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.

Strategic Team Development - Dr Fazal Mahmood

A team is a group of people organised to work together. Teamwork is the ability to work together towards a common vision, goal or objective. All team members must share in that vision and work both independently and inter-dependently to achieve the goal. Modern managers must have the ability to harmonise individual accomplishment with organisational objectives.

As a team matures, members gradually learn to cope with the emotional and group pressures they face. As a result, the team goes through fairly predictable stages:

Stage 1 Forming

When a team is forming, members cautiously explore the boundaries of acceptable group behaviour. Like hesitant swimmers, they stand by the pool, dabbling their toes in the water. This is a stage of transition from individual to member status, and of testing the leader's guidance both formally and informally.

Forming includes these feelings:

§  Excitement, anticipation and optimism

§  Pride in being chosen for the project

§  Initial, tentative attachment to the team

§  Suspicion, fear and anxiety about the job ahead

and these behaviours:

§  Attempts to define the task and decide how it will be accomplished

§  Attempts to determine acceptable group behaviour and how to deal with group problems

§  Decisions on what information needs to be gathered

§  Lofty, abstract discussions of concepts and issues; or, for some members, impatience with these discussions

§  Discussion of symptoms or problems not relevant to the task; difficulty in identifying problems

§  Complaints about the organisation and barriers to the task

Because there is so much going on to distract members' attention in the beginning, the team accomplishes little, if anything, that concerns it's project goals. This is perfectly normal.

Stage 2 Storming

Storming is probably the most difficult stage for the team. It is as if team members jump in the water, and thinking they are about to drown, start thrashing about. They begin to realise the task is different and more difficult than they imagined, becoming irritable, blameful or overzealous. Impatient about the lack of progress, but still too inexperienced to know much about decision making or the scientific approach, members argue about just what actions the team should take. They try to rely solely on their personal and professional experience, resisting any need for collaborating with other team members.

Storming includes these feelings:

§  Resistance to the task and to quality improvement approaches different from what each individual member is comfortable using

§  Sharp fluctuations in attitude about the team and the project's chance of success

and these behaviours:

§  Arguing among members even when they agree on the real issues

§  Defensiveness and competitive; factions start to form and members start to choose sides

§  Questioning the wisdom of those who selected this project and appointed the other members of the team

§  Establishing unrealistic goals; concern about excessive work

§  A perceived 'pecking order'; disunity, increased tension, and jealousy

Again, these many pressures mean team members have little energy to spend on progressing towards the team's goal. But they are beginning to understand one another.

Stage 3 Norming

During this stage, members reconcile competing loyalties and responsibilities. They accept the team, team ground rules (or 'norms'), their roles in the team, and the individuality of fellow members. Emotional conflict is reduced as previously competitive relationships become more co-operative. In other words, as team members realise they are not going to drown, they stop thrashing about and start helping each other stay afloat.

Norming includes these feelings:

§  A new ability to express criticism constructively

§  Acceptance of membership in the team

§  Relief that it seems everything is going to work out

and these behaviours:

§  An attempt to achieve harmony by avoiding conflict

§  More friendliness, confiding in each other, and sharing of personal problems; discussing the team's dynamics

§  A sense of team cohesion, a common spirit and goals

§  Establishing and maintaining team ground rules and boundaries (the 'norms')

As team members begin to work out their differences, they now have more time and energy to spend on the project. Thus they are able to at last start making significant progress.

Stage 4 Performing

By this stage the team has settled its relationships and expectations. They can begin performing - diagnosing and solving problems, and choosing and implementing changes. At last team members have discovered and accepted each other's strengths and weaknesses, and learned what their roles are. Now they can swim in concert.

Performing includes these feelings:

§  Members having insights into personal and group processes, and better understanding of each other's strengths and weaknesses

§  Satisfaction at the team's progress

and these behaviours:

§  Constructive self-change

§  Ability to prevent or work through group problems

§  Close attachment to the team

The team is now an effective, cohesive unit. You can tell when your team has reached this stage because you start getting a lot of work done.

This article has been extracted from one of the Impression Training course books. All training materials are developed by experienced trainers and consultants.

Impression Training runs courses related to this topic.

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This Is the Best Time of Day to See Your Therapist

If you see a therapist for anxiety or a phobia, you might make more progress in sessions scheduled for the morning hours. Cortisol, a hormone that regulates stress and fear, is highest at this time of day—and a new study suggests this could make a real difference in overcoming emotional difficulties.

The new research, conducted by researchers at Southern Methodist University and the University of Michigan, focused specifically on a treatment known as exposure therapy. During exposure therapy, patients work with mental-health professionals to put themselves in situations that would normally cause panic or fear. The goal, with repeated exposures, is to diminish those stress responses over time.

“For example, a patient may think that standing in an elevator could cause him or her to lose control or faint, suffocate, or may create physical symptoms that would be intolerable,” explained Alicia E. Meuret, PhD, director of the SMU Anxiety and Depression Research Center, in a press release. “By having them stand in an elevator for a prolonged time, the patient learns that their feared outcome does not occur, despite high levels of anxiety. We call this corrective learning.”

Not all patients benefit equally from exposure therapy, though. And Meuret and her colleagues suspected the hormone cortisol—which is thought to help suppress distressing memories and facilitate corrective learning—may influence how its effectiveness varies from person to person. They knew that cortisol levels tend to be highest early in the day, so they set out to test whether morning sessions worked better to help people overcome their issues.

