The Case for Meditation
In addition to one-on-one leadership coaching, I am a huge proponent of incorporating a regular meditation practice into your life. Meditation teaches leaders to be present. This skill is critical to leaders’ ability to be happier and more effective. How often do you find yourself leaving a meeting only to realize it wasn’t productive and next steps are unclear, or find yourself mindlessly multitasking while in a 1:1, leaving your direct report feeling annoyed and unheard? What about your ability to be present at home? How important is it for you to truly be in the moment when playing with your kids, spending time with a friend, or connecting with your significant other? These moments are fleeting and precious.
Why Meditate?
It is normal and understandable that we lose presence. Not only do humans have quite the list of ways to distract ourselves (social media, email, etc.), it is easy to forget that we have minds and are thinking. Through meditation we begin to recognize our mind’s natural tendency to lose focus and get caught up in our thoughts more often than we’ve likely realized.
According to Joseph Goldstein in Here Now Aware: The Power of Mindfulness, “Through the practice of meditation we begin to see the full range of the mind’s activities, old unskillful patterns as well as wholesome thoughts and feelings. We learn to be with the whole passing show. As we become more accepting, a certain lightness develops about it all. And the lighter and more accepting we become with ourselves, the lighter and more accepting we are with others. We’re not so prone to judge the minds of others, once we have carefully seen our own... Awareness gives us the option of choosing wisely: we can choose which patterns should be developed and cultivated, and which should be abandoned.”
Simply put, meditation helps you cultivate the ability to focus your attention, develop self-awareness and self-acceptance, and respond instead of react to whatever comes your way. These are critical traits of a leader that have a profound impact on your professional and personal relationships.
The Science of Meditation
For thousands of years, through practice, yoga practitioners have understood that meditation could help end the suffering we experience when we are constantly ruminating about the past or future, which is what our minds naturally do. The field of neuroscience and research done using fMRI scans of the brain is now just scratching the surface of being able to scientifically show how a regular meditation practice can physically impact us for the better.
According to Rebecca Gladding, MD, a psychiatrist and co-author of You Are Not Your Brain, your ventromedial prefrontal cortex lights up in the first few minutes of meditation. This part of your brain is always jumping from one thought to another and doing so through the lens of “me,” which can often lead to you catastrophizing everyday moments (for instance, the story you make up about your boss’s clear plan to fire you based on the way he looked at you during the team meeting). By beginning to focus your attention on an area of your choosing (this could be on your breath, through a body scan, etc.) your lateral prefrontal cortex lights up. This invites more balance into how you see the world. Suddenly your “me” lens calms (and you don’t jump to the conclusion of your boss firing you).
Keep up a daily practice and in 8-12 weeks the area of your brain tasked with developing empathy, your dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, becomes more active. This supports your ability to become a more compassionate person, another critical trait of a leader.
Even in small doses, meditation can remodel the physical structure of your brain. In turn, you can train your brain to make concentration easier, be more resilient to stress and cultivate more compassion for others depending on the type of meditation you choose.
How to Begin a Meditation Practice
By now you may be thinking, “Ok Nicole, I hear you, so where do I start?”
By signing up for my newsletter you’ll receive a meditation from me to help you get started. If you choose to work with me, you’ll receive access to a library of my meditations which I’ll add to periodically to support your regular meditation practice.
Still thinking, “But Nicole, isn’t meditation a little woo-woo?” If this is still your concern. I highly encourage you to read 10% HAPPIER: How I Tamed the Voice in my Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing my Edge, and Found Self-Help That Actually Works – A True Story by Dan Harris. A fellow Massachusetts native, Dan Harris is an ABC news anchor who went on a quest for self-healing after having a panic attack on live TV. He comes to investigate meditation as a self-proclaimed “skeptic” and finds himself on a path that truly changes his life for the better and ultimately results in his development of the Ten Percent Happier app and podcast of which I am a huge fan. If you are interested in checking it out, you can get a free month-long trial of the app by signing up here.
