Work can be stressful. While this is a very obvious claim to make, being stressed while you work often has repercussions that aren’t quite as obvious. 

Many people allow work to overwhelm them, seeking solace in the weekends and evenings that they have free. However, if you care about your job, it’s important that you discover ways in which you can stop the stress from piling up at work, which is likely affecting your output and overall productivity. 

There are several ways in which you can go about this, but one really interesting way is through meditation. It’s common for people today to still see meditation as a strange, foreign concept, which may make it challenging at first to see it as an effective practice for unwinding at work. 

Meditation can be an easy, convenient tool for being more efficient as you work and elevate your overall happiness. Here are a few ways in which you can introduce meditation into your work routine.

Ridding Your Body of Stress

You can get rid of some of the stress you feel while you’re simply sitting at your desk. If there is a particularly stressful point in your day — like your coworker made an upsetting decision or you didn’t deliver on a promise to a client — you may find that the rest of your work day feels interrupted. Experiencing just one negative incident can seem detrimental to your ability to work effectively for the rest of the day. 

“Stress which nullifies your desire to work further or distracts you in the way that stress can needs to be gotten rid of, since it will continue to hurt you as the day progresses,” writes Louis Halliday, HR at LastMinuteWriting and Writinity.

Take a few deep breaths and focus on the root of the stress. As you focus, tell yourself that you will move on from it and reinforce that you won’t let it conquer your whole day. At this point, you should breathe in and out deeply and exhale heavily to release the physical stress. Then, stand up and physically shake out the stress, so you physically and mentally get rid of the stress and its causes in your body and mind.

Start Small

It will be a little while before you are able to engage in 15-minute meditation sessions at the office. You also might feel a bit awkward since not everyone around you will be as familiar with the benefits of meditation in the workplace. 

To start out, you should try and do about three to five minutes of meditation every day, of any sort. Find the most comfortable time for you, whether it be during your lunch break or when you arrive to work in the morning. 

As you get used to meditation as part of your routine, you will find that you are able to focus on the practice for longer periods of time. You should continue to develop this habit, since meditation is a skill rather than just something anyone can do. It’s vital that you see it this way, since you don’t want to do it once and then lose faith if you don’t perceive immediate success. With meditation, there’s definitely a learning curve, and it can be more difficult on some days rather than others.

Don’t Meditate If You’re Exhausted

Sometimes, we can trick ourselves into embracing a meditation session as a way to get a bit of shut-eye. As appealing as this sometimes sounds during a busy week, it’s a bad idea. 

“Meditation is an active process, physically and mentally, and it contrasts directly to napping which is very much a passive activity. In fact, sleeping is valuable because it is passive, whereas meditation is valuable because it is active,” says Marc Laurent, a health blogger at DraftBeyond and ResearchPapersUk. 

Nap if you need to nap, meditate if you need to meditate. Just don’t start meditating and let yourself drift off into sleep, as you will not experience the benefits of meditation this way.

Conclusion

Meditation can be difficult to introduce into your professional routine initially. It may look a bit funny to your fellow coworkers, and people might even think you’ve fallen asleep at your desk. However, when it’s done right and you commit to a program rather than a one-off trial, you will find real results in stress reduction and overall productivity levels.