Meditation & Mindfulness

Our take is that meditation is the foundational training for almost everything in any of the sections in this guide. Meditation gives you the awareness and control over your mind that lets you make good decisions and take consistent action.

Meditation skills:

• How to Experience Your First Insight in Mindfulness Meditation ~Marta Brzosko
• This is How to Breath Properly ~Patrik Edblad

Alternative meditations:

• Breathing In the Light ~David Paul Kirkpatrick
• The Complete Guide to Active Meditation for People Who Just Can’t Sit Still ~Brad Buzzard
• How Cross-Stitching Developed My Creativity and Self-Discipline ~Gloria Wickman
• How to Hold a Simple Cacao Ceremony for Yourself ~Eduardo Antonio Morales

Guided meditation:

• The Headspace App vs. One Trendy NYC Meditation Studio ~Felicity Sargent
• A Case For Spending $300 to Sit Silently in a Room Full of Strangers ~Annie Atherton

Mindfulness exercises:

• Habit-Building Self-Awareness Exercises to Keep Yourself Accountable ~Niklas Göke
• Strengthen Your Mind By Giving Names to Your Feelings ~Sílvia Bastos
• The Complete Guide to Developing Your Grit ~Patrik Edblad

Applied mindfulness:

• How To Apply Meditation to Marriage (Or Any Relationship) ~Giovanni Dienstmann
• A Guide to Stoicism for Creatives, Entrepreneurs & Freelancers ~Brian McFadden

Journaling

Best used in conjunction with meditation, journaling is another way to develop mindfulness and build awareness of your subconscious. In the productivity work that I’ve been involved in, journaling is often a faster and more direct way to achieve your goals.

Start here:

• How to Start a Journaling Habit Today ~Bryan Collins
• Free Writing as a Better Alternative to Meditation ~Buster Benson

Journaling with a goal in mind:

• Cognitive Journaling: A Systematic Method to Overcome Negative Beliefs ~Richard Ragnarson
• Journaling Techniques to Master Balance and Grow Faster ~Sílvia Bastos
• How to Make the Power of the Subconscious Mind Work For You ~Kate Maria Pennell
• Minimalist Journaling: A Fun and Effective Tool for Tremendous Habit Change ~Michal Korzonek
• Replace Your Todo List with Interstitial Journaling ~Coach Tony
• How to Become an Optimist with Journaling Exercises ~Niklas Göke

Cognitive Bias

A huge part of mindfulness is overcoming the many ways your mind tricks you into believing things that aren’t true.

Start with these two articles. The first gives you the breadth of cognitive biases and the second gives you a skill that will let you spot when you are wrong and change your mind:

• Cognitive Bias Cheat Sheet ~Buster Benson
• The Falsification Method and How to Change Your Own Mind ~Mike Sturm

The remaining articles are ways to spot and overcome biases, and to build mental habits for thinking more clearly and rationally:

• Fourteen Mental Models to Help You Think Clearly ~Brian McFadden
• Ten Mental Biases and How to Fight Them ~Niklas Göke
• A Decision Making Checklist That Works With Your Emotions, Not Against Them ~Liz Fosslien
• How to Improve Your Decisions By Recruiting Your Own Small Council ~Ryan Engelstad
• How to Stop Lying to Yourself ~Piyush Kamal?
• How to Be Your Own Mediator ~Donita Brown

Anxiety & Anger

The boss who gave me my first promotion was enthusiastically cynical and gave me this great advice: “You are going to love everything about being a manager, except for the people.” People trigger our emotions and we need to learn how to deal with that:

• How to Stop Being Angry with Obnoxious People ~Flannery Meehan
• How to Deal With Conflict Effectively ~Robert Bateman

Then, on top of the feelings other people pull out of us, we also carry an incredible amount of self-created fear, anxiety, and stress. Here are ways to manage and overcome that:

• How to Avoid Emotional Outbursts ~Christopher Sowers
• An Introduction to Using Biofeedback to Decrease Stress ~Patrick Whitehead
• How Depression Made Me a Morning Person ~Alicia Liu
• How to Fight Your Negative Thoughts and Anxiety ~Piyush Kamal?
• How Emotional First-Aid Protects You From Negative Self-Beliefs ~Ryan Engelstad
• How Life Coaching Fixed What Therapy Left Broken ~Dana Shavin
• Parenting With Social Anxiety ~Andrew Knott
• The Complete Guide to Coping with Misophonia ~Julia Odom

Then, sometimes it’s your friend or relative that needs your help:

• How to Help Someone Who’s Having a Panic Attack ~Ryan Engelstad

Even though you know it’s important to stop whatever you are doing and enjoy life, it might be difficult for you, at least in the first few days, because you are so used to the hustle culture of today that has convinced you that working all the time is important. You might even be worried that stopping now will make you regret it later.

Whatever your excuse of not living in the moment might be, this article will help you get rid of it. It discusses some creative and interesting tips you can apply right now to adopt the habit of stopping and enjoying life every single day.

1. Introduce some space

We are always so determined to get the most out of every living moment, that we forget that some space is important. We jumble up our tasks, wishes, aspirations, and items from our to-do list so much, that there is little room to breathe, let alone live.

To prevent this from happening, learn the subtle art of not doing anything and just be. You don’t have to be productive every waking moment. You can have blank spaces on your to-do list that allow you to take a moment to yourself for self-reflection. Moments like these will help you stop and be mindful of the present, so you are living, not merely existing.

2. Put things in perspective 

When you look back upon the past, do you really feel happy that you worked so hard and got so much done? Or is it the calmer moments you miss, the mellower moments where you were laughing, living in the present, and sharing it with the people who matter?

No one remembers the hustle. Sure, it is important to have a bright future, but is it important enough to sacrifice your present for it? Is it really necessary to work all the time and not pause for even a single moment?

When you put things in perspective and really reflect on what is important to you, you will get a lot of clarity. You will understand the importance of not working all the time and the need to enjoy life.

3. Engage with people

Don’t fight all your battles alone. Stay in touch with your friends and take part in group activities. The social interactions will enrich your mind and present new experiences to you that you can cherish and reminisce later.

