This is an ABC podcast. It's been totally aware of what's going on around you and what you're doing. Sometimes you can have really busy minds, but using mindfulness clears all the clutter in your head. When your mind is clear, you have less stress, you stop worrying, you can find a sense of calm, and you sleep better, and you have more energy.
I can definitely vouch for this. I know it played a key role for me to get where I did as an AFL player, and I know now working in a high-pressure job, it is helping me navigate my way through it. In mindfully, over four series, I'm going to show you how to do it. By the end, I guarantee you'll have a karma and happier home.
Your kids will be loving school more, and you'll have an edge on the sporting field. You'll also be happier and kicking goals at work too, because that's where we're starting. Have you had time off because you just weren't feeling quite right inside yourself? You felt anxious, or worrying too much about things?
Do you find it hard to let go of work at the end of the day? Well guess what? Myfulness can help with that. Mindfully, creating a karma and happier you.
Let's welcome Dr. Andrew Rochford, medical doctor, author and father of three. Welcome to Mindfully. No, thank you.
It's nice to be here. How did you come across mindfulness? I know you're quite passionate about it. Originally, when I first got involved with Smiley Mind was the first time I'd really dug into what mindfulness was.
I've now gone from being just a guy that talks about it and has read the research and advocates for it to be somebody that tries to implement it into my life. I believe your biggest enemy is the one between your ears. You live most of your life in your own head. You create how you deal with experiences by yourself.
It's you take on the information, you decide how am I going to deal with this, whether it's success, whether it's failure, whether it's a challenge, whether it's going around day to day. You actually create yourself how you deal with that. I think that we can get ourselves so caught up in believing that we don't have control over that, that there's external forces, that this challenge I'm facing is everybody else's fault or it's, I can't do anything about it. You actually have to take a moment to realize it's my approach to this situation and how I deal with this that's actually going to have the biggest impact on my life.
Do I want to let it get me down? Do I want to be positive about it? We know moments where I do feel like, and I am somebody that spends a lot of time in my own head. I do decide, you know what, maybe I just need to be present.
I just need to stop worrying about everything else that's going on in the external world and realize that being a peace for a moment and being present is really important thing. Being mindful. You sound like you really know what you're talking about. The stats show that one in five of us have a mental health day in the last year because we've been feeling stressed, anxious or overwhelmed.
Do you think mindfulness will be able to help with that? Absolutely. First, I reckon that's probably underestimated. I reckon that's one in five people who are comfortable enough to be honest about the fact that they're taking time off work because of stress and mental.
I mean, I would argue this probably. You can double that if not three times. The number of people and those extra people just aren't willing to admit it. And I think 100% that we all need to realize that we're creating a world that has different types of stresses, mental stresses, connectivity, technology, technology is great and it keeps us connected and it makes communication.
But it also creates so many other new pressures in our world. We need to get better at dealing with the modern world and all the stats around anxiety, depression, diagnosable mental health issues, adolescent mental health issues, children with mental health issues. Those stats are going up for a reason. They will continue to increase in my opinion.
And we need to create resilience in ourselves. And mindfulness helps with that resilience. Mindfulness gives you a moment to pause and realize that you don't need to get caught up in, as I said, the stress sheet, a lot of time you're creating in your own mind. And I think that that's why encouragement of mindfulness in anyone is an important safety net that we all are going to need at some stage in our life.
So we spent a lot of time at work. What are some practical suggestions you could make to help someone out? Is it a five or ten minutes out of your lunchtime or something to be able to really send yourself those types of practicalities? I figure out the type of person that you are.
I think what relaxes you the most. There's so many different techniques and different ways to be mindful and it's a fairly broad term. For me, mindfulness sometimes involves music. Sometimes it just involves listening to a song that I enjoy or sitting in a place or just finding some sunshine.
Doing some exercise, eating food that I like. All those different things that I know make me feel better about myself. And that I can actually disconnect from the world and enjoy for a moment. That's what mindfulness is.
Be in the moment. If it's food, then taste the food. Smell the food. Enjoy the food.
Don't think about the 50 emails you've got to answer. Don't worry about that. Just actually take the time to experience that moment. Or whether it's if you like the beach.
Go to the beach. Sit on the beach. Feel the sand between your toes. Feel the water.
The breeze on your face, the sun on your skin. And actually let your mind process what that feels like. Because while you're processing that, while you're doing that and being in that precise moment, all the other stuff's gone. And that's where you can start to put it into your day.
Where you can start to make mindfulness a part of what you do. And that to me is always in everything in health. If it becomes part of what you do, you'll do it in the long term. And it will have a better benefit on your health.
It's the same as the song I'm going to eat certain types of food. I like brushing your teeth. Absolutely. Your mind feels a bit fairy if you're not going to those places.
Yeah. And the regularity of that is hard in the beginning, but then it becomes a habit. And that's what we want healthy habits. May I have a lovely conversation?
Love it. Yeah. That's what we go all day. Dr.
Andrew Rodgerford, medical doctor, author, father of three. Myfamous enthusiast. Thanks so much for being on MyFly. Absolutely.
Pleasure. Thank you. Mindfully. Dr.
Addie Wharton is a mindfulness expert with smiling mind. We're thrilled to have her. Thanks so much for joining us, Addie. Thanks for having me.
