6 Ways Meditation Makes You Happier at Work

Work stress. We all feel it, whether we’re struggling to find 15 minutes for lunch or responding to emails at 10 p.m. But a regular mindfulness and meditation practice can help, says meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg, author of Real Happiness at Work.

“Sometimes people are really concerned about practicing mindfulness at work. They think they’ll lose their edge, or they won’t strive or seek excellence, but it actually opens up the door to being more creative and finding a sense of meaning,” she explains.

Here are 6 ways that meditation and mindfulness can help you both survive and enjoy your work day, according to Salzberg.

1. Find a sense of meaning.

Studies have shown that strongest indicator of happiness at work is a sense of meaning, so Salzberg recommends infusing your day with something that gives you personal meaning. For example, say to yourself, “I will try to be compassionate to everyone I encounter” or “I will try to communicate well,” she suggests. This positive focus can really transform your day, she says.

2. Be realistic.

We’ve all had moments when we wanted to march out the door, but since the bills aren’t going to pay themselves, it’s important to be realistic, Salzberg says. Ask yourself, “What do you see as a realistic path to change in your situation?” she says. “See what you can change, and see what’s actually happening (without focusing on your immediate reactions). Focus on the bigger picture. Even if you’re seeking change, doing so from a less driven, less reactive place is a good thing.”

3. Have a daily meditation practice.

“It’s not realistic to be mindful all the time at work,” Salzberg says. “One of my teachers once recommended ‘short moments many times’ ... that’s sort of our goal. The best and most effective way to make that real is if you have a daily meditation practice—10-20 minutes a day of sitting or walking meditation. A dedicated period where you’re only trying to cultivate awareness and compassion. That will make it so much easier to have those short moments many times a day.”

4. Come back to your breath.

If you’ve received an upsetting email or had a tense moment with your boss, remember to breathe, Salzberg advises. “If you breathe and come back to the moment, it brings you back to your values and what you really want to see come out of the situation. It’s actually a very powerful thing to do,” she says.

5. Unplug.

If you’re checking your work emails first thing in the morning and last thing at night, mindfulness and meditation can help you unplug, Salzberg says. “The more aware we get, the more we see the consequences of certain actions. You realize that you need to take a break—you feel the stress in the body and you feel compassion for yourself. This helps you put down your device, establish new boundaries and new habits.”

6. Shift your perspective.

Meditation and mindfulness can help you remember that work is only one aspect of your life and only one part of your day, Salzberg says. “Meditation and mindfulness have a benefit of perspective-taking and giving you more flexibility of mind. You’re purposefully, intentionally asking yourself, ‘How else can I look at things?’ Have fun with it. See your very life and your day as a creative medium.”

Spirituality for Coping at the End of Life

Last week, my brother and I set ourselves to the humbling task of helping another brother in declining health move cross-country. Our ill brother is in his sixties, the oldest in our group of siblings, and we moved him from one nursing home to another.

He is suffering from a progressive, debilitating disease that attacks both body and mind. We lost our father only 13 years ago, and for one of us to be seriously ill so soon seems premature, especially the funny one, the one whose spirit and personality have always been happiest, the one most likely to make light of a situation.


A large cast of caregivers appears in the first days after arriving at a nursing home: the nurse who received us, a variety of aides in vibrant blue scrubs, a physical therapist and an occupational therapist. One afternoon, a calm and friendly woman whose title I’ve forgotten asked to take a personal history.

This brother and I were not always close, especially in the last decade. I did my best. Former occupation? Saddle maker. Music? Seventies — Rollings Stones and David Bowie. Habits? Loves talk radio, NPR, liked to draw and read, metal working. Religion? No.

We were not a religious family. In adulthood, some of us have made forays into Christianity or Buddhism or both. But, as far as I know, not this brother. I’ve been mulling over that last answer for a few days. I worry that answering “no religion” might prevent the staff from engaging with my brother on a spiritual level.
Defining Spirituality

A 2014 Pew Research Center study found that fewer and fewer Americans identify as religious. Belief in God has dropped from 71 percent in 2007 to 63 percent in 2014.(3) But most of us practice some form of spirituality.

In 1999, The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), in an effort to educate medical providers on how to more compassionately engage with patients at the end of life, addressed the issue of spirituality.

“Spirituality is recognized as a factor that contributes to health in many persons,” they wrote.

