The Odd Couple: Corporate Mindfulness and bringing awareness to the city

Corporate mindfulness.  At first glance this might seem like an oxymoron.  The two terms seem to be at odds, at opposite ends of some intangible scale of behaviour and philosophy.  How does the pursuit of career - the high speed, high pressure, high reward life of the city - relate to the practice of meditation?

I am sure that when you hear the term “meditation” there is an involuntary conjuring of images of hippies and eastern mystics sitting under Bodhi trees searching for enlightenment.  This is a common reaction and one which leads to the benefits of meditation being prematurely dismissed. The reality of meditative practice has little in common with these projected clichés.   Meditators cannot be pigeon-holed into stereotypes any more than corporate workers can simply be reduced to the pejoratively intentioned “suits”.

Mindfulness meditation at its core allows the practitioner to learn to come to terms with the stresses, pressures and difficulties of life.  By familiarising yourself with the difficulties, you develop a more skilful approach to the stimuli, robbing them of their power.  Mindfulness has been particularly successful in helping people deal with stress, self-criticism and anxiety that comes from constant pressure. 

Stress, self-criticism and pressure related anxiety.

Do these sound familiar?  Are these not the realities that face people in highly pressured and busy jobs?  We accept these unremitting pressures as normal but the cost to individuals and the companies they work for is immense.  Corporate burnout is a reality while stress related sickness at work has risen sharply.  It was estimated that 11.3 million working days were lost in the UK in 2013/14 due to stress, anxiety and depression.  This is an alarming statistic, but fortunately the need to combat stress is recognised throughout the corporate sector and meditation has proven to be successful.

Imagine if you were able to step outside the behavioural patterns that govern us.  Imagine how it would be to be able to observe how you related to the stresses of work load, deadlines and the desire for career progression, and respond in a way that alleviates rather than adds to the unavoidable pressures of your work.

Mindfulness gives the practitioner the ability to do this.  Beginning by learning to focus on the breath or how the body is physically responding, we anchor ourselves in the present moment, immediately changing our relationship to stresses and pressures.  Rather than worrying about a past that cannot be changed or a future that has not yet happened, meditators can short circuit the cycles of worry-self criticism-stress that exacerbate pressured workplace situations and bulging in-trays. 

Who in their professional life has not found moments of despair, where a tidal wave of paperwork and expectation threatens to overwhelm us?  This reality is often compounded by the undercurrent of self-criticism, thought patterns that further burden us and lead to us re-doubling our efforts as we edge towards burnout.  Mindfulness engenders a different attitude to these thoughts.  Meditators acknowledge but do not react to the destructive thought patters that drive many of us to try and perform until dropping.  The realities and pressures are not denied, in fact the very opposite.  Self-critical thoughts about not being able to cope and with the work and looming deadlines are welcomed, but seen simply as judgements, not reality. This kind of worry is debilitating personally and professionally, not to mention futile, so being able to let it go is essential for a more healthy and productive work force.

It must be understood that this is not a trick or a technique that can be quickly learned.  There are no shortcuts and the work of the mindfulness meditator is ongoing and requires dedication.  Seasoned meditators are still prey to the habitual and destructive patterns of thought but they can notice them and respond accordingly.  It is a discipline that has immediate effect but also has more profound, slow-burn rewards for those willing to practice.  Perhaps today you could find 10, 20, even 30 minutes in your day to meditate – to stop and simply be.  It may change your day, and perhaps your working life.

What's my motivation (or, why should I bother meditating at all?)

Mindfulness is everywhere. It's the buzz word in the fields of health, business, coaching and increasingly varied aspects of life, including sport, and creativity. In many ways this interest in mindfulness is fantastic. Awareness of the subject and its possibilities to help with the way we relate to our life and the world we find ourselves in is extremely important. It is true that mindfulness can help with our stresses and anxieties, our concentration and myriad other concerns, but understanding what motivates us to practice meditation is key in ensuring our continued engagement as practitioners.