Their study involved 24 people with panic disorders and agoraphobia, a fear of public places. The men and women received weekly sessions over three weeks, during which they were exposed to situations such as tall buildings, highways, elevators, supermarkets, movie theaters, and public transportation.

Overall, the participants showed improvement no matter what time of day their sessions were held. But, as suspected, they made the biggest gains during appointments that started earlier in the day.

When patients came back the week after a morning session, they scored lower on measures of threat misappraisal, avoidance behavior, and panic symptom severity. They also felt that they had greater control over their panic symptoms.

The authors point out that factors besides cortisol levels—like natural circadian rhythm or quality and quantity of sleep—could certainly influence the effectiveness of early-morning therapy.

But higher cortisol levels were also related to better outcomes in the study—above and beyond the time-of-day effects. (Saliva samples were taken during each session.) This suggests that the hormone is at least partially responsible for the a.m. bump, they say. 

Drugs to mimic cortisol’s fear-extinction powers are being investigated, says Meuret, but so far they’ve produced mixed results. For now, she offers another suggestion. “The findings of our study promote taking advantage of two simple and naturally occurring agents—our own cortisol and time of day.”

The study, published in the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology, notes that it’s not always possible to schedule therapy sessions for the morning. But exposure therapy also involves “homework” between meetings, the authors say, which can be practiced with more flexibility.

Meuret also cautions that her study looked at a very specific type of psychotherapy. Without further research, she can’t speculate how much the findings would apply to other types—like cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT, sometimes known as talk therapy) held in a practitioner’s office.

But she does say that most therapies for anxiety “target the learning of new and corrective information,” and that’s a good sign.

“Our data, along with data from learning and memory studies, suggests that there should be a benefit in practicing CBT skills in the morning hours,” she told Real Simple, although studies are needed to confirm this idea. “Evidence-based psychotherapy is about learning of new information, and memory studies generally suggest that learning is better in the morning.”

Functional Medicine Approaches To Narcolepsy Incorporate Lifestyle Changes Into Overall Treatment Plan

When a Complementary Therapies in Clinical Practice study showed that a variety of stress- and fatigue-related issues have been improved through functional medicine, Jose Colon, MD, MPH, was far from surprised.

For years, he’s seen the benefits of utilizing functional medicine, a science-based healthcare approach with an emphasis on addressing the root causes of chronic diseases.

Through his clinical practice, Colon, the founder of Paradise Sleep, has found taking an integrative functional medicine approach to treating sleep disorders—including narcolepsy—to be very effective.

“When we look to treating sleep disorders, we often spend a lot of time worrying about the nighttime but it’s especially important to address what’s going on during the daytime as well,” says Colon, author of The Sleep Diet-A Novel Approach to Insomnia. “I think of disorders like narcolepsy, a 24-hour disorder.”

That means helping patients with narcolepsy look at other factors that contribute to excessive sleepiness, such as their lifestyle choices. Colon says it’s all about helping patients make lifestyle adjustments that will help improve their condition (along with the sleep disorder medication that’s necessary).

While treatment approaches and methods vary from patient to patient, one lifestyle change Colon has recommended to some narcolepsy patients is a low glycemic diet. Eating low glycemic foods has been found to improve mood and lower fatigue, according to a 2010 study.

“Patients like to know what’s going on with their disorder and what kind of lifestyle accommodations we can make,” says Colon. “That includes scheduling naps or making nutritional changes to ultimately improve the quality of life among patients that have excessive daytime sleepiness.”

Other recommendations include reminding patients to stay hydrated, since fatigue can be a sign of dehydration. Even trying out essential oils in the peppermint or citrus variety to maintain wakefulness sometimes provides a needed boost.

“There are of course medications that can sustain alertness but sometimes a patient just needs to get through a test, sometimes a patient just needs to get through a meeting, and it is an option that you can add another medication or give them another short-acting medication. But another option is that they can look at another option backed by science that can be helpful,” says Colon.

Will functional medicine approaches become more prevalent in our conversations about narcolepsy?

Most likely so.

“I think we’re making movements, and if you take a look at the amount of data on mindfulness today and the amount of data that was on mindfulness 10 years ago, it’s a boom in the amount of information that’s out there,” says Colon.

The Fertility Crisis is real - and it's getting worse

Couples are waiting longer and longer to start families for many reasons. Too often, when the time is right financially, socially or professionally, it may not be right physically. Problems and delays in conceiving lead to pressures and stress between couples who fall prey to false hope and promises from an overly publicized IVF community.

IVF is a propitiously suggestive and expensive protocol that safeguards revenue by not disclosing accurate failure rate or injured organ data. IVF professionals feed into the panic; capitalizing on it through its money-making fear mongering protocol. They routinely formulate life in LABS rather than investigate and solve what is impairing a woman's fertility. Couples end up cashing in their life savings in hopes of having a child and many end up never conceiving.





                                              Jennifer Mercier's own struggles with conceiving led her to years of drugs and disappointment. She questioned the IVF community and its practices and began to dedicate her life to researching alternative practices that were less damaging to the body and the purse. The result: Jennifer found that a focus on the cause of the infertility is a better approach to take. Through research and her practice, Jennifer created an approach to conceiving that boasts a 5X more success rate than IVF for a fraction of the cost and a fraction of the stress to the couple and the body's reproductive organs. Her whole-body approach maintains the integrity of the woman physically and her reproductive organs remain unscathed, intact and free of drugs.