corporate mindfulness

How Corporate Mindfulness Can Improve Results

Have you ever wondered how the energy of a corporation might affect the output? How might this affect the bottom line? You might be surprised at what taking a more energetic and spiritual approach could help the health of not only the corporation but also the health of the employees.

Taking a mindful approach to life also involves looking at the energy of your organization or corporation and how that might affect the output or bottom line.

The Impact of Stress

A lot of people experience stress, and we have to consider how that affects a company’s bottom line.

If the overall energy of an organization is that of stress, there is going to naturally be a lower level of output, and quality of work.

Stress costs organizations nearly $300 billion a year, according to the World Health Organization.

Stress can also cause higher health care premiums and employee absenteeism. Stress might even cause employees to call in sick, even if they aren’t, merely because they are “sick” of work.

Some even say that the corporation is sucking their soul! Why might someone say that corporations suck their souls?

What can companies do about this to make the workplace a healthier environment? What kinds of changes can they make to support the mind, body, and soul?

One of the best places to start is by changing the environment. How often do you walk into a corporate office building and feel your energy drop? How often do you feel drained at work?

There are actually a number of factors that go into the health of the workplace environment.

A few of these are:

  • The setup of the workspace.
  • The amount of natural light versus fluorescent light, which is very draining to one’s energy system.
  • The level of flow that you have in the work environment if it’s cluttered, and if it’s messy, or noisy.

The truth is that all these things affect how well we work. In light of this, we have to ask ourselves why we can’t work in a space that is beautiful, and in a space that lifts us up instead of a space that sucks our soul.

Workspaces should not only be beautiful, but they should also promote a sense of well-being and relaxation. We know that we work best when we feel balanced and when we’re calm and when we are relaxed.

One thing that can help promote a sense of well-being is having enough fresh air, and having circulating air.

Stagnate energy is very depleting, especially if it keeps cycling and recycling. There are many things that can add to the ambiance of an environment including greenery and fresh plants, colors and even having something like fresh tea available.

If you want to employ a mindfulness program, you can even do things like having a chime or a bell every hour, to remind people to simply take a breath and to center themselves in the moment.

Creating a separate space for mindfulness and meditation is also a good idea, but you have to be cognizant of where the location is. For example, having a sacred meditation space near an elevator or somewhere where there is a lot of noise is probably not a great idea.

A sacred space should also have a few beautiful items as well, like paintings or other types of things that can add to the ambiance, otherwise, people may feel trapped or enclosed.

Another tip is to ensure that spaces set aside for specific intentions are separate. For instance, it’s important to make sure that a kitchen is separate from any work areas. This also helps contain the flow of noise.

When it comes to workspaces, companies should also ensure than people are ergonomically fit at their desks. If they are slouching all day, or spend their day sliding over, their energy will also start to decline.

If you make an effort to sit up straight, as opposed to sitting hunched over, you will also breathe much easier.

Taking the time to ensure that workers have good resources, and the proper resources to balance themselves out will go a long way to helping workers to be more productive throughout the day.

Other things that can be helpful include making sure people have access to:

  • Stress reduction
  • Relaxation or mindfulness programs
  • Things that can help them learn how to connect to themselves and to be more aware of their internal landscape and their feelings.

When you become more mindful, and more aware, this actually adds to the level of focus, productivity, workflow and communication in the workplace.

When you approach things more mindfully, it’s then much easier to communicate with your coworkers, for example.

Providing these resources is so important for a healthy, happy workplace. If people don’t feel like they are being taken care of, or if they feel like a machine or a workhorse, they’re not going to perform at their best level.

If people aren’t feeling a sense of meaning and purpose, they are going to naturally perform at a lower level.

If someone is spending the entire day at work, and they have no real influence over, or stake in or interest in it, it’s going to be very draining for them. At the end of the day, if they’re just sitting in front of a computer, putting output out without receiving anything back, it’s not going to be very fulfilling.

When a company has a mission, a purpose and a vision, their employees can connect to that vision and feel like they’re contributing to something meaningful and positive in the world.

If that doesn’t happen, the default is draining to the energy system and to the Spirit. When you feel drained, energetically, and you aren’t utilizing your whole self and your resources you probably won’t be able to rest well either.

