Meditation, Investing, and Leadership

First off, this is only for fun and not meant to be an intellectual exercise (nor any financial advice). I did a 10-day Vipassana meditation course last year, and thought of some parallels between meditation, investing, and leadership. Hope the readers enjoy.

A bit firstly about the 10-day Vipassana meditation course: Altogether it’s almost 10-hours' meditation a day for 10 days. It’s free to attend and there are centres across the world. It’s a Buddhist technique but the course/technique itself is completely areligious. It might feel like virtual hypnotism, as you hear only Mr Goenka’s voice and see only his videos during the course. You are asked to avoid interaction with fellow attendees, including even eye contact, as much as possible. I hardly learnt anything new intellectually or philosophically, but I also didn’t dismiss it as cult-like. This is despite all the trigger words (for me) that I heard during the course such as self-help, art of life, spirituality, and like. For clarification, I have nothing against spirituality, just that my personal definition of spirituality does not encompass vibrations, afterlife or past lives etc. It’s everyone’s free will whether they want to be on the path of spirituality through astrology, psychology, philosophy, meditation, or even money. Also, technically, one can always dismiss virtually anything as cult; it’s like astronomy to flat-earthers, religion to atheists, possessions to minimalists, or it can be anything else, music, sport, politics, you name it. Funny enough, you can find great many similarities between 180-degrees diametrically opposites. Rather, your viewing lens can bend most linear scales into a circle (think crony capitalism vs socialism or fashion vs naturism/nudism), but that’s a separate discussion altogether.

One of Mr Goenka’s concepts did intrigue me, which was that vipassana is an art of dying (i.e., expert vipassana meditators are likely to have painless deaths as they can objectively observe death as a biochemical phenomenon arising and passing). As such, whether it’s being a monk, an entrepreneur, or a tax-paying 9-to-5-er, each of these is a lifestyle in its own way; each an art of dying, chosen with free will by the respective individuals. I did enjoy the bliss of 10-days of silence and disconnect from all external contact. After the course, my brain and core felt absolutely de-stressed and relaxed despite the 10-days of pain in back/hip/knee/legs due to sitting in lotus position for meditation. In all honesty, I didn’t even know that there were multiple techniques of meditation. In fact, I wasn’t aware that focusing on your breath doesn’t mean your breathing passage. When my mum used to ask me to meditate and focus on my breath when I was young, I used to rather take it as her wish to make me sit still and silent for some time. At least the meditation technique in this course specifically asks you to focus on your nostrils. After initially focusing on breathing, the next steps are to observe your bodily sensations. I feel I am already a sensitive person, so my worry was that with a further heightened awareness of bodily sensations, what if I am unable to turn them off! After all, I had to go back to my family responsibilities after 10 days. Householders can take the ‘path to liberation’ only up to a certain extent, otherwise logical extensions on the path will most likely lead you to renouncing everything. A householder may benefit, though, through the self-awareness of one’s health, possibly even helping their doctor do a better diagnosis for instance. I did find Mr Goenka’s chanting quite funny, I don’t mean the chants themselves but his style. No disrespect, just my observation that excellence of Indian classical singers’ singing is inversely proportional to their diction – imperative to note, this is only during renditions, the same singer’s conversational diction more often than not tends to be clear and fluent in multiple Indian and foreign languages. Mr Goenka seems to have picked up on this inverse proportionality, regardless of the level of his own musical sense. I just think that, for a musically uninitiated, lyrics of a rendition can be equally important in order to feel the music.

Enough pre-amble, so the few selected aspects of drawing parallels between meditation, investing, and leadership:

Observe what is, do not react:

-???????Meditation: Meditators are asked to start with observing breath, then progress to observing bodily sensations without reacting. Our negative reactions as well as desires/cravings are the root of all suffering. If you train your body and mind to not react (whether negatively or for desire/craving) i.e., steady your mind and matter, then you’ll observe both objectively in order to transcend them. Essentially, vipassana advises you to observe what is (not what it should be) and not react in any way.

