It’s a tough time for libraries, and people in customer service. And while we don’t want to veer into any toxic positivity, it is good to spend a little time focused on building your happiness level. We are not going to solve people’s serious mental issues here. But bringing some happiness skills to your week can be helpful to everyone!
Mondays can be a little hard, even when things are going fine. Use this small injection of a happiness skill to your week. We are here to support you, and to help you to be a little happier in the library.
Working on your mindfulness skills can help you to have a day that is calmer, and maybe a little more open to happiness. Like everything we’ve talked about in this weekly series, this isn’t going to fix your life and make everything fine. But mindfulness may be one tool to turn up the volume on the good stuff, and turn down the bad stuff a bit.
Check out this article excerpt from Harvard Business Review:
“In our first study, with Gretchen Spreitzer, Chen Zhang, Laura Noval, and Samah Shaffakat, we worked with IT consultants in India and call center representatives in the U.S. In both environments, we found that workers who meditated in the morning were more attentive and helpful to their coworkers and customers throughout the day. Interestingly, while workers who engaged in any sort of meditation were more helpful, the reason why they became more helpful depended on the type of meditation practice they used: Breath-based meditation (in which you focus on your breath) helped people better understand others’ perspectives cognitively, while loving-kindness meditation (in which you imagine sending kindness and goodwill to others) made people more able to feel what others were experiencing, boosting empathy and connection to others.
Research has shown that both breath-based and loving-kindness meditation can help reduce the stress associated with emotionally charged social interactions. As such, for roles such as customer service representatives, consultants, doctors, call center agents, teachers, and other people whose daily work demands substantial interpersonal interaction, these practices can be particularly helpful. For example, mindfulness has been shown to improve performance among military personnel who engage in frequent high-stress interactions, and in our own personal and professional lives we’ve found that a brief loving-kindness meditation before going into a potentially charged interaction with a student or colleague can be a helpful reminder to listen deeply and respond with kindness.
Our studies showed that both focused breathing and loving-kindness meditation can boost helpfulness in certain workplace contexts. But for roles or situations in which accountability is more important, it may be best to focus more on loving-kindness practices, as breath-based practices can cause people to feel less responsibility for their actions. Particularly for leaders or managers who need to take ownership of their mistakes and address past issues in order to be effective, reducing their ability to feel remorse may create problems. Given this risk, organizations should consider investing in programs that encourage loving-kindness meditation or other compassion-focused approaches, especially for managers or executives, alongside more traditional, breath-focused meditation practices.
Finally, the research shows that when you engage in mindfulness can be just as important as engaging in the right kinds of practices. While you might think that you need to practice mindfulness at the same time every day, targeted mindfulness in the moments you need it most can actually be more effective. Especially when it comes to workplace interventions, it is important that whatever practice employers recommend fits smoothly within employees’ normal flow of work.”
You can read the whole article here.
CMLE can be part of your support network; we are here for you, and support you in your library work. Take a nice deep breath in, and whoosh it out; it’s going to be okay today.
