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Why Mindfulness?

12th Jun 2014
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AccountingWEB editor John Stokdyk wrote a recent blog describing the experience of sitting in a room with more than 40 accountants at Accountex, who were doing nothing more than concentrating on their breathing.

It was a striking image and a good indication of the way mindfulness is starting to really gain the attention of the profession, writes CABA wellbeing manager Lucy Whitehall.

In September, we at CABA are launching a new mindfulness course because we believe that it has outstanding potential to become a crucial skill for 21st century chartered accountants. All of this begs the question, “Why mindfulness?”

Let’s start with a definition. What is mindfulness? According to the Mental Health Foundation, it is “an integrative, mind-body based approach that helps people change the way they think and feel about their experiences, especially stressful ones.

"It involves paying attention to our thoughts and feelings so we become more aware of them, less enmeshed in them, and better able to manage them.”

If this sounds a long way from the world of audits and spreadsheets, we can look to a convincing amount of hard evidence. A recent meta study conducted by John Hopkins University showed that mindfulness can help with anxiety, depression and pain.

This is a technique backed up by hard science based on retraining your brain in the task of processing information.

Why do accountants need this kind of skill? Well, CABA’s latest research shows that 32% feel stressed in their day-to-day life and 15% have taken time off work due to stress. Worryingly, the latter figure has almost doubled in the last year.

It is also worth considering research by Dr Hilary Lindsay which found that, after professional competence, career adaptability was the most important element of lifelong learning for chartered accountants.

This identified five behavioural attributes within career adaptability - engaging, exploring, experimenting, positive attitude and self-belief. Mindfulness very much fits into this way of thinking about the profession, providing clarity of mind that makes it easier to adopt these attributes.

Within accountancy, mindfulness techniques have been used by Deloitte and, in the wider business community, at Google, Barclays and Harvard Business School.

CABA’s first mindfulness service is a new, free one day course that enables delegates to understand how mindfulness techniques can improve their ability to cope with pressures in the workplace or at home, manage anxiety or depression, boost their concentration and energy levels and improve their decision making.

There is strong evidence for the success of our courses – 99% of people who attended between February and April this year believed their wellbeing had improved.

By spending a day with us, you could learn a technique that will help you to properly relax and refocus while you are almost anywhere and doing almost anything. Doesn’t that sound like a useful life skill for a chartered accountant?

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By User deleted
16th Jun 2014 12:05

CABA & Treatment of Employees ...

The topic of this blog is somewhat at odds with reports about a recent employment tribunal, in which a former CABA employee won a claim of unfair dismissal against the charity:

http://charitywatchuk.wordpress.com/2014/04/28/chartered-accountants-benevolent-association/

http://www.thirdsector.co.uk/Management/article/1291605/tribunal-upholds...

The tribunal noted that CABA managers raised issues in meetings with Samantha Reddy about her behaviour, but did not give her detailed explanations in writing. This left her “in the Kafkaesque dilemma of being told that she must behave better in future without ever having been told when or how she had done wrong in the past”, the tribunal said.

Can an organisation that treats its own employee in this way be regarded as having the credibility to run 'mindfulness' courses on coping with emotional stress in the workplace?

 

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By david5541
23rd Jun 2014 13:12

the latest fad-mindfullness for accountants?

first it was zen and the art of motor cycle maintenence as a phillosophy to life then it was Neuro linguistic programming/emotional IQ, now apparrantly mind fulness -which is budism applied to mondern life- is the answer? may be for now... but to  be honest its only the latest fad.  mindfulness isnt the only way to improve mental health- change the situation you are in, change your diet-this world offers a multiplicity of choices of answers to stress/work related issues-

 

my biggest theory about stress and accountants is that ardous exams mean accountants are not given much opportunity to develop "human relations"/social/socialising/"team leadership" skills in their formative years since they will be studying and preparing for exams in every hour of the day, when they are not working.

 

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