Introduction
Hi, I’m Max – a personal development strategist for high performers.
Of all the research articles on my website, this one is certainly in the top three most important.
Meditation is, in my view, the number one personal development habit, beyond going to the gym, beyond networking, beyond saving money. Think of your life as the task of cutting down an enormous tree with a saw – meditation is your number one saw sharpening tool.
Without a solid meditation practice, life is spent cutting down this tree with a blunt saw, getting there at half the speed, effectiveness or efficiency – I am reminded of this story from personal development classic 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
A woodcutter strained to saw down a tree. A young man who was watching asked “What are you doing?” “Are you blind?” the woodcutter replied. “I’m cutting down this tree.” The young man was unabashed. “You look exhausted! Take a break. Sharpen your saw.” The woodcutter explained to the young man that he had been sawing for hours and did not have time to take a break. The young man pushed back… “If you sharpen the saw, you would cut down the tree much faster.” The woodcutter said “I don’t have time to sharpen the saw. Don’t you see I’m too busy?”
Here’s the thing to understand about life – you are your most important asset. And meditation is the art of working on yourself. Sometimes clients will ask me, “how do I work on myself, what exactly do I do?” and my answer is always the same – “look inside and you tell me”. Even the fact that this question gets posed in a coaching conversation illustrates a lack of self awareness, meditation is the cure-all for that.
Here’s a question – how often do you set time aside to be with yourself and self reflect? How important is this to you, REALLY?
And for all you high performer types who say “well Max, how is me sitting in a room by myself going to make me more money?” Here’s my answer – the chokehold to your business is YOUR PSYCHOLOGY. You, as the owner, leader or manager of a business are responsible for your decision making prowess to effectively move your company forward, right? Have you ever stopped to ask yourself where your decisions come from?
“Well they come from years of experience in running companies” – Yeah, cool, I get that. Have you ever stopped to look at the operating system that is being used to make these decisions? Surely you would understand that the human psyche is a rich tapestry of different parts of us, so which part of the psyche exactly is making your decisions in your business and in your life? What exactly are your decisions grounded in?
Meditation is the practice of developing introspection to sharpen your ax. And through daily practice your ax gets so sharp it becomes like a superpower. I’ve been fortunate enough to live in ashrams and monasteries, and my meditation practice has now clocked over 6,000 hours. And for me in my life, it has solved 7 figure business challenges, saved my marriage on multiple occasions, allowed me to find forgiveness, develop interconnections that others can’t see, and I’m only 8 years into my practice.
Okay enough rambling let’s get into how to actually meditate.
Step One – Set The Goddamn Habit!
Sit down with a timer and set that timer for 20 minutes – sit up straight with your spine straight so you don’t fall asleep, close your eyes, and just sit there.
“But Max, what about music? What about a guided visualization practice? What about focusing on my breath? What about mantra meditation or that fancy transcendental meditation in LA that everyone keeps raving about?”
Just sit there for 20 minutes. Here’s the thing about meditation, for the first year, you will suck at meditating – no one is born a good meditator – even those young children who grow to be monks have hundreds or even thousands of hours under their belt by the time they’re 10 years old. So, the most important thing is the setting of the habit. If you sit there for 20 minutes thinking that this is a waste of time, that counts. If you sit there for 20 minutes distracted and suffering through monkey mind, that counts. If you sit there and think about sex for 20 minutes, that counts!
One thing you will learn through repeatedly bashing your head against the wall through meditating is that YOU CAN’T CONTROL YOUR THOUGHTS. And nor will you ever be able to. If you don’t believe me, read the rest of this article without thinking of a pink elephant, and if you can, then you’ve proven me wrong…
…You’ve already thought of it haven’t you?
Step Two – Become Aware Of Your Thoughts
As you are sitting there for your 20 minutes, you’ll notice that your mind is like a hurricane, thought after thought after thought after thought. Now the temptation here is to think “oh well clearly I’m not cut out for this, clearly I suck at this, it must not be for me, let me just get back to work” – wrong! Stay with me here. In order for our emotional and psychological challenges to get resolved, they must first come to the surface. Think about the classic therapist who attempts to get you to speak openly about what is happening in your experience where they hold space for you to work through stuff. Meditation works in just the same way, but instead of a therapist, you are creating a space for your mind to work through its own challenges, and if you sit patiently and allow it to do this, these things will get resolved.
Think of meditation like going to the gym – the best workouts are the toughest where you’re barely getting through it. Meditation works in just the same way. The days where it feels like torture to sit through it, they are the days where your mind is working the hardest to solve unresolved challenges, they are the days you are growing the most. This is what we do not understand in western culture regarding meditation, we think that to meditate is to calm the mind – yes, this is true, but in order to have a calm mind, the mind has things to resolve. That is why it is often referred to as monkey mind, because your mind is finally being left alone to begin resolving inner conflicts, but as I said, in order for them to get resolved, they first have to surface.
Step Three – Increase Your Time
Once you’ve begun to create space between you as the watcher or noticer of thoughts and the thoughts themselves, begin to up your time. Again, the point of meditation is NOT to calm your mind. The point of meditation is be that empty space in which your mind resolves its own inner conflict, and as it begins to do this, THEN and ONLY THEN do you begin to experience calm.
It’s very important to remember that progress with meditation is non-linear, meaning that there are some weeks where you’ll get on a hot streak and have day after day of calm, beautiful bliss, insights will be coming to you left and right, business challenges will get resolved all by themselves, almost like magic. And the next week you’ll be in torment wanting to kill that barking dog next door. The point is to ride these waves out and stay as the space in which all these things occur.
If you fancy yourself a high performer, test yourself with this. If you’re a leader, I would challenge you that leadership begins with self governance and self leadership, if you can’t sit in a room by yourself undistracted for 20 minutes, what leadership can there truly be?
Conclusion
Let me sum up today’s reading by saying this, meditation is like a stock that you invest in that will pay you back for the rest of your life, it’s just that for the first year you will lose money, but every year after that it will pay you back more than you could possibly imagine – this is not an exaggeration.
There is no CTA at the end of this writing. This is purely an educational piece.
The definition of learning is BEHAVIOUR CHANGE.
If you read this article and you don’t start meditating, then you haven’t learnt anything.
20 minutes, it’s not that hard. And yes you do have time.
Max – Personal Development Strategist.
