Why mindfulness courses in the workplace?
Also in Switzerland, the term "mindfulness" repeatedly appears in German mindfulness, especially in wellness programs, as a meditation technique, for stress management, etc.
We have summarized here, for you, what this means for your life and, above all, for the company and its employees.
Mindfulness: What is it?
Mindfulness in this context means engaging oneself in the present moment - without evaluating it. With special techniques, you can learn to handle situations positively. This is easier said than done, especially at the beginning. Therefore, mindfulness courses usually take several weeks and months.
In the end, however, you can be left with deadline pressure, problematic colleagues, stress and setbacks, stress-free, positive, and thus constructive deal.
The technique summarized very briefly, is when one stops whatever he is doing, breathes calmly so that the environment noticeably changes itself and the person thus actually perceives things before acting.
Mindfulness is an excellent and, above all, a proven method to train mind and consciousness. The idea is to be attentive with our thoughts, feelings and our body and to pay attention to our environment. In this way, a deep understanding of ourselves and our immediate environment as well as how we deal with the world is developed. This helps us to put ourselves, the problems, the situations and our immediate environment in perspective and deal with challenges more efficiently.
Instead of constantly worrying about the future, deadlines, problems that you may not be able to avoid at all and doing other stressful things, you learn to live in the present, to experience the moment with all our senses and to take care of things which we actually have an influence on right now. The mindfulness practice shows a solution for daily distractions, teaches us from time to time to stop and always ask the two important questions:
- Am I really present in my life right now?
- How do I live at the moment?
Although relaxation always plays an important role and is meaningful, mindfulness is not synonymous with relaxation. Mindfulness does not just mean that you are more careful and take better care. Rather, mindfulness is the calm and serene perception of our environment, our thoughts and feelings - also and especially the difficult ones.
Therefore, the English term “Mindfulness” is easier to understand and describes the condition better.
If you are trained in mindfulness, you can watch your own experience without reservation and deal with everything that happened or is happening right now - regardless of how difficult the circumstances are. Of course, you need a longer training because our previous behavior and ways of thinking are strongly rooted. In order to be able to reprogram these and to approach life, problems and stressful situations in a completely different way, a hard but very fulfilling practice is necessary.
Usually one should count on several weeks – 8-week courses have proven to be particularly useful in research and practice.
It is also important to make what you have learned a permanent part of life and practice mindfulness on a daily basis.
Mindfulness in the workplace in companies and organizations
Of course, one can easily imagine that mindfulness courses in the workplace are particularly constructive and helpful. More and more employees and, above all, executives are suffering from stress and burnout. This not only leads to health problems for those affected, but also to the loss of work and reduced productivity, which logically has a negative impact on the company.
The stress is caused mainly by:
- enormous speed of changes of all kinds in the workplace
- Increasing workload due to increasing globalization and technological innovations
- Job losses
- Information overload
- Working pressure with the daily agitation from one appointment to the other
- Increasing conflicts in the workplace
- Lack of life balance
Undoubtedly, these challenges in the workplace will tend to increase in the future. It is all the more important to provide people with techniques to avoid stress, to be more productive and motivated, and to manage difficult situations successfully and constructively. Mindfulness courses at the workplace are ideal for this.