How meditating will make you rich
Thought that meditation was all about enlightenment and finding inner peace? Well, think again! New research has shown that meditation can actually give you a professional advantage and make you a better decision-maker.
Highly successful entrepreneurs and business people have long described the benefits that they have received through meditation and credited it to their success. By allowing you to have a clearer and more focused mind you can make better decisions. Decisions that could have a positive impact on your career or investments. By gaining clarity and perspective through meditation you can access parts of your brain that you otherwise wouldn’t have been able to, and the success will follow.
Accessing your success through meditation
Is it possible to meditate without losing your hustle? It’s a ques-tion that has racked my brain since I first tried meditation six years ago. I like the calm that meditation brings, but I have this fear that fully committing to a full-on practice will turn me into a docile, blissed-out do-nothing.
But here’s the thing: I work at Yahoo Health, so I know the re-search strongly supports the benefits of meditation. What’s the point in resisting any longer? Since I don’t have the funds for one-on-one instruction at the moment, I turned to the crew of people who are democratizing the practice — meditation devotees-slash-app creators Lynne Goldberg (OMG I Can Meditate) and Dan Harris (10% Happier) and foun-ders of meditation companies Suze Yalof Schwartz (Unplug) and Dina Kaplan (the Path) — for their takes.
It wasn’t until after I’d interviewed all these trailblazers that I re-alized that they alone are proof enough. Meditation hasn’t dulled their drive — it has actu-ally given them a leg up in their careers by boosting their mental health and happiness. Here’s why you should try:
It won’t silence the voice in your head, but it will change your relationship with it
This is one of my main concerns — I credit that ball-busting voice in my head with pushing me further, motivating me to work harder. What if silencing my inner critic kills my mojo? Not to worry, says Harris, an ABC news broadcaster who wrote the bestseller 10% Happier and just launched the 10% Happier: Meditation for Skep-tics app. “You’re not going to silence the voice in your head unless you are (a) enlightened or (b) dead. I’ve been doing this for six years, and the voice in my head is just as much of an a**hole as it was when I started.” Phew.
Instead, Harris says, it’s about taking that voice in your head less seriously. “Understand that not all the suggestions are connected to reality. The voice in your head is not going to go away, but you will have a different relationship with it, in which you learn how to respond wisely to things rather than reacting blindly,” he explains. “That is a superpower that makes you much more effective and much less of a jerk and much easier to live with, and boosts your edge in a world where most people are com-pletely blinded.”
It helps you pause before reacting emotionally — and, eventually, stops you from re-acting at all
Ever said something to your boss or a coworker that you later regretted? Meditation, experts say, can help tame that need to snap back after feeling pro-voked. Yalof Schwartz, a former fashion expert turned entrepreneur (she founded Unplug in Santa Monica, Calif.), puts it like this: “Instead of shooting out an email you’ll regret, [meditation] makes you pause, it makes you mindful — proactive instead of reactive. A CEO takes a second to breathe and saves a million dollars.”
Meditation helps you gain clarity and perspective and can even improve your memory, says Goldberg, whose OMG I Can Meditate app has grown its sub-scriber base by 2,000 percent in the past six months. “You can pause and you’re not so reactive, so it helps with business decisions.” Plus, says Harris, it’ll help you stay focused on the task at hand. “We live in an info blitzkrieg, where we’re inundated with texts and tweets and whatever, and focusing on your breath and starting over is like a bicep curl for your brain that teaches you how to stay focused,” he explains.
Article Source: Yahoo Health