Good Neighbor Podcast: Cobb County
Bringing together local businesses and neighbors of Cobb County. Good Neighbor Podcast hosted by Milli M. helps residents discover and connect with your local business owners in and around Cobb County, Georgia.
Is your business serving the residents of Cobb County? Then, we need to talk! Visit gnpCobbCounty.com to schedule your free interview.
Good Neighbor Podcast: Cobb County
E74: Corporate Meditation: The Secret Weapon for Business Growth
Discover the transformative power of mindfulness in the workplace with Diane Chrestman, founder of Mindatory Corporate Mindfulness Training and experienced psychotherapist. Fifteen years of clinical practice led Diane to a powerful realization: mindfulness meditation delivers exceptional benefits not just for individual clients, but potentially for entire organizations.
What makes corporate mindfulness such a powerful tool? The science is compelling. When employees experience stress, their brains operate from primitive regions incompatible with creative thinking and problem-solving. By implementing mindfulness practices, companies like Google, LinkedIn, and Aetna have documented remarkable results: approximately 30% reductions in workplace stress, anxiety, and depression. As Diane explains, "When you're feeling not stressed and concentrated, that's when the problem solving, the creativity, that's when those mental functions happen."
Many misconceptions surround meditation practices. Contrary to popular belief, enjoying a crossword puzzle or listening to music doesn't constitute meditation. True mindfulness training happens when we learn to quiet our minds during moments of discontent or boredom. With humans experiencing between 60,000-75,000 thoughts daily—that's 22 million thoughts per year—learning to still the mind creates space for clearer thinking and better decision-making. This translates to tangible workplace benefits: fewer conflicts, reduced HR complaints, and employees who arrive energized rather than depleted.
Ready to transform your workplace culture through evidence-based mindfulness practices? Diane works with organizations of all types, particularly small businesses up to 500 employees in the Atlanta area and beyond. Contact her at 770-378-7703 or visit mindatory.net to discover how these simple yet powerful practices can create profound changes in your organization's performance and employee wellbeing. Your team deserves more than just productivity—they deserve to thrive.
This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Millie M.
Speaker 2:Hello everybody, welcome to the Good Neighbor Podcast. I'm your host, millie M. Are you looking for a corporate mindfulness training that will help improve employee wellness, productivity and reduce stress? Well, one might be closer than anything. Today I have the pleasure of introducing your good neighbor, diane Cressman of Mindatory Corporate Mindfulness Training. How are you, diane?
Speaker 3:Nellie hi, Thank you for having me. I'm doing great Thank you Absolutely.
Speaker 2:We are so excited to learn all about you and your business. Tell us more about Mindatory Corporate Mindfulness.
Speaker 3:Yes, so I'm a psychotherapist. I've been in private practice in Gwinnett County for 15-ish years and out of all the therapeutic approaches that I've studied and trained with and that sort of thing, I have found mindfulness and meditation to be the most beneficial for my clients, and then, from a personal level, it's been by far the best thing I've done for my mental health.
Speaker 3:Just yeah, just quieting my mind, still making my mind, still I make better decisions, my mood is much better, yeah, so I decided to start mandatory corporate mindfulness training for a couple of reasons. One I really wanted to bring these practices to a larger audience, like bigger than just the single client that walks through my door, client that walks through my door. And then I also noticed that there has just been a greatly increasing interest in these practices in the corporate setting. So it started. I guess Google was the first organization that really started implementing it. Yeah, large organizations LinkedIn and Aetna and SAP, so a lot of different industries so healthcare, education have all brought these practices and, yeah, they're reporting.
Speaker 3:I mean, you know I'm a fan of these practices, but boy, in my opinion it's a no brainer. Like the advantages, the benefits to the cost ratio. Like it to me, it's just a no brainer. But like the advantages, the benefits to the cost ratio, like it to me, it's just a no brainer if you're a business owner.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and I think just in general, it's hard to convince people to just sit and be still, but the advantages of it are profound. So how did you decide to transition what you knew to work on an individual level, to say this can help businesses. What made you get into that?
Speaker 3:I started, you know, seeing other businesses, seeing businesses implemented, and I started seeing the interest rise and then there started to be case studies to to come out showing the efficacy of these practices and also showing the return on investment. So you know, some of the numbers are like 30 percent reduction in stress and about the same numbers around 30 percent in perceived levels of anxiety and depression at work.
