Art Burns
Mindfulness Coach at Under The Bucket Mind Training
Between his 19 years as a New York City Ad Executive and his nearly 10 years as a successful restaurant owner, Art is undoubtedly familiar with stress. Having spent the past four years...
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- Mindfulness Techniques for Stress Management: Cultivating awareness to reduce chronic stress
- Emotional Intelligence Development for Leaders: Enhancing interpersonal skills for better management
- Mindful Parenting Strategies: Fostering emotional security in children
- Mindfulness Practices for Peak Athletic Performance: Gaining mental edge in sports
- Trauma Recovery and Healing Approaches: Strategies for emotional recovery and resilience
Meet the mentor
TALK SHOW VIDEOS
Tricky Workplace Situation Handled
- Phones, social media, sports scores
- Avoid opening emails at work. Learn the simple practice of grounding and/or meditation to help focus your mind on what is happening right now.
- Practice mindfulness and meditation to train your mind to focus.
- Take time for yourself. See a doctor to rule out any serious condition. Take time for self care and create a healthy balance between work and home life.
- Whenever I have been distracted at work, I tend to run late on assignments and make more mistakes (and fail to correct the mistakes that I make.) Learning mindfulness has helped me focus my attention more effectively and I have trained myself to turn off the sources of distraction like websites, iPhone, social media, etc. I also use time blocking to allow myself to intentionally engage in those potential distractions in a healthy way so I don't feel totally deprived.
- Self regulation and empathy begin with self awareness. So I would assign my student a simple practice: set a timer to go off every hour during your work day. When it goes off, briefly scan your body and examine what sensations you are feeling in the present moment. Then, turn to your emotions and ask yourself, am I happy? Or what other emotions am I experiencing right now. Finally, check in with your thoughts. Notice whether they seem positive or negative and whether they are in the past or the future. After a few weeks of this practice, you will gain a deeper and clearer sense of self awareness and then regulation and empathy will come more naturally.
- It makes me feel less than important or human. More effectively, the email could have acknowledged the issue first and proposed a more personalized solution. Even if there is no other solution available, wording the email more personally with empathy and compassion would be far better than this.
- First, I bring acute awareness to my choice of words and be extra deliberate, knowing about the negativity bias implicit in the reader. Then, I pause and refresh myself before I read the email as though I am the other person. In this process I look for how the tome and choice of words translates and how I feel in my body as I read it. Then I make adjustments as necessary. Above all, I take my time with it! For really important or sensitive emails, I will actually send it to myself. This adds a dimension of reality as a recipient.
- Acknowledge the issue and express some sympathy and compassion. State that it must be very frustrating for Jessica, but assure her that we will do everything possible to help her. Offer her the most convenient solution available.
- Empathy is the ability to feel in your body someone else's feelings. So I would again go back to the self awareness practices. Also, I would have them go through active listening training. While this wouldn't apply directly to emailing people, it will help develop a mindset of empathy and making the customer feel heard and felt.
- Meditation, exercise, journaling, hobbies, and setting healthy boundaries (IE: turning off email and phone at a certain time.)
- You will enjoy your personal time more and also have more energy and focus for work.
- I have a deep history of stress so I would first describe what my life was like under the weight of chronic stress so they could identify with me. Then, I would teach them mindfulness practices. Since stress is always rooted in fear, and fear always concerns a future outcome, paying attention to the present moment is the most effective way to reduce stress.
