Meditation Groups for Business Leaders
In the latest of a string of very odd life transitions, I've now begun running meditation groups for business leaders.
It started on a whim. I've been meditating regularly for going on a decade now, throughout which time it has been a foundational part of my daily axe sharpening, but has always been a private practice. Perhaps because I wanted a community to challenge my ideas and increase the pace of my mental training, or perhaps because we're all locked in our houses, either way it seemed to me one day that now was the time to start a meditation group for business leaders and entrepreneurs. So I did.
I've always had a plan for everything I've done. I've always had goals, a vision, timelines, the works. For this group I have none of that. I have no idea where it's going and I check myself every time I begin to care. It's not about getting somewhere, or becoming something. It's an expression, it's organic, and it's beautiful.
It's like art. So much so that along the way one of the members of the group started creating beautiful, interpretive art about his experience meditating:
In any event, after a month with the first group people are digging it enough that they've started to tell other business leaders, and what started on a whim has now blossomed into three separate Meditation & Leadership groups (capitalized now), spanning multiple states.
The working title of this community is "The Quieting." And here's the logo:
What a weird and wonderful ride this has been, I commented to a friend and group member. He said, "I think it's going to get even weirder." I can't wait.
Meditation has radically changed my life. I am not the only one; Ray Dalio and Jerry Colonna (not to mention Ghandi, the Dalai Lama and all the ones you've already heard of) would attest. So I am deeply grateful to get to share that passion with the world, particularly in a business context. The benefits of meditation (equanimity & insight, the subject of another post) are so profound, and so profoundly useful, to leaders, that it's incredible it's not standard curriculum in B-school. Either way, knowing what my meditation practice has given me, I am thrilled to share what I've learned, and work alongside amazing leaders from every industry to journey inward.
I have no idea what's to come of the Quieting groups I find myself running. Maybe this is all it is, and that will be enough. Or maybe it grows into something else. [shrugs]
I have no idea, and am loving the freedom in that. But I do know that the combined impact of all the amazing people involved will be incredible, both immediately in leading us through COVID, and over the long term as the world continues to spin.
I may have no five year plan, and no milestones. But I do have a hunch that it's going to be good.