How mindfulness and meditation turned a workaholic’s life around, and how they can help you beat stress
- Mindfulness maven Junya Ogino teaches that you don’t have to know Zen Buddhism to help decompress from work pressures
- You can be mindful by just folding your clothes, he says
If, like a stereotypical Japanese salaryman, you are working brutal hours and sacrificing your well-being just to stay afloat, consider yourself lucky, mindfulness maven Junya Ogino says.
Why? Because you’re in a perfect position to try a simple brain hack that will put you on top of your game, helping you to face reality head-on, the confessed workaholic says. “Mindfulness could save lives,” he says.
As a certified instructor of the Google-born Search Inside Yourself contemplative training programme, Ogino warns his countrymen not to wear work addiction as a badge of honour because he believes it could put at risk their most critical asset: mental health.
Ogino teaches mindful leadership courses at companies across Japan, a country notorious for its workplace culture of long hours and rigid hierarchies, and leads workshops for executives seeking to create a mindful culture within their teams.
Mindfulness practitioners like Ogino know workers will never excel at anything when they are multitasking, partly doing this and partly doing that. If you are pouring your coffee into a to-go cup as you rush out the door, that is a big red flag, they say.
You are not just giving your brain a break when you stop trying to be everything to everyone; you are preventing potential damage by focusing on a single task and treating yourself to a few minutes of me-time every day, Ogino says.
The 45-year-old adds that it’s time to drop the myths. You do not have to chant. You do not have to be vegan. You do not have to shave your head. You do not have to wear tie-dye. It requires you to go nowhere and costs you no money.