Millstine Wendy - Five good minutes at work: 100 mindful practices to help you relieve stress & bring your best to work

Is it possible that workperhaps even your workin whatever shape or location it occurs, could somehow nurture a deeper sense of connection with others and a greater sense of awe and appreciation for the mystery of being alive?

Could your working life be more satisfying?

Would you like to work more effectively? Would you like to function with more ease and less stress? Would you like to develop more enjoyable relationships with those you work with?

How might any of these things happen?

In our previous two books, Five Good Minutes: 100 Morning Practices to Help You Stay Calm and Focused AllDay Long and Five Good Minutes in the Evening: 100 Mindful Practices to Help You Unwind from the Day and Make theMost of Your Night, we suggested that even the busiest person can take five good minutes to do a deliberate practice that can help shift their experience of life in a significant and even profound way.

The five-good-minutes concept is simple: take the time, for just five minutes (of course you can do longer!) to be present mindfully, to set a clear intention for yourself, and to act wholeheartedly, without attachment to any outcome, as you explore a focused practice or activity.

By practicing, in a friendly and curious way, the skills of mindful presence, clear intention, and wholehearted action, you open the possibility that exciting and enriching new experiences might arise in one of the most familiar places of your lifeyour work or professional world!

The 100 practices in this book are all focused on life as it happens while you work. They offer the possibility of recovering your heart and soul through the working life, as well as enriching the experiences of mind and body, all while performing with increasing effectiveness.

The practices are designed to be easy and practicalspecific and concretealso inviting and fun. You can do any of them right away, on the job. Some are more lighthearted, while others invite a more reflective experience. You may even find some to be uplifting and inspiring, offering a new vision of your working life (and your larger journey through life) that perhaps you had not appreciated before.

Meeting Your Life, Here,in the Present Moment

The foundation of your five good minutes is learning to establish presence through mindfulness. Mindfulness happens as you pay attention (to your breath, your body, or just about anything that is happening in or around you) on purpose, in a friendly and nonjudging way.

Life, whether you are working, playing, or resting, happens only in the present moment. The skills of mindfulness that you will develop through the practices in this book can help you inhabit the present moment (and thus your life) more consciously and joyfully.

In the Foundation section of this book, you will find clear and easy-to-follow instructions for developing your skills at being mindful. Feel free to refer back to these instructions whenever you need to as you explore the various practices. As you gain more and more experience with the practices, you will discover the naturalness and ease of being present, for example, simply by breathing mindfully, listening mindfully to sounds, or attending mindfully to the sensations of your body.

Dont Believe Everything You Think

Done mindfully and wholeheartedly, each of the 100 practices in this book offers you the possibility of experiencing some familiar aspect of your daily life at work in a different way. These fresh ways of experiencing yourself and your working life can provide you with insight and new understandings, increase ease, reduce stress, and even make how you approach your work healthier and safer.

It is all too easy to become distracted as we work.

Easy to fall into old habits of inattention and distraction. Easy to make up stories that arent true.

Easy to be hijacked by unpleasant feelings like worry, anger, or even physical discomfort or pain.

Easy to be pulled out of ourselves and out of the present moment by the momentum of busyness or the feeling of being disconnected and isolated.

In such times of worry and hurry, of isolation and distraction, ones ability to work effectively suffers, as does the ability to work in an emotionally intelligent way. And, beset by such distractions, one may even work in ways that are physically harmful or dangerous.

This book, like our previous two, is dedicated to helping you become the best person you can be and to assist you in opening to the most rewarding life you can have.

And there is a larger perspective.

As authors, we believe that as each individual finds more joy and ease and more peace and understanding in their own life, many others benefit as well.