Real Happiness at Work

THE EIGHT PILLARS OF HAPPINESS IN THE WORKPLACE Balance: the ability to differentiate between who you are and what your job is Concentration: being able to focus without being swayed by distraction Compassion: being aware of and sympathetic to the humanity of ourselves and others Resilience: the ability to recover from defeat, frustration, or failure Communication and Connection: understanding that everything we do and say can further connection or take away from it Integrity: bringing your deepest ethical values to the workplace Meaning: infusing the work you do with relevance for your own personal goals Open Awareness: the ability to see the big picture and not be held back by self-imposed limitations

Stealth Meditation As you sit down at your desk or work space, spend a few moments just listening to the sounds around you, and note your reactions to them.

makes for a better workplace.” To demonstrate the efficacy

Stealth Meditation Try to perform a simple, conscious act of kindness every day. It can be as simple as holding an elevator door, saying thank you in a sincere manner, or listening to someone with a clear and focused mind.

As we practice witnessing, loosening the grip of over-identification (This is who I am and who I always will be), we see that these states are not the totality of our being, that they arise and pass away. This is an essential difference. We are reminded that our inner saboteurs, those mental voices that make us unhappy, are just visiting. They’re not inherent to our being, forever and solid. They are born out of conditions; they come and go and are adventitious. In describing our minds,

Take a lunch break. You are most likely entitled to a thirty- or sixty-minute lunch break. This is your personal time to take a mental break from work and recharge for the afternoon, so take advantage of it. Be realistic about your time. You can’t do fifteen hours of work in an eight-hour day. Keep your personal life separate from your work life. This will reduce stress and ensure that company business stays at the office and doesn’t come home with you. Understand your job description. Don’t feel you must always take responsibility for tasks that aren’t yours. Of course, this does not mean you can’t help a colleague in need.

Stealth Meditation If you start to feel overwhelmed, take a quick, centering moment—as short as following three breaths—to connect with a deeper sense of yourself.

Stealth Meditation Unitask! Focus exclusively on just one thing for a small portion of time. Try setting a timer for 15 minutes, so you can focus without straying.

Sometimes in my own practice, I use this image of holding something in my hands that’s very fragile, very precious, like something made of delicate, fragile glass. If I were to grab it too tightly it would shatter, but if I were to get lazy or negligent and my hand fell open, the glass would fall and break. So I just cradle it, I’m in touch with it, I cherish it. That can be a metaphor for your breath. You don’t want to grab it too tightly or be too loose, too energized or too relaxed. We meet this moment and we meet this breath, and we cherish it, one breath at a time.

Feeling good about what we do for a living depends more on our moment-to-moment experiences than it does on prestige, status, or pay.

Never in history has the human brain been asked to track so many data points. As working people today struggle to keep up with the onslaught of information streaming toward them in the digital age, poor job performance caused by multitasking has become a major problem for employers as well as for employees. The reason for this is that, contrary to popular belief: Human beings seem to be cognitively unable to multitask. Multitasking is a modern myth that contributes to low self-esteem at work, fraying our nerves, and harming our job skills as we struggle, and fail, to master a skill for which the human brain is unprepared.

Strung out by information overload, however, many of us are becoming habituated and addicted to distraction. “Successful” multitasking has been shown to activate the reward circuit in the brain by increasing dopamine levels—the brain chemical responsible for feelings of happiness. The danger of this is that the dopamine rush feels so good that we don’t notice we’re making more mistakes. This is comparable to the rush you might feel while playing the slot machines in a casino. Stimulated and entertained by the flashing lights, the ringing bells, and the distracting, carnival-like atmosphere, gamblers go into a pleasure trance, addicted to the illusion of winning money when, in fact, they’re going broke. It’s important to be aware of how multitasking can stimulate us into mindlessness, giving the illusion of productivity while stealing our focus and harming performance.

The idea isn’t to help delude us into thinking there are no problems, or to encourage us to withdraw into conflict avoidance. But if all we think about, day after day, over and over again, is someone’s faults, we will build an ever more solid wall of alienation between us. If we can find just one good thing about someone and reflect on it, our view of that person broadens, and we are reminded of the complexity and challenges we all face in life. We still see all the problems, but we also feel a different quality of connection to the person we are contemplating.

Another instruction I got in Burma that I initially found quite odd was, “If you are annoyed at someone, give them a gift.” What in the world is that about? I thought, How bizarre! The practice isn’t meant to be a bribe or to promote denial of a wrong, but serves to break open a dynamic of resentment or hostility and allows us to see what happens without that filter of certainty we have when we think, You’re a pain! I tried it, and it was so interesting. I left a treat outside someone’s door, so that she didn’t even know it was an offering from me. I saw her open her door, spot the treat, and the most beautiful childlike smile broke over her face. Oh, I thought. She’s a lot more human than I had projected her to be. May she be happy.

Stealth Meditation Begin the day with a resolve. “Today I will become more aware of one particular action.” Then place your attention on that action throughout the day. Some simple suggestions: opening doors, greeting customers or clients, handwriting, reaching for the phone.