Episode 60: Mindfulness In The Workplace: Improving Your Productivity With Sleep and Meditation With Tamara Levitt
It's tough to practice mindfulness in the workplace when you live in a modern world of technology and social media. In this episode, Tamara Levitt, the Head of Mindfulness at Calm, joins Amy Vetter. Tamara is responsible for the creative development of Calm's Mindfulness and meditation sessions. She likens a stressed and distracted mind to a globe filled with glitter. The more the globe twirls and whirls, the more the glitter spreads. But if you let it sit in one place, the glitter settles at the bottom. When you meditate, you settle down and allow your stressful distracting thoughts to stay put at the bottom. The result? You think more clearly and become more mindful of your actions, boosting your productivity in the workplace. Where do you start with meditation? In this interview, she discusses why people have sleep issues and how meditation can help.
---
Watch the episode here:
Listen to the podcast here:
Mindfulness In The Workplace: Improving Your Productivity With Sleep and Meditation With Tamara Levitt
I interviewed Tamara Levitt. She has worked as Head of Mindfulness at the Meditation app Calm, where she has been responsible for the creative development of Calm’s mindfulness, and meditation portfolio of audio programs. She has built Calm’s content library, writing, producing, and recorded the company's meditations. With Tamara at the home as a Head Meditation Instructor, Calm’s audience has grown to over 7 million downloads worldwide. Calm was named App of the Year by Apple in 2017. Tamara is the author of two children's books Happiness Doesn't Come from Headstands and The Secret to Clara’s Calm, both are published by wisdom publications. Additionally, Tamara is a musician, producer, and speaker. This is being published for the first time on this show. During this interview, Tamara discusses why people have sleep issues and how meditation can help.
---
This time I'm on with Tamara Levitt from Calm, and I'm going to let Tamara introduce herself and talk a little bit about what she does at Calm.
It’s great to be here. Thank you for having me on. I work as Head of Mindfulness at Calm. We are a wellness app where we started with meditation and now, we branched over into masterclasses, sleep and all things that can help support people in their emotional and mental wellbeing. I write, produce a narrate, all of our mindfulness and meditation content, and have been overseeing our growing library of audio programs.
That's such an important thing to expand upon. I might go again, instructor. I also speak on what I call the B3 method, Business, Balance, and Bliss. One of the things I talk about in there is how meditation helps you sleep. It's nice that you've branched off to that. Why did you even go that route and what kind of benefits are you seeing?
With sleep specifically?
Yeah.
There are more people who have sleep issues then are learning to meditate. Many of us in this chaotic stressed-out in the modern world where we're full of pressures and deadlines. We go to bed and just because we feel like our body is ready for sleep, it doesn't mean that our mind instantly turns off. Meditation is incredibly valuable in helping to support people, get more restful, and better sleep because it teaches us that calm our minds, before bed. I love meditating before bed that because in your day and preparing yourself or bed and focusing on the present moment helps us to prevent getting caught up in all of our anxieties about the future and ruminating about the past. When we go to bed, our mind is quieter and there's less of a fight.
Meditation also teaches us how to deepen non-reactivity. For those of us who have struggled with insomnia, myself included, it can extremely supportive because it teaches us, how to not get stressed out when we're lying in bed and we're unable to sleep. We can observe what's happening in our mind and our body and stay calm so that we're not increasing our anxiety when we're trying to sleep. In terms of the results, it's incredible. I wouldn't even believe it if I didn't receive thousands of letters from our users telling me that they're finally sleeping after years of not being able to sleep and that they're getting off sleeping pills and now putting their kids to bed is a pleasure. People love both the meditations and the sleep stories that we have, which are bedtime stories for grownups.
I think what gets missed a lot because sleep is one of those things people make a joke about not having and so forth. If you don't get the right amount of sleep, it carries into your workday in the next day, how you interact in the business situations that you're in, the stress levels you have that next day and so forth. Understanding the importance of this and meditation being a step toward that, as well as you start training your mind is important. A lot of times, mindfulness can be used as this broad term and people don't understand what that means, but it's what can help us in the workplace. How have you seen calm or other meditation teachings that you have helped people with helping them at work or in business?
