We all wish we can get ahead in our careers. Whether you’ve been steaming ahead for a promotion for the last few months, looking for more responsibilities in your current position or, most importantly, been hammering at your boss for a pay rise, career progression is a great way to boost job satisfaction and for us to feel happy within ourselves.
However, progressing in such a way is easier said than done for most of us. Although meditation still, even today, has a rather spiritual atmosphere to it, this doesn’t have to be the case. Of course, that’s an element of it, but more and more people are starting the see the benefits that it has in everyday life. In fact, there are thousands of scientific studies that prove it.
But can meditation be used to boost and progress yourself in your chosen career path? If it can, how can you do it? Well, all will be explained as we explore four ways that meditation can help you move forward in your career.
Developing a Daily Practice
To be able to enjoy the full effects and benefits of meditation, you need to start practising every day. However, this isn’t as difficult as it sounds. You can start with just a simple five-minute session in the morning, whether by using or using meditation app.
In our fast-paced lives, it’s easy to think that we simply don’t have the time even to spare five minutes but once you start seeing the benefits, you’ll be able to edge that up to ten minutes, twenty minutes, half an hour and maybe even an hour.
This sort of willpower and habit-forming ability is a great mentality that will affect and run off into your work life. Think of all the little jobs that crowd your brain that would take five minutes to complete, but you never get around to doing. If you can find the time to meditate, you can find the time to file that paperwork, reply to that email, keeping your brain active and free from little jobs, allowing you to focus on more important aspects of your job that will progress your career.
Allowing Time to Work on Yourself
As much as we don’t like to admit it, we’re not perfect, and there’s always something we can change within ourselves. Whether it’s a personality trait, drinking more water, exercising more regularly, thinking of ourselves more positively or a practising a skill at work that we want to master.
Meditation allows us the time to sit and ponder these thoughts in the open, liberating and non-judgemental way. At work, it’s very common to feel guarded the majority of the time or even to feel like we can take everything on at once and handle it. More times than not, this doesn’t have to be the case.
Through meditation, give yourself a chance, and the permission to feel vulnerable and to learn and understand your physical and mental limits.
Be the Best Person You Can Be
Through meditating, you’ll be surprised, especially if it’s your first time, just how much better you feel towards life. You’ll feel at peace with yourself; you’ll feel confident, outgoing, positive, grateful and much more.
This will rub off on the people around you and, from personal experience, they’ll even mention how much happier you are and how much more productive and driven you are, without even mentioning that you meditate, which can sometimes invoke negative connotations. Trust in yourself and the self-development that you’re engaged in.
Learn to Connect with Life
At the end of the day, life isn’t all about work, it’s about fulfilling yourself with the things you care about, and it’s so easy to start focusing on just pushing yourself at work that you end up forgetting about all the things you care about the most.
Don’t let this be the case. Don’t forget to get up, take a walk, get outside, get some fresh air and meet new people. May eye contact with people on the subway, appreciate the clouds in the sky, stop and think about the things that are happening around you. Be engaged with the world that you live in.
Summary
You don’t need to be meditating to meditate. In theory, you can do it all day, every day; it’s just about the mindset that you have. Breath in and out, follow your breath, love life, and you’ll see the progression in career naturally forming each and every moment of the day.
