Meditation

meditateMost people have heard of meditation, and that it’s good for them. I think saying that its good for you is a huge understatement. It’s probably the one most transformative practice one can learn, especially as an entrepreneur.

So what’s the big deal about it? I will try to explain here – but keep in mind that meditation is in some way fundamentally unexplainable – in the same way playing music can only be appreciated once you try it yourself, and even then its true depth reveals itself gradually, the more we deepen into it.

At the simplest, meditation helps us relax. We sit in silence, we take deep breaths. This relaxation give us a recharge and reset. I know that in my experience, a meditation sit in the morning has a lasting effect throughout the day, allowing me to remain more calm and stable, and less reactive and frustrated. So particularly if you find yourself prone to getting stressed (which is basically inevitable if you’re running a start-up), meditation is the 100% organic medicine for rejuvenation and stress relief.

But there’s something else that happens when we meditate. We begin to ease our tunnel-vision focus on reality, in favor of a more diffuse perspective. I’m not speaking just about our vision, but our perception – the way we take in all of reality. Why is that important? Because our perception – the range of things we pay attention to – is constrained by our mental constructs or habits. A great example of it is this video. Did you notice the gorilla? Most people do not, because their mental constructs (knowledge about how basketball is played and the habit of fixating the attention on the ball) close off their peripheral perception, causing what’s know as inattentional blindness.

Similar things happen in the workplace. For example – you could we could be having a conversation with an investor, and be so absorbed in the words they are saying (as well as the thoughts that arise in you in response to them, counter-arguments you are planning to make, etc) that you might miss important cues from them – for example their eyes may for a moment light up when you mention a particular product feature or a related business direction – which could actually be a doorway into closing a deal with them. When we come in to a conversation with a wide-open awareness, we are able to more naturally and spontaneously respond to whatever arises, unconstrained by our pre-conceived ideas.

yin-yangThere’s yet a more subtle layer to the benefits of meditation. It creates an open space in our awareness. The importance of open space can seem hard to appreciate, because our Western culture has a strong preference for objects and doing rather than emptiness and being. But both of them are equally important; that is basically the essence of the familiar yin-yang diagram – the white is defined only by its relationship to the black, and vice-versa. Just like in the gym we alternate repetitions with rests for optimal results, so is stillness of the mind vital in between periods of intense thinking.The best computer metaphor I can think of is rebooting your computer after a few days of use – all of a sudden programs run faster. A lot of integration and new ideas happen in the periods of stillness.  I remember a few times in graduate school where I would just be stuck on some research problem. And I’d say, “screw it, let’s go rock climbing” – and magically, a new breakthrough or a shift in perspective would occur while I was pasted on a rock face, when I was relaxed from obsessive thinking about the problem.

People often say: “I’d like to meditate, but my mind is too busy”. This is basically like saying: “I’d like to go to the gym, but I’m just not in good physical shape.” The point of meditation is not to have a calm experience throughout (although the calm we increases more and more as a byproduct of practice). Rather it is to learn to confront the tumultuous nature of our mental activity and start to see through it, without getting absorbed by it.

Learning to confront that storm, and remain still in the face of it, is particularly important for entrepreneurs. As you probably know, every day of a startup founder is confronted with an incessant fire-hose of challenges, requests, bugs, deadlines and so on. We need this essential stillness training, in order to remain calm, centered and responsive, rather than reactive and overwhelmed, in the face of all these daily challenges.

As our meditative practice deepens, an even deeper shift starts to happen. We begin to fundamentally let go of the habitual self-centered perspective and relax into the wholeness of reality. As a result, we become less invested in maintaining our identity, our self-image, and the effort we put in to upholding it – and so we can become more fluid, flexible and at-ease with who we are. A fundamental non-resistance to reality-as-it-is starts to develop, and we are able to welcome each situation, even challenging ones, with a relaxed, easeful stance, like a game we are choosing to play.

It’s quite simple to get started meditating:
1) Sit down in a comfortable position with your back straight (It can either be on a cushion or a chair. No need to get into the cross-legged lotus position).
2) Set a timer for 10 minutes (better to start with a shorter time that you can commit to every day).
3) Count your breaths (inhales) till 10, then start over. Repeat.

Don’t worry if you mind starts to wonder, or if you suddenly find that you’ve been thinking about something for the past 5 minutes – that’s perfectly normal. Just gently bring your focus back to the practice. Again and again.

There exist many different meditation techniques, but the most important thing is to just start with something simple. Headspace is a great website that breaks it down in very simple steps. If you’re into the Quantified Self, you might enjoy the Muse  – a biofeedback headband that measures your meditation process and gives you real-time feedback of how calm you are, as well as a score at the end of your session. If you’re in the Bay Area, InnerSpace (a YCombinator-funded mindfulness non-profit!) organizes weekly meditations for tech entrepreneurs.