Hello and welcome to another episode of the Working Conversations podcast where we talk all things leadership, business, communication and the future of work. I'm your host, Dr. Janel Anderson.

Have you ever reached the end of a workday and felt completely drained, yet you're not actually even sure what you accomplished? Maybe you bounced from meeting to meeting, responded to countless emails, and tackled a million small tasks, but somehow it all felt like a blur. And now you're exhausted, impatient, and dreading tomorrow before today is even over.

Now imagine a different version of your day, one where instead of rushing from one thing to the next on autopilot, you move with intention. You pause for a few minutes between each meeting to rest and reset. You take a deep breath before responding to an email. You even notice small moments, your feet on the ground, the warmth of your coffee cup, the way your colleague smiles when you actually see them instead of just passing by that difference. It's mindfulness, and the research is clear. Being more mindful doesn't just make us feel calmer, it actively protects us against burnout. Today we're diving into how mindfulness rewires the brain, reduces stress and prevents burnout, plus some actionable strategies that you can start using right away.

Let's start by defining our terms. Burnout isn't just being tired or overworked. It is a chronic state of stress that leads to exhaustion, cynicism, and a lack of effectiveness. It completely takes you to your end.

The World Health Organization officially classified burnout as an occupational phenomenon in 2019, and its effective employees at every level. Now, on the flip side, mindfulness is the practice of being fully present in the moment without judgment. It's not just about meditation. It's about training your brain to stay engaged with the here and now right here in the present, rather than being caught up in past regrets or future worries or anything that's not happening right now. So how do these two concepts connect? Well, research shows that the more mindful you are, the less likely you are to experience burnout. Isn't that fascinating? You can control burnout even if you have a highly stressful job or work in a highly stressful in industry. There are many studies that back this up.

Let me just tell you about a few of them in 2020 a meta analysis. If you're not familiar with the term, that's when a researcher takes a whole bunch of studies already published on a topic and looks across all of them to say, what are the trends and what can we learn across all of these studies. So in 2020, a meta analysis was done that was published in the Mindfulness Journal. And it found that mindfulness based interventions significantly reduce burnout, particularly in those high stress jobs. I was just referring to a different study. This one in 2019 in the journal of Occupational Health Psychology showed that employees who practice mindfulness had lower stress, higher resilience, and less emotional exhaustion. Like, doesn't that sound like something you want? Lower stress, higher resilience, and less emotional exhaustion? Yeah. Give me some of that.

And researchers from and researchers published in the Frontiers of Psychology in 2021 found that mindfulness research published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology in 2021 found that mindfulness was directly linked to higher job engagement and lower stress levels. Again, something we probably all want more of. Okay, so mindfulness shifts how we interact with stress. It doesn't make the stress disappear, but it changes our internal response to stress and that helps us stay grounded rather than overwhelmed.

Now I want to share a bit about my own mindfulness journey. Now, I meditate for most days, not every day, but most days, and my meditation practice. And I've talked about this on the podcast before, but I'll just as a quick refresher or maybe it's changed a bit, but I do a 10 minute meditation, a guided meditation by Sam Harris in the app called Waking Up. And we'll give you a link to that in the show Notes, where you can use that app for 30 days for free.

And then after I do that, I do another it used to be 5. Now I'm up to 7 minutes of not guided meditation, but visualization of things that I am creating, actively manifesting in my life for the future. One minute on each of seven different topics where I'm very, very compellingly bringing a visual representation of what that would look like already done. So if it's a, you know, a specific goal or type of interaction I want to have with my family or friends, I just bring that very vividly into my mind. And a bell dings every one minute of those seven minutes, reminding me to go from the visualization of this family activity to this visualization of me having this professional success to visual visualization of me having this physical transformation in my body or whatever it is that I'm working on at any given time. So seven minutes of that. Now, I do that most days, but not every day. And I can tell you that when I do those 10 minutes plus 7 minutes, even if I only get one or the other in, I feel more grounded, less reactive and overall, I am more present in my work and my life, with my clients and with the people in my personal lives, my family and friends.

But here's something interesting. The biggest impact happens not just from doing that activity or those two activities, but when I carry mindfulness beyond that 10 or 17 minute practice into my entire day. And I remain present with it and I work with it throughout my entire day. And here's how I do that. I've trained myself to use small moments in time, small triggers, as mindfulness moments. So for example, some days I will use a threshold or doorway as my trigger. So every time I walk through a doorway, I remind myself to take a breath and check in with myself. Other times, if I'm not going to be going through very many doorways in a given day.

