Emails, meetings, and deadlines – is your work day always keeping you busy, occupied, and tired?
Have you been feeling a lot overwhelmed and stressed lately?
So much that you sometimes miss out on important information or your productivity goes out for a toss?
Well, staying focused and productive at work can be challenging, especially, when you are dealing with tight deadlines, work-life balance, daily commutes, and of course other responsibilities.
Mindfulness is a technique that helps you manage stress, improve concentration, and uplift your overall well-being. But how do you incorporate it into your work day? Let's understand.
Mindfulness!
Being present in the moment and immersing yourself in the present is an act of mindfulness. It allows you to pay attention to your feelings, emotions, thoughts, and sensations so you can focus, regulate emotions, and reduce stress.
Mindfulness also helps in reducing distractions, building resilience, and making thoughtful decisions.
Incorporating mindfulness into your work day!
Indeed a work day is all about getting ready in the morning and reaching the office on time. Sometimes it can include endless meetings from the morning to tireless working through the day. And to think of adding more to an already stressful routine can sound overwhelming. But it's not.
Mindfulness is about adapting certain practices into your lifestyle that you effortlessly undertake every day and it becomes a way of life to feel better and live better. Here is how you can incorporate mindfulness into your workday!
A mindful morning routine
How you begin your day sets the tone for how your day goes. Take some time out to create a mindful morning routine. This includes a few simple practices like:
1. Breathing exercises: Focus on how you breathe. Sit down crosslegged on a soft surface and spend a few minutes focusing on your breath. Inhale deeply through your nose, hold for a few seconds, and exhale slowly through the mouth. This simple practice helps reduce stress and calm you down.
2. Meditation: Meditate for a few minutes. This could include chanting a mantra, focusing on your inner self, getting into a yoga asana, or simply focusing on breath.
3. Positive Affirmations: Set the tone right with some positive affirmations that add positivity and gratitude to your day. If you can't think of it yourself, RightLife App offers daily positive affirmations through its ThinkRight feature where you can practice positive affirmations on a daily basis.
Mindful eating
Have you been eating your food in a rush or while talking to your colleague? Did you know that your body might not be absorbing the nutrients from the food and all the digestive problems you might have can be because of ignorant eating? It's time to be mindful when eating food. Avoid multitasking and pay attention to the flavours, textures, and aroma of your food. Chew the food thoroughly and take time to enjoy your meal.
Take regular breaks
It is not the uninterrupted working hours that bring productivity, but the little breaks of respite that enhance your focus and productivity levels. Take short breaks in between tasks to give your mind a respite from the screen and begin working afresh. Take a short walk in the office, catch up with a colleague, or just climb a flight of stairs – simple movements can be great for keeping your body and mind active. A simple hack is the Pomodoro technique where you work for 25 minutes and take a 5-minute break. Repeat this cycle and take a longer break every 4 hours.
Mindful Listening
Have you found yourself zoned out of a meeting or conversation with a colleague? This could be because you aren't paying your full attention to listening to them. Listen to the person speaking with full intent and understanding. Take non-verbal cues like body language, gestures, and facial expressions to understand what they are talking about and how. Repeat what you understood to gain more clarity and avoid miscommunications.
Setting mindful intentions
It's not uncommon to get distracted while working on something important or lose interest midway. The key to overcoming this is setting mindful intentions. Start your work with clear and mindful intentions. Make a list of tasks and prioritize them based on importance and deadlines. Focus on one task at a time to improve your focus and efficiency. Set achievable goals and break larger tasks into smaller tasks to ace through them.
Mindful workspace
A workspace full of clutter only creates distraction and chaos. Declutter and make your workspace more organized. Every evening take time out to clear off your desk, organize your day’s clutter, and leave the workspace clean and organized. This way you will always have an organized start to your day. Add in a small plant, or natural elements to have positivity around.
End your day mindfully
Your work day doesn’t end with you completing the tasks, it ends when you can happily disconnect from work and go back to your personal life. Take a few minutes out to review your day, and reflect on what is accomplished and things you are grateful for! And finally, when you leave your workspace, ensure that you disconnect from emails and constant office buzz to unwind and make a clear distinction between work and life.
RightLife App helps you be mindful!
As one of the best mental health apps, RightLife is a holistic health and wellness app empowering you to take charge of your health and wellness. With its ThinkRight feature, the RightLife app helps you understand your mental health, and tap into tools to help you work through mental health challenges and improve wellness. This includes simple mindfulness tools like positive affirmations, journaling, meditation, yoga practices from experts, etc.
Incorporating mindfulness into your workday can transform your work experience and translate into a happy and peaceful life. With the RightLife App you can include some of these simple mindful practices into your regular day and improve your mental wellness.
