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Making Healthy Choices: Take Responsibility for the Well-Being of Your Employees, with Deepak Chopra, Founder, The Chopra Center and Co-author, Super Genes
More and more leaders should be aware that they have a responsibility for the well-being, or at least facilitating the well-being of their employees. Because employee engagement, which depends on well-being, influences customer engagement and that ultimately influences investor engagement. Well-being is the number one thing leaders should be thinking of, not just biological well-being but social well-being, career well-being, financial well-being, community well-being. They’re all connected to each other.
First of all let’s define stress. Stress is the perception and interpretation of physical or emotional, psychological threat. So stress is not in the environment, stress is not in yourself, stress is how you interpret what’s happening to you in every moment of your life. And so stress is created by anticipating something threatening in the future or frequently about regretting something in the past. In other words what I’m saying is stress is all in your imagination. So I have a little mantra that I use now and then just to remind myself that the best use of imagination is creativity and the worst use of imagination is stress. And the mantra is simply this. No regrets, no anticipation, just this moment as it is. In this moment there’s no stress. It’s all in anticipating the future and regretting the past.
Stress creates biological havoc in your body. Your adrenaline goes up, your cortisol those up, there’s inflammation in your body and that sets the stage for almost any chronic illness, not just cardiovascular accidents, autoimmune illnesses, many cancers, susceptibility to infection, they’re all influenced by stress.
As individuals we might want to use stress management techniques, which could be something as simple as mindfulness and meditation, observing the breath, using a mantra, being aware of the sensations in our body, which are ancient techniques being positive on mindfulness training. We can also exercise, which is a great way to mitigate the stress response. Good sleep is very important in mitigating stress, as it is laughter, as is music, as is poetry, as is art, as is going and having an experience in nature. These are all things we can do individually.
When corporations and businesses help their employees manage stress, either by creating a gym or a yoga studio or a meditation room and giving them some time to engage in these activities, they find that the well-being improves, even productivity improves. I look at well-being in different areas, social well-being, community well-being, physical well-being, career well-being. Are you engaged? Do you enjoy what you’re doing? Are your abilities and talents and work appreciated and noticed? Are you working in a team that has shared vision? A team where your strengths are complemented by the strengths of others? And also your weaknesses are complemented by the strengths of others? All of this makes for well-being.