Are You Tense? Read This.

1.When you’re overwhelmed by the demands of the world.

Your phone is ringing incessantly. Your boss won’t stop emailing. Your client won’t stop nagging. Take a deep breath. Pause. Be silent for a few seconds. Inhale and exhale deeply. Then smile to yourself and say “How wonderful”. You might feel a little silly, but it releases tension and that’s the whole point.

2.When you wake up stressed in the morning.

Did you know Monday morning have the most incidence of heart attacks? Here's an exercise for that. Bring finger tips together and form a Lotus blossom. Open them like petals, one by one. With every finger you open say thanks for ten things in your life. Quietly to yourself. then cross hands and place upon heart, feel gratitude. Take a deep breath. Say, “How wonderful”, and smile to yourself.

3.When you want to say something unkind at work.

Your boss, client, customer, colleague, wife, whoever, is provoking anger. Or maybe you’re the kind that prides themselves on being brutally honest.
There’s a big difference between being honest and being a jerk. Practice the “Three gates of speech – is it True? Is it Kind? Is it Necessary? Don’t say it if it doesn’t pass all three gates.

These practices come from Nithya Shanti. He actively spreads awareness about the applications of mindfulness among corporations and the public. He became a monk at 23 and meditated in the forests of Sri Lanka and Thailand after disillusionment from working for one year in a corporate. He began conducting mindfulness workshops (aka “Joy Shops”) in 2009 after giving up the robes to spread his realizations with the world.

Nithya was speaking at the first Mindful Leader Summit India held in Delhi. The summit is affiliated to the Mindful Leadership Summit based in Washington DC, USA.