Speaker 2:Nothing else. Focus, like you can focus on the task at hand.
Speaker 3:Look it's like I don't like to me, you know you don't. You don't have to be, you don't have to, you know, be a professional mental health professional. To just look at your own experience, your own experience, like when you're feeling not stressed and concentrated, that's when the problem solving, the creativity, that's when those mental functions happen. It's not when we're stressed. When we're stressed out, we're actually or you know, have feeling anxiety. We're actually in a very primitive part of the brain. You know, without getting all you know too much psychobabble here, but whenever we are stressed out and trying to work, those two things just can't coexist. You're in a primitive part of the brain, the brain stem been around for a long, long time, and when you're trying to access those processes like creative thinking and that type of thing, we need to be in this part of the brain, the prefrontal cortex and the newer parts of the brain. So the two things are just not physically compatible, you know from a neural forehead, I'm more creative than most.
Speaker 2:There you go, love it yes well, talk about some of the myths or misconceptions about your industry or what you do in particular oh, that's oh.
Speaker 3:Thanks for asking that question, because I, when folks come in to see me, like in my individual practice, I I ask everybody do you have a meditation practice and a mindfulness practice? And I've gotten some. I've gotten some answers that are like no, that's not meditation. I think one answer I got is yeah, I meditate when I'm doing the crossword puzzles. And I can see where someone would get confused, because when you're doing something a crossword puzzle or painting or something like that, anything you enjoy it's easy for the mind to slow down. See, when you're directing your attention to something that you enjoy doing, the mind will naturally slow down and become concentrated because you're interested in that thing, right? So being able to slow down and concentrate your mind when you're doing something you love to do is not mindfulness training. That's just natural right. That's just natural right. Trying to slow down your mind and concentrate your mind whenever things are very quiet or boring, when we're feeling that very common energy of feeling discontent like that, that's when. That is when you're going to benefit from the practice.
Speaker 3:Another thing is I hear this one a lot is folks think they're meditating when they're listening to music. And again, you know, I can see, you know there, if we were to put these two things on a Venn diagram, you know meditation benefits and benefits of listening to music you love, yeah, there would be some crossover. You know, you feel more at peace, you feel more relaxed, you feel happy, but I wouldn't say that it's meditation. So because mindfulness and meditation have become such buzzwords like when anything becomes very popular, there tends to be get a lot of confusion in the practice. So I think that's one of the misconceptions. Yeah, in the practice. So I think that's one of the misconceptions. And I think another misconception is that organizations think that this is going to have to be a big, long, complicated training. It is really pretty simple. I mean, again, the return on investment to me for this training is just, it's a pretty no-brainer.
Speaker 2:I can only imagine how many also like conflicts can be avoided or, you know, hr complaints going down or just a whole series of unexpected benefits because people are generally, like you said, less stressed, more happy, more productive, things of that nature. And I definitely can relate to that idea of that restlessness and that boredom, because I know there are times where I meditate and my body is saying there's something else you could be doing right now. Yes, like you just feel like you're not being productive and I was like that thought is the point of this meditation is that I have to quiet that spirit of I always have to be doing something.
Speaker 3:Yes, yes and yes, that discontentment, yeah, that one bites, that. One bites me pretty frequently too. And yeah, and, and you know the paradox of it is I think this is so interesting is like, the more still my mind becomes, the more creative it felt like the like. The more still my mind becomes, the more creative it feel like the, the like, the more expansiveness I have in my problem solving. You know, and um, you know some some psychotherapists.
Speaker 3:Uh well, the, the, the estimates are that we have between 60 and 75,000 thoughts a day. You know many of them, I know that's. Many of them are subconscious. For example, you're wearing, you know the color of your sweater or you're you know like. They're very subconscious, but still that's a lot of thinking. That's 22 million thoughts a year.
Speaker 3:That is just a lot of stuff happening in our mind, right and um, what I tell folks is that they're, you know your thoughts, and, and my thoughts are somewhere along this continuum of being absolutely wrong to partially correct, to every now and then you might get one that reflects absolute truth, like this very expansive way of understanding and seeing things, but I, you know, I think most of them fall between this thing of wrong and you know somewhere in the middle. But to your point, yeah, if I can recognize that there might be some, some misconception and you know, I just feel like you were rude to me or I just feel like, whatever you know, if I, if I can see that this interaction that we just had, that didn't make me feel good or happy or whatever, that that might be due in part to some of my thinking.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Right, it might not reflect absolute reality.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Right, it might not reflect absolute reality. Yes and yeah, that does help HR. Yeah, yeah, when we can have those insights.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so who are your target customers and how do you attract them? It sounds like small businesses.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:All sorts, but you know who are your target customers yeah, I'm, I'm.
