Thought for the Week: Carve out some time for headspace

During this difficult period, many social enterprise leaders are working long hours, experiencing pressure and stress. It’s important to make time for your own mental health – this will help you to manage workloads, and to remain consistent and compassionate with your team, leading by example.

This week, try to introduce some mindfulness techniques by carving out some time in your daily routine.

Even if it’s just for a few minutes a day, find a quiet place where you can try this simple technique: sit down, be still, take some deep breaths in through your nose, and out through your mouth, do this a few times and start following your breath, allow the mind to come to a natural place of rest and perhaps close the eyes.

Through this mindful process you will find greater compassion for yourself and others

By sitting with the mind in this way, we’re training it to be more open and at ease, and we consequently discover greater calm, clarity and contentment. In doing so, we increasingly learn to have a direct experience of the present moment and the relaxation that can come with it. Through this mindful process you will find greater compassion for yourself and others around you. In fact, Headspace has been scientifically proven to increase compassion.

Try to build this process into your working routine, by simply taking moments throughout the day to pause and check in with yourself. By practising this mindful process more regularly, you train your mind to not allow yourself to get lost in a moment of frustration but to acknowledge it, accept it, sit with it, focus on your breathing and bring your attention back to how you’re feeling and why. This will help you to be intentional in every interaction or activity and make better decisions from a place of awareness and clarity, which through time can bring a more relaxed state of being.

Share your methods with your colleagues and schedule group mindfulness sessions to encourage your staff to make time each day to focus on themselves too.

Headspace has made some of its resources for businesses accessible for free. Its specially-curated “Weathering the Storm” collection of meditation and mindfulness content aims to help individuals during the coronavirus pandemic.

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