Running a successful business is hard. You need a balance of vision, creativity, leadership skills, empathy, drive, not to mention sleep.
But for many of us, these qualities don’t come naturally. Even when we learn a new skill that will help us in business, we often find ourselves stuck in older versions of ourselves that keep us from growing. We get distracted by problems from our past, treat people the way we were once treated or underperform or can’t break-through to that next level because of limiting belief in ourselves.
The key to unlocking our true potential in business, and in our personal lives, is growing our personal awareness. Without awareness, we get stuck in patterns and we’re burnt out before we even know we’re heading in that direction.
In this blog post, I’m going to talk about the benefits and power of meditation for business, and how turning inward can pay dividends for your bottom line.
The Power of Meditation for Business Owners
Meditation helps increase and expand your awareness. The Chopra Center defines transcendent meditation as “a simple, yet powerful tool that will take you to a state of profound relaxation, dissolve fatigue and accumulated stress, and renew your creativity and passion for life.”
There are several types of meditation, which we’ll discuss shortly, but simply put, meditation clears stress and opens up and expands your awareness, allowing you to see possibilities and answers where you once saw limits.
Not only that, but it takes you to a deeper level of consciousness below the bubbling surface of the mind that allows you to experience your true Self, the part of you that exists beyond limiting thoughts and emotional patterns.
Why is this so powerful for business owners and operators?
Because it allows us a ‘system reboot’, a way of unplugging and recharging from the mind’s constant chatter. The day-to-day stresses of business can take a heavy toll on our minds and bodies, both of which are required to run a successful business.
Meditation is a way of ‘rebooting’ our system so that we can approach our business tasks with a renewed focus, much like we would after a restful night’s sleep.
Billionaire hedge fund manager Ryan Dalio attributes Transcendental Meditation as the single biggest influence on his success. In an interview with clinical psychiatrist Dr. Norman E. Rosenthal, Dalio said meditation helped him feel like a “ninja in a fight.”
“It means when things come at you – challenges, stresses, disruptive events – you can be calm and analytical and approach them almost, like a Ninja sees things coming in slow motion so that he’s obviously in control.”
Dalio isn’t the only successful business owner to recognize meditation as a necessity for business.
Meditation is a fast-growing trend in Silicon Valley, where companies like Google have included it in their internal training programs. And Mark Bertolini, CEO of Aetna, made meditation and yoga classes available to all of his employees after he used it to relieve aches and pains from a skiing accident, reducing his employee healthcare costs by 7 percent.
Types of Meditation
There are several types of meditation that allow you to find the quiet necessary to alleviate the pressures of day-to-day stress. Some involve paying close attention to the breath and the present moment, while others focus on concepts such as loving kindness or the use of certain hand positions (mudras) to assist the meditator.
Others, like Primordial Sound Meditation (PSM®) or Transcendental Meditation (TM®), use silent mantras to take you to a deeper level of of awareness.
In PSM®, the mantras are personalized to each individual. Each mantra is calculated using mathematical formulas from an ancient Vedic tradition, and is based on the vibration of the universe at the time of your birth. Mantras help bring you into the silence that is always constant within you, allowing you to tap into infinite possibilities, potential and creativity.
These Mantras can be very effective and serve as a focal point or tool for the mind. They can effectively keep it occupied so that you slip beyond the thinking process to access stillness, and reach deeper, more expansive levels of consciousness. This allows you to hold more things in your awareness — which is necessary for the fast pace of business.
As business owners and operators, we are constantly creating, choosing and figuring out new ways to be effective. What better way to tap into the powers that help us do all of that, than by taking a few moments to seek out clarity in silence, and allowing our minds the rest it truly needs to perform?
The Benefits of Meditation
Without a strong foundation, any business will crumble. Its success begins with you.
Fortunately, we all have the capacity to succeed within us. We all possess limitless creativity and potential, it’s just a matter of clearing away the fog of stress and anxiety to uncover it.
But meditation is effective at more than just clearing stress, especially for business owners, where health is a top priority and a necessity to function. There are several other profound ways in which meditation can help us become better at servicing our clients or customers in an authentic way, that can boost your bottom line.
Meditation Deepens Your Empathy and Compassion For Others
Empathy allows us to feel what another person is feeling. Compassion on the other hand, is a willing and unselfish desire to alleviate the suffering of another person.
