The benefits of mindfulness & meditation in the workplace

Personally, I have now been practicing mindfulness & daily meditation for over 10 years.  I am often asked “what are the top 4 things for your health & energy?” and these always include mindfulness & meditation, along with great sleep, great nutrition and morning exercise.

In 2014, energiseYou celebrates its 10^th year in helping companies to improve the health, energy & performance of their employees.  For almost a decade we have brought mindfulness & meditation into the workplace via our workshops, webinars, podcasts & health events.

That aside, I have observed a very interesting polarity with this subject. On one hand, there are so many amazing benefits associated with mindfulness & meditation, such as:

-       Improves happiness

-       Increases your energy levels

-       Improves sleep

-       Makes you more successful in business

-       Helps you manage pressure at work

-       Improves problem solving & creativity

-       Lowers blood pressure & boosts the immune system

-       Reduces negative emotions, stress, anxiety, fear and anger

Yet, on the other hand, there are so few people that actually practice mindfulness & meditation on a daily basis.

So given all of these benefits why is it not practiced more? Here are some of the reasons:

-       People and companies are not fully aware of its transforming benefits

-       Some of these benefits cannot be fully appreciated until they are personally experienced

-       People often expect to be able to quieten the mind and meditate like a Buddhist monk on day one, which just doesn’t happen

-       People often try meditation without being shown how, find it very hard and then immediately give up

-       People often over look mindfulness as a practice because it seems too basic and simple, yet it is in its simplicity that the magic lies.

-       As with many things, people need to be inspired by someone to start.  My personal inspiration to start TM meditation was the film director David Lynch who has been meditating everyday for the past 35 years and he’s still loving it!

So the reasons that mindfulness & meditation should be a key part of your wellbeing programme are because of their profound benefits that can transform overall health & energy. To achieve this we need to address the challenges in the list above to ensure we can actively and regularly embrace the gift of mindfulness & meditation into our lives.

Creating a healthy mind really can boost success

It’s not just famous athletes and celebrities that are reaping the success of mind management and meditation.

If you listen to any ‘great’ leader they attribute much of their success to having a healthy mindset and adopting the right attitude. Steve Jobs, Richard Branson and Bill Ford have all spoken about their use of meditation and the benefits associated with creating a healthy mindset.

Now, if we can get our employees to do the same then we are really onto a winner.

A healthy mind offers huge benefits to us as individuals in terms of increasing happiness, improving creativity and aiding weight loss etc. But it also offers huge benefits to our businesses.

People who manage their mind effectively are more successful at work because they have higher energy levels, are generally much healthier and they are able to handle with pressure more effectively.

Our research, of over 4,500 individuals, shows the large majority of people score just 42% on the key drivers of positive mind management. This highlights a huge opportunity for us as employers to improve performance within our businesses.

In today’s nonstop 24/7 digital world, we lead such busy lives and as a result our mind rarely stops thinking. Most people’s habits mean they are using technology non-stop from the minute they open their eyes to the minute they close them at night. This over stimulation of mind and body can drain energy and cause poor health, such as sleep problems and mental health fatigue.

By helping our employees to manage their mind effectively we can really improve performance. 

To find out how you can create healthy mind and body in the workplace click here and sign up to my free 30 minute webinar today.

This is taking place on Wednesday 15 May 2013, at 12pm 2013. I will cover:

- How supporting your employees' health & energy can improve business performance
- Why your staff need a healthy mind & body at work
- The 7 essential ingredients to create a healthy body
- Innovative mind management practices to improve performance
- Practical steps to improve the health & energy of your staff this summer