Category: A Mind of Ease

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A Mind of Ease Energy Meditation Integral Meditation Meditation techniques Mindful Breathing Stress Transformation

Taking Care of Your Nervous System Through Meditation

Dear Integral Meditators,

The article below explains a brief self-healing meditation that can be performed at any time, specifically to calm and balance your nervous system.

In the spirit of mindful self-healing,

Toby

Taking Care of Your Nervous System Through Meditation 

Due to the busyness and stress of our daily life we often find ourselves with nervous systems that are chronically over-stimulated, often trapped in fight or flight mode, and generally wired for anxiety and fear. The main nerve within the nervous system is the spine, so one of the best ways to care for and gain benevolent control of your nervous system is to focus your attention upon relaxing and energizing the spine.
The short technique I describe below is one I use often myself as a short 1-5 minute meditation during the day, and is part of the multi-faceted approach to creating a calm-lucid body-mind that I teach in my Mind of Ease Program. It focuses on the body, but it can have a quick and profound effect on our mental and emotional state as well, due to the inherent interconnectedness of the body-mind.

Relaxing the Spine
Sit, stand or lie down in a comfortable posture with a straight back, your ears and shoulders in line with each other.
Focus your attention upon the length of your spine from the base of the skull all the way down to its base/your coccyx.
Feel your way inside the vertebrae of the spine, to the spinal nerve that runs inside. If you like you can wiggle your neck and hips a little just so as to feel the nerve moving so you get a feel for it.
Now see and feel the smaller nerves radiating out from the spine, spreading out from in between the vertebrae to the rest of the body.
See (visualize) in the centre of your spinal nerve there is a line of light and energy. As you breathe in see and feel this line of energy glowing brightly. As you exhale see that light and energy expanding out into the spinal nerve, and then out along all of the nerves that spread out through the body from the spine. See your whole nervous system in the whole of your body lighting up like a light bulb as you exhale.
Repeat for a few breaths, or for a few minutes, ending with a brief period of relaxation.

It can take a little while to get used to feeling your way into the centre of your spinal nerve and then breathing the energy out from your spine along your whole nervous system, but is a skill you can acquire relatively quickly with practice.

As I mention, I normally just do this as an ad hoc exercise whenever I am feeling a little tired or frazzled, I find it remarkable how quickly I can find a space of physical relaxation,  regeneration and energy by doing it. Try it out!

© Toby Ouvry 2014, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com 

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A Mind of Ease Integral Awareness Integral Meditation Meditation and Psychology

Going Beyond the “Do This” and “Do That” Mentality

Dear Integral Meditators,

This weeks article is one that I wrote back in 2011, before I had any kind of mailing list. When I re-read it today it really made me stop and think, then it made me stop thinking for a while, and then I started thinking again, but thinking better. I hope it does that for you too.

The upcoming mind of ease classes will be full of this type of practical reflection.

Yours in the spirit  of  mindful creativity in the moment,

Toby

Upcoming Courses at Integral Meditation Asia in October:

Sunday October 19th – Mindfulness and Meditation For Creating a Mind of Ease, Relaxed Concentration and Positive Intention

 Launches 24th October – The Meditation for Creating a Mind of Ease Online Course

Special 1:1 Coaching offer valid until October 14th  2014: Get 15% off the 3 session Stress Transformation Coaching Package.

Going Beyond the “Do This” and “Do That” Mentality 

My daughter has just turned six, and one of the things that I have noticed about our relationship recently is that it has been possible for me to start changing my relationship to her from a lot of “do this” and “do that” instructions to a much more process based “Why don’t you try this?” or “What will happen if you think about it this way?” Her gradual increase in age and maturity, combined with my own gradual maturing as a parent has allowed our relationship to evolve from being somewhat dictatorial to much more co-creative.

