Meditation For MBAs: Train Your Mind, Improve Your Game — Part II

For the purposes of this practice, treat all thoughts equally. That means that whether “I wonder who will be at the party” or “I think I’m getting the hang of meditation—I could be good at this” cross through your mind, they’re both thoughts. As such, you let both of them go, perhaps labeling them as “thinking,” and then bring your attention back to the experience of the breath in your body. It’s amazing how many thoughts try to pass themselves off as not thoughts! If you’re like me, to-do items repeatedly arise or you get some great ideas you’re afraid you’re going to forget while meditating. Feel free to keep a pad next to you where you can jot down such persistent thoughts; when you commit them to paper, they stop coming up.

Establishing a Practice

It’s common knowledge that if you want to gain mastery at something, you have to practice it regularly. The same is true with meditation. If you’d like to reap its brain-changing benefits, I recommend establishing a daily practice. You may say you have no time for it, but I assure you that you can eke out 5 or 10 minutes a day to get started. Pick a length of time that’s doable; it’s better to build up your sitting time gradually than to set the bar too high, get discouraged that you can’t hit it, and give up prematurely. Most of the scientific studies have had participants meditating for at least 20 minutes a day five to six days a week, and we’ve seen benefits resulting at that duration, so it would be great to ultimately shoot for at least that amount of time.

Establish a place to practice where you’ll not be disturbed by emails, phone calls, other people, or pets. It can be helpful to set a regular time, as your body will come to expect to meditate then, but this isn’t critical. Some people like to do it first thing in the morning to set the tone for the day. Others like to do it in the evening after they’ve taken care of their to-do list. I prefer to sit in the late afternoon when I can arrange it. Experiment to determine your ideal time of day. I recommend setting an alarm so that you won’t be checking the time every few minutes to see if you’re done yet. (Check out the Insight Timer app.) You may prefer having the structure guided meditations provide, so please make use of the audio files I’ve provided. You may also get the hang of the practice and choose to do it solo. Whatever gets you to practice!

Some people find they can get themselves to meditate if they do it in a group context. If this sounds appealing, contact me about group teleclasses I’ll be offering and courses that may be available in your area. While daily(ish) practice will benefit you tremendously, you can take a quantum leap if you do daylong or longer retreats, where you can go much deeper, and have more time and space to unwind. I can help you identify programs and retreat centers that will be appropriate for your level of practice.

This Week’s Informal Mindfulness Practices

As I noted in the first article in this series, you’ll amplify the results of your formal sitting time if you also practice mindfulness during the rest of your day. Here are two more informal practices with which you can experiment this week. Please feel free to continue to play with the ones I provided in the last article as well.

No doubt, several times a day you’re waiting, whether for your double latte at Starbucks, at the grocery store, on the subway platform, or in traffic. I also suspect that you spend this time on your smartphone, reading email, texting, reading the New York Times, or checking in via Foursquare or Facebook. What if you used your waiting time to put down that device, feel your feet on the ground, take a few conscious breaths, and check in to see what you’re feeling? I can already hear your objections—this email is urgent, I’ve got a lot of reading to catch up on, waiting is so boring—but I invite you to try this at least once daily. Think of it as giving yourself a personal spa moment to regenerate in the middle of a hectic day. If you feel resistant to doing this, I ask you to try an experiment. As you observe yourself beginning to reach for your device, see if you can determine where the urge to do so arises. Where in your body do you register this? Then pause for a few moments. What does it feel like in your body not to automatically use it? Maybe you feel tightness somewhere, a rush of hot angry energy? Is the feeling strong or mild? Now take out your gadget and notice what you’re feeling as you get ready to use it. Do the sensations in your body shift as you begin to engage with the device? Be really curious about what you experience. Even if you still end up using your device, you’ll have engaged your mindfulness muscles and gained insight into what’s compelling you to use it. Do this repeatedly, and you may find yourself having greater choice about how you want to spend your time.

The other informal practice I’d like you to try this week is called “Defining and Defending,” which I discovered in and have modified from Janet Chozen Bays’s book How to Train a Wild Elephant and Other Adventures in Mindfulness. This will help you become aware of the persona(s) you try to maintain. Become aware of how you define yourself and defend your image of yourself. Do you think of yourself as a staunch liberal, conservative, or moderate? Are you proud of having “green” values (and judge those who don’t)? Do you identify yourself as an investment banker or engineer first and foremost? Do you put energy into defending or maintaining these identities? If you get angry or irritated with someone or a situation, check to see whether this is because you feel like your identity is being questioned or threatened. Are there ways you are limiting yourself or your perspective by putting yourself in a particular box? If so, what does this feel like in your body? And who would you be without this label or identity? Would you be willing to drop it for a few hours or days to see what might happen?