The below post is taken from the Video Blog, the Subject Matter Minute. If it’s a little hard to read, it’s because it’s taken from the spoken word. You can view the episode on YouTube if you would like. Find it here: Episode #16 -Mindfulness Meditation
If YouTube is blocked for you or your agency, you can scroll to the bottom of this post to view it from Google Drive. (I would prefer you view in YouTube, so I know how many people have watched)
You can also listen to an audio version.
Welcome to another Subject Matter Minute, I’m Matt Nagy, thanks for tuning in! Before I get started, I want to thank last month’s subject matter expert which, of course, was EGI, or employees’ group insurance. They deal with a ton of stuff down there, so they are often my subject matter expert.
First of all I want to chat a little bit about something that I like to do. I’m a bit of a do-it-yourselfer. I find it hard to pay somebody for something that I’m pretty certain I could do myself. I’ve done a little bit of everything, you know, I’ve roofed houses, I’ve replaced window,s I’ve tiled floors, I’ve even gutted and remodeled kitchens and bathrooms. Now, I wouldn’t say anything I do is amazing, but I can tell you it’s way better than what I tore out! And we’ve always been happy with it… so there’s that. It’s kind of funny because my wife always asks me, “how do you even know how to do that?” I tell her, “Well I guess first of all, a lot of it’s common sense, but most the time I just read the instructions!” It’s amazing what you can get done by reading the instructions. Of course nowadays YouTube makes it a hell of a lot easier.
Lately I’ve kind of lost some of my enthusiasm for these types of projects, and you know, there’s probably a lot of reasons, but the main reason I think is that I got a lot going on. I got a couple teenage daughters, got a lot of work, a lot of side work, just plain busy… a lot of things going on in the brain. So what I can’t do, is what I used to be able to do, and that’s focus on the task at hand. You know? I would just be sanding the wood and not thinking about getting it done. Well nowadays… like, I just did a bathroom down here in the basement, and I was constantly thinking about when I could get it done so I could move on to the next thing. So I wasn’t enjoying the job at all. That leads me to the topic of this month. I think this is the first one that actually led into a topic. I think the rest was just information about myself that really didn’t matter, but this one leads into the topic at hand. It’s not a benefit or a process, but it’s about wellness, and wellness is a really good thing for anybody at work and in life. And actually a lot of agencies, or some agencies, actually have wellness programs that will promote wellness and reward employees for healthy behaviors.
So what I’m talking about today is mindfulness meditation.
I know, I know… some of you are thinking I’m getting a little hippie dippie here, but I’ll tell you what… the hippies back in the 60s that we’re meditating were onto something.
Now before I go on I want to thank Kimberly Fields who is my subject matter expert this episode. She’s actually been going to trainings and weekend retreats and knows a lot about it. Thanks Kimberly!
So what is mindfulness meditation? It’s simple in concept. Really it’s just being aware of the present… generally by focusing on your breath. It’s when we start thinking about the past, dredging up the past, and thinking about the future, that we get anxiety and worried. And this is really a way to bring those feelings down.
I was talking about the hippies a minute ago. The reason I say they were onto something is that the science is starting to bear this out. There’s been multiple studies that are starting to prove that this is very good for your brain, and not only just good for your well-being but physically good for your brain. There was just a study in 2015 by a UCLA that showed that mindfulness meditation preserves the amount of gray matter in your brain as well as shrinking the amygdala. So I’m getting all science-y on you here, but the amygdala is the fight-or-flight part of your brain that was created to keep you alive when predators were after you… which we don’t need so much anymore. In fact, that’s what really causes worry and stress. It’s shown that meditation actually shrinks that, which of course is going to shrink those sorts of feelings. So physical changes in your brain from meditating!
When we’re talking about mindfulness meditation, or mindfulness in general, it can be a wide range of things. All the way down here where you’re somewhat like Kimberly… you’re taking courses and you’re doing a daily practice of, like an hour of actual meditation, or it can be all the way down to kind of where I am, which is simply having an app reminding me to breathe. I’m sure a lot of you are like me and that you sit at a computer all day, and I’ve found… well you don’t notice until you actually stop and take the breaths… but I found that when I’m working at my computer I don’t breathe well. It’s shallow breathing. Sometimes I find myself grinding my teeth. Well, what this does is reminds me every once in a while to just breathe. So what I do is I take a few deep breaths and actually focus on the breath… stop thinking about everything else. So anyways, it can go from an hour of meditation a day clear down to just simply that.
There are a ton of things in between… small things you can do to help your peace of mind and your brain, for that matter. If you’re not interested in creating a formal practice, where you’re meditating for a certain amount of time every day, I’ve put a link to an article down below that gives you ten ways that you can incorporate mindfulness into your life and into your job. This is specifically about your job. So give that a read. Some of the things are single tasking, which is kind of like I was talking about with my remodels … basically you’re focusing on the task at hand when you’re single tasking. And that’s good for you. Another one was setting reminders like I do. You can set reminders or you can have something that reminds you. Like each time your phone rings you pause before you answer it, take some deep breaths. Another one is simply accepting things that that you can’t change.
There’s 10 in that article and then if you’re interested in more information there’s another article down below that is “14 ways to practice mindfulness” that are compiled from other articles, because there’s a lot of people talking about this right now. That includes Business Insider, Harvard Business Review, Fitness Magazine, etc. So if you want more information go ahead and check that out.
If you are practicing mindfulness or meditating, and you know about this, I would love it if you would comment down below and tell me where you’re at in your practice, or if it’s helped you, and what you think about it. I can tell you right now that I am an occasional meditator. When I first got this app, I probably did like 8 days in a row, and then I just started fading and doing it occasionally. We’re only talking like 10-minute meditations. I really need to get back into it. And then, of course, the other thing I do is have the app remind me to breathe. So that’s where I’m at.
Some of you may really think this is very hippie, but I tell you, the science bears it out, and you should read up on it. I really do think that this sort of thing can help you on your job and in life and I plan on doing better.
Well thanks for joining me on the Subject Matter Minute, thanks Kimberly for the information, and I’ll see you all next time!