there was a sabertooth tiger roaming the halls, but not for the next meeting or project.
Anxious people are lousy at accurately interpreting facial expressions. Considering the importance of non-verbal communication, this is huge.
Anxiety causes us to fall back into our old patterns. Our brains are lazy— if we’re stressed we return to what is familiar and “safe”, decreasing creativity.
Anxiety leads to faster decisions. But less accurate ones.
Anxiety can be physically painful. Stress-related neurohormones can cause real physical pain and discomfort.
“The faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention,
over and over again, is the very root of judgment, character and will.”
Minds at Peace Approach to Stress Reduction
Provide education and awareness on how stress affects physical and mental health.
Teach employees to recognize how their own anxious thoughts create stress.
Teach skills to identify when emotional reactions are hijacking the decision making process, leading to more stress and suffering.
Teach a variety of meditation skills to slow down the mind and increase focus on the task at hand.
Teach foundation attitudes of mindfulness which enhance interpersonal relationships in the workplace.
Gain greater self-awareness of negative automatic reactions and develop skills to counteract self-defeating, judgmental thoughts.
Mindfulness at Work
Stress reduction groups can be tailored to examine specific mindfulness themes applied to work situations. Each class uses meditations, along with exercises, to practice and enhance the weekly teachings based on the teaching of Sharon Salzberg.
Balance: the ability to differentiate between who you are and what your job is.
Concentration: being able to focus without being swayed by distraction.
Compassion: being aware of and sympathetic to the humanity of ourselves and others.
Resilience: the ability to recognize er from defeat, frustration, or failure.
Communication and Connection: understanding that everything we do and say can further connection or take away from it.
Integrity: bringing your deepest ethical values to the workplace.
Meaning/Fulfillment: Infusing the work you do with relevance for your own personal goals.
Open Awareness: the ability to see the big picture and not be held back by self-imposed limitations.
An engaging workshop for Orcutt & Company at their first company retreat.
“There were so many great takeaways and Mark was able to capture everyone’s attention. The team still references what they learned from Mark.”
One of the two Lunch and Learns at DeBra-Kuempel, with even more listening in through satellite offices, introducing employees to the 8 week Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction course. DeBra-Kuempel is serious about empowering their employees to reduce stress and build a culture of mindfulness.
A recent 8 week group showed a 31% drop in their perceived stress (PST).
“I enjoyed your approach and teaching style. I am not normally one to share in a group setting buy you made it feel safe to do so.”
“The class helped me become how unaware I have become.”
“Helped me identify new ways to deal with stress and anxiety.”
“Showed us a tangible, helpful way to self regulate our minds and emotions.”
“Thank you for your humor!”
“Thanks for dedicating your time, knowledge and caring to teach a very valuable course.”
Minds at Peace offers this material in a flexible manner customized to the goals of the company and availability of employees.
One time workshops to introduce mindfulness stress reduction.
In depth training can be designed to meet the organization’s needs over a several week period.
Ongoing support is provided through online educational links and emails.
A mindfulness culture leads to an improved ability to manage stress, better focus, and increased resiliency and vigor. Research also confirmed decreased sick days, improve overall health and wellness, and increased compassion towards fellow employees, all of which improves productivity.
Large corporations like Google, Facebook, Aetna and even the US Marine Corps use mindfulness to improve workplace functioning. But businesses of any size can benefit from learning these skills.