In Pursuit of Profession: Things that make you go……oommm

Imagine you’re at work and you suddenly have this overwhelming sense of panic flood your body. You start sweating profusely from every pore in your body. You can’t talk, you can barely even breathe. You have no idea where this feeling came from. You have no idea when it will stop. Worst of all, there are over 5 million people watching this happen to you.

That was the situation ABC news anchor Dan Harris, who was working on the set of Good Morning America, found himself in on June 7, 2004. A seasoned news and television personality, Harris states this about his panic attack in his bestselling book “10% Happier: How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, and Found Self-Help That Actually Works—A True Story”: “Right in the middle of the second voice-over, it hit. Out of nowhere, I felt like I was being stabbed in the brain with raw animal fear. A paralytic wave of panic rolled up through my shoulders, over the top of my head, then melted down the front of my face. The universe was collapsing in on me. My heart started to gallop. My mouth dried up. My palms oozed sweat.”

Harris’s solution for moving past his panic attacks and ultimately moving forward with his career was through meditation. Yes, that kind of meditation. You know, the kind that most of us think won’t work for us, or we don’t have time to practice, or is just simply too weird. I mean, what if our kids walk in on us sitting in the lotus position in a white linen outfit with incense burning and some chanting music on? There are only a few worse things they could see their parents doing, right? But I’m not suggesting that you meditate at home. In fact, the most beneficial place to meditate is at work.

How meditation works for work

Here’s the double-edged sword about work. It can simultaneously stress us out, and a stressed out employee is not a very productive employee, which can put even more stress on us because we’re not meeting our performance goals. Sound familiar? But what if you could simultaneously lower your stress, boost energy, increase focus, and actually change the way your brain functions for the better? That’s the power of meditation. But don’t take my word for it, or Dan Harris’ word. In the past few years, scores of studies have been completed on what meditation can do for workers. After daily periods of meditation, workers feel refreshed, reenergized, and centered - ready to focus on what’s important. A sales professional may meditate for a few minutes before an important phone call. A manager might meditate before conducting a departmental meeting. Or a surgeon could take a few minutes to meditate before operating. Why do these workers choose to meditate before such crucial times in their day? Because by meditating, they develop a profound awareness of what needs to be done and the lucidity to respond to these items with effective action. If we wanted to use one word to describe all of this refreshing, reenergizing and “action-iteming,” it all comes down to attention.

In our always-on, 24/7, multi-tasking world, our attention has suffered. Ever have a feeling that you can only concentrate on one thing for a little bit – perhaps only a couple minutes – before your mind naturally starts to wander off to another subject? But what a gym does for muscles, meditation can do for attention. Consider this synopsis from a recent University of Washington study: “The present study builds on a growing body of scientific literature suggesting that human attention is a trainable resource and that certain forms of meditation constitute a viable form of such training.”

Making it work at work

Now that we know what meditation can do for us at work, how can we practice it at work? And how long do we need to do it to make it work? Most of the research I’ve done on meditation at work suggests that you don’t need a huge time commitment – 10 to 15 minutes a day should do the trick – and ideally, you’ll work up to that amount of time in small doses. In his book, Harris suggests that new practitioners find a quiet place, sit comfortably, close their eyes and simply try to push all thoughts out of their minds by concentrating on their breath for a few moments. This is much, much harder than it sounds. Thoughts are constantly bombarding our minds and will continue to do so as we try to just concentrate on our breath. The trick is that when this happens, don’t get upset and think you’re a failure at meditation. Just reset yourself and try again. Like most other things in life, practice makes perfect here. Over time, you’ll be able to focus on your breath and push out those pesky thoughts for longer and longer time periods. As you do, see if it’s boosted energy, increased focus and lowered stress. I bet it will. And you’ll be a better worker, and person, for it.

Besides Harris’s book, meditation teacher and author Sharon Salzberg has several books out on the power of meditation in life and at work. Namaste!

This story was originally published January 21, 2016 at 5:11 PM with the headline "In Pursuit of Profession: Things that make you go……oommm."