Make Sure Your Employees Have Enough Interesting Work to Do

When productivity starts to slide, it’s not always easy to pinpoint the cause. Our first impulse is often to take a close look at how we can improve workplace processes. Is it a problem of time management? Could it be that the technology’s not up to the job?

Very often these are indeed the answers, but every once in a while, you see that all the traditional vital signs are in order.  In these situations, I often found that the problem is more strategic because it relates to the choices firms are making about the kind of business they’re taking on — something I call “work mix.”

It’s a particular problem for service firms.  Take for example the case of my recent client, an engineering consulting company I’ll call Astride. Its main work involves designing bridges, buildings, factories and houses. It has 96 staff working in offices in three small cities and is owned by four partners, three of whom head up an office each.

The partners were concerned about levels of staff productivity and performance relative to the competition. What could be the cause? I was called in to see if I could find out.

First up, I conducted a workshop, giving all staff the chance to address the issue and propose solutions. I also interviewed the partners and a cross section of employees to better understand the anchors on raising Astride’s productivity.

To be sure, some of the usual suspects made their bows. Interviewees complained of poor recognition for effort and a lack of clarity around individual career paths and possible progression through the firm. It was clear that the firm needed to make more investment in engineering design software. And there was a lot of improvement possible in terms of managing the workload across and between the offices.

But there was one unusual subject as well — a set of problems around the mix of consulting assignments that Astride was taking on. In firms like Astride, engagements can vary widely, ranging from figuring out the design of a construction component like a reinforced concrete slab to designing a whole bridge. Engagements at the bottom end of this range were described scathingly by some staff as “piss-ant jobs,” and there was a distinct feeling that Astride was taking on too many of them.

What makes a job too small? And what are the productivity effects of taking it on? It’s a tricky question because growth in professional service firms isn’t always smooth sailing. It involves a stepped process.

Let me demonstrate by looking beyond Astride. Think for a moment of other professional service firms. Let’s take accounting. Here we see a matching of firm size and client size — tantamount to a symbiotic relationship. The KPMG of today, for example, doesn’t aim to undertake the tax returns of individuals. Its focus is rather on large corporate and government work. It has built its organizational infrastructure accordingly.

But to get to this point it had to decide, one step change at a time, to let go of small clients while at the same time building the required corporate muscle for larger clients. This bootstrapping process comes with higher overhead costs at each stage. The gradual-growth-then-step-and-gradual-growth progress in professional service firms produced the KPMG we have today — a large multi-national accounting practice. But, and this is the tricky bit for senior managers, there’s no turning back. Having moved up that scale over time, it’s no longer economic to undertake the small jobs that have been left in the wake.

This is the very scenario that Astride’s partners are facing.  In growing companies like this there comes a moment of truth when a management that’s used to taking on any business it can has to start picking and choosing.  Thus far, I’m afraid to say, Astride’s partners are not grasping the nettle. But unless they do no amount of management training, technology upgrades, or workflow management will be enough to make up for the productivity losses that come from the “piss-ant jobs” they’re settling for.

So what should Astride be doing?  I usually recommend companies like this to begin at the strategic level by looking at:

    Strategic decisions. As with Astride, it could be that your major decisions — regarding the business you’re in, your target customer, and the work you need to specialize in for growth and economies of scale — is having a major impact on the ability of your staff to apply their skills effectively.  So have a review of these decisions. Have you even consciously made them?
    The decision-making structure. Partnerships, where each partner has an equal vote, are prone to indecision. Some managers want to grow, some don’t. Some want to move to larger jobs letting go the smaller ones, others are concerned about a possible downturn in business. To make these disagreements get resolved put a circuit breaker in place — a person with a casting and binding, vote and give him or her a title like CEO or Managing Partner.

After you’ve examined your practice on strategy and structure, by all means turn your attention to the usual suspects, like staff motivation, technology tools, and workflow processes. Do you praise and reward a job well done?Have you invested in appropriate software? Do you schedule working times for staff with no outside interruption, for example from phones or email? Do you balance workloads across all staff? Do you set realistic delivery schedules and work flows? Do your specialists waste time on clerical work?

But don’t begin with the usual suspects. If your organization is suffering from productivity issues, start by looking beyond the oh-so-standard time management course for staff. A bunch of PowerPoint slides over half a day will probably achieve very little. The cause may be more systemic. Dig deeper. You may be surprised.