YOUR EMPLOYER IS PUTTING YOU IN HARMS WAY
In fact, you can't smoke cigarettes fast enough to match the damage that today's workplace is doing to you. And not just you, but everyone from the newest hire to your CEO. Your company is unknowingly dragging the life from all of you.
My co-creator for this blog post is Tom Gardner (Linkedin) and Chloe Sosenko, a rising senior with a 3.5 GPA on a dual focus in psychology and entrepreneurship. She's a walk-on defensive starter and captain of the University of Michigan women's soccer team, which made it to the Elite 8 in last year's Division I National Championships. Her head coach describes her as "very intelligent, disciplined, committed to success."
You want to hire someone like Chloe.
But a year from now, when she's ready to throw her enthusiastic efforts into business, unless you're committed to change, she's not going to accept your offer. Neither will many of her teammates. Actually, most of her generation will be leaving your company in its present form over the next decade. Why?
Because they know that if they work in your environment, within 10 years, they'll be overweight, pre-diabetic, worn down by repetitive tasks, with burned-out adrenals. They'll function at declining rates, finding it troublingly difficult to break the habits they've formed in your office.
That may seem exaggerated, but it's the state of work around the world. We can all do far better than this. And your motivation to try can be purely economic: a healthier workplace makes for higher sustained performance and lower medical costs.
Mindfulness meditation is 1 of 6 ways to save your life -- and the company you work for:
In a multi-decade study spanning 15,000 participants, The University of Massachusetts Medical School indicates that meditation reduces the number of medical and psychological symptoms by more than 35%. Substantially more research has to be done on meditation, but the flurry of recent data suggests that "quiet time" reduces anxiety and depression, expands the ability to focus, and positively alters the structure of the brain. Offering daily meditation in your office, or dedicating time to individual practice, is the lowest-risk and least expensive of our suggestions.
The Benefits of Meditation Practice for Creatives
Focus. Concentration is essential to outstanding creative execution and performance. The simple act of focusing on your breathing day after day, will gradually improve your powers of concentration.
Patience. Meditation can be incredibly boring. For once in your life, you’re not trying to do anything or think anything, just sit there and pay attention to your immediate experience. And you will encounter all kinds of resistance to doing it. Zen priest Steve Hagen says, “If you can get past resistance to meditation, nothing else in life will be an obstacle.”
Calmness. At first, you’ll be surprised, maybe even horrified, to discover how busy your mind is – a non-stop stream of mental chatter. But if you stay with it, you should gradually find that your mind settles down as the months go by.
Clarity. Like calmness, this can be gradual and intermittent to begin with. But you are likely to notice moments and even periods of mental clarity, when you see things clearly and your mind is sharper than usual – which makes problem-solving and decision-making easier.
Insight. You’ve probably had the experience of suddenly realizing the solution to a problem, even though you haven’t been consciously thinking of it. Or you may have experienced a moment of inspiration, when a new idea flashes into your mind unbidden. If you’re practicing meditation regularly, expect this to happen more often.
Perspective. When you spend time just being present and observing your breath, thoughts, feelings, and moment-to-moment experience, you start to realize how trivial most of our daily worries really are. Even in the midst of the daily grind, you can let go of the small stuff, and keep the big picture in view.
@KELVINMCCANNIX installation art presents: Pop-up Mindfulness sessions Brooklyn. Designed to enhance women's creativity by reducing workplace burnout, each session is an improved focused engagement in music. "There's nothing that kills creativity faster than burnout. We are undermining ourselves and our own effectiveness by buying in to the myth, the collective delusion, that burnout is the way to succeed. It is not" - Arianna Huffington. @KELVINMCCANNIX explores alternative healthcare thru the appropriation of electronic waste. Pop-up Mindfulness session fees generally range between $70-125 depending on time of day, distance travelled and length of session.
Peace + blessings