But I do go through a lot of doorways, most of us do. So that's a really good one. But I might also just use my phone as the trigger point. Every time I pick up my phone, I will pause for a second before going into whatever activity it was, whether I'm using it to actually make a phone call, whether I am checking a message because it dinged that there was a voicemail or an email or a text message for me. Although if you've been following my work, you know, I usually leave my phone on Do Not Disturb all day long unless I'm expecting a call just because. Or maybe not all day long. But when I'm with clients, when I'm recording podcasts, when I'm doing my focus work, my phone absolutely is on do not disturb because I just don't have the capacity to take a call when I'm recording a podcast or look at a text message, when I am delivering a program to an audience. So I'm often on do not disturb.

But when I do pick up the phone, it's usually intentional in the first place. And then I take another moment of grounded intention to just take a breath before I make that phone call or before I look at that text message, or before I do whatever it is I'm going to do on that phone. Just keeps me grounded. These tiny habits, it anchors me in the present moment. Another one. That's great. Many of my clients have used this one, especially when I'm doing executive coaching with people in the sales field who are often getting in their cars a lot and making calls on their clients. So if you happen to drive a lot, or maybe you're a person who needs to shuttle kids to and fro to different places every time you Pick up your key fob or your actual physical keys.

If you have a set of physical keys, you use that as the grounding mechanism to just take a breath, get present with what you're doing. Again, I guarantee it's going to keep you more in the present moment and just like me, it's going to keep you more focused and less stressed. Now, as I mentioned before, I use the Waking up app from Sam Harris for my meditation practice. It's got guided meditations, not only the daily meditation that Sam guides, but he's got a whole library of different length and type of guided meditations. It's also got that meditation timer that I use when I'm doing that visualization exercise that I mentioned. And you can use that with or without background sounds like gentle rainfall. And there's also tons of different talks and articles on the impacts of mindfulness. So again, I will drop a link to that in the show notes for you to use that for 30 days for free.

Also, I get no kickback from it. I just want you to try it. I get no kickback if you try it. I get no kickback if you buy it. I just love it. I've been using it for years. Years. It's become so much more robust over the years and I love it so much that I want to share it with you.

It is one of the few annual subscriptions that, that I have that when it comes up for renewal is a total no brainer. I just click absolutely, absolutely renew. And it's not even very expensive to begin with. And I use it on the annual subscription basis. Now, whether you use the Waking up app or some other app or have no app whatsoever, the point is to do something to cultivate more mindfulness into your day and, and throughout your day. Mindfulness isn't just about carving out time to sit quietly like meditation. It's about integrating presence into your daily life, integrating those moments where you connect exactly with what you're doing right now. And that, my friends, is where the real magic happens.

All right, now I want to look specifically at mindfulness in those high stress professions and how it can absolutely make a huge difference. So mindfulness isn't just beneficial, it is becoming essential in high pressure fields. So take medicine, for example. The burnout rate among physicians and nurses is a staggering. Almost 60% of practitioners start that part over. Take medicine, for example. The burnout rate among physicians and nurses is staggering. According to a recent journal of the American Medical association, nearly 60% of physicians report symptoms of burnout 60%.

But research shows that simple mindfulness practices can help. One fascinating example that's used across multiple high stress fields is checklists. Now, lots of high risk and high stress professions use checklists. Medicine, aviation, the military and so on. And I love that they do this. Honestly, I want my surgeon to check all of the boxes during a surgery, even if it's routine and they've done it a thousand times. And maybe especially if it's routine and they've done it a thousand times because, well, I'm getting ahead of myself here for a moment. When I'm flying, I absolutely want the mechanic who cleared the plane for departure to have checked all of the boxes and I want the pilots to have very carefully gone through that pre flight checklist as well.

Now you get the point. So case in point, hospitals that use detailed checklists rather than general ones see a significant drop in stress and burnout amongst their medical practitioners. So let's take a look at an example. If a nurse has a checklist of things that they need to go through prior to administering the next dose of medication. And maybe one of the things on that checklist is to check the patient's eyes for glassiness or dilated pupils.