How we often use the “do this / do that” mentality with regard to the way we treat ourselves
One of the things that has struck me when thinking about the changes in my relationship to my daughter is how often we get caught up in a “do this” and “do that” relationship to ourself. “Instead of approaching situations and challenges in our life with an open, flexible and enquiring mind, often we will simply react in a pre-programmed way, based around our past experience. Internally we order ourselves around with no real sensitivity to what is actually happening and this kills our ability to respond authentically and creatively.
For example I may find myself mentally punishing myself for not having made more effective use of my time during the day. The conversation goes something like:
“You should not have got sidetracked by this, you should not have wasted time doing that, you don’t deserve to relax this evening because you have not achieved what you wanted…” the instructions and judgments go on and on…

What can we replace the Do this/do that mentality with?

One of the things that we are trying to create through a meditation practice is enough self-awareness  to be able to respond to our immediate circumstances as they are, without projecting judgments or old values onto them. What we are trying to do is replace the automatic “do this” and “do that” voice of our judgments and past mental programs with questions like:
“What is this situation showing me or offering to me?”
“What are the real emotions behind what is being said here?”
“What is the most creative thing I can do in this situation?”
“What is my most authentic response to what is happening here?
By bringing questions such as these to the forefront of our mind in our daily life we can start to over ride the automatic “do this” and “do that” orders coming from our impulsively critical mind and start to live a life that involves more freedom, as well as more authenticity and more happiness.

An awareness exercise:
The art of going beyond our “do this” and “do that” mentality lies in replacing these inner orders with a question that stimulates our enquiring mind and creativity. The next time you can hear and feel your old judgments barking orders at you as you try and cope with a life challenge, consciously place this question in the centre of your awareness:
 “What is this situation helping me to see and learn?” 
Try and stay with this question for a few minutes and observe the creative ideas that start to emerge from the inner space that the question allows.

Related article: You Always Have a Choice

© Toby Ouvry 2014, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com 

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A Mind of Ease Inner vision Integral Awareness Integral Meditation Meditating on the Self Meditation and Psychology Mindful Resilience Shadow meditation

The Reasons We Resist Deeply Good Feelings

Dear Integral Meditators,

What would happen to your life if you truly committed to feeling the deepest, best feelings that were available to you in each moment? This weeks article explores this theme, and the reasons we often turn away.

Courses and coaching offers for October are detailed in the upcoming courses section.

Yours in the spirit of feeling deeply good,

Toby

Upcoming Courses at Integral Meditation Asia in October:

Sunday October 19th – Mindfulness and Meditation For Creating a Mind of Ease, Relaxed Concentration and Positive Intention

 Launches 24th October – The Meditation for Creating a Mind of Ease Online Course

Special 1:1 Coaching offer valid for October 2014: Get 15% off the 3 session Stress Transformation Coaching Package.

The Reasons We Resist Deeply Good Feelings

The following is a list of reasons why we either choose to accept negative feelings and focus upon them when there are positive ones we could be focus upon, OR we choose to accept superficially ‘positive’ feelings and emotions when there is a choice available to touch something deeper and more profoundly alive within ourselves.

  • There are many varied and often real reasons not to feel good
  • My ever increasing list of broken dreams as I get older
  • My fear of being judged by others (don’t stand out in the wrong way!)
  • Everyone around me seems negative or guarded, why take the chance?
  • The positivity can’t last, I’m setting myself up for disappointment, the feelings will betray me
  • Real, visceral enjoyment and pleasure is not something I am worthy of
  • My partner/child/parent/friend (etc…) is not happy, so why should I be?
  • I’m waiting for someone else’s permission to feel this good
  • I might start having all sorts of creative ideas (and that might be risky)
  • I’m uncertain and worried about my future (to feel good doesn’t match that reality)
  • My business/job is not going well
  • The suffering of the world, the environmental crisis
  • I haven’t forgiven myself for ‘x’
  • I’m addicted to my own pain
  • If I feel really good it will highlight all the areas of my life where I feel pain, I don’t want to b reminded of that
  • If I’m feeling good there will be no one else to blame for my pain
  • I would feel empowered and so would have no excuses for not taking responsibility for my life
  • I will start to feel truly alive (and that would be scary)
  • I’m addicted to feeling ‘high’ rather than actually deeply happy
  • I want to feel and be what gets the approval of others rather than what really serves me

I wrote that little list in 5 minutes before I cooked dinner tonight. It seems sometimes like the choice to feel truly good, whole and well each day despite “all of it” is not the act of the mindless hedonist, but the mindful and courageous few.

