focus | St. Louis Corporate Yoga

Concentrate For More Success

Do you suffer from your attention spreading too thin? Do you have the feeling that if only you could concentrate more, you could probably accomplish your big goals? Or at least way more than you can currently? Our new article series is just what you need to read!

You have heard this many times: Success often comes down to who is willing to work the hardest. Hustle is still working.

You can achieve more in your job by hustling a bit. Have you ever thought about how many hours of your working day do you actually spend producing optimal results? Research shows that employees only work concentrated only for a couple of hours a day. And the rest? Checking e-mails, chatting with co-workers, surfing the web or sitting in meetings – these activities might be not so productive and still take up a few hours of the workday.

What if you could concentrate a bit longer? Or you could work a solid 3 hours every morning and afternoon out of the 8-hour workday? Now that would show up in everything you do. You’d accomplish more than any of your colleagues. Would your boss notice this change? You bet and it would only be a matter of time before your salary reflected your improved productivity. You could cut back on overtime and even get to leave early on Fridays!

Improving your concentration level will affect your private life, too. Imagine how much better your relationship would get if you were giving your partner your full attention. What positive impact this could have on your parenting skills? And your friends would seek out your presence even more.

Concentration helps you master crisis situations, too. You become more alert and more focused when you’re out and about. Your situational awareness will increase This makes you better at responding to a crisis you might be facing.

Before you search for the ultimate answer on how to get more focused every day, let’s look at your patters of concentration.

Do you have periods during the workday where concentrating is easy for you? Maybe you find focusing on what matters easy right after getting to the office. Maybe your focus time is the 2 hours before lunch break. Take notes of supreme concentration for at least a week. When did it happen? What were you concentrating/working on? Why do you think it was easy to focus in that period of time or on that particular task? Gather your notes in a notebook or on your computer – whichever feels easier.

Now turn your attention to the periods of time when you failed at focusing. When is this happening? Maybe right after lunchbreak? Maybe after you get to work and get overwhelmed with a full desk and dozens of emails bombarding you? Please note the reason behind this difficult, sometimes outright confusing and unconcentrated period of your workday.

In our next article we will support you to find your own patterns of focus and how to make the most of it for more success and less stress in your life!

Being In The Present

Being in the present – this is one of the best things you can practice to increase your well-being in life! How many times do you spend time reminiscing about the good old days? Or spending time just daydreaming about your golden future? Nothing wrong with daydreaming by the way… if you take action on reaching those goals!

Many people are so used to thinking in the past or future that they have a hard time staying focused on the here and now.

It is the present where magic lies! To motivate you to practice being in the now, we gathered a few amazing reasons why staying with the present moment can benefit your life:

Enjoy Food More

How many times do you eat while watching a show or typing on your laptop? It just seems that you save time but you have to pay a high price for saving a moment or two! You will likely barely notice what you are eating. Chances are, you won’t even remember what you ate a few minutes before. Not only that, you won’t fully process feelings of being full and satisfied and this can lead to overeating.

Stay present while eating and your experience will completely change. Think about how the food tastes in your mouth. Focus on how it smells, its texture and taste. Is it crunchy, soft, sour, sweet, or bitter? You will be eating slower and will have a vivid memory of this meal. You give your brain a chance to register when you are full. When you eat mindfully, you will enjoy your food more and eat less of it.

Control Bad Habits

You need to start a new project but you catch your brain wondering constantly instead of concentrating? Do you feel resistance creeping into your workdays? Feeling those bad procrastinating habits getting the better of you at the office? Observe your behavior mentally and make note of it. Ask yourself, what is going on and why are you having difficulty focusing. Just the act of putting your attention directly on the problem will help you work out better ways of dealing with it.

Have A Deeper Understanding

Focus in on what is happening here and now and you will gain a deeper understanding of what is really going on in any situation! You will miss less verbal and non-verbal cues in every situation. Just imagine how useful this will be in any office communications. For example, if you are meeting new co-workers for the first time, try to be as present as possible. Absorb everything they are saying, listen to their voice, notice what they say and do. You will observe and gather valuable information that lets you in on who they really are and how to best work with them towards success.

Have The Power To Change

You really only have control over what is happening in this moment. Try as you might you cannot change the past and you can’t dream the future into existence without taking action. Instead use the present moment to its fullest and you will realize your goals step-by-step. You can make changes going forward and that can only happen now, in the present. Make the most of the present and you will take control of your destiny!

Small Changes, Big Impact – Part Two

Does improving your personal and professional life have to be about making monumental changes? No. Even small steps in the right direction can often make a huge difference to your happiness. Plus taking things one step at a time will help avoid overwhelm. We are continuing with our “Small changes, big impact” series below:

1) Tame the email beast

How many times do you check your email account per day? Per hour? You might have noticed that checking email multiple times throughout the day can dramatically decrease your productivity.

