Ways Meditation Can Improve You As An Entrepreneur
By: Changwon C.
Tags: Business, Mindfulness, Entrepreneurship, Stress, Meditation

Photo by Simon Migaj on Unsplash

With recent changes in our entrepreneurial uplift across the globe where more and more people are working on or for a business company, people spend almost one-third of their lives at work. As a result, maintaining well-balanced health and wellness at the workplace has become extremely important.

Out of all the wellness techniques, meditation stands out for its spiritual benefits and maintaining physical and emotional health. It is a technique that anyone can incorporate into their life as it hardly takes more than a few minutes.

If you want to improve your work productivity, the following is an analysis of how meditation enhances focus and general happiness.

How to De-stress

When it comes to improving general well-being, de-stressing is necessary. It is also an aspect of entrepreneurial life that is hardly available to many.

Because work can come with immense stress and anxiety for some people, people need to realize the power of the subconscious. Whatever we do while awake affects us subconsciously, and we need to fix it by implementing smaller life changes.

The most common way to destress is by applying a generally passive self-concept lifestyle. It means that every day before going to bed and the first thing after waking up should be dedicated to imagining how you wish to think, feel, and behave for the day. As you think about how your body responds to your mental images, note it down.

We need to acknowledge what is good about our days and make a point of reminding the blessings we so often neglect. Our minds form memories through experiences, so it is useful to acknowledge positive events and build on them. It is also essential to clear your mind before trying to achieve meditation nirvana or mindfulness.

Meditation and Mindfulness

Meditation is a simple technique of sitting comfortably and focusing on a single thought. It helps in focusing on the moment and the task at hand. I have seen many of my colleagues meditating as the first thing they do in their offices.

Mindfulness is a term that describes the focusing part of meditation solely. It involves typical activities such as:

Mindful non-judgmental awareness of breath, body, feelings, thought, etc.

Mindful walking meditation

Mindful eating

Mindful body scan in sitting or lying down position

Listening with non-judgment

Mindfulness facilitates the preparation, incubation, and illumination of the creative process. It means that it enhances divergent thinking, so more splendid ideas reside in your mind. You also start to relax more comfortably by reducing beta waves and temporarily separate yourself from your dilemma or problem. A higher self-awareness and awareness of your thought process helps make connections with your inner self, resulting in many introspect moments that produce better solutions.

Photo by Lesly Juarez on Unsplash

The core difference between meditation and mindfulness is that you mostly focus on a thing or thought with reflection; instead, you focus on yourself. With mindfulness, you focus on something either material or imaginary. In both practices, the goals are the same: you pay attention to the natural rhythm of breathing while sitting or doing some activities.

Types of Meditation

I understand how it can be challenging to practice meditation, let alone work, with a busy schedule. Still, it is all about trying new experiences that make you a better entrepreneur. Since it is a versatile technique, there are many ways you can achieve focus. These include:

Music Meditation

Counting Breaths

Using Nature

Music Meditation

Music meditation is a very commonly used technique, and it is an exceptional practice. All you need is calming tones, and you try to focus on your breath as soon as you hear the notes. You can do it as an individual or collectively with a group of colleagues or friends. I noticed that it promotes a collective calm in collective groups in a workplace and reverberates through the environment.

If you are doing this type of meditation individually, try to span the activity for smaller segments of the day to help manage stress and improve focus.

Counting Breaths

This type of meditation hardly takes more than 5 minutes. All you have to do is sit still while keeping your attention on deep breaths. It would help if you counted in between the inhaling and exhaling, and as soon as you do that, you can feel a surge in your feel-good hormones. It is because it is scientifically proven that deep breathing calms us down. You can also request an employee to perform this technique for stress management.

Using Nature

This type of meditation uses the healing powers of nature: using plants around the workplace. A study suggests that the general productivity in a workplace full of plants increases by an impressive 30%. You can also use Feng Shui totems on your desk to maintain a calm and peaceful environment. It is because of the aura of these items around you that help you control your emotions. Their rejuvenating effect aura and reflective properties make them one of the most commonly used calming techniques used by heads or CEOs.

Photo by Benjamin Child on Unsplash

Ways Benefits of Meditation Improves Business Productivity

I used Headspace and some YouTube videos to figure out how to meditate correctly, and I can vouch for its excellent benefits in improving productivity:

Less Absenteeism

If you have a team associated with your business, you can be happy to note that collective meditation has proven benefits, as it reduces absenteeism. Long-term stress can directly affect the health of both managers and employees. Meditation also reduces the probability of injuries and sickness, and a worksite with healthy individuals is a place of less absenteeism.

Enhanced Creativity

When you are relaxed and free of anxiety, you look at things differently. You come with new and improved ways of approaching a task. If you are under stress, you can overlook a connection between two variables. Meditation can help thinking and creative new solutions to solve business problems.

Reduced Stress

This aspect goes without mentioning, but your employees’ stress levels are bound to drop if you practice collective meditative techniques routinely. Meditation produces a deep state of relaxation and a tranquil mind. By focusing on a singular thought or object, you unscramble your chaotic thought process. It directly affects your overall physical and emotional well-being.

Improved Focus and Memory

If you want to increase your productivity, you must rely on the tools given to you by Nature: a good memory. Not only will it help you remember details and make informed decisions, but it can also help you deliver better products or services because of increased focus. Your ability to concentrate on a single task improves your overall problem handling. Multitasking, although desirable, has been proved to be detrimental over time.

Improved Emotional Regulation

When it comes to maintaining relationships as an entrepreneur, your emotional intelligence plays a significant role. With meditation, you can reduce impulsiveness and conflict resolution skills. It also helps you in negotiations and deal-making. Regulating emotions can also help you increase empathy for your colleagues and employees and increase respect for them.

Improved Resilience

With an increased buffer to handle problems, you will see you and your team address challenges of an even more extensive nature. Meditation makes you resilient in the face of adversity. You can better focus on finding a solution to the problem than thinking about avoiding or delegating the issue to a third party. I have seen many entrepreneurs fishing for opportunities by being resilient and being calculated risk-takers.

Improved Decision-Making

I have often considered improving my decision-making abilities, and I have found my experience with a month-long meditation helps me focus on better solutions. Decisions are made in the prefrontal cortex, and it is the brain region that helps with reasoning. Mindfulness helps in increasing the reasoning part of decision-making. If your logical abilities are heightened, there are greater chances of making informed decisions. Meditation also helps to mitigate the cognitive biases, which are a by-product of rational thinking but can also cause harm if relied upon too much.

Improved Relationships

In business, relationships are crucial to collaboration and teamwork. These skills are trainable, and some workers are naturally better at them than others. However, you can improve these skills by meditating. A Harvard University research suggests that meditation directly enhances compassionate responding in workplaces. It means that people in the workplace are more tolerant of each other. I also could not help but notice the link of empathy with the prefrontal cortex.

Improved Happiness

Happiness is an aspect of life that often gets ignored when someone aspires to become an entrepreneur. I found that the University of Northern California and the University of Michigan jointly produced research recently that showcased how happiness indexes increase in people who meditate regularly. Not just happiness, but all the positive emotions when you dive deeper. I also came across Matthieu Ricard, who is officially the world’s happiest person according to these brain scans, and he practices meditation to achieve this level of happiness. Increased positive emotions also reduced the negative ones, and the research agreed with this assumption. Even if you meditate for just twenty minutes over three weeks, you see improved results than those who do not meditate at all.