Can Meditation Work For You?
Some of us logical types have a hard time with meditation. It can seem pretty woo-woo, especially when you take a look at some of the people who practice it daily or those who call themselves meditation gurus.
Yet, meditation really is beneficial to the mind. There are different types, so if you don’t like to just sit and breathe there are other ways to be mindful, like walking meditation. It’s helpful to your brain, no matter how you choose to practice it. May 21 is National Meditation Day, and that might be a good opportunity to take a breath out of your busy life.
Mindfulness is good for your brain, which means it’s good for productivity,
When you’re constantly on the move and very busy, your brain gets fatigued faster. Every time you switch tasks, you lose a little brain power. As a business owner, you might be doing tasks in your business that you really don’t need to (either because they should be done by someone else, automated, or maybe don’t really need to be done in the first place).
Mindfulness helps you pause and ask yourself if you really need to be doing this right now. Sometimes the answer is yes, but often the answer might really be no.
A mindfulness practice such as meditation helps you focus your attention, which is important when you want to get the important things in your business accomplished each day. When you don’t bring your full attention to a task, it takes longer.
There’s no such thing as multitasking! The human brain can’t do two cognitively complex tasks at the same time – it has to switch back and forth between them, which also drains your brain power.
Meditation practice has been shown scientifically to rescue stress, increase focus, and the like. So while it may sound woo-woo, it can change your brain in positive ways.
What’s the goal of meditation to improve productivity?
I think a lot of logical people are suspicious of meditation because they think the goal is to empty the mind of all thoughts. That was definitely what I believed for a long time, and I didn’t even bother meditating because I didn’t think that would ever happen. Nor, to be honest, did I want it to. I use my brain for my work, so why would I want to empty it? No way!
But that’s not what meditation has to be. There may be a practice of meditation that asks for brain emptying. However, if you just want to strengthen your focus, lessen your stress, feel less overwhelmed or some combination of these, the goal is most decidedly not to empty your brain of thoughts.
In this type of meditation, the goal is to be aware of thoughts, but not attach to them. For some people, it works to visualize the thought as a cloud, passing through the sky and disappearing off somewhere. There are other ways to visualize, like putting the thought on a leaf and letting it float down a stream, or on a boat that glides out of focus.
Once you realize you’ve attached to the thought and are following it, you don’t judge yourself for it. After all, this is what brains do! You just recognize whenever that happens that you’ve attached, and you release the thought and wait for another to observe.
I actually find the boat visualization helpful because you can imagine yourself running aground on the shore somewhere when you follow a thought. Once you realize it, you climb out of the boat and push it back into the water, then sit on the shore waiting for the next thought to arrive.
Sometimes it is really hard to detach. Sometimes it’s easier. It doesn’t really matter, and if you have a session where you attach to your thoughts more than the last time, it doesn’t mean you’re getting “worse” at meditation.
Detaching without judgement is hard for those of us who have a strong critical voice, but the practice is even more important when that’s the case. So you can detach from the critical voice and see that it’s just a thought, not necessarily the truth of the matter. The brain generates lots of thoughts, but not all of them are true or helpful.
Starting a practice of meditation
If you want to start a meditation practice, start small at first. Especially if you’re the kind of person who is busy all the time. This will feel awkward and be weird, but don’t judge yourself for being a human being and having thoughts as human beings do and following the thoughts as human beings do. You can always start with a guided meditation and there are plenty of apps that offer them.
I found when I started with guided meditations that there are some voices I just hate to listen to. If you hear a voice you can’t stand, find another one. You’ll find someone you can listen to, so allow yourself to take the time to find one.
If you want to do it without an app or guide, get comfortable. I like to lie down, but if I’m tired that leads to falling asleep, which isn’t optimal unless you do it specifically to go to sleep. Set a timer. Starting with five minutes is great and you can definitely fit five minutes into your day. (Take it from your binge watching time at night if you need to.)
Some people like to look at something like a candle, or you might prefer to close your eyes. Using your breath to anchor to is an easier method than some others – when you find yourself drifting or following a thought, which you will, you gently return to your breath. You don’t fight the thoughts coming, because again, they will come.
You notice you have a thought and return to your breath. Or refocus on the candle or a mantra. That’s it. And you do that until your timer goes off. Some days it will take FOREVER for the timer to go off! That’s OK. Sometimes the time flies by. That’s OK too.
Meditation is like learning or exercising. You don’t get the benefits by trying to cram a bunch of meditation in on the weekends, or a single long bout of meditation every few weeks. A little bit each day, consistently, around the same time is the best way to do it and reap all the advantages. You can increase your meditation time slowly, up to 20 or 30 minutes. I myself am not there yet, and everyone goes at their own pace.
If you’re struggling to make it a habit, anchor it to something else you do every day. Like after you have your glass of water in the morning after you wake up, you set your timer. Or after your shower, or whenever. Getting into the habit takes a little time, just as every other good habit does.
Recap (tl;dr):
Meditation can help boost productivity and also help with stress. There are proven scientific benefits, so if you’ve stayed away because it seems too woo-woo, feel free to jump right in, starting small at first.
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Photo by Katerina May via Unsplash.