Most of us are coming out of what has hopefully been a restful and replenishing holiday season. But now it’s back to work and the resumption of the ‘norm’ where our modern lives and workplaces are busier than ever.
Before we know it demanding workloads and numerous responsibilities will be filling our calendars and to-do lists to the brink of bursting. The constant flow of information, email, and media competing for our attention at all hours of the day resumes. It’s not hard to see that we can become so busy being busy that we lose sight of what is most important to us, or even lose our sense of self and connection with others.
Our brains do their best to cope with these demands by setting habits of thinking, feeling, deciding and behaving that aim to help us handle our workloads and the high expectations we place on ourselves. It’s like having ‘default settings’ in our brains that guide us to navigate our daily experiences as if we are on autopilot mode.
We can all benefit from making time to slow down and tune into what’s important. We can reawaken our awareness and focus our attention on what matters - taking action mindfully. What’s more, we can practise doing this - even train this capability - because ‘busyness’ has become the default setting and our brains are switching into autopilot mode in an attempt to cope with the demand. This process is mindfulness, and it is something research shows us is incredibly valuable.
While the above context is serious stuff, we can have some fun learning ways to practice mindful awareness and building our attention skills. We can enjoy the process of firing, wiring, and rewiring our brains default settings and switching off our autopilot - all while experiencing novel and interesting experiences.
By understanding where our strengths and challenges are in the area of mindfulness we can make smarter decisions on where to focus and invest our effort and time to make progress in this work and life skill. Have you ever wondered how skilful are you are in applying ‘Mindful Action’ to your work and life? Have you ever wondered about the capability of your team and or organisation in this area? If you want to explore this and take you and your organisation to new peaks of your potential then get in contact with us at Benny Button!