4. Relax for a while

Take an off day. Meditate. Engage in self-care. Do some relaxing exercises. Take a shower. Engage in any activity that helps you relax and be mindful of the present.

This is a personal choice and the answer to this might be different for different people. Until you find a habit or a hobby that relaxes you, keep looking for it and you will find it one day.

5. Use technology

It might sound ironic that you are using technology to stay in the present and enjoy life. But it can be a powerful tool in your arsenal that helps you pause for a bit and really enjoy the present.

You can turn to technology and download a free habit tracker. This is a great way to mark your progress on the calendar and use it to motivate yourself to keep pushing on.

Having someone else do it with you can make building any new habit easier. If you can’t find a friend who’s also learning to be present and enjoy life every day at the same time as you are, you can hire an accountability coach to help keep you on track. These are trained individuals who will hold you accountable and help you get back on track if you ever fall off the wagon.

Praying to a higher power is one of the most intimate and effective ways of connecting with your deepest desires. The biggest challenge in developing a prayer practice is the trouble of doing it consistently. The best way to develop a daily prayer practice is to treat it like a habit and build it like you’d build any other habit. 

You might feel that if you do it sporadically, you skip out on your daily prayers. But if you discipline yourself and build cues in your life that help you stick to your prayer practice, you can become more consistent and stay true to your goals. This post discusses practical tips on how you can build a daily prayer practice and stick to it. 

1. Structure your prayer 

It might become easier to pray if there’s a structure to your prayers. This can follow a pattern of being aware of your body and surroundings, saying a silent thank you for everything good in your life, understanding all that needs to be changed, and finally making a wish.

Structuring your prayer is a very personal process and it will differ for every person. Only you can structure your prayers in a way that works for you. Once you find comfort in structure, you’ll find it easier to go back to them and repeat the process day after day.

2. Build a routine

You can build a weekly routine for your prayers. For example, on Mondays, you can pray for yourself. On Tuesdays, you can offer prayers for your family. Wednesdays can be for prayers the plight of the world. Thursday prayers can be for your nation, state, or community. Fridays can be for your job, your education, and your material needs. Saturdays and Sundays can be for the hopeless, the lost, and those who have no one to pray for.

When you have a weekly routine of praying for different aspects of your life, it will be easier to stick to it and build a daily prayer practice. Having a specific place in your house where you do nothing but pray can also act as a trigger to remind you of what needs to be done.

3. Keep the desire burning

When you feel a deep connection to the almighty, the desire to pray will burn bright in your heart. Fan the flames and keep this fire burning. When you know why you want to pray, you will be less likely to skip even for a day.

4. Get a habit tracker

Using a habit tracker to mark the days you stuck to your goal of daily prayer can be an excellent way to make sure you don’t fall off the wagon. Seeing a streak of several days would be an excellent motivation to keep pushing yourself. It can also serve as a reminder of what you are capable of and how much remains to be done before you can reach where you’re supposed to.

5. Get an accountability partner

Having someone else pray daily with you can make building any new habit easier. You can join a community of people who visit your preferred place of worship every day.

If you can’t find a friend who’s also learning to pray every day at the same time as you are, you can hire an accountability coach to help keep you on track. These are trained individuals who will hold you accountable and help you get back on track if you ever fall off the wagon.

But how to go about designing one that you can stick to without falling off the wagon? The following 33 ideas will help you how.

1. Stretch. Stand on your toes, stretch your arms over your head, and roll your head from left to right and back again. Do a few side stretches, squats, and lunges. This simple 3-minute stretch routine will get your blood flowing and your muscles nicely stretched.
2. Take a cold shower. It’s been proven to be a cure for procrastination.
3. Do a few minutes of meditation. A quick check of the sounds around you and an even quicker body scan of how each part of your body is feeling should be more than enough.
4. Read a few minutes before getting out of bed.
5. Journal your plans for the day before actually setting things in motion.
6. Listen to a podcast that makes you feel good about yourself.
7. List three things you’re grateful for before starting the day. 
8. Read a blog or an article to set the right mood for the day.
9. Spend a few minutes learning a new skill or absorbing new information.
10. Write ten ideas. These can be ideas about a project you intend to start or how you can make the most of your day.
11. Monitor your self-talk so you can become your most loyal cheerleader. Practicing positive self-talk the first thing in the morning can be the best way to have a great day.
12. Keep a dream journal and write whatever you remember of last night’s dreams.
13. Exercise your creativity. This can manifest itself in writing down ideas, making plans for the future, or spending a few moments doing what you really love.
14. Review the previous day and think of all the ways you make sure the mistakes of yesterday don’t show up today.
15. Do your most important task first thing in the morning. This will pave the way for a productive day.
16. Read your email and answer the important ones.
17. Spend a few moments working on a side hustle or your new business idea. This will keep the adrenaline pumping.
18. Appreciate something in your immediate surroundings. Take a deep breath and say thank you to it for existing. 
19. Make your bed. Research has proved this simple task can clear your brain of clutter and give you amazing ideas for a great day ahead.
20. Open the curtains and welcome the sunlight in.
21. Open the windows and breathe in the fresh air.
22. Step out onto a balcony or the terrace and spend a few moments with nature.
23. Take care of your houseplants. Several authors have written about how caring for a plant is like caring for yourself.
24. Spend some time on your most cherished hobby. This doesn’t have to be monetized. It can simply be something that makes you happy.
25. Listen to good music to set the right vibes for the day.
26. Go out for a small walk around the house to clear your head and set your priorities of the day right.
27. Eat a healthy breakfast.
28. Gently massage your neck, shoulders, and forearms to set the blood pumping.
29. Wear something that makes you feel good about your body.
30. Brush your teeth, wash your face, and welcome the brand new day with enthusiasm.
31. Learn from the experts at Better Humans on how to set your ideal morning routine. They write the best, most detailed articles on personal development and how to be the best version of yourself.
32. Download a habit tracker and keep track of your progress of how many days in a row did you manage to stick to your morning routine. A False or counterfeit ID is any kind of recognizable proof that might be fashioned, modified, or regularly implies to discover the Phony id of anybody. One model is, you can make a fake id by getting a photograph of all alone and printing an impersonation express driver’s permit on your very own PC.
33. Hire an accountability coach from this directory of coaches to help you on this journey to set and stick to your morning routine.

