Mindfulness Archives - Page 13 of 16

The Power Of A Mindful Moment

Nobody needs to tell you this. Life is one big, endless cycle of activity. From the moment we wake up (but not wanting to rise) until we get some shut-eye at night (wishing we’d gone to bed earlier) it’s simply about being busy, busy, busy. How we handle this “busyness” determines how we get to be truly effective in our personal and professional life and how we get to feel in physical and emotional terms. Are we going ballistic because we’re stressed out? Have we lost our drive because we’re tired? Of course some pressure is good for the body. The batch of stress hormones that come along with it jacks up our performance, energizes us and pushes us to head back for the salt mines. The cortisol number in our bodies goes up as high as ten times more creating that sense of enthusiasm we all need to keep us going. That’s the good news. The bad news is that when too much stress starts hitting our brain, we run the risk of being a mad hatter. So, What Do We Do? Enter: Mindful Moments Mindful moments can serve as a helpful tool to assist us in managing our busyness, tone done mental fatigue and regain focus and normal level stress. What’s A Mindful Moment? Mindful moment is that stand-still pause where you consciously connect with a keen awareness of the present moment. It’s the here-and-now time fraction, where instead of letting your mind roam forward to future thoughts or allowing worries to bring you back to what happened during the yesteryears, you simply touch base with Now…this moment. Because breathing is the human function readily available to just about anybody who is pretty familiar and well adapted to the art of regular breathing, a mindful moment is about focusing on it. No matter what position you’re in, sitting or standing, a mindful moment allows you to concentrate on the inhaling and exhaling of your breath. As you do so, you’ll notice your tension starting to go down. You start to feel less antsy and become calmer. And you get this sense of control of handling any emotions being generated. So, When Should You Try These Mindful Moments? When you think seriously that your potential reaction to a given scenario may go haywire and you envision results as not serving you best, go try a mindful moment. Some of the most typical situations you might encounter include the following: When you start getting edgy and irritated waiting in line at the coffee shop, in a government bureau or a bank. When you get this pins-and-needles feeling and dread for that important job interview. When you feel sick as you see a surge of 500 emails into your inbox. When you oversleep, the traffic is a nightmare and the you’re-running-out-of-gas orange light is flashing in your face. To be sure you’ll run into other situations similar to these as you go through the routine of everyday life. When you begin to get that walking-on- eggs tense feeling, go for that mindful moment. It helps.

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The Importance Of Well-Being At The Workplace

Emotional Intelligence, Engagement, Leadership, Mindfulness, Positive Psychology, Wellbeing / My Holland

Well-being is about people feeling highly valued and supported in the job they do in their place of work. It’s also about their health, productivity and performance which can usually lead to good bottom line numbers for companies. Business organizations that are well-structured and well-managed generally play an essential role in the promotion of employees’ health and over-all well-being. The benefits they bring result in the reduction of absenteeism and malingering illnesses and facilitates ease and speed of recovery and return to work after either a serious injury or illness. At its simplest definition, well-being is about personal happiness, feeling good and doing one’s job in a safe and healthy environment. Why Is Well-Being Important To A Company? Experts in the corporate world say the cost of replacement of employees who resign can go as high as one hundred fifty percent (150%) of the departing employee’s salary, given the collateral costs of recruitment, hiring and training. On the other hand, business organizations which have a workforce that is highly engaged can reduce employee turnover by eighty seven percent (87%). You don’t have to be a rocket engineer to figure out its impact not only on a company’s net profits, but on the productivity, culture and over-all output of the business, as well. And so, if you haven’t as yet taken employees’ well-being seriously in your company, now’s a good time. Work out a wellness program with a system that’ll increase productivity and bring in good figures for your company profits. Even more importantly, develop a wellness package for your staff that will result in over-all happiness and health. Here are 5 easy-to-implement guides your company can adopt to create a well-designed wellness program to, not only raise your employees’ engagement level but as well, build a pervasive, positive culture in the workplace. Link your program to the company’s strategic direction. Get this running parallel with your company’s vision and values. This way everybody wins. Make sure you have a yardstick to measure your ROI. Launching a wellness program will naturally entail some investments. Put it all together with specific objectives and how success is to be measured. Check your rate of absenteeism, cost of employees’ wages and your company’s engagement scores. They’ll serve as an index against which you can compare performance after the program has been put in place. Get your top management to buy into the idea of a sound and well-grounded well-being program. It never hurts to have the support of everybody, especially the head honchos you might have to run too should problems crop up. Work out some quick wins. Provide initiatives that will help your staff to quickly jump in and level up. Don’t forget to have fun! The subject of wellness and health doesn’t have to be boring. Make sure your message is intriguing, trendy and to the point. It should inspire a change in behavior of your guys. Inject some lightheartedness into it or even some fun from time to time. With something like this in place in your company, don’t be surprised to see your people with smiles on their faces Monday to Friday!

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Help Your Employees Set And Define Better Goals

Compassion, Engagement, Leadership, Mindfulness / My Holland / Defining goals, Help your employees define their goals, Helping employees

It oftentimes happens that with the start of a calendar new year or a fiscal year among business companies, employers set up their employees to develop and achieve goals. Left to their own devices, these guys could pretty well be writing down traditional new year’s resolutions as in reducing weight or refraining from going to sleazy girlie bars or, they may simply go through the motion of listing down objectives as nonchalantly as doing the grocery list. Of course, it’s got to be a little more serious than that. Reason enough why employers should play a role in their staff’s goal setting. Here are several ways you (as a business owner or entrepreneur with employees) can help your guys set better goals: Reiterate the company’s mission. It’s funny. In a survey of three thousand US workers, only about four in ten know what their organization stands for and what makes their brand different from the rest. You have got to help employees better understand the over-all mission . Redefining this and sharing the company-wide goals will get your guys working towards goals that will run parallel to your company’s. Make the employee goal-setting a two-way affair. You can’t let this be the employee’s sole responsibility. You, as a manager have got to jump in and make it a collaborative process. Why? Because it’ll help to get those objectives more aligned with your company’s mission. Ensure you help make those goals as specific as possible as to include the who’s, what’s, when’s, where’s and why’s of it. And, use concrete numbers so you can quantify and measure the results in realistic terms. Set your employees up for success. Work out goals that are within reach or, you may want to break down long-term goals and set up timelines for what has to be done and when. This will make short-term, smaller goals more achievable which should provide the motivation to push on. Map out an achievement plan. Don’t stop at simply setting and defining goals with your employees. A goal achievement plan is essential as well. This is where you need to have control points as you get to know what needs to be accomplished for the quarter and how all concerned should actively work to address any issues that may have risen. This should also help to keep your guys on track. So you’ve been the conscientious manager who assisted the team members in the setting of goals. Now take a step back and review what you’ve collaboratively put down. Honestly, ask yourself the question … “Are these the goals that will inspire passion among my team members? Will these drive them to go the extra mile?” If you’re getting affirmative answers, give yourself a pat on the back and treat yourself to the biggest ice cream cone at Dairy Queen. If not, I don’t have to tell you… it’s back to the drawing boards till you’ve got something that’ll fly!

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Mindfulness

The Power Of A Mindful Moment

The Importance Of Well-Being At The Workplace

Help Your Employees Set And Define Better Goals

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