Wilma Jones - Living Happier

Wanna Be Happy? Your Brain Wins Over Your Body. Except for Sex.

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wanna be happy? Your brain wins.

While reading some info on a science website I ran across a study that confirms the importance of being mindful. You know about mindfulness, right? Thinking about what you’re doing in the present moment while you’re in that moment. Two Harvard researchers, Matthew A. Killingsworth and Daniel T. Gilbert used an iPhone app to study people’s happiness based on what they were doing and what they were thinking at that particular time. The study results confirm that being mindless and thinking about something other than what you’re doing makes you unhappy.

The three take-aways from the study for me are that your mind drifts away from focusing on what you’re doing over 46 percent of the time. The second finding is that when your mind wanders it can cause you to be unhappy. The most important study result to me is the final one. What you think is a better predictor of your happiness than what you do.

Simple. I think it proves that your brain rules over your body. The study found this is true for all of the things we do except one. Sex. When you’re having sex you’re pretty much thinking about sex. But for everything else we do, we’re often thinking about something else when we’re doing it. And when you’re doing that, you’re being mindless, not mindful. And it’s affecting your happiness.

I know mindfulness works. I used to be one of those people who was always thinking about what other people thought about something I said or did. Literally it would affect my sleep that night. Or it made me distracted as I went through my day. Constantly going back to revisit the moment again and again. It’s one of the many variations of being mindless.

After starting a yoga practice I realized how much better I felt when I focused for an hour on my intention and my breathing. To me yoga has three parts. First are the movements. Next is breathing. (I am still perfecting this one.) The final one is mindfulness. You set an intention for your hour of practice and work to focus on that intention during the class.

The mindfulness part was hard for me at first. Thoughts of what happened earlier that day or what I had to do after class used to fill my head. Then I attended a class where the instructor’s advice was a perfect analogy for me. She told us that when a thought comes into our mind, “swoosh” it away as easily as it entered. Just acknowledge it and send it on it’s way. Then return to the present moment.

Eventually I got the hang of keeping my thoughts in the moment for most of the hour. And it felt good. No worries, for real. It took a little longer to learn to breathe properly. (I know that sounds stupid since we have to breathe to live. But trust that you’re probably breathing shallow.) But now, after 10 years of yoga practice I am a much better breather than I used to be.

My yoga practice was the origin of my transition to being a more mindful person in all areas of my life. It started with yoga. Then I started using mindfulness to help improve my personal life. Now I use the concepts in business. It’s made me more courageous and more successful. Trust that I am a strong advocate for adding mindfulness to your life.

Start practicing mindfulness to improve your life. It’s simple. It’s free. It’ll make you happier. And it works. Check this article and this one to get started.

 

Does Your Small Business Need to Implement Mindfulness?

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Small business mindfulness

If you’re a small business owner maybe you think mindfulness doesn’t have a place in your business. Maybe you think it’s only for big corporations like Google, Toyota Motors or General Mills who have the dollars to invest in their workers. I think you should think again. Science and experience prove that implementing mindfulness principles can make a big difference in your business.

So let me start with a few questions. Are all your employees engaged and focused about their job? How about you? Small business owners often feel burned out. As entrepreneurs you’re so busy checking off the tasks to get things done, your ability to think about solutions from a ‘big-picture’ perspective lessens.

Building a strong, healthy work culture and giving people the skills to work with their minds, emotions and other people is one of the big benefits gained by organizations that incorporate mindfulness in their workplaces. Mindfulness is a opportunity for you as a business owner to help increase everyone’s level of happiness and well-being at the job. And that what will help increase the business’ bottom line.

If you’re wondering how making people feel better about their jobs will help make you more money, just think for a moment about the demands of most jobs today. We expect people to multitask, because well, everyone has to multitask and do more than one thing at a time on the job. Emails will keep coming, along with calls with customers, marketing for more prospects, meetings, reports, accounts payable, accounts receiveable and taxes and on and on. A few simple mindfulness techniques can help people feel less stress at the job and they’ll learn to increase their focus and accuracy on the volume of work they have to do.

When people feel overwhelmed in the job they often feel the opposite of mindfulness, they feel mindlessness. When your job feels like you’re putting out fires all day, going from one work mini-crisis to the next – that’s mindlessness at the job. Learning mindfulness won’t change the activities we have to accomplish during the workday. But it will change how we let those tasks influence us. It is those changes that create the impact on the bottom line.

The ability to complete tasks in less time with greater accuracy means you and your staff are more productive. Feeling less stress at the job equates to fewer sick days, aka ‘mental health’ days when your staff can’t face another day at the office. Trust and believe, mindfulness measures up to increased revenue, improved employee retention and better work environments and even helps develop better business leaders!

Have you thought about how mindfulness can help boost your business?

1 Way for Your Boss to Stress the Dignity of Your Work

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boss value dignity of your work

This weekend I purchased a fashion magazine. I am not a big fashionista, so this purchase was a bit unusual for me. I bought it because I know I need to go shopping before this fall season hits for real.  My wardrobe could definitely use some up-leveling. I know the mag will help me determine the key pieces to I can add to what I’ve already got, to give a touch of trendy to my look as I do business in this final quarter of 2016.

After looking over the limited selections for fashion mags appropriate for someone without a 2 as the first digit of their age, I decided to pick Harper’s Bazaar. It’s funny, because as I sat down on my front porch and started to flip the pages I realized what joy I could find in this little activity. The task of planning to do the task of upgrading my fall wardrobe was enjoyable in itself. And I hadn’t even hit the stores yet!

