Meditation makes magic.
Well, not all kinds of meditation. However, when you are a beginner and have never tried any kind of meditation, it doesn’t matter where you start. It is worth giving it a try, having fun with it and finding out what suits you best.
In the long run you will know what kind of meditation your mind needs either to calm down, to get great ideas, to let go, to overcome sorrow and anger or to be more motivated and connected to your precious goals.
The most important thing is to begin somewhere.
With this article I would like to give you a short overview and some advice based on my long experience with all kinds of powerful meditations. This is to also help you establish a good self-regulation system for your mind when stress and pressure occur in your daily professional life as a leader.
First of all, there are many so called guided meditations out there. You can listen to them on YouTube or buy them. There are many techniques, from visualisation of something powerful in or outside your body, to empowering techniques and many kinds of body scans or breathing meditations.
Mostly they are supposed to take you out of your negative thought stream and give you something else instead. Some of them aim to help you heal old wounds, to forgive and release trauma from your nervous system. They free your path to become more effective and may also ground and pace your mind, thereby completely changing your current mood. They can make your mind more focused and strengthen your motivation to achieve your outrageous or so called impossible goals.
The moment you start doing these meditations, you should calm down completely and feel more relaxed and empowered.
However, whatever meditation it may be, when you seek real transformation it often requires discipline and regular meditation practice, otherwise you may never see the difference and stay the same person, struggling with the same reactions to stress and never overcome your fear of failure or fear of success.
There is also another meditation which I (really) cherish a great deal. I learned/learnt them from old Buddhist teachings. They seek deep transformation of your mind and have a 2,500-year-old track record of success. I’ve tried many of them and experienced a huge impact on my business, my quality of life, my leadership, my relationships and my view of the world. My reality shifted completely as did my income.
After trying all kinds of good “modern” guided meditations created by amazing trainers and coaches, I’ve chosen to stick with the old Buddhist methods to guide my life and success. First of all, because they go beyond western ideas/thinking of how to actually create success, money and amazing relationships. They teach you how to create reasons for the world to give back to you and it’s always worked for me.
But the successful practice of Buddhist meditation depends on your deep understanding and application of something we often forget: strong ethics, integrity and generosity as a way of life.
The basics of this path is to embrace the following idea as a law of nature: GIVE in order TO RECEIVE. At first I was sceptical, but I tested it and challenged it several times and I’ve seen the results. I’ve worked with these principles with many clients of mine and I’ve seen that this works without any doubt. It is not about believing in it. Don’t believe me or anybody else, try it out and track your results.
To give you an example of how you could try it out:
You want more money? Well, forget more hard work or using others as instruments to achieve wealth. We all know that there is no guarantee that hard work will get you any results. According to Buddhist ethics the direct correlation to wealth is your level of generosity. If you always have been greedy, your hard work will not help you generate more money. It is like as if you didn’t put any money in your account so there is nothing there when you need some later.
Apples come from apple seeds as your wealth comes from your level of generosity in the past.
Suppose you want to be surrounded by honest honourable people. Be yourself that honest honourable person at least for a while and see how your life transforms and honourable people will gravitate to you and all of the sudden will appear in your reality. It will blow your mind.
You want more success? Make somebody successful. Invest your heart and soul in it. You want more appreciation, understanding or love in your life? Well, you know what to do.
Plant the right seed in your mind in order to get whatever you want later on.
If you want learn more about this, I highly recommend you to read one of the books (no matter which one, just pick what speaks to you right now) of Geshe Michael Roach.
There are also books of the Dalai Lama about Applied Buddhism in Business and Leadership that may grab your interest.
There are many different kinds of Buddhist meditations for different purposes and I just choose whichever one suits my current situation. One of the meditations I use to resolve difficult situations or relationships is called Tong Len. You’ll find many recordings of it on the internet.
By the way, you don’t have to be a Buddhist in order to get amazing results. Everything that I’ve learned from Buddhist principles applied in business is similar to what Christianity has always taught us. We all have this undeniable feeling of morality and intuitively know what is wrong and what is right, what is fair and what is not. The path I’ve chosen just helps me to get closer to my intuition to always find the right beneficial answers to my questions.
There is also another completely different amazing technique I’ve also learned from Buddhist teachers. This one doesn’t stick to any visualization methods but invites you to let go of whatever comes into your mind and come back to the present moment. Again and again.
This meditation is not a guided one and everyone has to do it on their own. This meditation is called Vipassana and is one of the most well-known awareness meditations. In my opinion, mastering this meditation is fundamental for practicing all kinds of existing meditations. I practice it regularly and would recommend it to any Leader, Entrepreneur or Manager.
If you have any responsibility over the lives of other people, if your job is produce amazing ideas and find creative solutions, if you seek to make the world a better place, it is important to clear your mind in a radical way.
This is what Vipassana gives you.
Vipassana meditation goes beyond any desire for success or money. It actually helps you to release everything and with it any suffering caused by not getting what you want, suffering from your fears, anger, sorrow and doubts. It doesn’t mean you have to be poor, it just shows you the impermanence of all phenomena of life in a deep way. So you can be a billionaire (or an amazing husband, father, business partner, Leader) without becoming too attached to it.
Vipassana cleans your mind like a shower cleanses your body. Practiced daily, even for only ten minutes, it will help you to experience more calm, joy, compassion, connectedness and an amazing effectiveness in your work as a Leader.
Practiced Awareness is what makes a good Leader into an Extraordinary One.
