An Introduction to Mindfulness for Event Planners

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Event planning can be stressful.

It can involve trying to juggle the organisation of an event, along with other jobs and work you need to do for your business such as accounting or finding new clients.

Event planning also always comes with the worry of having enough people attend your event, hoping that the whole thing runs smoothly and that no major issues arise.

Mindfulness can help to increase your focus and concentration and reduce your stress, all which can help you with event planning.

So what exactly is Mindfulness?

Mindfulness in its simplest form is ‘present moment awareness’ or paying attention to what is happening right now without judgement but with kindness, compassion and acceptance.

It helps you to check-in with yourself and become more aware of what’s going on in the present moment, instead of living on autopilot 24 hours a day. Once you start to become more aware of your present moment experience, mindfulness can have the following positive effects:

You react less automatically

Perhaps your usual reaction to certain situations is with automatic anger, stress or hypersensitivity.

Mindfulness can show you a different way and help you choose how you react.

Say for example, someone lets you down a day before your event and your usual reaction is to get extremely stressed, upset or angry. Mindfulness shows you how to notice the feelings in your body and choose your words and actions carefully, which can avoid landing you in a negative or aggressive situation.

Mindfulness improves your focus and concentration

Doing mindfulness meditations helps to train your mind when it wanders.

It allows you to focus on one thing at a time, such as your breath and so helps you to identify when your mind wanders, enabling you to guide it gently back to the point of focus. You can transfer this skill to other things in life as well as meditation, such as driving, having a conversation or event planning.

Therefore, you can boost your focus and concentration on any task you have to do.

Increases your ability to be in a state of flow

Following on from improving your focus and concentration, mindfulness also moves you towards a state of flow.

Flow means being fully engaged in the task at hand, whether that’s a leisure activity or a work task. Research shows that people who are in a state of flow a lot of the time are at their happiest. It also allows them to have greater creativity and success in their work and personal lives.

How do you practice mindfulness?

Mindfulness can be practised formally and informally.

Formal mindfulness meditations are the longer sitting or lying down meditations which you can practice for 20-30 minutes. Informal mindfulness are activities you do every day that you can bring mindfulness to.

Here is an explanation of how to do a mini formal mindfulness meditation which is through mindful breathing.

1. Sit on the floor or chair and find a comfortable position. Sit with your back upright and slightly away from the back of the chair, which sends a message to your brain that you are alert and ready.

2.  Close your eyes and tell yourself that you are going to focus on your breathing.

Make a commitment that you will try to focus on your breathing as best you can and be as kind to yourself as you can if your mind wanders off (which is perfectly normal and may happen so don’t worry!)

Let go of the idea that you are trying to achieve a certain goal or outcome.

Mindfulness is about present moment experience as it happens, there are no goals here. Try and accept whatever arises as best you can.

3. Focus on your breathing. Focus on wherever is easiest for you. You can focus on feeling the breath in the back of the throat, the nose, the chest or the stomach.

Beginners often find it helps their focus to place a hand on their stomach and feel it going in and out from breathing.

4. Your mind may wander off into thoughts, dreams, hopes for your event, to-do lists and planning.

Just gently guide it back to focus on your breath when you notice your mind has wandered off. Try not to get frustrated if your mind keeps wandering off.

Try gently smiling to yourself if this keeps happening.

5. After ten minutes, open your eyes. Gently stretch if you need to and carry on with your day.

Informal mindfulness can be brought to any daily activity such as eating, showering, cooking or cleaning. Just start with focusing on your breath and then engaging in your present-moment experience when you participate in a daily activity.

For example, when you eat, take the time to fully focus on the experience of eating alone.

Put down the newspaper and turn off the TV.

Feel the sensations in your arm as you lift the food to your mouth and study the food.

Make observations about weight, texture, smell, any sound it may make and the taste and how it feels in your mouth.

Really connect with your present moment experience.

If your mind wanders away from the experience, just gently guide it back to whatever you were focusing on.

Tips on how mindfulness can help with planning your event

Mindfulness is the opposite of multitasking.

It means to focus on one task at a time with present moment awareness.

It can help with the quality of your work because multitasking doesn’t allow you to fully focus on each task you are doing.

You may be running a business and dealing with the day to day workload of it, while also trying to plan the event. Break it down so it doesn’t feel so overwhelming. Allocate a few hours to emails and just use the time allocated and don’t get caught up in secondary things, they can wait.

Prioritise each task and in between jobs, try a little informal meditation such as bringing mindfulness to a tea break or a formal mini meditation such as mindful breathing.

End your days with a formal mindfulness meditation or a sport that you can fully focus on and engage with, so you can give yourself a break from focusing on your event.

Finally, remember to try and enjoy the experience if you can!

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