I think you’ll agree that both of these traits are essential in business. All businesses, after all, aim to alleviate the suffering of their customers or clients in some way, thus giving us the opportunity to understand what our customers or clients are going through, in order to more genuinely serve them.
But it accomplishes more than just that.
A study by the Scientific American on meditation found that meditating on “an unconditional feeling of benevolence and love for others” inspires an “unselfish desire to help someone who is suffering” without being emotionally overwhelmed. This means that it allows us to serve unselfishly, without running the risk of emotional burnout.
You’re Less Likely to React Quickly (and Negatively)
Because meditation allows you to be present and aware of sights, sounds, bodily sensations and inner self-talk, simultaneously, you learn to slow down before reacting or making decisions quickly.
Meditation creates pockets of space between your thoughts, allowing an open monitoring of how our thoughts inspire our actions. Instead of reacting swiftly and negatively to an angry email from a client for instance, practicing daily transcendent meditation gives you the mental space to notice when you’re about to react negatively, and gives you clarity on how you should respond.
You’ll also find that you’re less reactive towards these types of so-called ‘downturns’ in your day, because the ramble of negative thoughts associated with them, when managed, will soften and dissipate.
It Decreases Worrisome Thoughts
A fair amount of rumination is involved in running a business, and it’s not always positive.
We’re constantly wondering (or rather, worrying) whether our last consultation call will turn into a client, or if our current clients will stay on with us after their contract expires. There are far too many nights spent lying wide awake, turning around possible solutions, outcomes and ideas in our minds.
But just a few minutes of meditation per day can help with this.
Meditation allows for what is called ‘detached focus’. This means you’re aware that your mind is falling down a negative spiral, but you’re not spiraling down with it. If your mind wanders down a path of ‘what-ifs’ in terms of how your business might fail in some way or another, meditation allows you to observe those thoughts as they arrive, let them exist without judgement and watch them pass.
It Decreases Anxiety and Stress
By now we’re all familiar with how stress affects the body, by increasing the risk of heart attack, heart disease, stroke and a host of other physiological problems. But when you’re working long hours, operating under tight deadlines and feeling the pressure to perform, the build-up of anxiety and stress is almost certain.
Meditation is a fitting antidote. Not only does it work to regulate the production of cortisol, the stress hormone in the body, but it also shows up in the brain. In fact, one study from the Scientific American showed that people who were experts at meditating showed less activity in anxiety-related areas of the brain, like the amygdala.
When we’re less stressed or anxious, we increase our efficiency and ability to perform the tasks at hand. In fact, meditation teaches us that we can get more done when we’re calmly focused on the present moment, rather than preoccupied with the stress of time and deadlines.
Deepak Chopra often says that we are only stressed or anxious because we are thinking about the past or the future — when we are in the present moment, we are at peace. Transcendent meditation works to bring us to the present moment so we can deal with the matters in front of us, as they happen, rather than stressing about what might happen, or what has happened.
It Boosts Awareness of Your Unlimited Potential
One of the biggest things that keeps people stuck in business is their lack of belief in themselves. They believe their situation or lack of confidence dictates their financial future, and that they don’t have the power to change the direction of their lives or their careers.
But meditation is an open door to powerful, internal change. When you use something like PSM® to practice sitting in silence (what Chopra calls “the birthplace of happiness”), you experience your deepest connection to the Universe and all that is. From this place is where your true potential lies, not in the past or future. It’s also the place of your most intuitive thoughts and creative energy.
Accessing this field of consciousness on a daily basis brings expanded awareness to your daily activities. This way you’re able to operate on a higher level throughout the day, working at maximum efficiency because your mind is at ease.
Conclusion
In closing, there is a deep well of peace inside all of us that you will only come to know through meditation. Meditation offers the silence necessary to tap into that quiet, inner stillness we were all born with, and that we can use to our advantage in business.
As a certified Primordial Sound Meditation® instructor, I can tell you that the simple, present awareness you come to know through meditation is just as important a tool as any other in business, and will keep you nonreactive, creative and present as you scale and grow your business to new heights.
I look forward to reading your comments and if this resonates with you, it would mean so much if you would share it with others.
