The ROI of Meditation and Mindfulness in the Workplace: Part One

Executives Get Stressed Too! The ROI of Meditation and Mindfulness in the Workplace

I bet that some of you reading this thought I was going to discuss the Return on Investment that can be realized in economic terms by investing in Meditation and Mindfulness training. I will certainly address that later, but the ROI I want to focus on as a nurse who has worked for Fortune 500 corporations is how Resilience Offsets Illness.

Techniques to enhance resilience will have a beneficial impact on reducing healthcare costs and steps to increase resilience will also have a positive impact on you and your organization’s bottom line. But beyond all that, we will also discuss how efforts to enhance resilience will have a positive impact on productivity, creativity, teamwork, job satisfaction and employee retention.

So, let’s start out with some terms that I'll be discussing.

RESILIENCE: University of Wisconsin neuroscientist Dr. Richard Davidson defines resilience as:

“the process of effectively coping with adversity - it’s about bouncing back from difficulties. The great thing about resilience is that it’s not a personality trait; it involves a way of paying attention, thinking, and behaving that anyone can learn.”

Let me repeat this important statement. “The great thing about resilience is that it’s not a personality trait:” which means that it is not something that you have or lack; it is something you learn either accidentally or intentionally. In other words, it can be taught, learned and practiced. In later blogs, I will be sharing with you examples of some well-known corporations that are committing time and resources to build the resilience of their executives and line staff.

ILLNESS: By illness, I am referring to major illness categories, especially ones that carry with them high costs of treatment, lost productivity and possible employee turnover. Let’s look at some of the evidence-based outcomes related to stress or strain. All around us we see the physical effects of stress manifesting as:

• cardiovascular/heart disease;
• obesity;
• diabetes;
• respiratory complications;
• nervous system complications;
• decreased immune systems;
• increased Inflammation;
• mental health issues; and addiction.

MINDFUL MEDITATION: The primary intervention I will be discussing with you today has many definitions. Dr. Jon Kabat Zinn defines mindful meditation as “the awareness that arises from paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally.”

Popular author and Buddhist practitioner Jack Kornfield who has been credited with bringing meditation to the West describes it as “an innate human capacity to deliberately pay full attention to where we are, to our actual experience, and to learn from it.”

I would like to make a distinction between meditation and mindfulness, keeping this as simple as I can. Meditation is the practice of sitting quietly, paying attention to the breath or repeating a mantra, when we notice we are having thoughts and distractions is when we are mindful and return to the present moment. Mindfully we let go of distractions and return to the present moment without judgment by continuing to watch the breath or repeat a word or a mantra.

In other words, the practice of meditation leads to the development of the skill we call mindfulness. As you quiet your mind during meditation, you notice or observe your thoughts coming and going, whether you choose to or not. Your thoughts and distractions continue to show up taking you away from the present moment, but now you are noticing the thoughts showing up, you are aware, you are mindful of the distraction from the present moment. In meditation, you simply notice thoughts and distractions without judgement and gently let go of them instead of reacting to them. Meditation builds mindfulness which in turn builds resilience. In other words, mindfulness is an outcome of practicing meditation and resilience is an outcome of practicing meditation and mindfulness.

If you would like to bring Meditation and Mindfulness into the workplace for yourself and/or colleagues Pat can show you how. Start building resilience now! Contact Patricia Forde, MA, RN for more information at 305.606.2050 or pat@mindhealinginstitute.com.