5 Ways Meditation Can Help Business Leaders Boost Their Performance
Picture the scene in your mind’s eye…
You are in a tranquil, peaceful garden. Sitting cross-legged in the soft grass, your hands are on your lap, eyes closed, slow steady breathing. In the distance you hear the sounds of birds chirping and gentle bells softly ringing. As you continue slowly breathing you go deeper and deeper into a zen-like state. As you slowly reach perfect oneness with the universe, you understand the true meaning of life, and you slip into nirvana.
Ok, Ok…let’s reel this thing back into reality. Yes, this is about meditation and it’s benefits. But not THAT type of meditation. Instead we are going to talk about a type of meditation that is more practical than spiritual, more like an exercise than an escape, and one that if practiced routinely can help you become more successful in your professional (and personal) life.
When most people think of meditation, they think of spiritual or religious forms of mediation. Endless hours of sitting quietly in search of some deeper meaning or deeply religious experience. But there is a form of meditation that is much more practical and concerned with connecting you to your present moments than escaping to the astral plane.
The type of meditation I am speaking of is Mindfulness Meditation.
What it is Mindfulness Meditation?
So what exactly is Mindfulness Meditation? Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindfulness) provides a good working definition:
“Mindfulness is the psychological process of bringing one’s attention to experiences occurring in the present moment, which one can develop through the practice of meditation and through other training.”
In a nutshell, Mindfulness is about awareness. It is about pulling your attention into the present moment instead of drifting off back into the past or ahead into the future. Mindfulness Meditation is a simple meditation practice that trains you to focus your attention on the present moment. This is done through focusing your attention on an anchor point, typically the breath. As your mind drifts, which it inevitably will do, you objectively note that your mind has drifted and pull your attention back to the breath.
So a simple Mindfulness Meditation practice would look something like this…
You find a spot and time to sit quietly. You focus your attention on your breath. You do not force your breath, just let it come and go naturally focusing on the sensation of how it feels as you inhale and exhale. When your mind drifts away from focusing on your breath, you objectively note that you are aware your mind has drifted, and you re-focus on your breath.
Sounds simple right? I mean, how could something so simple as focusing on your breath help you become a more successful leader? Yes, starting a Mindfulness Meditation practice is easy, and it has a number of benefits that you can start realizing fairly quickly that will boost your performance as a leader.
The Benefits of Mindfulness Meditation
Mindfulness meditation has a wide range of benefits from physical to emotional. Here are 5 benefits of mindfulness that can help make you a more effective leader.
“Create The Space”
You are driving down the highway and a driver in the other lane unexpectedly swerves into your lane, cutting you off. What’s your reaction? There is a pretty good chance, that like most people, your first response would be anger. A stimulus happens to you (you are cut off) and you respond (you get angry). For most people there is no space between the stimulus and the response. Something happens to them and they immediately respond, without taking time between the stimulus and the response to decide the best reaction for all parties involved. Stephen Covey defines this concept perfectly in his personal development classic The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
“In the space between stimulus (what happens) and how we respond, lies our freedom to choose. Ultimately, this power to choose is what defines us as human beings. We may have limited choices but we can always choose. We can choose our thoughts, emotions, moods, our words, our actions; we can choose our values and live by principles. It is the choice of acting or being acted upon.” ― Stephen R. Covey
Mindfulness Meditation is the most powerful tool I know of to help us create this space. It helps us to slow things down and look at the world more objectively, therefore giving us a space, even if just a second or two, to pause after the stimulus and choose our response. Mindfulness Meditation helps you to notice the world around you instead of reacting to it.
Now let’s picture the getting cut off scene again for someone who has been practicing mindfulness meditation. The car swerves and cuts you off. Instead of immediately getting angry they may say: “Oh I notice someone has cut me off, they must be in a much bigger hurry than me. Maybe they have a sick child or spouse in the car. Maybe they are running late for work and have been threatened to be fired the next time they are late. Maybe they have something much more important going on and I am in their way. I’ll let them pass, no big deal.” Of course you may notice that it is a young driver who is driving and texting at the same time and not paying attention. You may choose to get upset about this. But the key point is you CHOSE you response, you did not immediately react. This is a super power.
The ability to “create the space” to be objectively in the moment, and not immediately fly into an emotional response is powerful. Imagine how much less stressful your life would be, and how much more effective you would be as a leader, if you could more calmly be in the moment, objectively and rationally looking at a situation and choosing your reaction instead of being emotionally charged.