Effects of Chronic Stress

Chronic stress affects your mental energy and affects your ability to get a good night’s sleep. It also affects your immunity and your health. Taking steps to ensure that your employees have meaningful work, and taking steps to ensure that they have power over that can go a long way to helping them express themselves freely.

If people feel like they have to hang themselves up at the door, they cannot be their authentic self. As a result, it may even feel like the corporation is sucking their soul.

If people feel that they can’t be their authentic selves, there may also be unspoken tensions in the workplace. This creates political dynamics, and hierarchy, and an ego-based agenda. If people don’t feel safe and secure within themselves and don’t feel as if they can safely express themselves and their ideas, then they are going to have a limitation of energy and flow in the workplace.

Mindfulness in the Workplace

“If you just sit and observe, you will see how restless your mind is. If you try to calm it, it only makes it worse, but over time it does calm, and when it does, there’s room to hear more subtle things–that’s when your intuition starts to blossom and you start to see things more clearly and be in the present more. Your mind just slows down, and you see a tremendous expanse in the moment. You see so much more than you could see before.” Steve Jobs

Mindfulness programs help people to get connected to their deeper, true authentic self. As a result, they can then express themselves easier and feel a greater sense of connection.

Having that sense of collaboration is so important. It’s also important to feel a sense of openness and to give your employees flexibility, at the workplace.

This may mean creating options like working from home, to lessen hours, or other types of things. In the end, as long as someone is meeting his or her goals and deadlines, it should not be an issue.

Doing all of this helps give people a sense of autonomy and freedom over their work which is vital.

Having a more open system, a collaborative system, where people can share and be their authentic selves, is really important. Often times this sense of stress and tension trickles down from top management, which is why it’s so important that leaders have the proper resources for themselves to do their inner work.

When leaders have a sense of awareness and connection to their inner genius, and to their higher self, they can think more easily out of the box and think more strategically to receive those innovative ideas that really give the company that leading edge.

The leader then becomes like the fulcrum point of the organization and the point from which the organization moves.

If leaders are feeling stressed, and feeling an intense pressure to perform they will channel that energy back out and send it out to their team.

When that happens, the team will then send this same type of negative energy back out to their employees and this creates a trickle-down effect.

On the other hand, when the leader feels balanced, calm, supported, and energized, they send that same kind of positive energy out into the field of their organization. That is one of the main reasons for leaders to continually work on their levels of awareness and consciousness.

When a leader is suffering from a great deal of stress or feels a great deal of responsibility or burden of having to take care of so many employees they can start to feel isolated because people look to them for direction for decision making.

It’s not uncommon for leaders to lack the proper resources when it comes to dealing with their own stress. When the leader is feeling stressed, and feeling more anxious throughout the day all of this trickles down to the employees. As a result, people will start to feel scattered, stressed or anxious as well.

It is essential that leaders learn how to develop a mindfulness practice to develop true resilience to stress. Mindfulness also helps one learn how to self-regulate, and deal with challenging emotions that often come up in the business arena.

Resilience comes from having that ability to be soft, to relax, and to surrender. That level of heart and strength comes from an inner softness.

All of these things are aspects that lead to the overall energy of an organization. It’s essentially about raising the vibration and raising the energy of the whole organization and that starts from leadership.

When there is an opportunity to release the lower vibrations and to release stress, tension, and anxiety, this provides a sense of safety, flow, and relaxation.

As a result, you’ll often see a heightened improvement in the level of productivity, focus, energy, and motivation. All of this adds to the sense of inspiration for all employees.

Thanks for taking the time to read about energy awareness and connections at the corporate workplace.

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Article Author

Sura Kim

Sura Kim

Sura is a highly experienced Meditation Coach and Trainer, and is passionate about helping people tap into their joy through the practice of meditation. She first discovered meditation when she was in severe pain while working on Wall Street. After receiving profound healing benefits from her sitting practice, she left New York to study meditation in Asia and has been teaching meditation ever since. Sura currently offers online trainings for leadership teams and coaches. She offers a program called Leading Edge, which is a six-week online program for executive teams. Her work can be seen on Huffington Post, Daily Om, and other major publications. Learn more about Sura and her work at SuraFlow.Org where you can receive a free meditation toolkit and begin a practice of daily calm.
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