Note: This article is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any medical conditions and is not a substitute for consulting with your personal healthcare professionals.

Life can be stressful. And while, as humans, we are hardwired to be able to deal with some stress, and even to weather occasional periods of intensity, when stress is prolonged, it can have serious consequences for our physical health, our sense of well-being, and our overall quality of life.

And when stressful events are compounded—when problems and worries and heartbreak pile up—the impact on our physical and mental health can be severe. Chronic stress can wreak havoc on our lives, greatly increasing our risk for anxiety, depression, insomnia, high blood pressure, and heart disease. It can even lower our immunity.

Unfortunately we have little warning of when stressful life events will happen.

Even if your life is pretty balanced and you feel capable of managing upsets when they occur, every one of us, at some point, will be challenged to our limit. We will feel overwhelmed. We will struggle to cope with our emotions, with all we have to do, with everyday life in general.

That’s why learning to manage stress is so important for thriving in life. And doing so through mindfulness training not only helps you navigate stressful events with greater skill and ease, but it also provides you with important life tools, such as:

• Greater self-awareness, which leads to better understanding of what we need at any moment and particularly when we start to feel stressed.
• Increased capacity for compassion and forgiveness toward others and toward ourselves.
• More resilience, which makes it easier to overcome hardship.
• Strengthened ability to stay centered and grounded when things are difficult.
• Feeling more present and awake in the present moment while also experiencing a greater sense of acceptance and relaxation overall.

Mindfulness meditation has been found to calm the stress response, commonly known as “fight-or-flight.”

The stress response occurs when the part of your brain called the amygdala perceives a threat. In response, a flood of hormones, including adrenaline and cortisol, are released, causing a range of physiological changes, such as increased respiration and blood flow to your extremities and to your brain, preparing your muscles to go into action and heightening your senses, among other potential life-preserving measures.

When the threat subsides, the parasympathetic nervous system kicks in to slow these reactions and bring your body back to a baseline state.

But the stress response isn’t just a reaction to an obvious threat. It can be triggered by anything your brain perceives as a threat—like the psychological stress of feeling overwhelmed, or physical discomfort, such as chronic pain. Regardless of the cause, the brain and the body react in the same way, to prepare you to fight, freeze, or flee.

Technology has impacted every aspect of our lives. In so many ways, these advances are great. But technology has also ushered in a state of constant connectivity, largely displacing the natural cycles of high productivity balanced by periods of rest. Now we’re always on, always connected—and our bodies and minds don’t get a chance to fully rest and restore. This just makes us feel more stressed and overwhelmed.

Despite these impacts, there’s a perception that stress equals productivity; that in order to succeed, we have to be on, all the time.

Yet when we’re busy we tend to become frazzled, lose focus, and to start multitasking, a process that might seem efficient but that actually makes us up to 40% less productive and more prone to making mistakes.

Research shows that mindfulness training helps us get tasks done more efficiently, with less mistakes, and without the backdrop of heightened stress. Mindfulness makes us more clear headed and focused on what we’re doing. It also makes us less distracted.

In the workplace, researchers find that mindfulness meditation training decreases burnout and improves employees’ sense of well-being, both of which are important for job satisfaction.

It’s not a stretch to say that mindfulness is an essential ally in busy times and for busy people.

So, how, exactly, does one go about practicing mindfulness to help reduce stress and stay productive? Here are some tips to help get you started.