Introduction

Mindfulness is a mental discipline and way of being that has been practiced for thousands of years. Modern science has researched mindfulness as a secular practice and discovered its tremendous power-creating positive changes in the brain that have never been seen before in brain scans.

Mindfulness was initially used in medical settings in the late 1970s. In the decades that followed, the use of mindfulness throughout western society began to rapidly increase. Nowadays, hundreds of corporate organisations, from Google to General Mills, use mindfulness to help their employees boost their resilience, productivity, emotional intelligence, focus or even just to make them feel happier!

This book, Mindfulness at Work For Dummies, offers an accessible and fairly comprehensive look at the ways of bringing greater mindfulness into the workplace setting, whatever your motivation.

This book is for anyone with any sort of role in the workplace. Employees, small business owners, managers and corporate executives and leaders will find practical application from this book, we hope. We even explore mindful leadership in some depth, a leadership theory that’s now taught in the finest business schools in the world.

We wrote this book because we’re passionate about mindfulness! Having practiced mindfulness both in our personal and professional lives, we can see the massive positive benefits of a workforce that is trained to use mindfulness – greater creativity, improved communication and higher levels of productivity and wellbeing.

We also feel mindfulness can help manage the negative consequences of the demanding modern workplace environment. High levels of pressure, tight deadlines and overly demanding managers can take their toll on the toughest individuals. With stress now one of the leading causes of absence from work according to the World Health Organization, the need to find ways of building mental resilience is huge. We like to think that mindfulness offers a powerful way of raising resilience in the workplace setting, and the science agrees.

With hundreds of organisations, big and small, now offering mindfulness at work, this book offers a systematic and evidence-based way to integrate mindfulness in the workplace. We tried to simplify the concepts without losing their subtle essence, and include lots of exercises for everyone to try out, from the boardroom to the shop floor. We hope Mindfulness at Work For Dummies will offer something for you too – and offers you a fresh approach to your work.

About This Book

Mindfulness at Work For Dummies provides you with practical techniques to integrate mindfulness into the workplace. Each chapter is jam packed with insights about the art of mindfulness, how to be mindful quickly and easily, and how to work with mindful awareness. This book has been written for beginners to the idea of mindfulness and those looking for ways to introduce mindfulness into their organisation in a scientifically proven way.

This book comes with access to downloadable mindfulness exercises designed specifically for the workplace. The audio is in MP3 format so you can listen on your computer, phone, MP3 player or burn onto a CD for your personal use.

Within this book, you may note that some Web addresses break across two lines of text. If you’re reading this book in print and want to visit one of these Web pages, simply key in the Web address exactly as it’s noted in the text, pretending as though the line break doesn’t exist. If you’re reading this as an e-book, you’ve got it easy – just click the Web address to be taken directly to the Web page.

Foolish Assumptions

In writing this book, we made a few assumptions about who you are:

• You work on a regular basis, or are actively seeking work.
• You are looking for an approach to improve you and your staff’s success in the workplace.
• You want be more mindful at work, but don’t know where to start.
• You are willing to try the various mindfulness exercises and strategies we have suggested several times before judging if they could work for you or your staff.
• You’re looking for long-term ways of improving your effectiveness in the workplace rather that just a quick fix.

Beyond those, we’ve not assumed too much, we hope. This book is for you whether you’re male or female, eighteen upwards.

Icons Used in This Book

Scattered through the book you’ll see various icons to guide you on your way. Icons are a For Dummies way of drawing your attention to important stuff, interesting stuff, and stuff you really need to know not to do.

This icon indicates an activity that’s specifically tied in to the Mindfulness At Work Training (MAWT) you can find in Chapters 6 and 7.

Shoot over to www.dummies.com/go/mindfulnessatworkuk and download the audio that goes along with this book.

This is stuff you need to know: whatever else you carry away from this book, note these bits with care.

Look out for these icons if you like science and want to learn about the evidence behind the mindfulness exercises and approaches.

Handy tidbits to help you get you nice and mindful at work.

An activity for you to try out for yourself.

Beyond the Book

We offer further resources that go with this book. Firstly, visit http://mawt.co.uk – register your email to get free resources, links to recommended videos and access to research material mentioned in this book. Also, visit that website if you’d like to get in touch with us about our own trainings.

In addition to the material in the print or e-book you’re reading right now, this book comes with some access-anywhere content on the Web. Check out the free Cheat Sheet at www.dummies.com/cheatsheet/mindfulnessatworkuk.

We also specially recorded a set of guided mindfulness exercises for you to use along with this book. You can download the content whenever you wish. Go to www.dummies.com/go/mindfulnessatworkuk to access the guided mindfulness audio.

Where to Go from Here

We’ve compiled this book so that you can dip in and out as you please. We invite you to make good use of the Table of Contents (or the index) and jump straight into the section you fancy. You’re in charge and it’s up to you. If you’re a total beginner to mindfulness, or not sure where to start, begin with Part I and you’ll have a better idea how to proceed.

We wish you all the best in your quest to be mindful or to bring mindfulness to others at work, and hope you find something of use within these pages.