© Toby Ouvry 2014, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com 

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A Mind of Ease Inner vision Integral Awareness Meditating on the Self Meditation and Psychology Mindful Resilience Motivation and scope

What Constitutes the Good Life? – Looking a bit deeper

Dear Integral Meditators,

In order to experience the ‘good life’ I really believe that we need to go beyond our superficial ideas of positive and negative, pleasure and pain. In the article below I explain why.

Final reminder if you are in Singapore of the Mindful Resilience Workshop on this Sunday, 21st September in the morning. Anyone attending the live workshop will also gain access to the Mindful Resistance online course launching next week, which is a really good deal I think.

Beneath the article is details of I-awakes monthly offer, in this case on their Neurocharger 3.0 track. Its good stuff!

Yours in the spirit of the good life,

Toby

What Constitutes the Good Life? – Looking a bit deeper

What constitutes the good life? You might think that the good life might be described by the prevalence of the following types of emotions and experiences; happy, contented, blissful, enjoyable*.
The not-so-good-life would then be constituted of a corresponding list of opposite qualities like unhappy, discontented, in pain, depressed.

BUT. It is possible to be superficially happy, lazily contented, addicted to sensation and short term kicks (bliss) and enjoyment as distraction from what is truly important.

Similarly it can be unhappy in a way that leads to positive change, discontent because it is appropriate to be so, learn valuable lessons and victories from pain and reach a deeper level of self-knowledge when we confront depression and emptiness.

What would then happen if we replaced our list of qualities that constitute the good life to the following; enriching, exciting, rewarding, challenging, and meaningful?*

We can be enriched by our feelings of both happiness and unhappiness.
We can be excited by the prospect of resting in contentment and also shaking our world up with our discontent.
We can be rewarded by our resilience to pain as well as our periodic touching of deep bliss.
We can be challenged by loneliness and depression and derive new levels of enjoyment from that which we find meaningful.

If we are willing to consistently push ourselves beyond the superficial boundaries of ‘chasing positive and avoiding negative’ as well as ‘looking for short term pleasure and avoiding pain’ we may find that undreamed of capacities for the good life start to emerge from each day of our existence.

So then, what are the leading edges of your enrichment, excitement, reward, challenge, and meaning in life today? It doesn’t have to be ‘positive’.

*Two lists taken from “ The Carl Rogers Reader”, Haughton edition,  page 419, section entitled ‘The Greater Richness of Life”

© Toby Ouvry 2014, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com 


I-Awake technologies special offer for September is on Neurocharger – Train Your Brain with 60 Minutes of Gated Frequencies For Energy, Balance & Focus. Get 25% off the regular price!
Discount Coupon Code:(apply during checkout) NEWSSEPT25OFF
Good until Sept 22, 2014
Click on link for full details and to listen to the free sample track…

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A Mind of Ease Awareness and insight Essential Spirituality Integral Awareness Integral Meditation Meditating on the Self Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques Mindful Self-Leadership Mindfulness

Trusting Your Mind

Dear Integral Meditators,

Our mind is our fundamental tool of survival in the world; the better it functions and the more we are able to trust it, the happier and more successful we will tend to be.
The article below outlines a few points around how you can start to build genuine self confidence by learning to trust your mind, and gives a mindfulness exercise that you can use to begin a practical exploration of this area.
Yours in the spirit of mindful self-confidence,
Toby