Speaker 3:I prefer right now small businesses because I don't have the infrastructure. So you know, up to say, 500 folks. And the Atlanta area-ish I'm also trying to hit. There's a technology corridor in the Carolinas I'm trying to hit and some, yeah, as far as industries, though, there's, you know, all industries. The medical industry is really starting to take notice. Education I'm hoping. I'm really plugging away, I'm knocking on doors. In education, I, yeah, I just have the greatest respect for teachers you know, and the teachers and the students need it for sure.
Speaker 3:Yeah, boy, and, and you know, I just I feel really confident it would start their day off a little bit with a little bit more energy, If you know, if some of these practices were, were the way they started the day, so yeah, have you ever thought about doing your own podcast?
Speaker 2:It sounds like you just have a wealth of information on teaching people about stress and you know, and their mindfulness, and so is that something that you've ever thought about.
Speaker 3:I have batted that idea around a little bit, but I don't know. I start like thinking about where you would put the rubber to the road and it just like becomes too much. My mind starts racing.
Speaker 2:Oh, what is it? Paralysis by over analysis.
Speaker 3:That's my.
Speaker 2:I get it, I get it yeah. Let's just switch gears really quickly. Can you describe a hardship or a life challenge that you overcame and how it made you stronger?
Speaker 3:Boy, yes, I can. So when I was in grad school, millie, and we were learning how to do assessments right for clients, and there was something that we did called adverse childhood experiences. So that's when you're like doing an assessment with somebody how much trauma they had. And boy, I was always the highest A score in my class. I had a lot, I clicked a lot of the squares and gosh, this was just so interesting how this happened.
Speaker 3:When I realized my A score was so high, something in me you could call it ego kind of clicked and I thought, oh, I'm broken, I'm a victim. Yep, and boy, that became like my thing right, and not only seeing myself as a victim. But where it got so interesting was at some point I thought, oh, I can use this. At some point I thought, oh, I can use this. I'm going to use this because if I can convince you that I'm a victim say, we're in a relationship and I can convince you that I'm broken, you should not have any expectations as far as my morality, my reliability, my emotional regulation. Like, if I can convince you how broken I am and you have expectations of me, that's your bad. No accountability, no accountability.
Speaker 3:And boy, I milked. That I did, and it was time on my cushion, it was time on my cushion that made me see that. And what a blessing, what a blessing that has been, because, yeah, I don't see it that way anymore. Yeah, these things happen, and yeah it was. It was yeah rough, but you know, learning, hardships and growth have to coexist and and so now I mean I wouldn't have even been able to share this five years ago without tearing up yeah but I'm not identified by it now.
Speaker 2:I love that because and that's something that I never even thought about I know sometimes people take on the victim role for attention or sympathy, but I never thought of it in terms of I can't be responsible for any of my decisions because I am a victim. So I'm glad you were able to grow and move past that. Can you just quickly tell our listeners one thing you want them to always remember about Mindatory?
Speaker 3:I guess that, like it's I guess I just want to keep kicking this can down the road that it's a no brainer, as far as easy to implement, a return on investment and can really be beneficial to organizations and, you know, have work, be a place where people feel, you know, not just at the end of the, not drain the moment they walk in and the draining just goes on through the eight hours, but you walk in through the doors and it feels like you're pumped up in a way, you know and yeah. So that's what I want folks to remember and to also just you know, really want to recommend that you learn how to do these practices. There's many different ways to practice. Many, many.
Speaker 2:Absolutely Making the workplace more of a place of peace. I love that. So those small business owners that are listening and they want to get their employees on board, how can they reach you?
Speaker 3:They can call me 770-378. 7, 7, 0, 3, 7, 8. Or they can go to my website.
Speaker 2:Mindatorynet yeah, perfect. Thank you so much for joining us and being on the show. We wish you and your business.
Speaker 3:Oh, it was my pleasure. Thanks for having me, millie. Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to gnpcobbcountycom. That's gnpcobbcountycom, or call 470-470-4506.