Is meditation the holy grail for next generation leaders?

Ok, I admit it.

I'm a high performance junkie. Always on the lookout for the next frontier of bigger, better faster.

And recently...

A high performance junkie when it comes to more fulfilment and inner peace.

Where do you 'get' that, then?

You bet I've looked into meditation and am aware of the myriad of benefits it brings. To be precise, I've dabbled with meditation, trying to start a regular practise more times than once, perhaps because meditation felt like the right thing to do.

However, after starting my own business, things shifted a bit.

The joy (and stress!) that comes from the entrepreneurial challenges of creating, self PR and marketing, and thinking about money, sometimes literally 24/7 had an impact on my already busy mind.

It seemed like everything was spinning faster all the time and I felt having very little, if any, control over it.

After a while I realised, somewhere deep, I craved for a moment of stillness into the busyness, some peace where I could just BE for a moment, without thinking any items from my mile-long to-do list.

(That said, a fun fact: the a-type in me was still very much there so obviously I signed up to a beginner level meditation course to get it right.)

The momentum this 21-day course and the few following months of self-study practise generated, made me realise that

A meditation practise is one's own, private and sacred journey.

I certainly had had an idea of how meditation should look like, and in hindsight it was actually preventing me to get into a regular sitting practise.

Quieting my mind, no thoughts?

Yeah...not gonna happen.

So, perhaps for me, the turning point was approaching meditation with curiosity, testing a bunch of different 'styles' and being pretty relaxed about the outcome of a practise. I give myself 10-30 minutes each day, with no expectations.

Perhaps because of that attitude, I'm often richly rewarded.

It's indeed astonishing how us humans can learn new things. After one year of committed practise (and there are still hard days for sure!) I have established a daily, non-negotiable sitting practise which brings me joy, clarity and ease. I can honestly say I believe meditation is making me happier.

I even sometimes go as far as stating that meditation is the biggest factor contributing to my personal growth and fulfilment over the past year.

As my personal experience is this positive and rich, I like to talk about it, also here on social media. I actually often say 'all CEO's should meditate' - and I mean this.

Coming back to the header of this article, I believe meditation can make all the difference on how we, the next generation leaders, approach this world full of stress response and constant chatter. In my opinion we need qualities such as compassion, empathy and flexibility, all nurtured by meditation.

So, to gauge where my next gen leaders at, I did a poll on LinkedIn a few weeks back.

A simple poll of whether my network meditates already. Here are the results - and personally, I was positively surprised this many have a practise!

I also got such amazing commentary alongside the post that before they get lost in the abyss of social media, let me share the with you.

Some tips and tricks from my network (if you click on the image, you're taken to the person's LI profile so you can connect with them!):

If you have something cool to share - or a question - please share below, I'd love to hear from you!

And...if I have piqued your interest to give meditation a go, excellent. It not, that's excellent, too. Perhaps it's not your time just yet - unless you make it your time :)

With gratitude

x Anna

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