But how does one make gratitude a habit? This post discusses five ways to become more grateful and make the gratitude lifestyle a habit.

1. Start simple

Start simple by thinking of three happy thoughts each night before going to bed. These can be something profound that happened to you — like you got a new pet or a promotion. But most people don’t have really profound things happening to them every day.

Start by thinking about the simplest things that gave you happiness on that day. Maybe a child smiled and complimented you. Maybe you played with a puppy and gave it food. Maybe you saw some pretty flowers that brightened your day. Start with the simplest, smallest things before going to bed, and watch how they improve your mood as you fall asleep.

2. Maintain a gratitude journal

Once you’ve gotten into the habit of thinking three happy thoughts and saying thanks to them before going to bed, you can take it one step further and start writing them down in a gratitude journal.

The point here is not to write amazing, life-changing incidents that made you happy. The point is to seek happiness in the mundane and be grateful for life’s simple pleasures. Even the smallest of happy incidents can light up your mood. Don’t hesitate to write something because you don’t think it’s important enough. Include the smallest details even if they made you smile for a fraction of a second during the day.

3. Express your gratitude to the people who matter

The next step in your journey towards embracing gratitude in your life is to let the people who matter know. It may be your friends, family members, or your partner. Just tell them how grateful you are to have them in your life and praise them for all the amazing ways they have added value to your life.

It might not be easy, especially if you’re not used to expressing your emotions freely. But you can do it with practice. Start small by just smiling more and appreciating them, and then you can move on to actually thanking them for the great things they do.

4. Fit gratitude into those moments before expressing your anger

Every time you are about to burst into a fit of rage, pause for a few moments and take a few deep, calming breaths. In those moments, recall three things you are happy to exist in your life and count them over in your head. 

Take a moment to express your gratitude to them. Visualize how fortunate you are and how much they have improved your life. Know that this moment of anger isn’t going to upend your entire life. Is it even worth it?

These few seconds of intense self-reflection before getting angry at someone can go a long way in reinforcing your gratitude habit. It will make you more thankful and gracious in general and help you embrace gratitude in your life.

5. Turn to technology to make things easier

You can do this in four ways:

• When you can’t access your gratitude journal, record yourself saying the three things you’re grateful for. You can also send a text message to yourself about your daily gratitude journaling points.
• Download a habit tracker and track the days you wrote in your gratitude journal. Seeing an unbroken streak for a long time will motivate you and help you keep the momentum going.
• Hire an accountability coach from this directory of Accountability Coaches. They will help you keep track of your habits and make getting back on track easier if you skip a day or two. 
• Learn from the experts at Better Humans. They write the most detailed tutorials on self-improvement.

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“The goal of meditation isn’t to control your thoughts, it’s to stop letting your thoughts control you.”

Jon Andre started practicing meditation 20 years ago as a way to find calm and reduce stress. It’s made such an impact on his life that he transitioned to becoming a meditation teacher through his work at meditationSHIFT. He told us more about his practice and the benefits he has received from daily, consistent practice.

Why did you start meditating? What was your goal?

My goal in the beginning was simple: I wanted to reduce stress. This is important, because it seems trendy these days to say that there should be no goals in meditation. I disagree. There needs to be something that brings you to the practice in the beginning, and motivates you to turn it into a habit that you do every day. If there isn’t, you will most likely try meditation once or twice and then give up. Mindfulness and meditation offer a wide range of benefits, but you have to develop a consistent practice to realize them. The only way to develop that consistent practice is to have a reason to try in the first place.

What is your meditation routine?

I do “formal” meditation a minimum of twice a day, for 20 minutes each session. More important, though, I work to bring mindfulness to everything I do during my day when I am not formally meditating.

For me, meditation is like the practice a performer or athlete does to execute well on the stage or in the game. My formal meditation sessions (“practice”) enable me to bring mindfulness to the rest of my life (the “stage” or “game,” in this analogy).

Too many people look at meditating as a chore. This instills a negative mindset, and makes it easier to give up. If, however, you view it from the standpoint of what it can do for you when you aren’t actually meditating, you start to see it more as a way of life – not an item to check off your “todo list.”

Can you tell me a story about how meditation improved your performance?

I don’t think there is one story I can isolate, because everything is connected. Instead, I look at how meditation has improved my life as a whole over the last 20 years. Meditation teaches you to cultivate awareness of your mind-made activity, and in doing so you learn not to get attached to it (or swept away by it). The applications for this are numerous: it can help with stress, worry, fear, anxiety, depression, regret, self-confidence, etc. The foundation for all of these things–what we commonly refer to as the “struggles of life”–is our mind. And, once you learn to understand your mind and how to deal with the challenges it creates, your life can improve dramatically.

I realized these benefits and many others over the past two decades, and my direct experience compelled me to begin teaching mindfulness and meditation to others. In my opinion, understanding your mind and developing a consistent practice are the most important things you can do for your happiness, health, and well-being. I started my company, meditationSHIFT, over 11 years ago. Between our self-study course, seminars, and speaking engagements, we help individuals, groups, and businesses realize the benefits of a consistent practice.

Do you think meditation gives you a competitive edge? Why?

Actually, meditation has helped me realize that I don’t need to be competitive with others. By learning to observe my mind, my thoughts, and all the other mental activity, I see that the concept of “competition” is a mind-made construct that only serves to separate me from everyone else, and promote a “me vs. you” mentality.

What I have learned through a consistent meditation practice is that I am not this entity alone on an island, struggling against the world. Instead, I am connected with everyone and everything else. We all strive for the same thing: to avoid pain and increase pleasure. Some of us do it in ways that are labeled “bad” and “unacceptable,” but we are all still striving for the same thing regardless of our tactics.

When thoughts pop up that I’m better than someone else or that someone else is better than me, I see them for what they are: temporary. They can go the same as they came, provided I don’t cling to them and turn them into “my story.”