Instead of the nurse simply noting whether the patient's eyes look glassy or their pupils are dilated, a detailed checklist might require that the nurse record the exact eye color of the patient before deciding whether to administer the next dose of medicine or not. This small detail forces them to be more engaged and more present rather than rushing through the task on autopilot. Studies show that this not only reduces the stress level of the healthcare workers by being more mindful of their tasks as they go throughout the day, but patients actually feel more cared for when their doctors and nurses are fully engaged. And the British Medical Journal reported On this in 201222 in their quality and Safety Journal. So there's research that's backing this up. And it's not just in health care. Teachers, law enforcement offers teachers, law enforcement officers and corporate professionals are seeing mindfulness based programs reduce burnout and improve performance. So again, going back to that idea of the checklist, yes, I want my surgeon to go through the checklist, but not in a rote fashion.

I want my pilot to go through the checklist, but literally not on autopilot. I want my pilot to go through the checklist in a very mindful way, making sure that each of the things on that checklist is absolutely appropriate for this flight under these weather conditions, with this many passengers on board, and so on and so forth. All right, now the question is, how do you apply this to your own work? You might be thinking, well, Janel, I'm not a surgeon, I'm not a nurse, I'm not a pilot. How does any of this relate to me? Well, you can use actionable mindfulness practices in any field to not only bring you more present and lower your stress level throughout the day, connect with your clients, whether they be internal or external clients, throughout the day, and reduce your level of burnout and your propensity for burnout.

So let's look at five simple ways to incorporate mindfulness into your workday. The first one is micro mindfulness moments. So pick that frequent activity like I was talking about before. Walking through a doorway threshold, taking a sip of coffee or water, picking up your phone or your car keys. Use that moment to take a breath and reset. Refocus your attention on what you are doing exactly right now in this moment. So if you are hopping in the car to drive your children someplace, as you get in the car, touch that key fob, take a breath, be present for the activity that you're engaged in right now. If you're walking through a doorway to go refill your coffee cup, take a moment in that moment to anticipate what the coffee's going to taste like. Be present right now in this moment. Again, it's a total game changer, these micro mindfulness moments. So the meditation that you do in the morning, if you choose to do such a thing, might set you up great to do that. But also bringing that meditation practice, that mindfulness throughout your day is where you're going to get the real traction from the minutes that you spent in the mindful in the meditation practice earlier.

Another the second technique that you can use is the five second pause rule. Now, this is about your interactions throughout the day. So before responding to an email, before speaking up in a meeting, pause for five seconds. Now, this rule is best when you are engaged with something where you are feeling emotionally charged, where you are feeling a little spun up and perhaps a little reactive. And this will prevent knee jerk reactions and it will improve the professionalism of your communication. But it also makes you more mindful even when done when you are doing rote things like responding to a routine email or making a phone call. Try it and you'll see that not only does your emotional state change, but your outcomes will change too. Now, for those of you who are hesitant to speak up in meetings, I don't want this to have you further get up in your head. I just want this to be one of those things that if you are a blurter or you have a knee jerk reaction, or you're feeling particularly emotionally charged about something, this is where you want to take a breath, count to five before you respond because you will come across as much more professional and your thoughts will be more put together.

All right, number three, mindfulness transitions. And you maybe heard me talk about this last week in the episode where I talked about building that white space in. But between meetings, take a few minutes. And even just simply between emails, take even 30 seconds from one answering one email to answering the next email to check in with yourself when you are doing that shift between work life and home life. If you have a commute, use that commute to reset for the next thing that you're going to do. If your commute is up and down the stairs or down the hallway of your home because you are working from home, then essentially, especially take a moment to really be mindful in that transition from one thing to the next as you shut down your computer. And I highly encourage you to shut down your computer for the night if you work from home so that it doesn't ding and beep and buzz at you, encouraging you to go back and check one more email. So make that transition intentional and make a mindful transition.

And whether it's taking a 30 second break between one email and the next, or or longer on your commute or something like that, ask yourself, how am I feeling right now? What do I need in this moment? And then do your best to give yourself what you need, or at least some version of it. So you might not be able to take a nap if you sense yourself being tired or exhausted, but maybe you can step outside for just a few deep breaths of fresh air to revive yourself. Maybe you can do something else, a couple of deep, deep stretches or the rolling of the shoulders or something to reset when you sense that you are feeling exhausted or tired or stressed. Okay, so even just a few moments of something that can answer that need for yourself.