Mindfulness applies the same way in regular day-to-day life, as it does in the workplace. It's about being present and fully in at the moment in a non-judgemental way, whatever moment that we're in. A few examples of ways that mindfulness can help support people in the workplace are learning to deal with stress and anxiety, which is constant where we're facing massive deadlines and pressures. We're also dealing with a lot of uncertainty because a lot of our industries are rapidly changing. Mindfulness teaches us awareness so that we're able to recognize when we're stressed. We can recognize sensations in our mind and body that often we don't pay attention to. It teaches us how to respond to our mental state so that we can treat our situation more skillfully.
We can take time to pause, calm ourselves down, and then go back to work, feeling calmer and less anxious. Another example is that we're less reactive. A lot of the time, work is incredibly stressful and we have these autopilot tendencies that we fall into and we become very reactive. We do things without taking the time to think and a perfect example are emails. I used to do this a lot where I used to feel like I needed to reply to all emails instantly. If I was upset about something, then that might escalate a situation. Mindfulness can help people and this is something I can attest to. It's helped me to learn, to pause, calm myself down, and wait until I'm able to respond to a situation more skillfully, and this improves our relationships and it prevents further conflict.
That's a big one learning how to be non-reactive in the workplace. Another big thing is productivity because we're constantly distracted by phones, our email, and social media. There are so many things that are distracting us now in our day-to-day lives. Mindfulness and meditation specifically teaches us, as we said to come back to our breath over and over, and our thoughts are going to arise frequently. We're going to learn to come back, bring ourselves back over and over. We can bring this into the workplace. We're more likely to recognize when we're swept away by social media or any other means of distraction and bring ourselves back. This improves our focus and our productivity.
When we talk about business leaders, a lot of times, this initiative is becoming, I would say trending up as far as mindfulness in the workplace and so forth. However, what I've seen is that for a business to be successful with putting this in the workplace, it has to start with the leader because without the example of a leader doing it, then it's hard to believe in from a corporate or a business perspective of everyone else looking there. What would you say to business leaders about number one, how did they even get started? It’s because they're busy people running businesses being part of a startup as well, how crazy it can be. Where do you fit it in? Secondly, what are the impacts, that the leader that you see as a benefit from this in the place?
Workplace Mindfulness: Meditation is incredibly valuable in supporting people to get more restful and better sleep because it teaches us to calm our minds before bed.
In terms of taking the time to develop mindfulness in our busy lives, I'll speak to the way that they're doing it at Google, Nike, and a lot of other big companies. They are bringing mindfulness into the workplace by having mindfulness educators come in and teach classes or using apps like Calm. At Calm, we start the day with a ten-minute meditation and we have something called the daily calm, which is a new session every single day. It's an amazing way to bring mindfulness into the workplace. When you start the day with mindfulness, then you will be mindful in your conversations and all of your interactions and in the way that you're working through the day. That is a very impactful way.
These tools weren't available many years ago and they are now. People are taking advantage of them and they're seeing big benefits. They're seeing stronger team dynamics. They're seeing better relationships with employees and with managers. There are fewer rash decisions that are being made that can damage the business because there's more skillful and decision-making. There's better productivity because people have greater concentration. One of the things that mindfulness teaches us is non-judgment and compassion in our relationship with others.
Especially leaders working with employees, having employees felt heard, and strengthening those relationships is so pivotal. It strengthens employees a sense of happiness in the workplace, and it also reduces health issues. When employees are sick, that costs money and those are some of the things. Creativity is also a big one. Mindfulness and meditation for me are some of the most direct routes to creative problem solving and creativity in general. There are massive benefits to bringing mindfulness into the workplace, less conflict, much better conflict resolution skills. That's another one for sure.
When you give your brain some space away from a problem, away from trying to come up with a new idea that you all of a sudden figure it out a lot of times. I want to go back to one thing you talked about because it's a very easy type of thing to put into play. When you said that at Calm, you do the ten-minute daily calm is what you call it. Could you go a little bit more in detail? I think that's something everyone's got ten minutes in their business and maybe talk about that journey a little bit, like getting it started, how much buy-in was there to do it? What do you do for those ten minutes so that some business owners can see if that would work for them to put it into their business as an idea?
Using an app is probably the most cost-effective way to bring mindfulness into a business. The way that we do at Calm is, we have a large meeting room that everyone meets in the morning. People can sit on chairs, they can sit on cushions, some people sit on the floor, however, people feel comfortable is perfectly fine. We have a phone that's connected to speakers and we press play. In terms of the process of meditation, the activity involves, often closing your eyes. You don't have to close your eyes, but it's a nice way to go inward and not have distractions. I sit with my eyes closed and we close our eyes and there are different types of meditation practices. In mindfulness meditation or insight meditation, the most common type of meditation that has been brought into the West involves, focusing our attention on any anchor that is sensation focus.