Trusting Your Mind

Mindfulness and meditation can give us temporary calm and relief from the continuous activity of our thinking mind, but if we are tempted to use it as a way of escaping from our mind then we should be wary.
Ideally mindfulness should be a way of gaining confidence and trust in our mind and ourself so that gradually our relationship to our thinking mind becomes more and more harmonious and mutually supportive; our thoughts support a healthy experience of self, and our sense of self encourages a reliable approach to thinking about our life experience.
Nathaniel Branden has in interesting definition of self-confidence, he says “Self confidence is confidence in the reliability of our mind as a tool of cognition…it is the conviction that we are genuinely committed to perceiving and honouring reality to the fullest extent of our volitional power.”
So, the long and the short of this is that in order to be genuinely and deeply self-confident, you need to learn to trust your mind, and use it as well as you are able within the limits of your ability.

Pseudo-self confidence
Quite a few people exert a lot of effort building pseudo self-confidence in order to disguise their fundamental lack of trust in their own mind and judgment. We might become very physically fit, or very wealthy, or have read all the right books about being a parent, have gained many educational certificates and degrees, or even become an expert meditator (and other examples ad infinitum) all as a way of building a buffer between ourself and our actual moment to moment experience of reality and life. Fundamentally we don’t trust our mind to be able to deal with it effectively; deep down we lack self-confidence, so we build buffers and things to hide behind.

Three mindful questions for building self-confidence and trust in your mind.
Take a situation in your life, perhaps something that you have experienced today. Ask yourself three questions in turn:
“What am I seeing and experiencing here”
“What is my mind telling me about what I am seeing and experiencing?”
“Am I honoring my own experience and mind here or am I turning away from it?”The answer to the third question will tell you whether you are using this activity and experience to build your self-confidence and trust in your own mind, or whether you are subverting it. As the old saying goes “Many drops of water slowly dripping into a pot will eventually make it full”; in our day by day journey to self-confidence, or to a lack of it, this saying rubs both ways.Generally the challenge here is not that we don’t know enough, but that we know more than we would like, and would rather avoid the responsibility of that knowledge.

© Toby Ouvry 2014, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com 

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A Mind of Ease Inner vision Insight Meditation Integral Meditation Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques Mindfulness Presence and being present Shadow meditation

Fly on the Wall Mindfulness

Dear integral Meditators,

What would it be like to observe yourself s a stranger, and follow yourself around for a while? Would you like what you see? And what might you learn about yourself? The article below explores this theme…

In the spirit of observation,

Toby

Fly on the Wall Mindfulness

This is a technique that I mention in my previous article on Mindful Relationships. I’ve been working with it quite a bit this week myself, so I just thought I’d write a little more.

The idea with fly on the wall mindfulness is that you sit down and imagine yourself as a fly on the wall during recent events in your life. You watch yourself as an observer and see what this reveals to you about yourself.

For example if I do this with myself today I can follow myself through various activities based around my daughter’s birthday; see myself going out in the morning to try and find birthday candles (see my annoyance and frustration; does nowhere have birthday candles!!). Later I observe myself reacting/responding to the special dietary requirements of the guests, three visits to the garage or corner shop, but I’m feeling easy and going with the flow. At various other points during the day I see myself and realize that I was having feelings (both positive and negative) that I was not fully aware of, and that being a ‘fly on the wall’ reveals to me very fast.

Some of the benefits of regularly doing the fly on the wall meditation include:

  • Access to an increased objectivity in your view of yourself without repressing or intellectualizing the emotions that are present within
  • Increased awareness of your behaviors and emotions, many of which are invisible to you because they are so habitual and unconscious
  • Greater ability to mentally step back from charged or reactive situations with relative ease
  •  A natural and substantial increase in your healthy inquisitiveness, curiosity and observational skill

After you become used to it, it becomes a perspective that you can take as you are actually going around in your daily life that informs your experience of what is going on; at any time you can take your mind to a place up on the wall of ceiling and observe yourself and what is going on from there.