Meditation helps you see things as they are, and it helps you reverse conditioning that you have developed over a lifetime. From this standpoint, you can say it makes you better and gives you an edge. But, that advantage should be used to contribute to the world, as opposed to distinguishing yourself from it.

What is the biggest misconception about meditation?

The biggest misconception is that you are supposed to stop thinking, or that you are supposed to control your thoughts. People come to the practice with these misconceptions, and they quickly grow frustrated when they are unable to accomplish them. The goal of meditation isn’t to control your thoughts, it’s to stop letting your thoughts control you.

Don’t try to stop thinking: it will continue to happen. And don’t try to control your thoughts. The content of your mind doesn’t matter. Instead, cultivate awareness, learn to observe non-judgmentally, and condition yourself to not follow your mind wherever it leads. If you do this on a consistent basis, you learn that there is this underlying state of contentment that is always there. You just have to strip away the mental baggage that is piled on top of it.

Get your free chapter of The Strongest Mind in the Room: How Meditation Boosts Human Performance. Find free guided meditations on our How to Meditate Lift Guide.

[Tweet “”The goal of meditation isn’t to control your thoughts, it’s to stop letting them control you.” – @5rulesforlife via @coachdot”]

“Meditation and aggression are completely compatible. Think about it: Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant meditate in the service of being as effectively aggressive as possible.”

Jonathan Rosenfeld, Ph.D., is a Change Strategist who coaches CEOs and companies in mindful leadership, including Medium.com where he leads Leadership and Change Strategy. Jonathan is extremely passionate about building mindful workspaces that create environments for better work and more effective leadership (read this if you want to learn more about how he’s building a mindful workspace at Medium). He sat down with us to explain the benefits of meditation for leaders and how he’s seen the practice empower leaders and employees alike to do their best work.

How did you get into meditation?

I was curious about meditation from the time that I was an adolescent, both in terms of how it alleviated psychological distress and also just the idea of learning to do something that would be so transformative and helped you be in the world in a more meaningful, perceptive way. And so as an adolescent, I looked into different meditation practices and went on various retreats. I was never completely taken by the experience, though. I thought I was bad at meditation, just as most people think they are when they first try it. You get tired of being really bad at something, so even though I continued to meditate those beliefs stayed with me through my adult life.

About three years ago, various things were going on with my career that were very exciting but also created a lot of stress. This frustrated me. Granted, it’s a well established phenomenon that the things that are exciting are also anxiety-producing, but I was still annoyed. I thought that if my career was blossoming, that I should primarily be happy, have fun, and not feel so stressed out.

I was a bit concerned that being stressed out was costing me some degree of intellectual acuity. I wanted to bring my full cognitive ability to coaching people and being as effective as possible. So I decided to give meditation another try. I talked to various friends about meditation and was directed to Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), Jon Kabat-Zinn’s state of the art model. They really distilled down the actual meditation practices that are psychologically transformative in a very methodical, instruction-based way. So I said OK, I’ll give this type of meditation a try. The next challenge for me was to find a teacher because I didn’t want a teacher who in any way felt new-agey to me. I found Bob Stahl, a down to earth, working class guy from Maine. During his retreat, I felt like I was successfully meditating for the first time. That was three years ago. I’ve very conscientiously stuck to my meditation practice since then and it’s just gotten stronger and stronger. Of course there are peaks and valleys but the meditation practice has gotten stronger and stronger over time.

What was the breakthrough moment for you?

I had a two-part breakthrough moment. One of the reasons that I’d given up on meditation previously is that all of these unpleasant thoughts would come to the forefront of my mind when I would start to meditate. This was the last stuff that I want to be thinking about: terrible things that have happened to people I know, thoughts like that. So when I went on that retreat, sure enough I did the first meditation and these horrible, horrible things popped into my head. I talked to Bob about it and he was just very compassionate. He encouraged me to hang in there. I found myself sort of melting and getting more and more relaxed during the meditation. My heart felt more robust and I began to feel a lot of compassion for myself and for other people. By the end of the second day, I was thoroughly enjoying meditating, which had never happened to me before. Meditation had always felt like work. When I got home from the retreat, my children blurted out that I was smiling more than usual and said that it was really uncharacteristic of me to seem so happy. And I thought, wow, that’s a pretty fantastic endorsement.

When did you start incorporating meditation into your coaching practice?

Pretty immediately. I started talking to a client about meditation, recommending it not just for them as leaders but also for their employees. They were convinced enough to give it a try, so I ended up bringing Bob Stahl to an all-hands retreat where he spent half a day instructing us in meditation and mindfulness.

But I’d incorporated mindfulness into my coaching even before then. While I didn’t develop a deep meditation practice until a few years ago, I’d always done some type of meditative practice. I’ve been doing what I call micro-meditations since I was an adolescent and have always incorporated those in my coaching.

What is a micro-meditation?

A micro-meditation is effectively a way to slow down and pause your overreactive brain. So maybe you stand up. You take a few breaths. You do muscle stretch or a full body scan from your head down to your feet. You identify where you hold tension and you release the tension. Just thirty seconds of calming yourself down can improve focus and lead to better outcomes. When you get the physical and mental tension out of you, your presence, demeanor, and temperament become more relaxed. You feel more connected to yourself.

I used to coach people to pay attention to their muscle contractions during negotiations. If you use a micro-meditation to get your body neutral before a meeting, you’ll have the awareness to notice any increased tension during interactions. New tension is a signal to pay attention because something is going on in the room that you’re not totally comfortable with. You might not be cognitively aware of a problem, but you’re subconsciously aware which triggers your body’s stress response.

You don’t get the same transformational insight with micro-meditation that you get with a deeper meditation practice but it’s a really valuable practice and skill.

How does meditation make you a better communicator?

Well, we all in a non-pathological way, deal with a tremendous amount of fear. If you want to use a less charged word, we all deal with a tremendous amount of apprehension. And since we are wired to survive and procreate, as opposed to optimize, that apprehension becomes the reason that we don’t take action. That inaction is routinely a conversation we have to have because we’re too apprehensive about a negative outcome.

