Well done – if you’ve worked through the course materials, and practised most days for say 2 weeks, you’ve made a great start.

You’ve made a start with mindful breathing and awareness of feelings in the body – two of the core tools for understanding your own reaction to stress and beginning to learn some simple ways to pause and de-stress.

You’ve also learnt a little about what mindfulness is and how it works, and have hopefully begun some simple gratitude and kindness practices.

This is just the beginning. Mindfulness is a life skill and it takes on-going practice to develop it properly; in fact there’s never a point where anyone can say ‘that’s it, I’m done’; it just deepens and you find ways to integrate it into your life more and more fully.

Research has shown that it takes about 6-10 weeks for new neural pathways in your brain to establish – in other words, developing new habits and new reactions to stress is not an overnight exercise. Repeated, daily practice over many weeks is the key.

So to build on what you’ve started, at the very least, keep going with these simple practice for another 6 weeks.

However, good guidance and deeper work is useful, so we really recommend taking the 8 week ‘Manage Workplace Stress’ course. It’s designed for busy people, and the results are impressive: over half those completing the course find they are  at least 70% better at managing stress, 68% more productive, and 67% happier.

Here’s what’s in it:

• more depth and variety with mindful breathing practice
• more depth and variety with body awareness practice
• more on gratitude, and how we are supported and can support others
• guidance on self-care, focused on diet, sleep and exercise
• mindfulness practices including walking and movement
• mindful hearing & mindful communication – including guidance in meeting and emails
• more on kindness, compassion and emotional intelligence
• practical tips on coping with workload pressure and saying no
• suggestions on how to deal with difficulties and change

Also, please do use our app Five to Nine, whether you go for the free version or the upgrade – it gives you a one minute reminder every weekday.

We’d love to hear how you got on with this short course.

You could just email us at feedback@mindfulwork.co.uk, or use this quick feedback form below:

Thanks in advance  - your views help us make it better for the next students.