Mindfulness meditation is being offered at some of the world’s biggest companies, such as Google, GlaxoSmithKline and KPMG, to cut workplace stress and boost productivity. With workplace stress costing UK businesses £6.5bn a year, it’s no surprise that companies are investing in mindfulness: business magazines and HR journals are open about how it can boost profits. And research has shown how mindfulness reduces sunk-cost bias, where business leaders obsess about lost causes at the expense of more pressing concerns and decisions.
Yet mindfulness experts, aware that the technique could be used to turn us into placid worker drones, are taking rearguard action. Mark Williams, the founder of the Oxford Mindfulness Centre, said that seeing more clearly what is happening in their lives could make employees more subversive and critical. In other words, businesses may be cultivating an army of mindful rebels. But he said that three years ago – so where’s the revolution?
But practising mindfulness to deal with work-related stress is not turning us into rebels, it’s making all docile. Is it our equivalent of soma, the drug that kept everyone happy in Huxley’s Brave New World? We’re more likely to rebel if we don’t dull the pain, right?
Yes, mindfulness might encourage colleagues to be nice to each other, and help bosses make better decisions (in the interest of the bottom line, of course) and we might all work faster. But removing the negative thoughts from our minds also makes us more accepting of our lot. Even for people who are inclined to challenge the status quo, a course of mindfulness will make them less likely to question why they aren’t getting extra holiday, longer lunch breaks or reduced working hours to reward improved productivity. Mindfulness is the ultimate sticking plaster for when nothing materially improves.
A couple of friends who live in Denmark came over at Christmas. When I asked if they would ever move back to Britain, they looked horrified, saying they were infinitely happier in their jobs in Denmark than they ever were here. I said they must be practising mindfulness on repeat to be that content at work – yet they had never heard of it.
Clearly in Denmark they treat the causes rather than the symptoms. Workers leave work at 4pm on the dot, get paid generously, have less income inequality and pay more taxes. (After that conversation, I now have to use mindfulness to push the thought of Denmark and how happy everyone there is out of my mind.)
None of this is to deny that outside the workplace, mindfulness is a hugely valuable means of therapy. There is powerful evidence to suggest it can reduce recurring depression. It can be used to treat insomnia and anxiety, and can also help addicts come off drugs.
A year ago I had the sort of terrifying health crisis that reminds you just how tenuous life can be. My physical downfall resulted in a mental avalanche of anxiety, trauma and insomnia that wouldn’t leave me. The only intervention that worked was mindfulness. Its unique power put me back together.
And that is why mindfulness shouldn’t be co-opted, corrupted and manipulated by businesses to make us work harder. Mindfulness should help make us aware of how to live more fully, not how to meet a deadline without having a panic attack. Breathe out, and just try to be mindful of that.
• William Little is a freelance journalist
