Mindful Work--Post #1--Overview

Overview. Mindfulness meditation is like taking your brain to the gym for a workout. In fact, I believe it will become as popular as running has become for fitness. Sit quietly and focus on your breathing—that’s meditation in a nutshell. When thoughts come—about an argument you had yesterday, about a deadline that’s looming, or about the lawn to be mowed—simply acknowledge the thought and go back to concentrating on your breathing. The more you practice this, the stronger your mind gets. It’s like doing mental pushups—you get more resilient and stronger over time. The clinical findings have proven its effectiveness: mindful meditation helps reduce heart disease, cancer, diabetes, depression and anxiety, fatigue and muscle pain. In experiments, it has reduced cortisol levels, aided immune systems, increased happiness, and even calmed kids down. Many companies, from Google to General Mills to Goldman Sachs, have significantly invested in mindful meditation for their employees.

Mindful Work: How Meditation is Changing Business from the Inside Out (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015) by David Gelles, reviewed by Steve Gladis, May 2015.