I think that if you meditate, then your threshold for moving into an apprehensive state is much lower. Your improve your ability to treat your apprehension as an existential phenomenon as opposed to information that should lead to how you make a decision in one way or another. Here’s a story from my coaching experience to illustrate this point. Recently, one of my clients had to have a critical conversation with his boss. He was worried that he might be out of a job if the meeting went poorly. We walked through as much data as possible, framed the situation, talked through everything, and then I asked him what he would recommend if he had nothing to fear. And he spills out, “Blah blah blah.” I asked him how it felt. He said, “That felt great!” So I said, “That felt great because this is in fact what you need to say. That’s exactly what you should say to your boss.”

The client had all of these irrational fears around how his boss might act. Let’s assume that his boss is a rational, reasonable, compassionate person who highly values him and wants to make best use of him at the company. Then he should say exactly what he wanted to say in the first place.

One founder told us that meditation made them more aggressive in their leadership. That seems contradictory to me– what do you think?

One of these days, I want to do a big talk on the subject, because meditation and aggression are completely compatible. Think about it: Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant meditate in the service of being as effectively aggressive as possible.

One hallmark of highly effective leaders is their ability to make complex decisions. Leaders are often faced with massive amounts of ambiguous data with which to make these decisions. They have to accept the ambiguity but make a clear decision. People won’t follow confusing messaging or believe in an ambiguous mission. And so what leaders tend to do is create false dichotomies by ignoring or getting rid of data that doesn’t support their decision. They try to make decisions black and white so that they can act with more conviction. But of course there is no intellectual integrity in acting that way.

The challenge every leader faces is, can they accept high levels of ambiguity and then convincingly make the best decision that they can make at that time. I think meditation helps immensely with that and allows you to accept the phenomenon of the ambiguity without having to be pained by it. I assume this is what the founder means by meditation makes them more aggressive. They’re making quicker decisions. They’re doing things with more conviction. They’re not equivocating. Meditation made them a more powerful leader but that doesn’t make them any less compassionate or sensitive or thoughtful, either.

If you talk to leaders, you’ll hear this all the time: what I did today I should have done 6 months ago and I knew it. There’s often very little to be gained [by stalling] once a decision is made in your mind. A strong meditation practice let’s you make better decisions, earlier, and with more with more conviction.

Stalling on making a decision is a huge issue for CEOs. I mean you’re also dealing with cognitive dissonance: once you’ve decided to fire someone of course you should have fired them six months ago, whether it’s in fact true or not.

Can you share some examples of how being a mindful leader makes you more effective?

Well speaking of firing, it’s good practice and compassionate leadership not to fire someone too quickly. If you’re unhappy with somebody, before firing them you want to see if you can turn them around. But the main strategy for turning people around is to give them more chances to make the same mistakes that they’ve made previously. That’s not a winning strategy. More often than not, they’re going to make the same mistakes if you do that. I think that to the extent that meditation supports self-awareness, if you’re going to give a person another chance, then give them a really different chance. Put them in a position where you are both going to learn more about who this employee is.

Here’s another example of how you can be a more mindful leader. Say that there is somebody doing X in your company. They tell you they want to do Y. They do X really well and other people are in charge of doing Y, so there’s no real incentive to support the change. But if you slow down enough to acknowledge that you don’t truly know who they are or what they’re capable or not capable of and you give them a measured opportunity to do Y, then one of two things happens in my experience. One is that they do Y and they do Y surprisingly well. You’ve just opened up the door for them to develop their talent and be an even more productive member of the company. The other outcome is that they never do anything. In that case, they probably never really wanted to do Y in the first place–they simply wanted to push or pull in some way, but you’ve removed the tension from your relationship with your employee. Now you haven’t blocked them from doing something and they have made their own choice as to whether they want to do it or not.

What other skills do you think meditation gives leaders?

There are so many. For one, meditation helps leaders be less reactive. This is huge. People look to leaders to see how they are supposed to feel. Should they be optimistic? Nervous? Excited? Leaders set the tone and energy in many ways. Among the things that meditation does is that it lowers all of your physiological indices. So people who meditate tend to present as calmer, more relaxed people. Given again how much people scrutinize leaders, I think that’s phenomenally impactful.

Meditation can also help leaders remove everyday stress and anxiety from their lives. Leaders absorb massive amounts of anxiety and tension from everyone around them. That’s part of their job. In fact, if you’re absorbing people’s tension and anxiety then part of their association with you is that “When I am around So-and-so, I feel better.” That in and of itself really empowers you as a leader. But you can’t absorb it and hold it and continue to be effective. You have to metabolize it. You can do that through anything from cognitive exercises to rigourous exercise to meditation.

Meditation also gives leaders more poise. Leaders might go into a situation that feels like a crisis, but if they’re self-aware then they can ask themselves, “This feels like a crisis but is it really a crisis?” Most of the time, it isn’t a crisis, which also reduces the pressure, which should reduce stalling on a decision. Usually there is a significant window within which a leader has to take action and being less reactive lets leaders calmly and assertively deal with a stressful situation.

Finally, I think that meditation simply makes people happier. People enjoy their lives more when they meditate. They savor their successes more. One of my clients manages a sales team. Every time that the sales team had a success, he would raise the bar for what he wanted them to do, which is perfectly normal when managing sales teams. But in doing so he never let his sales team celebrate. He was so hyped up by their success he encouraged them to immediately achieve more. My client learned to relax and allow his team to celebrate for a few days and revel in their success before giving them another challenge. The employees were more energized and began to see him not as an unremitting task master but as somebody who celebrates and appreciates their accomplishments. It made them more motivated to work for him.

How does meditation nurture poise and presence?

That’s a great question. I was just talking to a leader this morning who is bringing me into his company to do the keynote for a retreat. This particular company has always prioritized making sure that it’s leaders have strong emotional intelligence. But I told him that no matter how good you are, some days you are smarter than other days. I asked him how he would know the days that he is out to lunch versus the days that he is not? How can you track that? It’s really hard, if not impossible to do so, but you can set yourself up for more success if you meditate. Meditation increases the number of days when you are on and when you are present.

