The mind is a muscle, and meditation is a form of stretching
MOST PEOPLE wouldn’t find it strange if you told them to stretch their muscles before running a race.
Stretching limbers up the muscles, increases performance, and reduces the risk of injury.
And yet, and yet, every day people around the world turn up for work and run a mental race in which it never occurs to them to stop and stretch.
The mind is a muscle, and meditation is a form of stretching.
The problem with meditation is that many people believe it’s not for them. Meditation is for hippies and prayer is for religious folk, the thinking goes, and if you don’t fall into one of those buckets then you are likely to dismiss these practices altogether.
In the cut and thrust of the corporate world, meditation is often seen as a soft idea, the kind that may get you ridiculed or fired, the province of bohemians and tree hugging pinko lefties.
Easy, easy, there is no need for name calling. While it may be true that meditation is warmly embraced by creative types, that may just be because it actually works.
Your author is no hippie. A former lawyer with his fair share of war wounds and battle scars, he is also open to new ideas.
And so, and so, to see whether meditation may have anything of value to offer, we have been trialing it for the last two weeks using a very simple book of Chinese origin called The I Ching.
The results are nothing but positive.
By taking 10 minutes out at the start of your day, 10 minutes before starting back after lunch, and 10 minutes before going to bed, you can relax the mind, reduce stress, increase productivity, and decrease the number of hours you need to sleep each night.
It is working for us.
Try it for yourself. There are lots of free meditation resources available online. We are interested to hear how you get on.
Report back with your results, and share your experiences in the consulting forum.