Introduction

Hi! We are so glad that you have chosen to read this book and hope you have also enjoyed reading Mindfulness for Busy People (Pearson) and if not or you haven’t yet read it, then WHY NOT? Well, seriously, it is absolutely excellent of course, but perhaps you were hoping for something a little more specific regarding one of the most stressful areas in our lives – work? And here it is. So how are you doing? How is work going? Let’s see:

• Feeling overstretched?
• Underpaid?
• Like, no one really gets just how much work you have to do?
• Feeling burnt out?
• Unfulfilled?
• Overwhelmed?
• Lacking motivation? Maybe confidence?
• Can’t seem to focus?
• Haven’t got enough creativity to get the job done?
• Want to jump-start your colleagues/team/yourself into more action?
• Wondering how you can make your business a success?

Well, whether you answered yes or even no to any or all of these questions, welcome and we hope that this book will offer you a solution to these or any other work-related dilemmas that you may be facing. We could continue to run off a list of all the thousands of possible reasons that may have motivated you to pick this book up but in the spirit of breaking an old habit and trying something new, we’re not going to do that. The fact is that you are reading this now, and that’s enough. We both thank you and sincerely hope that you find what you seek and that this book inspires you in the deepening of your inquiry.

As Practitioner Psychologists working in the heart of London’s square mile, we have introduced mindfulness to thousands of people and hundreds of teams and businesses all of whose working lives have improved dramatically as a consequence, whether that’s because they’ve come to experience less stress, more confidence and creativity, improved focus and productivity, better relationships with colleagues and effective team dynamics or an overall healthier and more meaningful and fulfilling culture and environment within which to work (or all of the above). Let’s face it, mindfulness is everywhere these days, it’s been really hard to miss the headlines. More and more about its multitude of benefits, particularly for our work and working lives, is now being researched, written and talked about at an increasingly rapid rate. So just in case you have been living underneath a rock in some faraway land for the last few years, or maybe finding it hard to keep up with all the latest breaking news and research, or you just simply want a clear, no-nonsense and concise practical guide of what mindfulness has to offer you and your work, we chose to write this book. So here it is.

We hope that in reading this book you’ll come to:

• Understand what mindfulness is, how to practise it and how it’s relevant to your work.
• Improve your resilience and effectiveness in today’s modern, fast-paced workplace.
• Increase your productivity, performance and efficiency at work.
• Enhance your creativity, decision-making, problem-solving, delegating, prioritising and time-management skills.
• Ensure your working relationships with colleagues and businesses are healthy, wholesome and the most productive that they can be.
• Improve your well-being, and ability to reduce and manage stress in your workplace.
• Develop greater care, compassion and connection with yourself and colleagues.
• Understand how applying mindfulness to your working environment can help you and your business to remain healthy and thrive.

About this book

This book has been written as a pragmatic, down-to-earth and quick introduction to using mindfulness at work. It is a practical book, intended to help you reduce stress and improve your day-to-day focus and effectiveness in the workplace. It may also help you begin to cultivate a healthier and more meaningful and rewarding environment within which to work (if that is what you also choose to do) for yourself, your team and the greater good of your organisation as a whole.

Instead of offering a specific mindfulness programme for you to follow, this book has attempted to provide a broad overview of the most salient insights and developments around the application of mindfulness at work, drawing on the tradition of mindfulness as well as on more modern scientifically proven mindfulness-based approaches to psychological change. Should you want to learn more about mindfulness, there are also other more in-depth books on the subject, some of which we have listed within the ‘Recommended reading’ section at the end of this book.

How to use this book

To help you practise mindfulness while you’re on the job, throughout your working day, there are over 50 practical mindfulness-based exercises included throughout the book. You will find a range of these exercises, entitled ‘Mindful on the job’, which do not require any extra time out of your working day, embarrassing postures or degrees in philosophy in order to practise them; each one is clearly marked with a symbol as indicated on the next page. These types of mindfulness practices are designed to help you cope and/or perform better in typical work-related situations. They have not been written as a plan or programme for you to follow in any particular order over a set number of days or weeks. Instead, they are designed so that you can use any one of them, as and when you want to in the context of relevant work-related scenarios. That being said, in order for you to bene-fit from them the most, we would advise that you practise ALL of them as often and as regularly as you can, even at times when you feel that you may be coping and/or performing well. In order to really benefit from mindfulness (and especially for the longer term), you will need to keep practising it, as often as possible. There is also a chart entitled ‘Quick Reference Guide to Keeping Mindful on the Job’ included in Chapter 8 which we hope will provide you with a useful overview to the mindfulness practices included in this book and which particular work-related scenarios each one is most useful for.

