Meditation at Work
What else can you do?
So now let's focus on the individual's responsibility also to do all she or he can to take care of themselves. This can be done by learning skills to reduce the impact of stress which can be taken into any workplace and be used in almost any potentially stressful situation. As indicated earlier "spiritual spending" - including meditation - is booming, as workers try to find their own remedies for too much pressure and too little balance in their lives. Physical activity can help enormously and so can techniques which focus on developing peace of mind.
Here there are two areas of immense usefulness in ameliorating stress at work and with broad application and usefulness throughout all aspects of one's life. They are:
- Firstly in learning mind techniques which quickly relax the body and calm the mind, by which I mean meditation skills.
Learn to relax
- Secondly in developing what may be called emotional intelligence and in developing such intelligence quite deliberately and as if one were setting out simply to learn a new body of knowledge as one would learn computing or legal skills. You can do this initially by meditating so that through mindfulness you develop a greater understanding of your own hot-wired emotional reactions and then learn to separate out from them so you can observe them and change them and change the effect they have on you.
Learn to review - release - rescript!
'I was pleasantly surprised at how effective a short meditation session at lunchtime is in reducing stress levels. I found that I was able to concentrate clearly and calmly in subsequent conciliations I conducted. I wish these classes were available daily as a technique to create more peaceful and effective work practices.'
Lynette Byrnes, Conciliation Officer, NSW Anti-Discrimination Board, Sydney.