Get Out of Your Mind to Be Fully Engaged At Work

Every human being wants to be able to be themselves no matter where they are. No one wants to shut the door behind them at work in the morning and become merely a role, a title, or a diminished version of themselves. And yet, we do it all the time.

Research shows that 71% of employees aren’t fully engaged at work. Though typically the corresponding conversation to low engagement is the $288 billion in lost revenue due to low productivity, another relevant conversation is that this means we have a workforce that is nearly 3/4 comprised of human beings who aren’t being their best, most full selves at work. That is a great cost to not only the bottom line and the quality of work performed, but also to the quality of life of the people who are disengaged.

If 71% of us are struggling with engagement, that suggests that being engaged isn’t easy. Or perhaps it suggests that our attempts at engagement are misguided.

We have such a strong cultural bias toward intellect and doing over feeling and being that even as the mindfulness movement becomes more prevalent in the workplace, the focus still tends to be on calming the mind in a way that actually can promote numbing out. Very little attention is given to the role of the body and of our felt senses and emotions in promoting our most mindful and fully alive selves.

We learn very quickly in our culture that to be a good employee means to show up as mentally sharp and emotionally contained as possible. That in order to be great leaders, strong decision makers, key team players, we need to operate from the neck up.

But current research in neuroscience demonstrates that the opposite is true: growing our capacity to feel our sensations and discern their meaning leads to greater social and emotional intelligence. This enhanced social and emotional intelligence allows for access to greater emotional regulation, more agency in choosing one’s response to a situation rather than getting stuck in habitual reactions, stronger connection to one’s intuition and decision making skills, less fear and more compassion, empathy and connection to others.

This list no doubt describes the qualities of a stellar employee. It also happens to describe what we’d all agree is a pretty remarkable human being. Not only are those two things not mutually exclusive, they are correlated. The more of our humanity—of our whole selves—we can bring to our work, the better we will be at what we do.

About the Author:

The writer is an expert in the field of Financial Controller with focus on David John Ellery and John Ellery etc..

Source: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/get-out-your-mind-fully-engaged-work-jay-fields?trk=hp-feed-article-title-like