Deadlines are looming. Forecasts are failing to actualize. Big decisions must be made. Your team is underperforming. Questions regarding funding are engulfed in doubt. People are depending on you. The future of your business hangs in the balance.
Dealing with stress from business can be a daunting task—not to mention all the extra stress from outside the workplace. Sometimes being an entrepreneur and running a business feels a lot like executing an elaborate circus act. With so much going on, focus and concentration can be fleeting virtues. Yet there is a solution that can bring balance to your life, and it’s no new invention either. In fact, millions of people have used it for thousands of years: Meditation could be the answer to your entrepreneurial tribulations.
Before condemning entrepreneurial meditation as some deceptive social fad, take a moment to consider some facts. According to an Inc. article, “Twenty-two percent of companies already offer meditation training at work. Another 21 percent plan to add such training in 2017.” In a Fortune interview, bestselling author Tim Ferriss talks about how professionals regularly use meditation. “When Ferriss sat down with more than 200 executives, leaders, and other people at the heights of their fields for his new book, Tools of Titans, he found that 80% had some form of guided mindfulness practice.”
Businesses are taking meditation seriously—so what’s it all about? Meditation helps you cope with problems you deal with on a daily basis and in high pressure situations. Meditation isn’t about controlling all of your problems, but rather developing approaches to dealing with them more effectively.
Meditation can deliver great results in the workplace. A Harvard Business Review article states, “The research on mindfulness suggests that meditation sharpens skills like attention, memory, and emotional intelligence.” HBR writer Emma Seppala spoke with a number of executives about their experiences with meditation, and “saw again and again how their observations about meditation in the workplace connected back to the findings of academic research.”
So how does one get into a meditative state in the first place? It might seem like a tough practice to just start doing, but there are many resources that can help. Inc. states that meditation is “estimated to be a $1.1 billion industry in the U.S.” Apps like Headspace are blowing up and attaining thousands of regular users. I used Headspace when I first started meditating and it made the transition from never having meditated to meditating almost daily very smooth.
Results may not be immediate—but that’s completely normal. In a CNBC interview Ferriss offers this advice: “Start small, rig the game so you can win it, get in five sessions before you get too ambitious with length. You have to win those early sessions so you establish it as a habit, so you don’t have the cognitive fatigue of that practice.”
It took me a few weeks to actually start feeling results, yet I stuck with it, and I can attest it was completely worth it. Stress no longer feels insurmountable; it remains an obstacle but the solutions are much clearer and defined. Even if meditation isn’t your cup of tea, I’d highly recommend taking a few minutes out of your day to press pause and just breathe. Good luck and… Namaste!