Nobody whose amygdala is highly agitated is present. From neuroscience we know that one of the basic human dilemmas is that the amygdala up-regulates. The amygdala, or the memory and fear center of your brain, routinely, erroneously tells your conscious brain to be apprehensive even when there is nothing to truly be worried about. Worry is distracting. If part of being an effective leader is that people experience you as empathic, as really listening, really being present, you might be able to pull off the ‘look’ but the substance isn’t there if you’re just chronically agitated by all of the things that being in a leadership role carries. But if you meditate, you increase your ability to be present and put aside all of those worries that you can’t do anything about at that time. For example, right now I am in a room with you. The best use of my time, right now, is to be fully present in our conversation. I could pay half attention to you and ruminate over some problem that I’m not going to be able to solve until next week anyway when I get new resources or new data, but it’s more effective and more enjoyable for me to be in the moment with you.

One of the things that I really passionately believe is that people have a need to be accurately seen, not necessarily agreed to. For example, let’s say I have a report coming to me about an upcoming decision and my employee makes a compelling case. If she feels like I’ve really heard her out and understood her argument, yet I don’t follow her proposal, she’ll have no problem with the final decision. Presumably, she’ll defer to my greater authority or experience. If she feels like I didn’t listen to her side of the story, then she’s left at the end of the conversation going, “You know, if he’d actually listened to me, he would have done what I had suggested.” That creates tension and makes it harder for her to follow the the plan. Meditation is the practice of paying attention. Paying attention makes you phenomenally more effective in connecting with people and making them feel heard, which makes it easier for you to inspire them and bring them along with you in whatever direction you need to as a leader.

Do you think meditation gives you a competitive edge?

Well the short answers is yes, absolutely.

The longer answer is that if you can hold complex data in your head and not create false dichotomies, you’ll be a better leader since you usually make better decision if you have more data. If you’re more aware of your confirmation bias, then your ability to consider a broader range of solutions will help you come up with better solutions to problems. If you’ve increased your ability to absorb anxiety around you rather than transmit anxiety, you’ll lead more confident, more effective teams. If you can be more actively empathic in a meeting or negotiation and recognize the tension in the room, that’ll give you a huge advantage.

None of that is meditation per se, but meditation helps you do that. In terms of what we know about how the brain is re-architected as one meditates, I think the practice gives you a humongous advantage. It’s sort of a no-brainer that meditation will make you a better leader. You asked earlier, how much I’ve incorporated meditation into my coaching. It’s not the first thing that I suggest, but once I develop a certain amount of rapport with somebody, I highly encourage meditation. No matter what you’re trying to achieve, it’ll give you a leg up.

Do you have tips for people who want to incorporate mindfulness into their work lives?

One thing I have found helpful over the last several years in terms of bringing your meditation practice into the workplace is to return to your body and the breath over and over again throughout your day. I often set a timer when I know I am going to be working for many hours straight. Every hour when it goes off I close my laptop, raise my gaze, and practice shamatha. After a minute or so I return to my work, setting the timer again for another hour. Doing so breaks up the work routine and habitual stressful momentum, and allows me to return to what’s going on right now, several times throughout my work day.

Get your free chapter of The Strongest Mind in the Room: How Meditation Boosts Human Performance. Find free guided meditations on our How to Meditate Coach.me Guide.

[Tweet “”Meditation and aggression are completely compatible.” @coachdotme interviews @rosenfeld_j on meditation for leaders”]

“In the morning, I’ll roll out of bed, drink a glass of water and immediately start my practice. No email. No TV. Just water and mediation.”

Steve Schlafman is a Principal at RRE Ventures, where he focuses on investing in early-stage startups including Breather (by Coach.me user Julien Smith), Giphy, and The Black Tux. He’s also a new meditator on a 54 day streak on Coach.me. We asked Steve about why he started meditating, how he’s fit the new habit into his busy schedule, and how daily meditation has made his life and work better so far.

24 straight days of meditation. The benefits have just started to reveal themselves. I feel more mindful, energy and productive than ever.

— Steve Schlafman (@schlaf) September 22, 2014

Why did you start meditating? What was your goal?

I started to meditate because I desperately wanted to spend less time in the past and the future and more time in the present.  Additionally, I tend to be a very anxious person so I was looking for a daily practice that ground me and calm my mind.  When I initially started, my goal was to practice least once a day and record how I felt after each session. I found it very easy to incorporate it into my daily routine.

What is your meditation routine?

The style of meditation that I learned is called Vedic. The idea is to practice twice a day for about twenty minutes.  I’ve adopted that schedule and have found it super easy to incorporate into my busy life.  I’ve made this a priority so each day I block out enough time to make sure I get in my fix.  In the morning, I’ll roll out of bed, drink a glass of water and immediately start my practice.  No email.  No TV. Just water and mediation. It’s the first thing I do every day.  In the afternoon when I’m about to hit a wall and I usually reach for sugar and caffeine, I’ll lock myself in a conference room or my office for a quick session. Before I started to meditate I’d usually take fifteen to twenty minutes in the afternoon for coffee so finding a bit of extra time wasn’t an issue.

What benefits have you noticed in the first month of practicing?

I’m a lot more patient and I don’t let small things bother me. Before I embarked on this journey, I would stress about things that were in the past or future and totally out of my control. Meditation has helped me become more mindful of my emotions. Previously I found myself running around and trying to do a million things at once. It was very hard to notice how I was truly thinking and feeling. By incorporating meditation into my daily habits, I’ve become more aware to my environment, others around me and the people I’m interacting with. Over the summer and prior to meditating, I read the book, ‘The Power of Now,’ and it helped me prepare my mind for deeper awareness.

Can you tell me a story about how meditation improved your performance?

I’ve only been meditating now for about fifty days so I’m still very new on this journey. My friends and colleagues at work claim that my ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) is virtually gone. I find that to be a huge complement because I’ve always had a hard time sitting still.

Do you think meditation gives you a competitive edge?

