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Finding Real Happiness at Work: Purposeful Pauses, with Sharon Salzberg, Buddhist Meditation Teacher and Author, Real Happiness at Work: Meditations for Accomplishment, Achievement, and Peace
Even in the classical setting, one of my Tibetan Buddhist teachers once said the ultimate goal of meditation practice is having short moments of awareness many times a day. So short moments many times is kind of like the mantra. Sometimes people say to me, “How can I be mindful all day long at work?” And I just say, “Give it up. You’re not gonna be.” But, we can definitely have short moments many times and that will break the momentum of what’s sometimes a crazy atmosphere. It will help us return to ourselves, return to this moment. And when we do that, we come back to our values, our priorities. We remember what we really care about, what our intention is. And so even just that little time of coming back – what some people call purposeful pauses – just a moment. It’s like, “Oh right. Now I can decide what I’m gonna do.” Something like that. It’s very impactful. It’s very powerful.
Stealth Meditations
There are many tips that an individual can use on a daily basis. I call them stealth meditations, because one of the great benefits of them is that nobody has to know you’re doing it, right. It’s not like you’re a contentious meeting at work and tempers are starting to flare and anxiety’s starting to go up and you have to open up the closet door and pull out all this equipment and sit down cross legged and look funny. It’s like you’re breathing, nobody needs to know it’s happening, right. You’re centering, you’re coming back to yourself. So these include things like, don’t pick up the phone on the first ring. Let it ring three times and breathe. Even just that will help you center. Or build in one minute – one minute before a major meeting. One minute before a big phone call just to be with yourself, just to breathe. Just to listen to what’s happening around you.
Or, one very helpful suggestion I heard was maybe write out the email and don’t press send right away. Just take a few breaths, read it again and then decide if you want to send it. Or if you feel that the email is gonna be perhaps provocative or controversial send it to yourself first. Get ahead of what it’s like to receive that email and then you can decide what you want to do. I also think one of the great myths of our time is that multitasking helps us get more done and do it well, whereas studies show that actually it’s not true. We’re not getting more done and we’re not doing things so well. So every once in a while just unitask. Just drink that cup of coffee or just walk from place to place without texting at the same time. Really just be with your experience whatever it might be.
Guided Meditation
If you want to experiment with mindfulness of breath meditation you can just sit comfortably and close your eyes or not – however you feel most at ease. Find the spot in your body where the breath is clearest for you or strongest for you. Maybe it’s the nostrils or the chest or the abdomen. Bring your attention there and just rest. See if you can feel one breath without concern for what’s already gone by. Without leaning forward for even the very next breath. Just this one. And if your attention slips off, you go to the past, you go to the future, you fall asleep, don’t worry about it. We say the most important moment in the whole process is the moment after you’ve been gone, where we practice letting go, we practice beginning again. Just bring your attention back to the feeling of the breath. And if you have to do that over and over and over again, that’s fine. That’s not a problem. And when you feel ready you can open your eyes.