It could be the breath, it could be body sensations and it could be sound anything that's happening in the present moment to keep us returning to the present moment when we get lost in it. As I mentioned, we get lost in it a lot. This strengthens our ability to tune into what's going on within, it strengthens concentration, and it deepens our ability to be less reactive in life. I think of meditation often, the way that I teach that I share it with kids is if you imagined a glitter globe and you compare the glitter, that worlds and twirls around our stressful thoughts when you allow that globe to sit all the glitter settles. That's what happens with our stressful thoughts. It's incredible you after ten minutes sitting together, ending the meditation and then moving into our day together, starts the day with this calm and peaceful mind.
Do you take any time to talk afterward if anyone wants to share things about the meditation or does everyone disperse in their day when it's finished?
I am not based in San Francisco, so I'm not always there. Sometimes I'm there in the office. When I'm there sometimes people will have questions after and I'll be there. When I'm not there, they'll often share with each other. It’s a nice way to connect with people because there are so many different themes that we focus on. They're all themes that resonate with people. I like to share a lot of stories in my sessions. People will often talk about the stories or how the meditation has impacted them, or if it does bring up a question, then people will communicate and talk. It does bring people closer in relationships and all kinds of relationships. I've heard in marriages and families that meditate together, it so completely strengthens the relationship between the people that are sitting together. It's lovely. Our team has a strong team and there are amazing communication and compassion. Meditation is a big part of what's promoted that.
I would say in this time of technology as well and I liked the idea of using an app. My staff is much all remote and you could set the time on the calendar for everyone to get on at the same time when you hit play together on the app and be there together, while you're doing it, and then be able to talk after. Even if you're not physically in an office together, and this time where people can work from anywhere, I think such a great practice, to put into play, so that everybody starts their day together and intentional. I love that idea. It could be helpful for business owners out there. Any other tips that you would like to provide or examples that you think would be important for anyone listening to this?
Mindfulness doesn't happen overnight. We've got these habit patterns of the mind, these tendencies, and behaviors that we've had for years. I think setting the expectation that it's not going to happen overnight it's important, but also recognizing that the impact that meditation mindfulness can have is tremendous. Some people see the benefits immediately, but if you don't see the benefits immediately, it's okay. It doesn't mean that it's not working. All it means is that it's taking the time and often we don't even see the changes in ourselves. I've heard that there are some people that have spoken with family members and friends that have said, I haven't noticed that much of a difference and their family will say, “I have.”
Workplace Mindfulness: There are so many things that are distracting us now in our day-to-day lives. Mindfulness and meditation teach us how to improve our focus and productivity.
That's an interesting thing because we don't notice. There are so many things that we don't notice about ourselves. Other people do notice the benefits, but for me, I've seen mass and mass of benefits in many ways and in other ways, it's taken a lot of time. We need to be patient in our practice. We also need to be committed to it. Having a regular practice is important. It's more important that we're practicing regularly, even for short periods of time than to practice sporadically and not have that consistency of mindfulness throughout our week. Those are some of the suggestions that I've made.
That's great. I want to thank you so much for coming and sharing your knowledge. They will now see you but hear your voice on the app if they download it. Thank you very much.
You’re welcome. Thanks.
---
For our Mindful Moments of this episode that I had with Tamara is all about how mindfulness meditation can help with our energy and what we want to create around us. One of the topics that we had that was important was all about sleep. Too often we push that to the side of, we don't sleep well or I can't get eight hours and make a joke of it but all the studies say that women in particular need 8 to 10 hours of sleep and men needs 7 to 9 hours of sleep.
The reason that is so important is during the night, we are clearing out emotions so that when we wake up the next morning, we feel refresh. That's a lot of times why we hear when people say, "I just need a good night sleep." It's because when we wake up in the morning, we are still not holding on to the stressors, the frustrations, or things that upset us because our mind has had the opportunity to clear it out during our sleep. When we aren't sleeping well, we may not understand that energy that we're creating with the people around us because we're feeling off.