Email is a major distraction to all of us. Feeling bored? Let’s see if there is anything interesting going on. Bad case of procrastination? Surely there is something else you can do before embarking on the project you are procrastinating on.

Email can get very addictive and you will find yourself in a loop of constantly checking private and office emails.

What if you decided to check your email 3 times per day only at the office? At the beginning of the workday, before lunch hour and in the afternoon. Let your co-workers know about your new system so they have a realistic expectation about you reading their emails. The good news is the world will not fall apart if you take a few hours to respond to an email! What if there’s any emergency? Your colleagues will find a better way to connect with you. Many times a personal discussion can help dealing with office emergencies.

2) Tech-free for a day

As much as we love technology, it is easy to get sick of it from time to time. We discussed the email beast above. Constant internet access, smart phones, messaging apps, social media and we become available to others all the time. And while it is nice to keep in touch… maybe we need some boundaries around our availability.

What if you switched off your phone as soon as you get home? Keeping it switched off is social situations? Simply saying “no” to constant availability.

Can you still remember the old days without mobile phones? We did survive and didn’t miss much, right?

Why don’t you consciously take time away from technology completely, for example for a day each week or month? Take Saturday or Sunday off from being online all the time. Who knows maybe you remember the activities you forgot you used to enjoy: reading a book, walking in the park or just daydreaming. Or you could use it as the perfect excuse to spend more time with your family.

3) Stop multitasking

Want to increase your productivity at the workplace? Stop multitasking immediately! It’s been proven time and time again that multitasking will not lead to better results or higher productivity. Especially women fall into believing that multitasking can be an answer to a more productive life. Well, it is not true. Some research suggested that multitasking actually can be unhealthy for your brain.

Focusing on one task and you will get more done in less time. Your quality of work increase, too! Decide to multitask less even if you feel the expectation to deal with more than one thing at one time. The myth of multitasking is still very apparent in our work culture so you might be challenged by others if you decide to stop this behavior.

Focus on one task and your productivity will increase automatically!

Find the 1st Part of this series here!

Yoga’s Incredible Benefits – Part 2

Why choose yoga as the base of your company’s wellness programs? There are tremendous mental health benefits in offering yoga to your employees! Let’s explore the most important of these benefits this week. If you would like to read more about why yoga is the best choice for a corporate program, please read our last week’s article about the most important health benefits of yoga.

Nobody can deliver great work without concentration – we know this from our own experience. Nowadays losing the ability to concentrate is easy. Distractions come from every direction: colleagues, email, messages, phone calls, the need for immediate responses – all working against focus.

Practicing Yoga gives the wonderful possibility to create harmony between the mind and the body. This harmony then gives way to a sharper focus. All the light poses during a corporate yoga class plus the deep breathing exercises work together to provide this experience. Yoga students enjoy these benefits not just during class but hours after the yoga class has finished. It becomes easier to concentrate on the most important tasks and actually getting them done in less time and with less effort. In short, developing focus is the best way to increase productivity.

During an overwhelming week at work, it is a blessing to be able to free the mind from constant worry and negative emotions. A meditation practice will help tremendously in providing “space” and emptying the mind.

Yoga is still misunderstood sometimes as a weird practice of endless meditation. But there are numerous medical studies proving that yoga can help many modern day ailments like mental anxiety, stress, worry and overwhelm.

Have you noticed your employees stress level rise? Job pressure, work overload, conflicts with co-workers and managers at the workplace are the most important source of stress in the US population according to a recent American Psychological Association (American Institute of Stress, NY) survey. Around 73% of those suffering from stress experience psychological symptoms caused by stress regularly. (Source: http://www.statisticbrain.com/stress-statistics/)

Fortunately yoga can activate the natural relaxation response! Deep yoga deep breathing, meditation or rhythmic exercises can help to relieve the stress we all face in today’s world.

Basically anybody can begin a yoga practice and reap the benefits of practicing this ancient art! (Individuals with medical conditions need to discuss taking up yoga with their health providers and specialist, of course.)

In a corporate setting we welcome everybody no matter their fitness level or previous practice of yoga. All the yoga classes are customized to fit the needs of the particular group.

From our own St. Louis Corporate Yoga case studies we know that even one corporate yoga class per week can bring lasting relief from job stress. If you are interested to learn about the results our programs deliver, please ask for our case study documents by contacting us – just send your questions through the green box to the right side of this page or through our Contact page. Would you rather give us a call? Here is where you can reach us: 314-630-1677.