There are audio recordings that accompany this book too. These guided mindfulness practices can be downloaded for free from the following website: www.pearson-books.com/mindfulnesswork

The particular practices that are accompanied by an audio guide are indicated in the book with the following symbol:

The book also includes a number of ‘Work in progress’ exercises which again are clearly marked with their own unique symbol (this symbol is indicated below too). These specific types of exercises are designed to help you learn more about the underlying principles of mindfulness that we’re keen to get across to you. They will crop up throughout the book at relevant points to stimulate your further thought and reflection on the specific mindfulness-related concepts that you’re reading about.

Please feel free to adapt any of the exercises to suit you or your working environment better, and also please feel free to share your experiences with colleagues.

Types of exercises with corresponding symbols

Mindful on the job	Work in progress

You will find case studies and experiential excerpts highlighted throughout the text which have been adapted from real-life scenarios of our work with our clients as well as from our own lives and work. Each chapter also contains summaries of current research under the title, ‘Proven in science, smart for business’. In addition, towards the end of each chapter you will find a list of bulleted summary points called ‘Mindfulness top tips to go’ including what we think are the essential take-away messages from each chapter. Following each chapter you’ll see a ‘Useful resources’ section which includes links and references to extra external sources which you may want to explore. Please note that all names and identifying markers have been removed from the case study material within this book to protect the confidentiality of our clients.

A few further notes before you read on …

First and foremost, this book is intended to be a practical and experiential guide to help you to practise mindfulness for yourself in the context of your work. The reason for this is that as psychologists we know that our learning is greatly enhanced through our experience and also, as you’ll soon discover (if you don’t know already), in order to benefit from mindfulness you do need to practise it. Alongside all these exercises, however, you will also find lots of information, research and facts on the practice and principles of mindfulness generally, and on mindfulness at work specifically. We will also describe mindfulness practice and its applications in detail in each relevant section of the book, so that your knowledge can evolve alongside your practical experiences. We are really keen for you to experience mindfulness for yourself for the reasons given above but also in this way you won’t need to take our word for it (or anybody else’s); you will see the benefits unfolding in a way that makes sense through your very own direct experience.

We love words and debates – it is our work after all! However, we also know that language is all too often the problem, not always the solution, so we will be encouraging you to actually experience what we’re on about, as best as we/you can. Trying to describe mindfulness can become a bit like trying to explain the colour ‘green’; there are loads of technical definitions and many, many metaphors (we like those, so watch out for them!), but the best way to really understand and learn about it is to try it out for yourself.

We have been really excited about writing this book and being able once again to demonstrate how mindfulness is incredibly relevant and applicable to our modern lives. Most people think that this ancient practice (over 2,500 years old) is all about sitting crossed-legged on a cushion in a temple, in some faraway mystical land, chanting for hours to monotone sounds, and not at all relevant for the realities of our day-to-day modern lives. However, we hope to show you once again that mindfulness does have its place in our modern world (more so than ever!) and specifically in our work too, and with purposeful efforts to practise it our work and working lives can dramatically improve.

We hope that in reading this book and trying out ALL the exercises included in it, you will begin to notice how the real mindfulness practice is not so much about sitting meditating for hours on end, but more in how we actually conduct ourselves at work, day to day, moment by moment while we’re on the job. It’s all well and good to sit somewhere quiet, close your eyes and breathe but when we bring this practice to life in our work, in real time, say while sitting in a meeting, responding to incessant emails, managing multiple demands, or interacting with colleagues, now that is where the fun really begins! Although some of the exercises included in this book may seem a little odd or silly at first, and even though your mind may want to judge them so, we do encourage you to never mind your mind and take your time to try them out nonetheless, as best and as often as you can to ensure that you get the full experience. Please do take your time as you work your way through this book. We hope you enjoy it and that it makes a real difference to you and your work!