What it is and what it’s not
This article has the intention of highlighting why people struggle with meditation and offers some insights as to how to modify or adopt a meditation practice to give you something that could offer competitive advantage.
Meditation has been shown in a wide range of research evidence to offer benefits for performance. So, why is everyone not doing it?
I have come across many top performers who have said they have tried meditation and that it doesn’t work for them. So, I ask them to describe what they mean by meditation. I get all sorts of replies:
· ‘Doing meditation apps’
· ‘Breathing exercises’
· ‘Sitting and trying to be calm’
· ‘Walking in nature’
Yet, they struggle to articulate what it is they do as they are meditating. And this lack of understanding may lead to the reasons why people quit meditation or fail to be able to add it to their performance training.
Focus on the outcomes
We hear so much about meditation in social media posts and reports from sports people and celebrities that we should know what it is.
I did a Google search for ‘doing meditation’ and it came up with reduce stress, increase calmness and clarity, promote happiness (e.g. New York Times). And I’m not going to go into the amount of pictures of people sitting cross-legged and holding thumb to finger! Other video clips offered being more positive and productive, reducing anxiety and ‘finding zen.’ Sounds great, right?
But therein lies part of the problem.
People have been sold the outcomes – calmness, stress reduction, inner peace, happiness etc. – without understanding that they may not experience those whilst meditating. So, the likelihood is people try meditating, and when their experience does not match up to the amazing, advertised outcomes they feel that it does not work.
But if you focus on outcomes, you will never reap the benefits of meditation practice.
A helpful analogy
In guiding people to understand what the experience of meditation may be like I often use the analogy of going to the gym. I ask them for their reasons for going to the gym. I get answers like ‘being fit, ‘being stronger’, for example. With these outcomes in mind, I ask clients to describe if they feel that they experience ‘being fit’ and ‘being stronger’ every time they go to the gym. The replies are frequently, ‘sometimes, but most of the time it is effortful, uncomfortable work.’
When you go to the gym and you exercise, that experience commonly comes with varying degrees of discomfort from your normal state. You are effortfully pushing your body, your heart rate increases, you feel out of breath, your muscles fatigue. You have to exert effort, and experience this discomfort to get a training effect. And this results in change. Not immediately, but in the future.
But if you were seeking your outcome and the visceral sense of feeling fit or stronger every time you went to the gym, you may end up unsatisfied.
And this how I relate it to meditation. Meditation is a workout for the mind. Therefore, it will be effortful. There will be discomfort at time, as you experience and observe inner difficulty, for example. But that is where the training is.
Of course, there may be moments of calm, peace, and joy, but if you go into a meditation seeking those outcomes you are priming yourself to be unsatisfied.
Meditation – a workout for the mind
Another helpful metaphor is viewing the brain and your mind as a garden. And like a garden, it is going to grow anyway. You can leave the garden to do its own thing, but then you may find that the garden is overgrown with weeds and brush that makes it difficult to function. Making any change to this garden would require a lot of work and effort.
But if you attended to this garden frequently, making the effort and putting your attention to pulling a weed and cutting the brush, it would begin to transform into something that is easier to manage. And rather than getting upset when weeds and brush continue to appear, you just accept that this is what gardens do, which makes the task of attending to the garden seem less onerous.
And it should be noted that meditation is a workout for the mind. There are times that it will be effortful, difficult and the last thing that you want to do. But it is the tenacity and persistence in those moments that will help you attend to and manage the garden of the mind.
What I have just described within that metaphor encapsulates the skills that are required in meditation.
The skills you train in meditation
For the performers that I offer mental skills training to, I ask them if these skills would be helpful for them in their performance domains:
Awareness – being better able to know what is going inside of you and outside of you so that you could see where your reactions were coming from and manage them.
Attention – being able to notice when your mind has drifted away from task and into mind wandering, and then being able to guide your attention back to the task of performing.
Helpful attitude response – responding to yourself within an experience, even a difficult one, in a way that facilitates better performance.
Skilful action – being able to choose your responses, in contrast to being a helpless victim of habitual reaction.
And meditation is a formal way of practicing these skills.