So we're talking about mindfulness at work. There's so many people out there that experience both good and bad days at work. Can you talk through some of the stats and research I want to say is about how people may feel at work? Yeah.
A lot of people do struggle at work. So we know that about one in five Australians have taken a day off due to a mental health problem in the last 12 months. We know that the rate of stress is going up and up. So more and more people are feeling overwhelmed and burnt out so much so that they actually have to take time off work.
But we also know that lots of people turn up at work, potentially not feeling at their best, and that impacts a whole range of different things, particularly their satisfaction with their work life, but also their productivity and their ability to do their job. So we're seeing that there's actually a really big financial burden placed on workplaces around Australia and probably the world. I think there's an estimate around about $11 billion cost per year related to mental health problems in the workplace. And that's related to time off work, but also loss of productivity.
So it's a big problem. Yeah, just for the individual, but also the organisations themselves. Absolutely. Yeah.
And I mean, you know yourself when you're working in an environment and you're not feeling at your best, it's really hard to focus and pay attention. It's really hard to feel motivated and enthused about what you're doing. And so yeah, exactly. It's a really big problem for the individual, but also for the business itself.
So do you think we could apply mindfulness in the workplace to be able to make a difference with that? Absolutely. So mindfulness is a practice, I think, that spans across a whole range of different parts of people's lives. And we're finding that more and more adults are using it as a tool to manage stress in particular, but also to boost performance.
So that sense of being able to tap into what motivates you and pay attention and focus and to get into that flow that sometimes athletes talk about, but more and more business people, or people in the workplace are actually trying to find that sense of flow so that you can focus and really get a lot of productive work done. So mindfulness is a great tool to help people learn how to balance all of those parts of working. So stress management, but also performance. And what are some of the strategies and tips you could share with us so that if people are listening and going, oh, yeah, that's the place I want to get to.
That's the space I would like to be in. Yeah. So I'd have to think about when's the time in your day where you could actually fit a small mindfulness practice or a meditation? And then more broadly, as you start to get used to mindfulness and practicing meditation, you can actually start to see opportunities throughout the workday or potentially with your colleagues to do some mindfulness practice together.
And the interesting thing about mindfulness is that it doesn't have to just be a sitting meditation. It can be a mindfulness practice where you're paying attention to your surroundings. It might be part of your routine work. So it might be, for example, when you're having a meeting with a colleague, you can choose to actually have that meeting in a mindful way.
So what I mean by that is that you can actually make sure that you're fully present when you're having those meetings. So paying attention to what the person is saying rather than thinking about the endless to do list that you have or predicting what the rest of the day is going to look like, actually making sure that you're focusing your attention on the thing that you're doing right then and there. So what we often recommend to businesses is to start a meeting together with a meditation because often when you walk into a meeting, you're bringing a whole lot of stuff with you. So all of the things that you've been doing that morning, you know, you might have been racing to and from work or getting kids off to school or checking emails, whatever it might be.
And so what stopping and practicing a meditation at the start of a meeting does is provide a circuit breaker. So you can actually stop checking with yourself, reset, maybe reflect on what you want the rest of the day to look like and then continue on with that meeting. So it actually provides a space where you can actually stop and check in. And for all of your colleagues to do that with you means that you're all going to actually participate in that meeting in a much more present and focused way.
Yeah, I'm a really big fan of that. And so that might only take sort of one or two minutes. Absolutely. Yeah, you can do a 30 second meditation if you want to.
If you can, if you can sometimes spend a couple of minutes on it is better than 30 seconds, but if you've only got 30 seconds, it's better than nothing. We've got four mindfulness meditations coming up. How would you suggest we use them? So the four meditations that are coming up cover a whole range of different topics and they're designed to be used at different times.
So if you're finding that you're feeling stressed, for example, when you go to work or throughout different times of the day at work, maybe the stress management meditation is the place for you to start. So to start thinking about how your body reacts to stress. Where does your mind go when you start to feel stressed and how can you actually learn to regulate those feelings? For other people that might actually be helpful to use a meditation or a mindfulness practice between finishing work and going home.
Sometimes we all have that tendency to take work home with us and that can impact on our family life or our outside of work life. So finding a way to use mindfulness as an end to the day can be really helpful. There's a meditation coming up called Work Wine Down and that helps you do just that. So basically stop and leave work at work and then continue on with your day.
Some other areas of practicing mindfulness might be around building a skill. So another meditation that's coming up is around decision making. So learning how to tune into how you're feeling and look at the options objectively rather than emotionally and learn how to make a decision based on evidence rather than emotion. So there's a few different ways that you can use mindfulness and the meditations that are coming up to help you in your work day.
Thanks so much for the insight. Dr. Addie Woodin, thanks for being with us on Mindfully. Thanks for having me.
Alright, it's now time to give your first session a go. There are four smiling mind meditations if you listen to, which will help you out at work. I hope you get as much out of it as I have. And I'll catch you soon for another series of Mindfully from We Head to the Sporting Arena.
You can find Mindfully in the ABC News Center or you can subscribe in iTunes or wherever else you get your podcast from. And if you've got a friend or a workmate, you think might get something out of Mindfully, share it and get them to subscribe to it because sharing is caring.