Make Decisions More Effectively
Because Mindfulness Meditation helps us to “create the space” and see things more objectively, it helps us become better decision makers. Instead of rushing headlong into a rash decision, we have the ability to pause and consider our alternatives. All the way from the most urgent decisions we need to make (“The smoke alarm just went off, what should I do next?”) to the most mundane (“What should I have for lunch today?”) mindfulness can help us pause and consider our options instead going with our first impulse. For business leaders this is critical. How many bad business decisions have been made because the leader reacted based on their first impulse vs. pausing to consider their options? Trusting your instinct is a critical quality for a leader, but your instinct should be driven by objective response vs. emotional impulse.
Decrease Procrastination
As mindfulness allows us to take a step back and observe our thoughts, we can more easily identify when we are in a negative habit or pattern. Instead of being “tricked” by thoughts that justify a certain undesired habit, we can see them for what they are and choose a healthier course of action. This applies to just about every negative habit under the sun, but for business leaders this can be particularly beneficial to overcome procrastination.
Let’s say you have a very important project you need to start working on to meet your deadline. You arrive at work with the intention of diving in but instead your brain tells you; “You better check your email to see if any important messages came through.” So you go into your email, just to take a quick peek, and next thing you know it is noon and you spent your whole morning chasing email instead of working on that critical project.
Mindfulness helps make us “aware” of these defeating thoughts and patterns allowing us to face them more objectively and make better choices. Take the above example with mindfulness applied. You get to work to start on a critical project and the thought passes to check your email first. Now, there is a follow up thought: “I am aware that I am attempting to procrastinate.” Instead of just falling right into procrastination you have given yourself a choice to recognize the thought for what it is and instead, dive into the project.
Become a Better Leader
Strong leaders are calm in the face of chaos. While others around them panic, act rashly, or freeze; a great leader calmly looks over a situation and decides the next best course of action. Again, they DECIDE, they do not REACT. Practicing mindfulness meditation gives you that ability to pause and evaluate a situation before you react. People will see this in you and recognize your ability to remain calm and lead. Your organization, your community, and, most importantly, your family, desperately need good leaders who can help steer the ship in the right direction. Practicing Mindfulness Meditation can help to slow things down, provide you the space to objectively evaluate a situation, and lead with purpose and compassion.
Like Your Job More
One of my favorite sayings is “every time you point a finger at someone you have three pointing right back at you.” Try it. Point you finger and notice that three fingers point back at you. I believe this applies to our job (among many other things in life). We point our finger at our jobs saying; “The culture here sucks”, “My boss is a jerk”, “This industry is too tough.” But are we honest enough to look at our part in this? What am I doing to create a more positive culture in my team? Am I being impatient with my boss? Am I proactively getting involved with making positive change in my industry or being passive? A lot of people “job hop”, thinking the next company, job, or career will bring them the satisfaction they are looking for. But the ability to love the job you are currently in is up to you and within your grasp.
Again, Mindfulness to the rescue. As Mindfulness Meditation helps us look at the world more objectively, we more clearly see the part we play in creating our own lives. It helps make us accountable to the quality of our lives, including our jobs. As Mindfulness takes hold and helps us create the space, it allows us to ask follow up questions. “I hate my job!” is now followed up by: “Why do I hate my job?”, “What can I do to improve the situation?”, “Is it the job, or me, that is causing this displeasure?”
Look, a lot of job situations are toxic, or the time has come for any number of reasons to make a career change. By all means, make the change. But make sure you have evaluated your role in the need for the change and are not expecting a magic bullet in a new job. Mindfulness gives us this objectivity to learn and accept what we can do to improve our current job (and love it more) or decide the time has come to make a change.
Tips for Practicing Mindfulness Meditation
Ok, so we understand what Mindfulness Meditation is and how it can benefit us. But how do we start practicing it? Our lives are so busy. Between the job, the family, and other commitments, how do we possibly squeeze time in to start a meditation practice? Well, this is where we see the benefits of mindfulness again. Mindfulness meditation is extremely easy to practice and fit into your daily schedule, no matter how busy it is.