Finally, don’t let the idea of being a fly put you off, if it does, just use the image of a surveillance camera, private eye or something like that!

© Toby Ouvry 2014, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com 

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Body-Mountain, Cloud-Thought, Sky-Mind

Dear Integral Meditators,

The context in which you experience your thoughts and feelings determines how much significance and power they have over you. The article below explains a simple way of re-contextualizing your thoughts in a way that makes it easier to enjoy their ups and downs, their comings and goings with a greater sense of stability and clarity.

Final reminder of the Language of the shadow workshop this coming Sunday, click on the link below for full details…

Yours in the spirit of mountains and sky,

Toby

Body-Mountain, Cloud-Thought, Sky-Mind

Here’s an image to use in meditation; Experience your body as being like a mountain, your thoughts and associated feelings as being like clouds and your mind or consciousness itself as being like the sky.

Often the thoughts and associated feelings that we have in our mind are the dominant factor in our experience of personal stability or instabilty during our day. They take us away from the stability of our physical body and make us forgetful of the clear and spacious nature of our consciousness itself.

How does a mountain experience clouds? It is completely unbothered by them; whether the sky is clear around it or it is surrounded by thunderclouds, wind and rain, a mountain remains stable, solid and calm. By relating to the solidity of your body as being like a mountain you can re-contextualize the way you experience your thoughts and feelings. Being less easily swayed and manipulated by them, you bring solidity to your experience of the present moment.

How does the sky experience clouds and weather? It allows them to come and go with ease.  At all times the sky remains open and spacious, even when it contains clouds, wind and rain. Indeed, if it was not spacious the clouds could not even be there. If we become used to relating to our mind, or to our consciousness itself as being like the sky; even in the midst of mental chaos and emotional stress we will be able to retain a connection to an experience of spaciousness, openness and clarity, just like the sky itself.

Clouds come in many shapes and forms. If we are the mountain and the sky we can enjoy all forms of clouds, all forms of weather with a sense of solidity, calmness and clarity underlying the experience.

© Toby Ouvry 2014, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com 

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A Mind of Ease Biographical creative imagery Inner vision Integral Meditation Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques Mindfulness Uncategorized

The Dance of Relaxation and Alertness

Dear Integral Meditators,

Normally when we think about meditation the image that comes to mind is that is stillness and sitting still. In the article below I describe meditation and mindfulness as a dance, and how we can take this dance into all areas of our life. I hope you enjoy it!

Yours in the spirit of the dance,

Toby

The Dance of Relaxation and Alertness

When I first learned meditation I was taught an analogy for how to concentrate in meditation that after all these years still holds good in my understanding. It is like holding a bar of soap in the shower; if you hold it too loosely it will slip out of your hand, but if you hold it too tightly then the tension of the grip will cause the soap to ‘ping’ out of your hand. So in order to hold the bar of soap you need to have the right balance of grip strength and gentleness, too much of either and the soap will slip from your grasp.
Concentration in meditation and mindfulness is like this; you need the right balance of relaxation and alert effort. If your concentration is too relaxed then you will keep forgetting and loosing the object of your contemplation. Conversely however, if you try too hard to focus then the tension of your effort itself will cause your concentration to be impeded. So you have to hold this ever delicate balance of relaxation and alertness in order to sustain your focus over time. This balance is one way of interpreting what Buddha meant by ‘the middle way’; we avoid the extremes of over-exertion or laziness by hitting this combined, balanced state of alert-relaxation.

So you could say that meditation and mindfulness are a perpetual dance of relaxation and alertness; you are trying to find a complementary and mutually supportive combination of these two qualities so they are like dance partners that mutually enhance each other’s qualities as opposed to being like two opposing fighters that are continually trying to knock each other down.

Generally this is a skill that we have to learn because for most people relaxation and alert effort are two different habitual modes of our being, either we are relaxing and reducing our level of alertness, or we are expending effortful alertness at the expense of our experience of relaxation.