And then the fourth technique, structured mindfulness practices. So again, here's where we're going back to meditation. So if the idea of meditation itself seems overwhelming, start with just one minute. I guarantee you, no matter how restless you are, no matter how anxious you are, no matter how much you can't sit still or your mind bounces from one thing to the next, you can absolutely sit still for one minute and do one minute of meditation.

And literally, even if your mind does bounce from one thing to the next, it takes some practice to get yourself into a state where you are free from the bouncing around kind of mind. And even those of us who've meditated for years, our mind still bounces from one thing to the next. The important thing in a meditation practice is to catch yourself having multiple thoughts and just bring yourself back to present. And in fact, in my 10 minute meditation, it is like ping pong city all over the place. And a big part of the meditation is just bringing myself back to center, releasing the thoughts that are preoccupying my mind while I'm doing that meditation. So start with one minute if it feels overwhelming. And then you can slowly add another minute and another minute. So another thing to help you with those structured mindfulness practices is using apps.

So use an app like the one I referred to earlier. Waking Up Again. You can check the show notes at janelanderson.com/211  for a free month of the Waking up app. And there are lots of other good apps as well. Headspace Insight Timer. I could go on and on. There's lots of lots of good apps. The one I use Waking up by Sam Harris Love it, love it, love it.

And then number five, apply that detailed checklist approach to your work. What is a task that you tend to rush through and how can you make it more intentional and detailed? Especially when it comes to the human interaction and customer service aspect, Whether that's your internal customers, your external customers, or your friends and family outside of work. What if you really paid deep attention and close attention to them when you were interacting with them? Now ironically, the more engaged you are in your activities again, this is where that detailed checklist comes in. The less drained you'll feel. So maybe it's just as simple as looking into your co workers eyes to see what color eyes your co workers have. Even if you know what color they are, just look into their eyes again and remember that. Make a note of that. They will feel that additional level of connection that you're making with them.

Now, some final thoughts and call to action. But before I do that, let me quickly recap those five simple ways to incorporate more mindfulness into your workday. Number one Micro mindfulness moments. Like walking through a doorway, just pause and be present. Number two the five second pause rule, especially when you are your emotions are heightened and you might take a knee jerk reaction to something, just pause five seconds before responding to that email or speaking up in the that meeting. Number three mindfulness transitions. So 30 seconds between emails, a few minutes between meetings, some time on your commute. Number four structured mindfulness practices. Meditating, even just one minute at a time to get in the practice of building that muscle of being free from or coming back from the ping pong thoughts you might be having. And then number five, applying that idea of a detailed checklist to your work. So those five mindfulness practices, just choose one to start with, then come back and listen to this episode after you've mastered that one and add another one. So this would be a great episode to bookmark and come back to so you can add to those mindfulness practices throughout your day. All right, so a few final thoughts and a call to action.

Burnout is real, my friends, and the research is compelling that mindfulness practices throughout your day help you be better at not succumbing to burnout. It is not just about being overworked. It is about being overwhelmed by stress. It is about the cortisol and the adrenaline and the huge hormone cocktail that happens throughout your body.

Again, if you listen to the episode last week when you heard me talk about high beta waves, that's what we're talking about here. So bring those high beta waves back down into mid level and low level beta waves where you can do your best strategic thinking and your best work. And even better yet, mitigate against burnout. Mindfulness is a powerful tool that can rewire your brain, increase resilience and bring back a sense of control over your work and your life again. So here is my challenge for you. Try just one mindfulness strategy from today's episode. Maybe it's pausing for 30 seconds before you respond to email.

Maybe it's taking a breath before walking into a meeting. Maybe it is simply noticing the color and the aroma of your coffee before you take your first sip. Whatever it is, experiment with mindfulness today and see how it shifts your energy. And again, remember that it is insulating you against burnout. And if you found this episode helpful, I would love to hear from you. What is one way you are starting to bring more mindfulness into your workday? Send me a message on LinkedIn or hit me up on any one of the social media channels you can find me at Dr. Janel Anderson at just about all of them. Now if you haven't already, make sure you subscribe so that you don't miss future episodes and if you enjoyed this episode, share it with a friend or colleague, especially somebody who might be feeling a little burnout or have a propensity towards burnout.

As always, stay curious, stay informed, and stay ahead of the curve. And tune in next week for another episode where we take an insightful look at the trends that are shaping our professional world. Until then, keep thriving, keep working toward the future of work that we all want and need. Stay curious, stay connected, and I will catch you next week.