If you want to be successful in sports or in business, it is imperative that your body and mind are in sync and both equally the best they can be, which is why the practice of meditation can help you achieve success.
Used by world-class performers and top business professionals all over the world, and endorsed by hundreds of acclaimed academic studies, the practice of meditation is an essential tool to help you focus, and achieve your goals.
Meditation, with the help of apps like Headspace, has become more mainstream in recent years, but there is still a stigma attached to the term that misbrands what it is. It’s not all yogis, dream-catchers, and didgeridoos, as Tim Ferriss, best-selling author and an avid promoter of meditation, says, but in fact, an invaluable tool that can significantly help you proactively achieve true success and reach your maximum potential.
THE BENEFITS OF MEDITATION
When practiced daily, meditation has many benefits that can help individuals reach an optimal competitive mindset. It helps to improve concentration and focus, reduce stress, and enhance self-awareness, to name a few.
1- Increase Focus
Every athlete or business professional could work on bettering their focus – with higher levels of concentration, comes better results. Phil Jackson, legendary NBA coach, the Zen Master, and poster child for implementing mindfulness in athletes promote mindfulness as a way to increase focus in the game to elevate an athletes performance.
For any individual, if we make a mistake, and our mind is focused on the self-judgment of failure, we’re less present and more likely to repeat mistakes moving forward. Improving our focus reduces our mind from ruminating.
2- Reduce Stress
Stress is an emotion that many individuals feel in the workplace or when competing professionally. Meditation has been proven to reduce levels of anxiety, and therefore allows you to rationally tackle highly stressful situations, improving your ability to make decisions with a clearer and calmer mindset.
3- Enhance Self Awareness
When we are more self-aware, we increase our personal insight which then allows us to tap into inner resources, such as motivation and satisfaction. These emotions are vital when performing or working at a high level.
HOW TO PRACTICE MEDITATION
There are many ways that we can practice meditation – it is about finding what works for you. For some, like Tim Ferriss, you might practice Present Moment Awareness Meditation, where you learn to achieve a clear and calm mind when put in highly stressful situations. For others, like Arnold Schwarzenegger, a mindful approach to physical exercise substitutes for a more traditional meditation session.
If you are new to it, guided meditation or the use of apps, such as Headspace, are a great way to start. Over 16 million people have downloaded Headspace, and credit the 10-minute meditations with helping them proactively create their life. Headspace is committed to not only the authentic expertise behind the practice of meditation but also the science proving why mindfulness improves your output. Co-founder and voice of the Headspace app, Andy Puddicombe, said, “No matter how much experience we have, no matter how hard we’ve trained, we can only perform at our best when the body and mind are in sync.”
At least 80% of world-class performers practice some type of mindfulness or meditation practice, Tim Ferriss says. Plus we know that some of the world’s top companies implement meditation into their own mindfulness programs, including Google and Apple. It is clear that we must hone in on our mental capacities in order to heighten performance, rather than just focusing on our physical attributes. Practicing meditation is an invaluable tool that can be used to reach your maximum potential, at work or on the field.
