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5 Mindfulness Practices to Take Control of Workplace Problems
Check out these 5 common workplace challenges and ways that you can mindfully approach them by self-regulating your emotions. Your ability to manage your emotions well will increase your emotional intelligence and ability to more quickly recover from stress arousal”
1. Distracted and scattered
Practice
Learn a practice where you follow a simple object (like your breath). The repeated returning to a focal point trains your attention.
Benefit
Focus. Your attention wavers less and you’re not as easily pulled away by external distractions or internal chatter.
2. Annoyed by difficult colleague, office politics, gossip
Practice
Let others talk about themselves. Listen and consider what might cause them pain.
Benefit
Not as judgemental. You take more time to explore what might be causing other people pain and problems instead of assuming the worst.
3. Physically worn down by too much tension, rushing through meals, staring at screens
Practice
Take a few minutes and let your attention scan your whole body from toe to head. Go breathe fresh air.
Benefit
Body awareness. You more often notice how you actually feel in your body and when it needs care.
4. Stuck: solution to a problem keeps evading you
Practice
Sit quietly doing nothing for five minutes. Then, as you contemplate the problem, imagine you’re seeing it for the first time.
Benefit
Fresh eyes. Increased ability to let go of assumptions, expectations and storylines, and see things anew.
5. Frustrated with lack of progress in yourself or others
Practice
Listen fully to a longer piece of music without doing anything else at all. This helps you appreciate rhythm, rather than trying to force things.
Benefit
Patience. You let things develop in their own time rather than always trying to push them.