Coming up with a sleep routine is important when you're thinking about how to implement mindfulness in your day. When you show up better, then you show up better for the people around you. The other thing we talk about is how to bring this into the workplace, which is so important as well that we find ways that we can take breaks during the day to maybe 2 minutes, 5 minutes, 10 minutes, whatever it is. She talked about how they do it at Calm with having to find breaks where people can come into a room together and listen to a guided meditation or do it individually but that's a designated time.
We know when we give the brain release, we feel better during our day, get more present, be more productive as well in the work that we're doing. The power of apps such as Calm and others in this space is important to consider when we think about all of the benefits of understanding how to get still, observe our brain and our mind. Not judgment but observing why we're feeling a certain way so that we can then be intentional of how we go through our day. If we're lethargic, we can be intentional about the things that we need to do in order not to feel lethargic that day.
What do we need to do to offset that? That might be in how we eat, how we break up our calendar in the day, maybe we need to go take a walk, workout, or meditate to help us with getting through the day with the energy that we want to put out for the people around us. As part of this show, we also be having what's called B3 Break series. This is going to be a short episode that will be offered each week that will give you tips like this that you can incorporate into your day.
Some of them might be middling a meditation, talking about mindfulness, eating, and little things that you can do throughout the day to reset your mind as well. This will be a short episode so that you can feel the effects once you practice these things to see how it might change the way you go about your day or the way that you feel. I'm hoping that this interview was very helpful and maybe gave you some new insight of how you can incorporate this for yourself but also maybe for the people around you at work or at home so that you can show up in the way that you want. If you think this would be helpful to somebody, please share this show to somebody that could use this kind of inspiration to help them with creating the energy that they want during their day as well.
Important Links:
About Tamara Levitt
Tamara Levitt is an author, musician, producer, speaker, and mindfulness educator.
For the past 4.5 years, Tamara has worked as Head of Mindfulness at the Meditation app, Calm where she has been responsible for the creative development of Calm’s Mindfulness and Meditation portfolio of audio programs. She has built Calm’s content library, writing, producing and recording the company’s meditations. With Tamara at the helm as a head meditation instructor, Calm’s audience has grown to over 50 million downloads worldwide. Calm was named “App of the Year” by Apple in 2017.
Tamara is known for her authentic instruction style and heartfelt storytelling. She is responsible for creating the most popular feature in the Calm app, a unique daily meditation called “The Daily Calm.” Since its creation in 2016, she has written and narrated hundreds of Daily Calm meditations on an equal number of unique themes, topics, and lessons.
To date, the meditation sessions that she has been solely responsible for writing and recording have now been listened to by the Calm audience well over 100 million times, and her sleep stories have been listened to over 30 million times.
In December 2018, Tamara also released her Masterclass on Gratitude, which remains one of Calm’s most well-received among a dozen titles.
She is also one of Calm’s top Sleep Story writers and narrators. Among the 12 stories she has narrated, she wrote and produced 6. Titles include: ‘Ella’s Treasure’ (2016), ‘The Queen of Calm’ (2017), and ‘Luna’s Lullaby’ (2017).
Tamara has written and recorded content for partnership deals with companies such as American Airlines, Uber, RED, and MET Police.
In 2016 Tamara created all the content for The Calm Schools Initiative with the goal of helping educators introduce mindfulness into their classrooms. Under this initiative, any teacher with a K-12 classroom, anywhere in the world, can get free access to Calm’s paid subscription service. She also developed the content for “Calm College,” which is a series of guided meditations in the Calm app tailored to support the challenges of college life.
Tamara has also helped in the co-development of strategies to expand Calm into new international markets and languages. The Meditation and mindfulness sessions and programs that Tamara wrote and narrated have been translated to German. French, Spanish. They will also be translated into Korean, Brazilian Portuguese and Japanese by the end of 2019.
Tamara is an experienced and sought-after speaker with a global fanbase. She has been a guest on CTV News,” ‘City TV News,’ ‘Larry King Live,” The Morning Show,’ ‘NPR,’ and John Mayer’s Instagram show, ‘Current Mood.’ She has been featured in news sources such as ‘The New York Times,’ ‘The Globe and Mail,’ ‘Experience Life Magazine,’ ‘ZEITmagazine,’ ‘My Fitness Pal,’ and ‘Forbes.’ And she has offered keynotes at conferences such as ‘Wisdom 2.0,’ ‘THINK,’ and Arianna Huffington's Fortune Brainstorm Health Conference.’
Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share!
Join the Breaking Beliefs community today: