The number of employees talking about psychic stress in their companies grows constantly. We occasionally reported about this fact in other notes already. A well-proven protection from such psychic stress is given by trainings in the area of mindful meditation. Today, the demand of those meditation trainings booms. What is meant with mindfulness? Mindfulness is about “watching, what happens right now without judging it”. You only focus on your very own thoughts. By doing so, you are enabled to break through your chains of thought and thus illuminate the “blind spots of your mind”. Also, mindfulness increases self-awareness, hence allowing for “a different handling of stress”.
Why is mindfulness that successful? Mindfulness creates more space for the human component in companies. By doing so, mindfulness prevents cases of illness (for example due to burn-out) and can even strengthen the sense of unity of a team, e.g. by meditating together before a phone conference. An awareness of quiet and rest is recreated – especially the latter has been neglected more and more over the past years.
Fig. 1: Mindfulness as protection from stress and mental overlaod
How useful are trainings for mindfulness? One-time-only trainings for mindfulness are only conditionally useful. This is mainly due to the fact that people often fall back into old habits, disabling a change in cognition in the long run. Long-term programs promise a much better outcome because they support the change of old habits more effectively – a meeting once a week with a coach is enough already. This investment is very much worth it: mindfulness studies give evidence to the fact that people completing mindfulness training are more attentive, more present and less stressed.
Nevertheless, there are possible unintended side effects: e.g. in one company some employees quit their job simultaneously after completing a mindfulness training – they became more aware of the psychic stress involved with their jobs.
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