During one of our weekly meetings with the team, we started a new practice that is now becoming increasingly used both by sportsmen, entrepreneurs, students, etc. We are talking about Meditation.
Have you ever meditated?
If you own or run a business, you know how stressful it can be. Between managing your day-to-day obligations and bearing ultimate responsibility for the success of your enterprise, the associated stresses can become overwhelming. So much depends on you: at work you need to see to your product, process, clients and employees; at home you may have family, friends or other situations that demand your time.
When you’re fulfilling so many commitments, it’s easy to start letting tasks slip to the side. As your efforts wane, so will your results. When this happens, self-doubt begins to surface. You might start wondering:
Will I ever accomplish my business goals?
Will running my business ever get any easier?
Meditation and Mindfulness ameliorates depression, high blood pressure, pain, stress reduction and anxiety, just to name a few.
Meditation is a method of inquiry to meet your internal wisdom.
Each of us has an inner core complete with all the understanding and self-compassion we need to stay peaceful and focused. Instead of being tossed about by our stress, meditation helps us learn how to simply observe our stressful thoughts. By detaching ourselves from these thoughts and making ourselves into observers, we can watch them float by like a piece of driftwood floating along a river. You see it and know it’s there, but it has no real effect on you.
This type of detachment allows us to acknowledge our thoughts and feelings without being controlled by them. Once those thoughts can no longer influence the way we think, we develop a deeper understanding of and love for ourselves, which we carry over into our self-care practices, personal relationships and business relationships.
HOW TO PRACTICE MEDITATION FOR JOB SUCCESS
The first step in learning to meditate is priming, which helps you achieve optimal productivity by focusing your mind and body through mental and physical exercise. Priming aligns with meditation practices because, like meditation, priming hinges on focusing your mind on the present and visualizing the outcome you want, whether it is healing, professional growth, professional success or another goal. As you practice priming, you’ll become skillful at developing your optimal state.
HOW TO MAKE TIME FOR MEDITATION
Once you incorporate meditation into your life, you’ll wonder how you ever left it out of your routine. But getting a new habit underway can take practice, and meditation for business professionals can be challenging to accomplish when you’re dashing from one task to the next. Try some of these tips to make time for this important part of your day:
WAKE UP EARLIER
Set an alarm for 15 minutes before your usual wake-up time and create a morning ritual around that quiet space to prime yourself for the day ahead.
DEVOTE A BREAK AT WORK OR A PORTION OF YOUR LUNCH TO MEDITATION
You’ll still gain the benefits of the practice, and you may find it energizes you throughout the rest of your afternoon.
TAKE SMALL BREAKS HERE AND THERE
If you can only devote five minutes at a time to meditation, that’s still five minutes you weren’t benefiting from previously.
MEDITATION AND REDEFINING HAPPINESS
What is happiness? Is it a feeling that results from our lives going as we want them to go, getting everything we want and need without facing any challenges?
If that is what constitutes happiness, then most of the people in the world are probably not very happy!
Facing adversity is an everyday task for everyone on the planet. By redefining happiness as that sense of freedom and inner peace that comes from detaching from external circumstances and attaching to our inner life, we gain more control over what we feel and how we react. By practicing mindfulness and meditation, we learn to overcome barriers to happiness by cultivating our inner lives. We become more able to handle discomfort, which is a key component of being a successful business owner.
