Workplace Mindfulness

By Marc Brackett, guest contributor

As we all know, our best attempts at calm, thoughtful reflection work only when we feel in control of our emotions. If you’re raging with resentment or crushed by disappointment, you’re probably not capable of the reasoning required to see a situation in a new light. You first need to bring down your emotional temperature, lower your activation, and give yourself the space required for rational thought. Maybe you take a few deep breaths, a few steps back, a w…

By Christopher Lyddy and Darren Good, guest contributor

If you’re like most people, you’ve had the experience at work of sitting at your computer and suddenly coming to realize that you haven’t typed a word in ages. Instead, you may have just been mindlessly ruminating about a past incident with a colleague, or imagining the next encounter.

Getting “stuck” in this thought process, according to numerous interviews we conducted in a study of working professionals, can really interfere with being…

By Raj Sisodia and Michael Gelb, guest contributor 

The dominant narrative about business remains focused narrowly on generating as much profit and growth as possible. This is done by generating as much revenue as possible, which means selling as many products as possible to as many people as possible at as high a price as you can get away with, whether people benefit from these products or not. Since profit equals revenue minus cost, traditional businesses also look to minimize costs. They do …

By Michael Doyle 

Our careers provide us the opportunity to contribute to society, help us support ourselves and our families, and give us a sense of purpose of fulfillment. But for a great many people, the gap between this ideal scenario and their day-to-day seems to only get wider, as their working lives become more and more stressful and frustrating.

The benefits of bringing mindfulness into the workplace are well-documented, and yet it can be challenging to win over reluctant colleagues an…

By Marc Lesser, guest contributor

Company Time is a series of one-day and weekend retreats that I have been co-leading at Zen Center’s Green Gulch Farm for the past 20 years. These retreats are for people interested in integrating mindfulness practice into their work, for those looking for ways to make their work more meaningful and more connected to their deepest values, and/or for those considering some kind of career or life change. 

In these retreats, our role as teachers is to ask questio…

By Regina Smith, guest contributor

I am a black woman in my mid-forties and a senior executive at a small progressive predominantly white organization. I have approximately 10 direct reports, and I report to the president. Of the people who report to me, two are people of color (male-identified), and none of the other executives who report to the president are people of color.  Even at a liberal and progressively-minded spiritually-based organization, the air we breathe is still the air of domi…

By James Van Auken, guest contributor

People constantly wrestle with themselves. An impulse, a habit, an expectation—juxtaposed by a limitation, governance, or imposed denial of desire—all create disorienting dilemmas that can drive behavior and diminish mental resources. And in this internal wrestling contest of impulse, desire, and habit on one team and moral reasoning, responsibility, and “doing the right thing” on the other, a cyclical battle pervades.

In our contemporary society, we are o…

by Jaime Kucinskas, guest contributor

In many professional workplaces, mindfulness has become a seeming panacea. According to a recent survey conducted by the National Group on Health and Fidelity Investments, 35 percent of employers offered mindfulness classes or training, and an additional 26 percent were considering adding programs in the future. Advocates argue that it will not only help workers de-stress and improve their health but become more self-aware and self-actualized both in and ou…

By Rich Fernandez, guest contributor

There are many events taking place in the world today that challenge us severely, from the tragic and shocking news of mass shootings in the U.S., to ongoing challenges in places such as Hong Kong and Venezuela (to name only a few), to the latest report from the United Nations on the dire state of climate change.  

There are also many other challenges that don’t come across our screens or manifest on a global scale but can affect us daily and deeply. 

Like…

By Karlyn McKell, guest contributor

Creating a culture of mindfulness at work is essential to connecting with your team. As a manager, keeping track of how different times of the year can impact happiness and productivity is one good way to stay on the same page as your team members. 

Five percent of the population will experience seasonal affective disorder, and doctors are still trying to figure out the cause. While typically thought of as a wintertime ailment caused by too much time spent i…