-???????Investing: As an investor, when the value of your investment or target goes up or down, the general tendency is to react i.e., either sell or buy depending on the situation. But you can always first just observe and give yourself time not only to understand the reason of the movement but also to learn for future reference.

-???????Leadership: Similarly, a leader should remain objective as much as possible in any situation, build trust, seek to understand the motivations / reasons behind a difficult (or even a good) stakeholder’s or line report’s behaviour, and align incentivisation accordingly. On the other hand, one should watch out asserting their view, a virtual OCD to express their opinion, in day-to-day situations. One wants to ensure their stakeholders follow structure and process (i.e., always in organise and react mode), whereas a leader should ensure motivation is in place, define processes, and leave in good faith to the teams the responsibility to follow processes (i.e., design mode / observe but not react at every opportunity). One craves to advise others, usually oblivious to their own fallibility whether from the past, in the present moment, or in future; leaders guide others depending on circumstances, with minimal and/or specific expectations.

Impermanence:

-???????Meditation: Vipassana justifies that the reason for observing and not reacting is that everything is impermanent. From your pain, desires, wishes to the positions of celestial objects to subatomic particles i.e., all manifestations in the universe, itself included, are impermanent and everything arises/shows up to pass.

-???????Investing: An investor has to remember that a market crash or peak, or your investment/target’s decline or rise is also impermanent. As Munger would say, if you are invested in a dividend-paying blue-chip stock for the long term or as Bogle would say in broad market index funds, just remember that all market conditions are impermanent. This is not to say one never takes any action whatsoever. Also, definitions of blue-chip or long-term etc vary by individuals. Regardless, one can always get in (or out) during the next trough or peak. All interplaying drivers of the market and economy (from PE ratios to interest rates and yields, inflation, volatility, FX, unemployment, recession, supply bottlenecks, prices of gold/oil/commodities) will arise and pass.

-???????Leadership: As a leader, whether of cross-functional teams or direct line reports, one has to remember that your stakeholders and line reports are not yours for possession. The current organisational need has brought you together in the current structure. Your duty is of care, development, and delivery of tasks but not the tasks themselves.

Experience and results:

-???????Meditation: The 10-day course with almost 10-hours meditation a day was designed to allow attendees to experience the results themselves, as each one’s path to liberation and spirituality is their own. The intention is to experience the results here and now, and not in the next incarnation, nor in heaven or hell.

-???????Investing: Needless to sell the experiential concept to an investor who is already expected to be steeped in RoI. Of course, importance of return ‘on’ investment vs return ‘of’ investment depends on one’s risk appetite. Yes, you’ll face setbacks, market sell-offs, or even a cash out peak. But one has to experience it all so as to learn and consistently deliver results regardless of circumstances in prevailing market conditions. Just watching the FTSE/S&P/Dow Jones/DAX/Nikkei (barely covering stock market as an investment class), or GDP forecasts from IMF or World Bank, or any other economic indicators is of no use unless you actually dip your toes.

-???????Leadership: One doesn’t become a leader by waiting for a leadership role or knowing leadership theory or ideas. Ideas are ten a penny. You have to start taking initiative based on prevailing circumstances. Of course, everyone wishes to and needs to show results. But leaders should prefer to learn and progress to win the war but not necessarily each and every battle.

Any of these parallels can also be extended to parenting, coaching, and so on. Of course, it’s all subjective per your leadership and investment style. And individuals evolve over time with enhanced understanding of themselves and others, and by balancing the imbalances in their own behaviour; extroverts imbibe some introvert qualities, impatient ones develop patience, and so forth.?For an evolved leader (or one with an intuitive knack) as well as a seasoned investor, the parallels above would be just common sense. Nobody thinks of themselves as a micromanager, control-freak, immature, not genuine, untrustworthy, egotistical, or negatively assertive person. It’s likely what your stakeholders and line reports think about you. So also does an investor never think s/he is making a bad investment; they have to baseline their returns against either past self-performance or external factors (e.g., market performance, other investors etc).