So when we learn the dance through meditation and mindfulness we can then start taking it into all sorts of practical domains in our life, for example:

  • What might the dance of relaxation and alertness look like when dealing with challenging emotions, avoiding the extremes of crushing and repressing the emotion or allowing it to completely control us?
  • What might the dance of relaxed alertness look like in a business meeting?
  • What might it look like when making love?
  • When trying to get to sleep?
  • When dealing with disappointment or elation?
  • When focused on a sporting activity?

All questions to dance with.

This week if you like you can just spend a few minutes focusing on your breath specifically as a method of getting a feel for the dance of relaxation and alertness. Then in your daily activities keep experimenting with how the dance can help you with your daily activities, choices and challenges, increasing both your happiness and performance.

© Toby Ouvry 2014, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com 

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A Mind of Ease Awareness and insight Biographical Inner vision Integral Awareness Integral Meditation Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques Mindful Self-Leadership Mindfulness One Minute Mindfulness Uncategorized

Street Mindfulness – Three Key Questions

Dear Integral Meditators,

What is the core of your personal mindfulness strategy for a happy, empowered and effective life?. In this weeks article I share my own, and invite you to think about what yours might be.

Yours in the spirit of the right questions,

Toby

Street Mindfulness – Three Key Questions

We all know the saying if you can find the right question, the answer will come. One of the keys to the effectiveness of my own mindfulness practice I have found is to find the right questions that will direct my mind and consciousness toward the place that I want it to go. Here are the three questions that are currently pasted to my fridge on a piece of paper. I have found them particularly effective for optimizing my happiness, self-empowerment and effectiveness each day:

  • What is good about my life?
  • What am I willing to do to make it better?
  • What do I need to focus upon now?

What is good about my life?
As I’m sure you will know, when we are busy and stressed it is all to easy to start reacting to all the things around us and within us that seem to be not going so well or outside of our control. Particularly when I can feel a downer coming on in my mind, I just pop this question in there and focus on it for a little while.  Answers start coming naturally from focusing on the question, resilience from unhappiness does not need to be super effortful; sometimes it is just a matter of asking the right question and following where it takes you.

What am I willing to do to make it better?
Whatever the situation we always have some volitional control over what is going on and how we choose to experience it. This question reminds me that I always have choice, and that it is always a matter of how much responsibility I am willing to take. It helps me to focus on what I (or we if in a group) can actually do to make circumstances and experiences better, rather than casting around for something or someone to blame and then acting like a victim of circumstance.

What do I need to focus on now?
Our awareness is like a torchlight, it is always shining somewhere (as long as we are awake). For me the problem is that often my mind is not focusing my awareness where it needs to be in order to be most effective in the moment. So, this third question just prompts me to be mindful of where my attention is, and direct it toward where it needs to be to tackle the issue at hand most effectively.
I find this question to be particularly effective because it is all too easy in challenging situations for my focus to go AWOL not because I am tired or incapable, but because the emotional charge around the challenge makes me uncomfortable. So it is all too easy to ‘zone out’ or stick my head in the sand as an avoidance tactic. As an effectiveness tactic however this is a disaster! Hence the importance of ‘What do I need to focus on now’ as an mindful effectiveness tool to help me pay attention when I really need to!

So there you go; three questions that you can use if you like. I think of them as my ‘street mindfulness’ practice as I ask them when I am going about my daily activities, they don’t require a special sitting meditation session, or indeed a belief system, you just need to be willing to pose the questions and follow their consequences.

What might be the key mindfulness questions for you in your life?

Related article: Fridge magnet spiritual happiness

© Toby Ouvry 2014, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com 

I-Awake Technologies product offer of the month
(lasts until Tuesday, 1st July)

Get 25% off  Heart Wave Meditation; “A new discovery in Meditation Technology for engaging the heart”
Click on the link to listen to the free sample and find out more.