Absolutely. I fundamentally believe it’s important to slow down a few times each day and allow my body and mind to rest. Most importantly, setting an intention during the meditation helps me focus on a certain aspect of work and/or life. When I finish a meditation session, I’m able to focus on what’s in front of me for the next three to six hours. Most importantly, I don’t hold on to things in the future and the past which helps me open up mental space for what’s in front of me.

Get your free chapter of The Strongest Mind in the Room: How Meditation Boosts Human Performance. Find free guided meditations on our How to Meditate Coach.me Guide.

[Tweet “Why @RRE’s @schlaf kicks off his mornings with meditation”]

“In the morning, I’ll roll out of bed, drink a glass of water and immediately start my practice. No email. No TV. Just water and mediation.”

Steve Schlafman is a Principal at RRE Ventures, where he focuses on investing in early-stage startups including Breather (by Coach.me user Julien Smith), Giphy, and The Black Tux. He’s also a new meditator on a 54 day streak on Coach.me. We asked Steve about why he started meditating, how he’s fit the new habit into his busy schedule, and how daily meditation has made his life and work better so far.

24 straight days of meditation. The benefits have just started to reveal themselves. I feel more mindful, energy and productive than ever.
— Steve Schlafman (@schlaf) September 22, 2014

Why did you start meditating? What was your goal?

I started to meditate because I desperately wanted to spend less time in the past and the future and more time in the present.  Additionally, I tend to be a very anxious person so I was looking for a daily practice that ground me and calm my mind.  When I initially started, my goal was to practice least once a day and record how I felt after each session. I found it very easy to incorporate it into my daily routine.

What is your meditation routine?

The style of meditation that I learned is called Vedic. The idea is to practice twice a day for about twenty minutes.  I’ve adopted that schedule and have found it super easy to incorporate into my busy life.  I’ve made this a priority so each day I block out enough time to make sure I get in my fix.  In the morning, I’ll roll out of bed, drink a glass of water and immediately start my practice.  No email.  No TV. Just water and mediation. It’s the first thing I do every day.  In the afternoon when I’m about to hit a wall and I usually reach for sugar and caffeine, I’ll lock myself in a conference room or my office for a quick session. Before I started to meditate I’d usually take fifteen to twenty minutes in the afternoon for coffee so finding a bit of extra time wasn’t an issue.

What benefits have you noticed in the first month of practicing?

I’m a lot more patient and I don’t let small things bother me. Before I embarked on this journey, I would stress about things that were in the past or future and totally out of my control. Meditation has helped me become more mindful of my emotions. Previously I found myself running around and trying to do a million things at once. It was very hard to notice how I was truly thinking and feeling. By incorporating meditation into my daily habits, I’ve become more aware to my environment, others around me and the people I’m interacting with. Over the summer and prior to meditating, I read the book, ‘The Power of Now,’ and it helped me prepare my mind for deeper awareness.

Can you tell me a story about how meditation improved your performance?

I’ve only been meditating now for about fifty days so I’m still very new on this journey. My friends and colleagues at work claim that my ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) is virtually gone. I find that to be a huge complement because I’ve always had a hard time sitting still.

Do you think meditation gives you a competitive edge?

Absolutely. I fundamentally believe it’s important to slow down a few times each day and allow my body and mind to rest. Most importantly, setting an intention during the meditation helps me focus on a certain aspect of work and/or life. When I finish a meditation session, I’m able to focus on what’s in front of me for the next three to six hours. Most importantly, I don’t hold on to things in the future and the past which helps me open up mental space for what’s in front of me.

Get your free chapter of The Strongest Mind in the Room: How Meditation Boosts Human Performance. Find free guided meditations on our How to Meditate Coach.me Guide.

[Tweet “Why @RRE’s @schlaf kicks off his mornings with meditation”]

“If I have an emotionally upsetting experience, I don’t get so derailed by it.”

Dr. Kristin Neff is a leading researcher in self-compassion, “extending compassion to one’s self in instances of perceived inadequacy, failure, or general suffering.” You tap into your self-compassion when you forgive yourself for a mistake or muster up confidence to overcome a challenge like she has in raising her autistic son. In her research, Neff breaks down self-compassion into three elements: kindness toward oneself, recognition that suffering is something that we all go through, and mindfulness. She explained to us more about what it means to be self-compassionate, how she trains people to build self-compassion, and why it’s such an important life skill.

Why does your body and brain react the way it does to self-criticism?

There are a few ways that it happens. One is that we tend to identify with our thoughts, so the system which is designed to protect our bodily self gets triggered when there is a threat to our self concept. Our body really reacts the same way [that it does when it sees a physical threat]. When our threat system is triggered, we basically have three ways of reacting. One would be to FIGHT, which takes the form of self-criticism. One is FLIGHT, which would be avoiding thinking about the issue but still feeling really stressed from it. One example is procrastination. The third would reaction would be to FREEZE. When people freeze mentally, you usually observe rumination. You’ll get stuck in this loop of thinking, with the false noti0n that if you think about it for the 67th time the problem will go away.

Can self-criticism be helpful?

There’s lots of pressure out there but we don’t need to add any more pressure by beating ourselves up. Usually there is enough stress inherent with deadlines and the nature of situations that we don’t need to artificially create more. It really depends how you are defining criticism when you ask that. There is absolutely a benefit to constructive criticism. Is there a benefit to negative criticism? I don’t know. I think that people think there is an it does work to the extent that if you are so afraid of your inner critic that it might lead you to take some action. But what would it look like if you motivated yourself because you wanted to do well, because you cared and you wanted to reach your full potential, instead of acting out of fear?
The best set of studies out there is a paper by Breines and Chen. It’s a nice study because it’s all experimental, whereas many studies in the subject matter use self-report scales. The researchers didn’t have people criticize themselves. Instead, she had a self esteem boost control and a neutral control. The lack of self compassion is criticism. And she found that people who are induced to be more self-compassionate about a failure do better — they’re more motivated and they try harder at the task. In our own research, we have self report data that shows that self-compassion is linked to less fear of failure and more perceived competence, two hugely motivational variables.

What drives you to self-censor or self-criticize?

