Meditation: The Importance of Stillness within the Self and the Workplace.

In a world of productivity and objectives, busyness is idolised. We are told, that without it we cannot achieve our goals and targets. At times, this can certainly be true, however the tendency towards workaholism can also obstruct the path towards a favourable outcome. Here’s why.

When functioning from a position of busyness and pressure, we are only working with two out of the three vertices of the triangle diagram below: need and potential. While working on a task or decision, the need for change and progress may be evident and the potential to achieve the ideal, or something close to the ideal situation or objective can be imagined. In most cases, this is sufficient. But, it is the third vertex that is the gamer-changer.

When strategising the path which turns a need into all that can potentially be achieved, it is through the incorporation of stillness that our inner resources are accessible. These include valuable personal characteristics, such as wisdom, mental strength, courage and rationality, which are too often overlooked. You may ask how these serve you within a family or business setting? Strength is needed to assist and support friends, family or employees through periods of difficulty. Courage is needed to ask for assistance during these times and rationality is vital when making decisions in moments of stress, anger or fear. This unlocking of inner resources allows us to manage ourselves and our actions in a way which is productive and facilitates the achievement of objectives.

So, how do be arrive at this stillness and unlock these resources? If you have ever committed to one of the thousands of ‘self-help’ books out there, you have probably already guessed it - meditation. Since, this post is not titled “A Beginner’s Guide to Meditation”, I’ll let you do your own research into the topic if you’re interested. However, I will simply explain why meditation allows for this access to inner resources.

Simply put, your mind has got four functional elements: the discursive mind, the intellect, the memory and the ego. The discursive mind holds all which we are aware of - senses, language, thoughts, words etc. The intellect is the decision maker and although you may want to argue this, it makes decisions within moments. This process uses both rationality and intuition and is what many people call their ‘wisdom’. While, I will outline this in more detail in a future post, the essential point is that your mind cannot be running both the intellect and the discursive mind in the same moment.

This why stillness is such a vital constituent of unlocking inner resources and achieving success. In a single moment, you are either filtering thoughts through your mind, or you are listening to your intellect. Both cannot be happening simultaneously.

I will not claim that thought is not vital for decision making, since it is through the discursive mind that we take in our external environment and process sensory data. What I am saying, is that after this cognitive intake of data and the processing of it, it is highly beneficial to still our mind.

Maybe you have even experienced this when having to make a difficult decision. You may have been grappling with many ideas, trying to ‘think’ your way to a solution, but only, and very effectively, thinking yourself into corners and stumbling blocks. It was only when you took a break from what can sometimes be overwhelm and anxiety, that something ‘just clicked’. That’s what I am talking about - a kind of wisdom that came when your mind was still.

Even our language reflects this idea, with sayings such as ‘I’ll sleep on it’ or when you are emotional, others may say to you, “Just take a deep breath”. We know that stillness is often the answer to life’s most challenging of moments and decisions.