Here’s a special one-off article on the benefits of meditation and in particular mini-meditations – especially useful for those busy busy days!

“The more tranquil a [person] becomes, the greater is his success, his influence, his power for good. Calmness of mind is one of the beautiful jewels of wisdom.”
– James Allen, 1864-1912, Author of As A Man Thinketh

What Is Meditation?

The goal of meditation is to focus your attention and calm your mind. In general, meditation is best practiced in a quiet place with few distractions.

There are many different types of meditation, each of which involves different techniques. Transcendental meditation, for instance, entails repeating a word or phrase (known as a “mantra”), while tai chi is considered a form of moving meditation.

Although meditation is often practiced for spiritual purposes, the benefits of meditation also include greater physical and mental relaxation which can have a calming knock-on effect in all areas of your life, including business and speaking!

Why Meditate?

The benefits of meditation may include the following:

• relief of stress and/or anxiety – great for those pre-gig nerves.
• pain management
• improvement in mood and/or symptoms of depression
• improvement in sleep

Mini-Meditations

If you’re anything like me, trying to find a chunk of time to meditate each day becomes an effort.  Which is why I love mini-meditations. Many people (even in the work-place) use very brief meditations at strategic points during the day. I know speakers who have a visualization ritual before stepping on stage.  These meditative experiences may not be more than a minute or two in length – and I call them ‘mini-meditations’.

I like mini-meditations and think they can be a great tool for business and speaking.  You can use a mini-meditation at any point during the working day.  Useful if you’re in overwhelm, in stress, feeling frazzled or pulled into a squillion different directions.   They’re a great way to instantly tap into your inner calm.  A mini-meditation or mantra is also a particularly powerful tool before getting on stage.  Imagine inducing the feeling of utter calm and reassurance before you face your audience!

How To Mini-Meditate

You could close your eyes and take deep breaths, counting them.  Following one’s breath is a great way of focusing on the self.  You could repeat your mantra.  You could do some tai-chi moves!  You could have a visualization technique of calm and success. Anything that connects you back with your inner centre and gives you a feeling of calm.  A mini-meditation could simply be a breath of fresh air – literally and metaphorically.

Down With The Stress!

Mini-meditations, scattered throughout your workday and used pre-speaking gigs, can take the edge off tension buildups and made a marked difference in your ability to handle the stress of work or handle pre-stage nerves. Imagine handling work with a relaxed attitude! Imagine facing your audience whilst radiating inner peace! There’s also another great benefit – meditation is known to lower blood pressure.

So this week, why don’t you build some mini-meditations into your work day and observe the effect this has on your stress levels.  I think, like me, that you might find that taking time out to reconnect to yourself will reward you with a renewed sense of purpose and most certainly take away the overwhelm, leaving you with a feeling of peace.

If you are looking for more time in your day, then look no further than today’s article. One of the most important gifts you can give to yourself is the gift of learning how to manage your inbox.  It’s a time-saver….

In-box Stress

You know what “in-box stress” is, don’t you?  It’s that horrid feeling you have when you turn on your computer in the morning and groan at your overloaded in-box. 

Email Overwhelm

Back in the ‘old days’ all we had to manage was the telephones and the post.  These days we have email as well.  If you’re one of those people struggling to cope with the deluge you get sent each day, you’re not alone.   We all get way more e-mail than we can fully act on. The in-box gets bigger and bigger and rapidly spins out of control leading to email overwhelm and stress.

Letting The Inbox Rule Us

The real problem is not with reading email but rather with doing the tasks that come from the email.  Having to take action on each email eats a massive chunk of our day.   If you’re anything like most people, then you don’t have a natural way to prioritize your reactions to your email.  Instead you just try and do it all there and then – acting on each email as it comes in.  Not only can we not keep up that way, but all our important work does not even get done – we end up prioritizing the email over everything else – simply because we are letting our inbox rule us.

Taking Charge of The Inbox

Simple! Don’t read the messages as they come in.  Read them periodically, no more than every hour or so. Or perhaps even just once or twice a day.  Research shows that it takes several minutes to recover from each work interruption, and that’s what scattered email reading leads to.  Now for a big tip, turn off the email notifications!  That way you stop jumping each time a new email pings in.

