The Power of Emptiness

Sometimes, when you face a fraught situation or a complex problem and feel like you need to think about it more and harder, what you should do instead is stop thinking at all.

Clear your head. Get out of your own way. Let it go. Empty yourself. Create room for the needed insight to arrive. And then, perhaps, as if by magic, just the idea you've sought may come your way, and without all the effort you would otherwise have expended in vain.

Meditation in Good Company

Ok. I know. I've written about meditation twice recently. But those blogs were spurred by reading the really good Dan Harris book, 10% Happier. I couldn't help myself. Blame Dan. But today's rumination comes from a Sunday New York Times Article this week on how the CEO of Aetna insurance has introduced Yoga and meditation to his employees and customers. The results are wild.

Mark Bertolini had a near fatal skiing accident, and in his long battle to recover discovered both yoga and meditation. The practices had a profound impact on him. And so, when he became CEO, he had the idea of introducing them to the entire company, as something he would recommend and encourage, but not require.

To convince the company's head physician to go along with this, he offered to ask employees who wanted to volunteer for a little research to join one of three groups: the yoga group, the meditation group, and a control group. In a very short time, the yoga and meditation people were reporting lower stress and showing it in their heart functions and cortisol levels. The company spread the gospel, and more people signed up for these stretching and breathing exercises. The overall health of the organization improved right away, and was manifested in a big drop in medical costs. People felt better and reported greater focus and productivity. Aetna's stock has also tripled during this time, by the way. Check out the detailed stats in the Times piece. "It's magical," Bertolini reported. What's not to love?

Of course, there are critics. The author of a recent Harvard Business Review article, David Brendel, argues that we shouldn't over use techniques like meditation in the workplace to reduce stress because stress can be useful to prompt critical thinking, and so isn't just something to avoid. And to an extent, I agree. But my view would be that a little stress can go a long way. If practices like yoga, meditation, jogging, or weight lifting can take the edge off the stress, the anxiety, and the wholly unnecessary blight of worry in people's lives, something is gained and nothing worthwhile is lost.

A little stress is fine. Stress is where opportunity and challenge meet. It's the baseline experience of pressure. And that's not always a bad thing. But too much is counterproductive. And too much is the exact dose that stress usually comes in. Any practice that can reduce it down to healthy levels, while refreshing the spirit and sharpening personal focus is to be commended.

Of course, mediation is not meant to replace rational thought. They have to be used in tandem. As Brendel says: 

Mindful meditation should always be used in the service of enhancing, not displacing, people’s rational and analytical thought processes about their careers and personal lives.

So, to prepare yourself for whatever rational and analytical thought you might need, in any new challenge, you might first find yourself a comfortable spot and do like innovative CEOs often do. Breathe. And chill. If only for a few minutes. And let me know how it goes. Om interested.

A Great Meditation Book

In an airport bookstore the other day, I bought a book that ended up being much better and far more fun than I had hoped. It's called 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. Maybe I was just impressed with the subtitle, that pretty much took up most of the cover. It's by a top network news guy named Dan Harris. And it's really good.

Dan is a highly competitive person in a crazy competitive business and he had gotten so accustomed to the unhelpful nagging critical and often angry voice in his head dogging him throughout the day that he just assumed he was stuck with its stress and negative energy. I won't give away the story, but he discovers the world of self-help and meditation and approaches it all as a very skeptical guy - very funny, and cynical to boot. At some level, he realizes that he needs some help with his inner stress. But he interviews several of the top people who claim to have the answers and comes away just perplexed. There's some great gossip in here, by the way, if you go for that sort of thing - some nice celebrity stories and crazy tales you can enjoy in addition to what you'll learn that's of value.

If you ever wondered about meditation as something you should maybe consider, but didn't know where to start or who to believe about it, then do yourself a favor and get this book. And when you're done laughing, just sit and think about your breath for 5 minutes, in and out. And repeat daily. And, if you're anything like Dan, you'll start noticing a difference, not consistently at first, but over time. And you may even write me a note to thank me for telling you about the book.

You're welcome.

The Urge and the Pause

What makes you eat that extra burger, get that additional serving, have just one more drink, and maybe at least half a one after that? What pulls the trigger on that negative comment or angry outburst in response to what strikes you as idiocy, or as an insulting remark? What moves us to do almost anything that we later regret?

There's an urge, an insistent urge, and we act on it. Or, to use another helpful metaphor, there's a big itch, and we scratch it. In her practical little book on change, Taking the Leap: Freeing Ourselves from Old Habits and Fears, the American Buddhist nun Pema Chodron, passes on some useful advice. Consider poison ivy. When we have it and scratch, we spread the problem. We end up itching even more. And that most often results in even more scratching, and an even bigger problem. Great metaphor.

The meditative approach that she recommends instead is to pause, notice the itch, feel it fully, live with it, and refrain from reacting quickly and naturally by scratching. It's often more helpful to consider the itch than to obey it. You might ask yourself why the itch is there. You might remind yourself what will happen, as it always does, if you scratch, as you normally do. How will you look back on the scratching tomorrow? The intense urgency of the urge is always a passing thing. Resist for thirty seconds, or a minute, and the battle is won.

Scratch it now and you'll have to fight a bigger battle later. Now is always the time to pause, and consider, and learn to feel, before giving in to the urge that never makes things better, but worse.

Small pauses can solve big problems, and help to erase long term habits. When we use our minds properly, we can defeat what may long have defeated us. What we need is a new urge - to pause.

Sunday Bonus: Kobe and Arianna on Success

There's a remarkable conversation in the New York Times today. The writer Philip Galanes sits down with Kobe Bryant, thought by many to be our greatest active basketball player, and Arianna Huffington, founder of the Huffington Post and bestselling author, to talk about their struggles and successes, difficulties and coping mechanisms. I recommend it heartily. It's chock full of great insights and reminders. 

For example, I often speak on the topic of True Success - what the great philosophers have said that it takes for satisfying and sustainable achievement in any challenge. I've isolated seven universal conditions for success, from the world's deepest wisdom literature through the centuries, and tested these conditions repeatedly in the lives of contemporary people. I call them The 7 Cs of Success (as in "Seven Seas"). In the briefest statement, in any major challenge, we need: a clear Conception, a strong Confidence, a focussed Concentration, a stubborn Consistency, an emotional Commitment, a good Character, and a Capacity to Enjoy the Process along the way.

Kobe and Arianna speak of, or allude to, many of these tools for achievement in their fascinating exchange. The two have known each other for a while, because Kobe often seeks out highly successful people in other fields, hoping to enhance his own understanding of achievement.

At one point, we get, for example, relevant to my C7 - a Capacity to Enjoy the Process and my own repeated insistence that life is supposed to be a series of adventures, of journeys we enjoy as we move toward our goals:

KB: My heroes growing up, the Jordans, the Bill Russells, the Magic Johnsons, they all won multiple times. I wanted more. But it wasn't just the result. It was the journey to get there.

PG: You like the process?

KB: I love the process. The result comes later.

AH: He talks the same way about getting back to the game after injuries: doing the research, collecting the team. Kobe found joy in rehab. That's amazing because so many people are goal-oriented only.

Joy in rehab. Who would even think of that?

Go read more, about sleep, meditation, struggle, focus, and so much more. Click to read it here. And have a great day.