When you sit, stand or walk in a meditative way, what you are doing is attending to your experience with awareness. You are noticing what is going on for you in that moment.
Within a few moments, your mind will wander. That is not a mistake, it is natural and what minds do. And when you notice this you guide your attention back to your present moment experience. In practices you are guided to bringing curiosity to aspects of your present moment experience to help keep your attention in the present moment.
Within this mind wandering you may notice negative or difficult thought content. And this is where is the most pivotal change can occur – either detrimental or beneficial.
Because if you notice your mind wandering and its content to be negative and you respond in a manner where you are adding criticism and judgement – then you are training your mind to have this detrimental response. You are adding unhelpful attitudes to an already difficult experience. Now, any time you experience negative or difficult thought content you activate these dysfunctional reactions. The same can be experienced with uncomfortable body sensations, such as tension, or difficult emotions such as anxiousness.
In contrast, if you respond with a helpful attitude within that difficult or negative content, you are offering yourself a way of being with that discomfort without adding any further negativeness.
This is a hard bit to grasp so I’ll explain this again. Difficult experience is difficult experience. But with Awareness and Attention to this experience it offers you the ability to choose how you relate to that experience. If you relate to that experience with unhelpful Attitudes you are likely to build dysfunctional reactions, feel you can’t tolerate this and perceive that you do not have control within this experience. However, if you relate to this difficult experience with helpful Attitudes you are more likely to be able to be with this difficulty, feel able to tolerate the reactions and perceive you have more control.
Helpful Attitudes facilitate skilful Action
How you relate to difficult experience is the key to skilful action. Another helpful metaphor is thinking of difficult experience being like the beginnings of a fire. It starts with a few pieces of wood, but if you add further judgement and criticism, you add more pieces of wood to the fire. Responding with helpful Attitudes means that you don’t add any more fuel to the fire.
The difficulty may still be around but you are managing being able to be with it through managing your Attitudes and this facilitates skilful Action. Being able to choose your responses, and be able to put your Attention into performing at your best.
What are helpful Attitudes?
Consider these Attitudes:
- Curiosity, non-judgement, patience, trust, allowing and acceptance, befriending, compassion, courage, letting go, non-striving, gratitude, approaching
- How do they make you feel when you say them?
Now, consider these Attitudes:
- Closed, rigid, judgemental, impatient, sceptical, denying, attacking, uncaring, refusing, indifference, fearful, ingratitude, avoiding
How do they make you feel when you say them?
What do you most commonly add to difficult experience?
Meditation practice offers you the space to notice your thought content, your emotional experience and difficult body sensations. It therefore offers you the opportunity to practice responding to these difficult experiences with a helpful Attitude response.
Meditation to aid performance
The aim of meditation, therefore, is not about experiencing peace, calm or happiness. These are transient moments that you may or may not experience. The true learnings and benefits of meditation come from being open to any experience. And if that experience is difficulty, then you are practicing being able to be with that difficulty in a more beneficial way.
For the people I coach in high performance environments, it is inevitable that they will experience stress, pressure, difficulties and demands. Meditation offers them a space where they can notice how they are reacting to stress, pressure, difficulties and demands. They can begin fostering a more helpful Attitude response within these challenging moments that will facilitate them feeling more tolerant to the reactions and increase their perception of control.
This enables them to perform at their best regardless of the circumstances.
Seek a professional guidance
Meditation is definitely something that can be beneficial to dealing with the demands of high performance environments. However, before seeking any help or guidance, take some time to qualify the person offering this guidance.
- Have they taken training to provide guidance in meditation?
- Who do they have experience working with?
How you meditate can be pivotal to what it offers you. Guided meditation practice from an expert will be more likely to facilitate you being able to deal with future challenges and difficulties you experience. And from this, will enable you to perform at your best when needed.
Stuart Munro is practicing performance psychologist working with national team athletes, corporate executives and teams. He is trained in Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), Mindfulness Sports Performance Enhancement, MBCT for Life, and Mindfulness in Schools. He has researched and leads training on an integrated performance and mindfulness psychology program called the Munro Performance Empowerment Program™ .