Here are some tips to get you started on a Mindfulness Meditation practice:
Use Headspace — I am a HUGE fan of the Headspace app. I recommend that anyone getting started with a Mindfulness practice use Headspace. It is a wonderful way to start practicing Mindfulness Meditation. It provides a super easy pathway to get yourself started. Because it is an app on your phone, you can practice Mindfulness just about anywhere: in your home, at work, on your commute to work. The sessions are guided by Andy Puddicombe (@andypuddicombe (https://twitter.com/andypuddicombe) who does an excellent job of teaching mindfulness and how we can apply it in our lives.
Start Small — The beauty of mindfulness is that you can gain big benefits by doing it in small batches. You can start with sessions as short as ten minutes. One of the great things about the Headspace app is you can set a timer for how long you want the session to be. You can set the timer to be as short as you feel comfortable with and build up from there.
Use guided meditations to start — Headspace provides guided meditations, which I find to be very useful. Even if you decide Headspace is not for you, there are tons of guided Mindfulness Meditations available on YouTube or through other apps. Especially when you are getting started, a guided meditation is extremely important to help you keep your focus a little. I find when I just close my eyes and breathe for a period of time my “monkey mind” can take over. A guided meditation keeps me a little more on track and benefit more from the time I spend meditating.
Choose a Time to Practice — One of the great things about mindfulness meditation is that is can be practiced just about any time and any place. But to get the habit started, it is best to choose a time for your mindfulness practice. Personally, I do it at lunch. Typically, I can find the time to take 15 minutes at lunch to do a Headspace session. And I get the added benefit that it “resets” me for the back half of my day.
Make it a priority — We need to make our personal health and well-being a top priority if we want to truly be successful leaders. We simply cannot give our best to our organization and the people we serve if we are stressed, agitated, or worst of all, burnt out. Jim Rohn said “Learn to work harder on yourself than you do on your job.” Tim Ferris says “Put on your oxygen mask first.” Both of these thought leaders are telling us to take care of ourselves first, because we cannot help others, or give our best, if we are not well. Prioritize your well-being; practicing Mindfulness Mediation is a great way to do this.
Beating the Two Biggest Excuses
Typically, the two biggest excuses you hear from people resisting meditation are: “I don’t have time.”, or, “My mind races too much to meditate.” Fortunately both of these excuses are pretty easily quashed by Mindfulness Meditation.
First, Mindfulness Meditation lends itself well to short periods of practice. You can literally gain benefits with as little as 10 minutes per session. The beauty of the Headspace app is that it will let you set a timer based on how long you are ready to practice. You can set your timer to 10 minutes to start and work your way up from there. Everyone can find 10 minutes in their day. First thing in the morning, at lunchtime, on a break, before you go to sleep; there are several times during the day you can squeeze in a 10-15 minute meditation session. Personally, I meditate at lunch. I close my door, throw on my headphones, and listen to a 15 minute Headspace session. Remember, the more you feel you are too busy to meditate, the more you may benefit from meditation.
Secondly, it is ok for your mind to be busy during Mindfulness Meditation. The purpose of the exercise is to note that your mind is busy and bring your attention back on the breath. This is the “repetition” of the exercise. Just like in a squat, you lower yourself and push yourself up to complete a “rep”. A “‘rep” in mindfulness meditation is to objectively note your are thinking, and pull your focus back to the breath. You have just completed a rep. You may do 10 reps or 100 reps during each session, either is ok. Actually the more you note you are thinking and pull your focus back to the breath, the more beneficial the exercise, because you did more reps.
In Conclusion
So there you have it. A brief primer to Mindfulness Meditation, its benefits, and some tips on how to practice. Again, meditation can be looked at as a practical exercise to help improve your daily performance. Making the time in your life to meditate will reap beneficial results. Your mileage may vary, but you will see benefits.
Remember, mindfulness meditation is like an exercise. You need to perform it numerous times to slowly see the benefits over time. You are not going to go on a one mile jog today and be ready to run a marathon tomorrow. But if you consistently run, you will get better and better. Soon you will be able to run a 5k. Then a half marathon, then a full marathon.
The same thing applies with Mindfulness. You will not do a 10 minute Headspace meditation session then be at total peace for the rest of the day. But over time, you will find that you are responding to situations much more gracefully, you are finding your days to be less stressful, and you are noticing the world around you more and more.
Oh, and by the way, if you do continue a meditation practice you very well may grow your level of spiritual connectedness and fulfillment. If you choose, it can be a more fulfilling experience and help you find deeper meaning to your life. But that is just an added bonus…