It comes from a variety of sources. For some people, it might the internalized voice of someone who criticized them in the past. We know that parental criticism is linked to lower self-compassion, for instance. Another reason you might criticize yourself is to “beat the other person to the punch” so to speak. Let’s say that you are an artists and you are afraid that someone will comment negatively on your work; you might criticize yourself publicly before they have a chance. That takes some of the emotional weight out of hearing it from others.
I think that if you start looking at the inner critic, the inner critic knows what is right and what should be done. Sometimes it’s easier to feel that you should have been perfect, which implies that you could have been perfect, rather than to accept the reality that as human beings, we aren’t perfect.
Another problem with self-compassion is that people usually have compassion for others but not for themselves. They tend to exclude themselves from the circle of compassion.

Why is that?

That’s a good question. For one, it’s not encouraged in our culture to have self-compassion. People sometimes think that it’s selfish or narcissistic to love yourself too much. Or they think that they will to lose motivation if they are kind to themselves. But they don’t have any of those concerns with compassion for others!

Are there any cultures that do encourage self-compassion? What have you learned from studying them?

There is very little cross culture research, but we know that practicing Buddhists have more self-compassion than the general public. We did one study looking at Thailand, Taiwan, and the United States. In Thailand, they take their Buddhism very seriously. For instance, men are supposed to go on a week-long meditation retreat before getting married. It’s really part of their culture. People in Thailand had the highest levels of self-compassion. But it’s not just an East-West thing, because people in Taiwan had the lowest levels of self-compassion. In fact, it was found that in a lot of Asian cultures criticism has really seemed to be a virtue that people practice. Americans are more in-between. In all three cultures, self-compassion was linked to higher life satisfaction.

What is the connection between mindfulness and self-compassion?

Well mindfulness is a core component of self-compassion. You can’t have self-compassion without mindfulness. You have to be aware that you are suffering, you’ve got to turn toward it and be with it certainly long enough to respond to the suffering with compassion. We know that the MBSR (Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction) program raises self-compassion even though there isn’t a lot of explicit instruction around self-compassion. You receive a bit of loving kindness meditation on the retreat day. It’s mainly conveyed through teacher warmth. For some people, that seems to be enough, but for people who tend to really lack self-compassion, it seems to be and we have pilot data that suggests that they need more explicit practice around self-compassion. So if you were to take our self-compassion workshop, it’s pretty radically different from a traditional mindfulness workshop. We give a lot of exercises in which you call up a difficult situation in your life and practice self-compassion.
What was interesting in 0ur study of the self-compassion program is that there was no difference between formal meditation and informal practice in terms of how much self-compassion was gained. The informal practice might be something like putting your hand on your heart when you are suffering, using self-compassionate language toward yourself, dealing compassionately with your inner critic and trying to understand what it’s trying to tell you. We have a lot of practices that don’t require being on a cushion, so to speak, and that are typically shorter. They were equally predictive and both Chris and I were surprised by that.

How does meditation build self-compassion?

That’s a good question. It depends on what type of meditation you are talking about. I also don’t think that we have the answer to that scientifically yet.
One type of meditation that people have looked at is loving kindness or Metta meditation. Loving-kindness meditation is aimed at increasing loving-kindness (tenderness and consideration toward others). The research has shown that this kind of meditation increases self-compassion.
In our self-compassion program, we adapt a lot of meditations to increase self-compassion in particular. So how does the meditation increase it? I suppose by training the brain to have more positive emotional experiences toward oneself.

How do you modify traditional mindfulness meditations to build self-compassion?

We have two ways of adapting loving kindness meditation. The first is to target, or think thoughts toward, a loved one — it’s very easy to feel loving kindness toward a loved one. You imagine yourself with the loved one, you kind of slip yourself in.Then you switch your focus from the loved one and you to just focusing on yourself. We then give people an exercise to think about what’s deeply meaningful for them and what they yearn to hear from others. It makes them feel loved, validated, and accepted, and they use that as the basis for coming up with their own phrases that they can then say to themselves.
We also have a variation of a breath meditation that we call affectionate breathing. So it is a breath meditation but we layer in a lot of things like putting your hand on your heart, get your oxytocin flowing, being very gentle when they bring their mind back, which they do in mindfulness meditation too, but using metaphors of like, imagine your attention was a little child that had wandered off, and the gentleness with which you would usher that child back. So that’s mindfulness with a little bit more explicit affection in there, it’s not as radically different.
And then our third core meditation is called giving and receiving compassion. You might say it’s a variation on tong glen. With tong glen, you breathe in the suffering of others and you transform it and breathe out compassion. We found that this was a more advanced practice. So instead we have people breathe compassion for themselves and breathe out compassion for others. We use this as the basis for both compassionate listening and relationships and also for caregivers.

How does meditation give you a competitive edge?

Does it give me a competitive edge? Well, it depends again how you are defining competition. Meditation allows me to be more productive and do better work. So that you could say provides a competitive edge. Does it mean that somehow I can outsmart the competition more? I think sometimes it may not or it may makes me want to compete a little less. But I’m certain that it makes my work higher quality and helps me be productive. You know in academia, that is a competitive edge — if you get more papers out there so that people read what you do.

What have you noticed about your productivity since you began meditating?

Well one is that if I have an emotionally upsetting experience, I don’t get so derailed by it. One example is when my son got diagnosed with autism. It was very hard but the experience didn’t totally derail me — I could still do my work, I could still function, I could still keep going.
This may sound roundabout but because of my self-compassion and mindfulness practice, I took a big risk by choosing to study self-compassion in the first place. 15 years ago, it was still a little “woo woo” to study anything related to meditation or self-compassion. I mean, there was some mindfulness work out there but even back then there wasn’t a lot. I think my practice helped me make that choice because I was passionate about it, even if other people might raise their eyebrows. And so I think that meditation gave me a competitive edge in the long run because I chose to study something risky but that I was really motivated to research.

Get your free chapter of The Strongest Mind in the Room: How Meditation Boosts Human Performance. Find free guided meditations on our How to Meditate Coach.me Guide.

[Tweet “”If I have an emotionally upsetting experience, I don’t get so derailed by it.” @coachdotme interviews Dr. Kristin Neff @self_compassion”]