Carl Jung at the Office: 3 Things to Monitor for Well-being and Success

Posted on February 22, 2023 by Josh Simon, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.

What if all the world’s problems and solutions were inside of you, just you, and all you had to do was be mindful to that? What would the world look like if we were all mindful to ourselves? What even is mindfulness? Specifically, the term mindfulness is described by doing whatever you are doing, but with three essential elements. The action must be done (Shapiro, 2006):

On purpose (intention)
With attention
With a particular attitude of interest, awareness, and presence

These three elements are the three-legged barstool of mindfulness, but we can take that barstool and put it in almost any room and sit on it. Without spending an entire career looking at nothing but applications of mindfulness, let us just focus on an area that does not get much attention: mindfulness in our relationships with ourselves and how this can benefit us at work.

Thousands of self-help books talk about having better relationships at work and getting more fulfilment at a job, but the juiciest of these authors are somewhat difficult to read and yet, the most insightful. Carl Jung comes to mind here.

The beauty of Jung’s writings is that they study the importance of “individuation”, our ongoing process of getting in touch with the unconscious self, “inner child”, “inner self”, or whichever term is most amenable. By thinning the line between our conscious and unconscious selves through practice and learning, we become more whole and more uniquely ourselves. Though the process is lifelong, there are three things, according to Jung, that anyone can do as a first step, and they are quite helpful when put into practice with the office in mind:

Monitor your MOOD

A mood is generally defined as a series of similar emotions that happen together and stay that way for a time. Moods can last minutes, days, or longer. Stress and uncomfortable situations often arise when someone is in a mood and does not know it, and while this seems silly, it is surprising to learn how many of us simply cannot name our mood on demand whenever asked. However, it is probably easy to imagine what would happen if we all went around pointing out each other’s moods to one another. That would be the opposite of a good time, and would probably not result in better moods or increased well-being!

Instead of pointing them out to each other, here is the concept: you are responsible for actions resulting from your own mood, and therefore it is your responsibility to be aware of your mood as often as possible. Sure, there will be times when we slip or get messy, but if we all noticed our own moods and took action accordingly, the world would show fast improvement. By monitoring your current mood, you will be able to get a handle on it before it sneaks up and does something you do not want.

Listen to your THOUGHTS

Thoughts pass through our head constantly, like birds chirping in the background. We do not really know why our brains do that, and trying to stop these thoughts is like trying to look into your own eyes without a mirror or bite your own teeth. Perhaps the point is not to stop them at all? Jung contended that these thoughts can sometimes contain information that is valuable to us. The unconscious mind is constantly pushing up ideas and thoughts which often sink back down again below our consciousness as we push them aside and ignore them. Pushing them back is necessary to be able to function as a sane human being, but in the quiet times, it is good to practice listening to them and observing them.

Doing this for a little bit each day can produce insights and ideas you did not know you had! Too often today we are on our phones or watching some other screen. We rarely have time to be bored anymore, and boredom time was important for listening to our thoughts and gaining the insights from them. You may encounter revelations about relationships with your coworkers or you may wind up solving a problem that was intractable when you tried forcing yourself to think about it. Jung believed that daydreaming in times of boredom was like making a direct phone call to the unconscious.

Pay attention to IMAGES

When most people think about “thoughts”, they think about words, but brains also think in images. In fact, some people can ONLY think in images even as adults. Others cannot make images at all in their heads. For the people with images in their brains, the message is the same as monitoring your thoughts: paying attention to these can give you clues to what your unconscious is up to and help you solve problems with relationships or other work-related issues.

Here is the addition on images: the images you see on the outside, out in the world, are also helpful when they have meaning to you. There is a lot of synchronicity out there between the things we see and the things we are thinking about or going through. The point of the synchronicity, according to Jung, is that the unconscious mind is what gives it meaning. Without that, you would get nothing from it. However, the meaning we get from seeing images that correlate to the things we are feeling and thinking are also potentially helpful in pointing the way forward. These images can be useful in the same way as monitoring mood and thoughts.

Now what?

There is one important note in regard to all three of these items: at no point does Jung suggest fighting them or trying to change them forcibly, nor does he suggest blindly following them without care for their potential harm. The unconscious self is much like a child. It will be more cooperative if one befriends it. That may require some redirection from time to time, but anyone with a toddler can tell you that outright denial or force is rarely a successful tactic at dealing with it. By simply monitoring mood, thoughts, and images you become practiced at understanding your actions and you develop a good relationship with yourself. Forced change is not part of that equation, but long-term change is a strong possibility.

If you would like some help thinking about these things from various perspectives, I can work on that with you. I am a certified personal development coach and can be reached for an appointment at spiral-coaching.com.

Reference
Shapiro, Shauna L., et al. “Mechanisms of mindfulness.” Journal of clinical psychology 62.3 (2006): 373-386.