Mindfulness Changes Everything

Just to clarify, before I go on, I don’t for one moment argue that mindfulness is the panacea for all mental health conditions, nor do I dismiss the notion that pharmaceutical intervention along with things like CBT can have positive effects on a mind that is traumatized to the extent of being maladaptive. 

However, I am, through the research I have conducted, convinced that mindfulness practices contribute to a state of emotional well-being and overall physical and mental health, in both a preventative and remedial sense. Mindfulness changes the brain, and that changes everything.

More than that though, I am convinced that mindfulness allows us to intervene in the way the brain works to effect more positive outcomes for how we feel, think and act. In other words mindfulness is not simply about mitigating against traumatic experiences or righting an emotionally chaotic ship. 

Rather, applied mindfulness develops, hones and accentuates capabilities and ability to use our brain in a more effective manner. 

We can, for instance deploy mindfulness to improve how we learn - increasing our capacity for taking in new knowledge and applying it in new situations - the very definition of human progress. 

Imagine the application of this in business. 

Corporations spend billions every year on training and there’s a great deal of suspicion and evidence that much of this is wasted or at least not as effective as it could be. Applied mindfulness allows us to help employees develop their learning styles so that new knowledge ‘sticks’ and can be reapplied, effectively increasing the ROI of corporate training budgets. 

Applied mindfulness has also been shown to be effective in developing what are called soft skills - those core human competencies such as emotional intelligence, communication, collaboration, team work, problem solving, empathy, resilience and adaptability, and creativity. 

These are the sorts of skills that make for a productive, engaged and happier workforce, and for a more competitive business. 

Finally, applied mindfulness can be directly deployed against one of the key drivers of worker disengagement and burnout - stress. Stress, especially in the workplace (either in the office or at home), has an outsized effect not only on the functioning of employees but on the corporate bottom line as the cost to companies of stressed-induced sick leave and staff turnover undercuts corporate competitiveness and profit.