The next step is this: don’t take significant actions on emails when you first read them – unless they are truly urgent. Instead, put those actions on your to-do list.

As you read through your batch of emails, task each one that needs action onto your to-do list.  Prioritize them as you would any other task.  This way you treat your email no more or no less importantly than the other tasks in your day.  I suggest writing your task list first, then checking your in-box, adding your email tasks to the list and then prioritising the entire list. That way your e-mail doesn’t rule you – you rule your email.

The End of In-box Stress

Converting emails to tasks is a powerful practice.  It gifts you time  – as you are not bogged down doing e-mail actions prematurely, you’ll get through your email much faster.  Conversion to tasks also stops email from completely hijacking your workday!

Before you were answering emails and taking action just because it was at the top of your in-box.  Now you’re putting the email action onto your single task-list and working from your priorities. As a result, the most important tasks get completed first, rather than the other way round….

Converting emails to tasks takes away the stress from managing your inbox. As the email tasks are now on one list, this means you can empty your in-box easily.  Your task-list holds all your actions so you can empty and file the inbox daily.

The freedom of an empty inbox is such a relief.  It takes away stress and gives you more time to get on with your important tasks.  Why don’t you make a start right now into tasking your email actions onto your to-do list and enjoy the extra time it gives you…..

If you are too busy working in your business to notice that your life has been on hold for a few years now- then chances are you don’t even have time to read this article.  But I promise you if you do, you will be richly rewarded.  You see, as Michael Gerber said in the The E-Myth most of us get into business because we want to be our own boss- and then our Lifestyle goes down the tube in a flurry of tax preparation, stock taking, hiring and firing and general stress!

But times are changing and more and more business owners are undergoing what I refer to as “The Lifestyle Shift”.  They are waking up to the fact that they are the boss, and they should be able to design their business to match their lifestyle.  From the ground up.

If it’s time for you to have more time for yourself, your family, and for your dreams, then read on…

Your lifestyle is ultimately your life’s work. We are all artists, whether we acknowledge that or not. And every day we are gifted with a canvas upon which to create our design. We are now operating in the Information Age, at a time of great wealth and great possibility. Yet seemingly intelligent people continue to operate under old assumptions. Too many people I know “work hard” for no other reason than they thought that’s what they were expected to do. There has never been a greater time than now to design a life the way you want it.

How do you “Design Your Life?”

The first step is a simple one. 

Wake up to the fact that YOU  ARE THE BOSS.  Your life is the way it is because you let it be that way- either by your actions or non-actions.   You are tolerating it, or fostering it, or forcing it to be just how it is.  Most of us get so busy just getting the work done that we forget to take stock and remember who’s in charge.

You started your business.  It is a direct reflection of you.  So isn’t it time to take responsibility for your deepest desires and start making it JUST HOW YOU WANT IT?

My greatest wish for the world is that everyone lives a life of self-expression. By that I mean that one’s life is an expression of that unique identity within them. It honestly breaks my heart when I speak to business owners who describe their lifestyle as anything less than awesome. As business owners we are in pole position to craft our lives the way we want to. For heaven’s sake, if the guy or girl running the show can’t have it they way they want it, what hope is there for anyone else? I think it’s just that we get lazy. We get lazy because questioning our assumptions and making changes in the way we operate is actually harder to do than work 70 hours a week! 

So what can you do? 

Take a half a day for yourself.  Get out of your routine.  Go to a place that conjures up “the sacred” for you.  That is different for everyone.  For some its a church, for some a park, for some a bookshop or the Virgin Megastore!  Wherever you feel connected to your creator, the universe or your higher self.  Spend a couple of hours just hanging out with yourself, and then in that space – ask yourself one simple question:  “is your business supporting your lifestyle or eating away at it?” 

Make no mistake- if it is not actively building it up, it is wearing it away slowly through attrition.  There is no middle ground here.

Commit to taking one action this week that will allow you to reclaim your lifestyle.