To get the 25% discount simply type in the coupon code NEWSJUNE25OFF into the relevant box during purchase and checkout

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A Mind of Ease Meditating on the Self Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques Mindful Self-Leadership Mindfulness One Minute Mindfulness

Mindfulness: The Co-Creation of Happiness and Performance

Dear Integral Meditators,

This is an article that I prepared with some corporate clients in mind, it is another answer to the ever young question “what is mindfulness?”. Also, the practical exercise at the end is short but can have HUGE results.

Yours in the spirit of mindful flow,

Toby

 

Mindfulness: The Co-Creation of Happiness and Performance

Mindfulness is the art and practice of bringing more conscious awareness to your activities, relationships, thoughts, emotions, desires and motivations. It functions primarily (though not only) as a method of strengthening the conscious mind and its attendant natural intelligence.
In each moment we are making choices about how much conscious attention and awareness we bring to our activities; mindfulness guides us to bring a high level of consciousness to the activities in our life where it is most important to be fully awake and engaged both personally and professionally.

Mindfulness functions to bring two main effects to our life:

  • We become happier
  • We become more effective at our chosen tasks

More than this, mindfulness helps create a win-win relationship between these two; the happier we become the more effective we tend to be at work and at home, and the more effective we are the happier we tend to be both in our professionally and in our personal life.

Up to this point in time the majority of people practising mindfulness have been doing so because they have come to understand the benefits of mindfulness to their own personal wellbeing and health. More recently organizations are coming to understand that mindfulness offers one of the best ways to improve employee engagement at work and to improve productivity. But why should this be so? Let’s take a closer look using three examples:

Personal happiness and effectiveness at work
Positively disposed people are more likely to find ways of being happy in their work (rather than looking to find work that makes them happy, which is a crucially different thing), when you feel happy your mind is relaxed, you feel good and so it is actually enjoyable to put effort in to your tasks at work. Enjoyment and effort combine to produce greater effectiveness and engagement at work. Greater effectiveness and engagement in tasks as we all know have a feel-good factor, and so our greater productivity gives rise to more personal happiness in a mutually complementary dance.

The way you feel about yourself directly influences how you manage change
Mindfulness is a way of leaning to bring a conscious appreciation of yourself and what you bring to the world; it helps to create what psychologists call a good self-image or self-concept. People who have solid, secure and positive self concepts are less threatened by external change and thus when change happens in the workplace they tend to have the capacity to respond to it rationally, consciously and intelligently. The capacity to manage change well in turn further re-enforces a positive self-image and concept, so again here we see a mutually re-enforcing relationship between the a strong self-concept and the capacity to manage change, both facilitated by mindfulness.

Confidence and personal responsibility increases both creativity and problem solving capacity
Mindfulness is a space where we can learn to consciously cultivate confidence in ourself and learn to take responsibility for the important things in our life. As we all know, confidence and the capacity to take responsibility are essential qualities that we need to bring to the table to creatively solve problems and put forward new ideas in our professional life.
Conversely, whenever we solve a challenge or come up with a new idea at work both our confidence and our tendency to take responsibility for tasks and problems. So again we see a mutually re-enforcing pattern where mindfulness improves our personal qualities and wellbeing which in turn strengthen and enhance our engagement at work and in life.

It turns out that the best way to improve professional engagement is to work on a person’s personal growth and wellbeing; whether a CEO or a cashier, a happy and centred person is always a more effective professional.

Two questions to begin working with your own mindfulness practice

So what does a mindfulness practice actually look like? Actually there are a variety of mindfulness practices that you can engage in. Here is a two minute one:
Or the first minute focus your conscious attention upon the question “What is good in my life right now”. For that time simply focus upon mentally noting the good and the positive in your life.
For the second minute focus upon one particular situation in your life and ask the question “What is the most important aspect of this situation that I need to pay attention too?” For the duration of that minute see what answer this question takes your mind to.
If you find it helpful you can write down your principal answers to both questions.

Two minutes of mindfulness practice right there. Try it for a week, see where it takes you.

© Toby Ouvry 2014, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com