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Exploring For Personal Discovery: Chapter 1: Discovering Mindfulness

Mindfulness can improve productivity in several ways. By focusing fully on the task at hand and gently redirecting your attention when your mind wanders, you can complete work faster and with better quality. Like training muscles, you can train your attention through mindfulness meditation. Practicing mindfulness also allows you to notice where mental energy is wasted on unhelpful thoughts like worrying, and to reduce stress levels so you are healthier and better able to work. When you cultivate curiosity and enjoyment of your work through mindfulness, you become more creative and productive. Over time, work may feel less like a chore and more like a natural flow, resulting in effortless and high quality work that is thoroughly enjoyable.

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59 views1 page

Exploring For Personal Discovery: Chapter 1: Discovering Mindfulness

Mindfulness can improve productivity in several ways. By focusing fully on the task at hand and gently redirecting your attention when your mind wanders, you can complete work faster and with better quality. Like training muscles, you can train your attention through mindfulness meditation. Practicing mindfulness also allows you to notice where mental energy is wasted on unhelpful thoughts like worrying, and to reduce stress levels so you are healthier and better able to work. When you cultivate curiosity and enjoyment of your work through mindfulness, you become more creative and productive. Over time, work may feel less like a chore and more like a natural flow, resulting in effortless and high quality work that is thoroughly enjoyable.

Uploaded by

dpdfs
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Chapter 1: Discovering Mindfulness 13

So, if you’re writing a report, you focus on that activity as much as you
can, without overly straining. Each time your mind wanders off to another
thought, you notice what you were thinking about (curiosity), and then
without criticising (remember you’re being kind to yourself), you guide your
attention back to the writing. So, you finish your report sooner (less time
spent thinking about other stuff), and the work is probably of better quality
(because you gave the report your full attention). The more you can focus on
what you’re doing, the more you can get done. Wow – with mindfulness you
can improve your productivity!

You can’t suddenly decide to focus on your work and then become focused.
The power of attention isn’t just a snap decision you make. You can train
attention, just as you can train your biceps in a gym. Meditation is gym for the
mind. However, you don’t need to make a huge effort as you do when working
out. When training the mind to be attentive, you need to be gentle, or the mind
becomes less attentive. This is why mindfulness requires a kindness about it.
If you’re too harsh, your mind rebels.

Awareness also means that you notice where energy is being wasted. If you
have a habit of worrying or thinking negatively, you can become aware of
such thoughts and try to stop them.

Stress is the biggest cause of absenteeism (not turning up to work). Mindfulness


is one way of managing your stress levels and therefore increasing produc-
tivity, as you’re more likely to stay healthy and be able to work in the first
place. (Perhaps that’s not a benefit after all!)

Your work also becomes more enjoyable if you’re mindful, and when you’re
enjoying something you’re more creative and productive. If you’re training
your mind to be curious about experience rather than bored, you can be curi-
ous about whatever you engage in.

Eventually, through experience, you begin to notice that work flows through
you, rather than you doing the work. You find yourself feeding the children or
making that presentation. You lose the sense of ‘me’ doing this and become
more relaxed and at ease. When this happens, the work is totally effortless,
often of very high quality and thoroughly enjoyable – sounds like a nice kind
of productivity, doesn’t it?

Exploring for personal discovery


Many people begin coming to mindfulness meditation to reduce their levels
of stress but as their stress levels reduce they continue to practise in order
to help regulate their other emotions, and discover a greater emotional
balance. Eventually, meditation becomes a quest for personal discovery.

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