Meditation is probably a good tool for you to start using in these crazy times. For most of the country, the last 7 – 10 days have seen your world flipped upside down and you’ve probably spent more time at home with your family than you have in years. Add in that many people have lost their “Spring Break” to the Coronavirus outbreak, and it’s been a pretty stressful March so far. Most importantly, if you are in an essential business, thank you! You are doing some amazing work. Your days are more dangerous than normal. And without you, we’d never get through all of this.
For those who have the time and space to think about business, the Harvard Business Review had a good article yesterday, Why Leaders Need Meditation Now More Than Ever.
Meditation Tactics
Everyone’s meditation experience is unique. For me, I try to begin every day with a 10 minute guided meditation using the Calm app on my phone. On the days when I don’t get my 10 minutes in, I do feel a difference. But when I do, it’s nice to start the day with a fresh mind. Before you dive into that mountain of email and tasks, a little quiet time helps refresh you for the day.
The HBR article offers three practices you could use:
- Meditate first thing in the morning
- Start each meeting with a few minutes of meditation
- Step back when you get caught in unproductive thought patterns
I’m a fan of the first tactic for sure. In my daily work, I don’t end up in a lot of meetings that would benefit from some meditation. It would be very interesting to see a judge have an entire courtroom meditate for a few minutes – maybe it would make the morning’s calendar less antagonistic??? But chances are, we won’t be seeing that as part of a Judge’s Part Rules anytime soon.
Regardless of what effect the Coronavirus has had on your business, if times are stressful, consider adding some meditation into your daily routine. When I first started doing it, I was very skeptical. I had seen Dan Harris talking about it on TV. And in that creepy way that Google always seems to know what I’m thinking, an ad for Calm popped up in my browser shortly after that. So I gave it a try and haven’t looked back…
