Mindfulness and Your Startup – Why It Matters
Mindfulness training, which involves meditation practices that keep our thoughts focused on the present as well as training mental clarity, is becoming more commonplace among startups, companies and organizations today. Several renowned companies have implemented mindfulness training programs for their employees, including IBM, Google, Facebook, Apple, Procter & Gamble, Dell, Ford, and more. Mindfulness training can help your employees at your startup to increase their productivity, as well as be more satisfied and happy with their work.
Mindfulness can be used in your startup to promote healthy work-life balances among your employees. By setting aside a certain time of day for dedicated, quiet self-reflection, you and your employees can gain much by focusing on and realigning the priorities that matter the most, not just for your startup, but also for their personal well-being and improvement. A useful tip for work-life balance is to truly enjoy living outside of working hours without being burdened by tasks and things that are related to work, such as answering business emails and handling projects even while vacationing. This way, your startup’s employees can give their full when having their time away from work, and will come back to work satisfied and refreshed, which will increase their productivity.
Mindfulness practises can also lead to better mental clarity, which is a useful thing to have when dealing with stressful situations and while working under pressure. Besides improving our mental functions and capabilities, mindfulness can also lead to stronger mental fortitude, which can contribute to self-confidence, thus making you and your employees more proactive and firm in making tough decisions. With mental clarity, you and your employees are also able to act more nimbly and identify potential risks and challenges much more quickly than when tired and fatigued. Another useful thing that mental clarity affords your startup is the capability to assess and prioritize goals and objectives in a clear and objective manner. Mindfulness puts you in a better state of mind to analyze and reflect on the path that your startup is on and the direction that it is headed to. With mental clarity, you are thus able to both respond to challenges and obstacles and chart your startup’s future progress much more capably.
Mindfulness also contributes to collaboration and innovation. By setting aside the grasping ego and calming the hectic mind, mindfulness practises are able to nurture a mental state that is more open and responsive. This means that whether you are a leader, employee, intern or even just a temporary hire at a startup, you are able to approach situations and tasks with a beginner’s mind that is more receptive to new ways of doing things, as well as being able to come up with ingenious solutions to overcome problems and challenges. An important aspect of a beginner’s mind is the willingness to keep on learning, never assuming that one’s cup is already full which can lead to arrogance and downfall. By encouraging your employees and team members to nurture this state of mind while they are at work, it can be quite surprising the amount of new knowledge and ideas that they can obtain and share when interacting with one another. These kinds of interactions are also fertile ground for the birth of new collaborations and team-oriented projects that would have otherwise not happened if they had kept the ideas and knowledge to themselves.
By nurturing a mindfulness culture at your startup, you provide your employees more than just a means of handling stress effectively, you are giving them the key that strengthens their mental fortitude and that trains their mental clarity for improving self-reflection and confidence. Mindfulness training also promotes a beginner’s mind with its emphasis on continuous learning and openness, which are conducive for innovation and collaboration to happen at the workplace.