Mindfulness is often (mis)sold as a cure all to all the modern world's ills. Stressed? Try Mindfulness. Anxious? Try mindfulness? Low morale at work? Try mindfulness. Want to increase personal motivation? Well here's a novel though, try mindfulness. Your cakes won't rise? Have you tired mindfulness?

The inherent problem in all this is that we set a clear goal to begin with – be it the removal of stress or anxiety through to better performance at work – and this becomes our sole reason to practice meditation. Once you have set a goal like this then you have also set yourself the possibility of failing. This is contrary to the whole process of mindfulness, which has no inherent goals or states to achieve, and can have serious consequences. Once meditation starts to throw up difficulties or challenges (as it will – we are getting to know the parts of our mind that we often suppress) then we can easily see ourselves as “failing” to achieve a set goal. This quickly leads to disenchantment and giving up.

Mindfulness meditation is not about fixing or changing anything. It is not about achievement or failure. It is teaching us to simply allow what ever arises to exist without suppression and without denial. It is a subtle shift in perspective that enables us to react skilfully rather than automatically.

The paradox here though is that there does have to be some motivation, otherwise why would we give up our time to sit on a cushion in silence and face our inner reality? Furthermore, the motivation has to be constantly reassessed otherwise, like the examples I gave above, we can become fixed on a simple cognitive reason for practicing wherein we can either be put off by not “achieving” a goal, or we can stop practicing because we have done what we set out to do.

The need to reassess was brought home to me recently whilst I was on a week long meditation retreat in Scotland. Five years ago I was drawn to mindfulness because of issues of stress and anxiety that were blighting my life. As much as I told myself I was not setting myself the goal of being “better” there was an underlying goal of reducing my suffering – this was the end in itself. After prolonged periods of practice I found that I did feel much happier, much more placid and the anxieties, while still there, seemed to have been turned down to a much lower volume. I had “won”. I had “achieved” my goal.

So here I was at a retreat centre in Scotland, ready for a blissful week of relaxation. But in this assumption I had set myself up for a fall. When I sat down to meditate I became aware of the well know signs of agitation, discomfort and even anger. Why am I stressed? I’m on retreat. There’s no pressure. Why am I tense? Why is my torso squeezing? I notice subtle striving in wanting a “relaxed” session. The physical response is a slight increase of tension. I try harder to “meditate properly” so I can loosen the knots that are forming in my stomach muscles. But it's not happening. The frustration grows. “But I've beaten this” I say to myself internally.

By pure chance, we were doing a practice on personal motivation so I tried to steer my mind away from fixing the difficulties and to motivate on why I practice. This is a subtle practice because we are not looking for a cognitive answer and this can be frustrating – as it was for me that day. I got up at the end of the meditation without an answer and still feeling stressed.

However, later that day I became aware of the physical sensations again, and I was just immediately aware that this is why I practice. I realised that whilst my outward and cognitive reactions to stress had lessened, they had not gone. I had merely pushed them down to a more subtle level. My body was screaming out in alarm physically, but cognitively I was all Zen and batting the messages of stress away. And then it came to me. The realisation isteslf is the reason I meditate. It's not about fixing but an awareness of how skilfully my mind maintains the very things that cause difficulty and how I can become aware of this and act accordingly. I keep coming back to the cushion, not because of something that clearly forms itself during the meditation, but because of a slow realisation that grows from awareness.

Strangely, this little bit of insight allowed me to take the pressure of myself for not having a clear, cognitive reason for practicing. I even felt less stressed. I realised I was influenced by a subtle goal of having a relaxed and peaceful practice and I was using this to ignore the messages my body was sending me. Stress is part of everybody's life and my goal of overcoming it for ever had merely created a suppression of natural periods of difficulty. It was only through reassessing and letting go that I was able to come to this realisation. For seasoned practitioners through to beginners, this constant assessment of WHY we practice is important and may just keep us going in the difficult times.