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I wanted to become more successful in my personal and professional life. Like many of you, I have experienced stress, joy, and much sorrow and spinning my wheels in trying to get ahead in life. I am also very dyslexic, so I shied away from anything to do with writing or public speaking as much as I could. Through the years, I tried journaling but never was consistent with it. Due to my dyslexia, writing caused me GREAT anxiety. So, I abandoned my efforts only after a few weeks.
Then I discovered mindfulness, and it changed my life! I am now a published author and blogger, and I earned a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree, so indeed, mindfulness has worked for me. It’s interesting to learn that mindfulness has gained significant attention in the medical field in recent years due to its numerous health and emotional benefits.
I have enjoyed practising holistic living all my life, which means caring for the health and wellness of my body, spirit, and soul. However, I never ventured into the mindfulness territory and needed to understand what it was and why I should learn it. Thinking about it, I never connected mindfulness with my lifestyle, good health, or wellness.
Being a curious person, I learnt mindfulness from books, courses, and lectures and even found its principles in the Bible! As I studied, I began seeing the many benefits that would help me in all aspects of my life, so I gave it a go.
I began practising mindfulness and approached everything I did intentionally. I found that mindfulness worked well if I made it a ‘’lifestyle’’ rather than a practice where one dips in and out. Dipping in and out would make me forget always to be mindful of the moment. However, making it a habit became a lifestyle habit and soon became my second nature.
I was going through a lot of stress and stress at work and found mindfulness helpful in my professional career. First, we need to understand that for mindful practice to work and to stick to it, we need to understand what it is and how it works. So, if that interests you, read on as I share a few ideas in this article to help you to get on the mindfulness journey.
The Benefits of Mindfulness
Several studies have shown that daily mindfulness can help reduce stress and anxiety, lower blood pressure, boost the immune system, and improve sleep quality. Mindfulness can also help with chronic pain management by teaching individuals to focus on the present moment and accept painful sensations without getting overwhelmed.
If you want to know more about mangling pain with mindfulness, a good book I recommend is Mindfulness Health, a practical guide to relieving pain, reducing stress, and restoring well-being. Authors Vidyamala Burch and Danny Penman: Piatkus: 2013.
Regular mindfulness can also increase emotional resilience, self-awareness, and self-regulation, improving mood and overall cognitive function.
It can also help individuals to cultivate a more positive and compassionate outlook on life, enhancing their relationships with others. Overall, daily mindfulness practice has so many advantages for our physical, emotional, and mental well-being.
It’s important to note that mindfulness is not a cure-all solution for all health problems, but it certainly has benefits that make it worth trying!
How Mindfulness Boosts Your Professional Career
Mindfulness can help you both in your personal and professional achievements. It can help people in a variety of ways when it comes to their professional lives.
Mindfulness can help with professional success, which is being present in the ‘now’ to help you fully engage in what you’re doing without judgment.
One way mindfulness can promote success at work is by improving focus and productivity. When practising mindfulness, we train our minds to be more focused and present with the task. This means that we’re better able to stay on task and avoid distractions, which can be incredibly helpful in any work environment.
When practising mindfulness, you’re less likely to get distracted by thoughts about the past or the future. You’re more likely to be fully present, so you’ll be better able to meet those deadlines and get those essential projects done more efficiently.
Self-Improvement and Mindfulness
Developing a mindfulness lifestyle can lead you to better relationships at work. When practising mindfulness, you’re more aware of your emotions and can better empathise with others. You’re also more likely to be patient and curious, which can lead to better communication, teamwork, and collaboration.
Practising mindfulness can help us develop greater empathy and compassion for others, which can be particularly valuable in leadership roles. By perceiving, understanding, and acknowledging the needs and concerns of others, you’re better able to build strong, effective teams and foster a positive and enjoyable work environment.
Stress Affects Your Well-being
In addition to increased focus, mindfulness can help us manage our stress levels, affecting our well-being. By being more aware of our thoughts and emotions, we can respond to challenging situations more mindfully and with excellent composure. This can lead to improved communication and decision-making, critical skills in any professional setting.
Stress is your body’s way of responding to any demand or threat when you sense danger?—?real or imagined?—?the body’s defences kick into high gear in a rapid, automatic process known as the fight-or-flight reaction or the stress response.
I know it doesn’t feel like it, but the stress response is your body’s way of protecting you. Working correctly with stress helps you stay focused, energetic, and alert.
In addition, stress gives you extra strength to defend yourself in emergencies. Healthy stress can save your life, for example, urging you to slam on the brakes to avoid a car accident.
Stress affects our emotions, and mindfulness can also help with emotional regulation. It’s common to experience stress and negative emotions in the workplace. Still practising mindfulness teaches you to manage those emotions and respond to situations more positively and constructively. This can lead to better decision-making and more positive outcomes in work-related situations -better leadership.
Recognizing Stress
We de-frag our computers because they get clogged up with too much information so they will perform more efficiently. The same happens to our minds, and we get clogged up with the information being absorbed at a high rate of knots throughout the day, so it’s hard to sometimes make sense of it all. You may feel you are all over the place, need help focusing, and can’t clarify the information. When we struggle to make sense of a difficult situation, it doesn’t leave much headspace to deal with everything that needs our attention, which may cause undue stress.
Unhealthy Stress and Burnout
When stressed, you might feel like your brain has turned to mush, or you have ‘’brain fog ‘’. When you are experiencing high stress, you may feel that life feels unreal, as if you are disconnected and floating slightly outside your body, watching yourself mechanically doing things. It’s a horrible feeling; you could even suffer a temporary personality change due to severe stress.
For example, you may hide at home, not wanting contact with anyone when you are usually social. Or if you often take time out by yourself, you might find yourself going out every night, drinking when you usually doughnut don’t. Usually financially savvy, you may do unusual things like compulsive shopping.
When stress merges into burnt-out, life seems pointless.
When something happens that leaves you deeply upset, life can temporarily lose its meaning. You can have negative thoughts like, ‘’Why keep trying when everything is going to go wrong?” And you might be tempted to quit your job on the spur of the moment.
You may relate to some or all these symptoms -or none. In whichever way it affects you, severe stress is not good; it causes suffering.
To wrap this article up, mindfulness can help you bring a greater sense of clarity, focus, and compassion to your professional life, leading to improved performance, greater job satisfaction, and more positive relationships with your colleagues.
Why not explore mindfulness and give it a go? It can be a powerful tool to achieve professional success.
By improving focus, emotional regulation, and relationships with others, mindfulness can help you be more productive and fulfilled in your professional life.
Thank you for reading to the end; I hope this article was helpful to you. Let me know if you have any questions. If you wish to contact me, please go to the contact page.
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To live life purposefully can be done if we allow faith, hope and love to become who we are.
With over 40 years of experience, I have worked internationally having a Bachelor of Pastoral Counselling and Theology, Master of Arts in Counselling & Professional Development. BACP Life Coaching Certificate. I currently work as a Christian educator, blogger, author and I am a grandmother and live with my two dogs in Wales UK.
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