As I got into it a little more I turned to an interview with Bruno Cucinelli in a monthly column called, “My List.” It’s basically a day in the person’s life listed, “by the numbers.” It’s a really short little feature, but I found a nice chunk of wisdom in his words.

Mr. Cucinelli is a designer, and I guess if I read Harper’s Bazaar more often, I might know more about who he is. Whatever. As I read the article and began to flow through his day, I learned he’s also a entrepreneur. And it appears he’s also a pretty good boss. I say that because he speaks about the process of going to his employees when he had a question or needs to speak with them about something on a project. Yes, he goes to them!

In most companies very often the organization chart hierarchy prevails. It determines who travels to whose office when there is a need for a discussion. I very clearly remember the execs in my division at MCI back in the mid-90’s who made it a point to travel to their team member’s offices rather than have their admins summon us to their office. Now of course, we could go to speak with them if we had a need. But the fact that my VP had no problem traveling a couple of flights down on the elevator to speak with me said volumes about respect.

It seems Mr. Cucinelli feels the same way. He states, “If I need someone, I tend to go to them…It is somehow a way to reward the work of my employees. The fact that I go to them myself is a way of stressing the dignity of their work.” I have to imagine he’s a pretty cool guy to work for because he doesn’t seem overly impressed with himself. 

Creating an environment of respect both up and down the org chart is important to a happy workplace. When employees feel respected and their work is valued, that’s a key indicator that they will work hard and stay with the company longer.

 I would have to say that’s the exception and not the rule at most companies based on the over 50 percent of workers who say they are unhappy at the job. Do you agree that staff feeling respected by the company leadership is important to work happiness?

4 Creative Ways to Improve Your Kindness On The Job

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Kindness on the job

I met a woman last week at a conference who told me she loved what she did everyday but hated her job because her boss was mean. She hopes he finds a new job soon because she doesn’t want to leave because once you remove him from the equation she said, “everything balances out.” Research proves the most important relationship, or “social connection,” we have on the job is with our immediate supervisor. And no one wants to report to a jerk. At least no one I know.

A lot of managers think they have to be tough with their teams to show they are real leaders. That’s such a bunch of BS and more importantly, it is not as effective as being a kind leader. Being a compassionate and empathetic boss helps with employee retention and productivity and the statistics prove it.

In fact senior level managers who are mean to the middle managers reporting to them can cause the front line employees to leave the company, even if they have no contact with the senior managers! This data comes from the team at Vanderbilt Owen Graduate School of Management, the School of Labor and Employment Relations at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Cornell University School of Hotel Administration who did a study that was published in 2015.

Management who lead their teams with kindness gain significant advantages according to the American Management Association who found that 84 percent of people who said they work for a kind boss planned to stay at the company “for a long time.” Among those who declared their bosses to be not so kind, only 47 percent planned to stay for an extended period.

Kindness is not that hard and it helps to create a work environment that people won’t dread come Monday morning. Here are 3 easy ways to incorporate a little more kindness into your workday:

1. Greet people daily and use their name

Acknowledge your colleagues daily by greeting them and using their name. Having a personal interaction makes people feel seen and heard.

2. Be an encourager

Stating a positive attribute or accomplishment about a coworker to them or encouraging them in front of their manager or company leadership is a great way to be kind at work. Remember it has to be real and genuine, not sucking up or throwing backhand shade.

3. Don’t be the office critic

Focus on people’s strengths, not their weaknesses.

4. Offer to assist

This might take some of your time and effort, but it’s a great way to establish rapport with a colleague and to show you care about the team. I suggest being specific about what you’re willing to do. You don’t want to get stuck doing someone else’s project.

In my experience kindness at work really pays off. Have you found kindness to be a wise business strategy for building teams at work?

 

It’s Real Folks. 1 Horrifying Example Of Hateration At The Office

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It’s Real Folks. 1 Horrifying Example Of Hateration At The Office

Let’s say you work for one of the big communications companies in the U.S. You’re one of thousands of hard-working professionals keeping dial tones humming and great throughput on connections to the cloud for millions of customers every day. But when you go in the office one day this is what greets you:

noose hanging in cubicle

Unless you’ve been hanging out under a rock for the past year, the climate in our country is getting a little heated. And I don’t just mean the temperature. Naw, walking into your cubicle and seeing a dang noose hanging from the drop ceiling is more than a bit scary.

Yet, this is exactly what happened a couple of weeks ago at an AT&T office building in downtown St. Louis. It turns out it was an office of contractors from Ericcson. The company blamed it on an “international contractor” who didn’t understand the “disturbing racial and cultural implications a noose has here in the US.”

That response makes me think, “really?!” Excuse me, but anyone from any country who has been living in the US for the past year would be aware of the cultural implications of a noose or a host of other racist symbols.This happened in St Louis. Anyone familiar with Ferguson, MO? I don’t believe for one moment that someone who lives in region of the country that has been a hotbed of racial tension for months was unaware of the implication of hanging a noose in a coworker’s cubicle. Someone who thinks it’s okay to play this type of joke at the job has issues.

I am glad to know the person was fired. That was the right thing to do. At a minimum, this was another disturbing example of the absence of consideration and tolerance in US workplaces. Your thoughts?

 

 

 

 

 

Contact

Wilma Jones
Wilma J, LLC
Wilma@WilmaJ.com

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