The most difficult part for an Entrepreneur about starting up is Starting Up. And Spirituality is no different. Almost 1.5 years into my business and 1 year into spirituality, here is why I recommend all Entrepreneurs to meditate and get spiritually inclined. (If you still don’t believe me pick up articles that talk about “success formulas”, “things to do”, “activities for becoming successful” etc for entrepreneurs, most of them would have a mention about meditation).
1) Entrepreneur – A lonely soul
Who knows loneliness better than an entrepreneur? The difference lies in how comfortably you handle this loneliness. While you meditate you are all alone, its a journey you explore by yourself to reach the core YOU. And its the law of life cycle – we come in this world alone and leave this world all alone. Meditation help you refine and define and get the best out of you, a personal trait that all entrepreneurs should possess.
2) Awareness – Helps you know “that you dont know”
If we think we know it all, trust me we dont. Most of the times its horrendous to settle with this fact in our lives. But deeper you try to mine into yourself the more you become aware and manifest the side of life you were unaware about. And the journey of exploration begins from there towards becoming an enlightened soul. Isn’t “WHY” the most favorite question of all entrepreneurs? By questioning it all the time, you are just trying to become more aware. Think about it!?
3) Focus – on only what is important
The fundamental of any form of meditation is focusing/concentrating on the third eye or breath to get a control over your mind (trust me it sounds almost insurmountable but highly possible). There are thousands of horses (professional and personal) running in the mind of an entrepreneur leading to aversion from concentrating on things are are of pivotal importance. Imagine all horses running towards a deep sea (of stillness) and vanishing at one go. Lo! To get focus, get stillness.
4) Control – on your thoughts, self and aspects of business
Dont all entrepreneurs strive to control most aspects of their business? No matter how many they are irrespective of theirs sizes, in order to have a strong hold on their business and be always updated with what’s happening, the direction business is taking and simultaneously formulating strategies to make things fall on the right path. Controlling follows awareness in spirituality. The more you get aware the better control you have over your thoughts, senses and self. Control is another form of discipline.
5) Patience – is the key
Most of the early failures occur in and entrepreneur’s life because they get impatient with the flow of their businesses and its outcome over time and efforts. Likewise, most of times people feel reluctant to take up meditation because its a slow, gradual and requires lot of patience (it teaches you how to be patient as well, one of the most important human virtue). We want things to happen at lightening speed just like the mechanism of technology. There is nothing technological in spirituality but the experiences are meta physical!
6) Gets you Grounded – its the barren tree that lifts its head high in an empty boast
Meditation facilitates in inculcating the virtues of humility, compassion in you and aids in dumping off your ego. Isn’t ego the biggest killer for any entrepreneur? In any start-up, the co-founder becomes the back up/replacement for any levels of work to be got done till s/he hires right people to take up those responsibilities. If, as an entrepreneur you have the courage to become the back-up of the dishwasher/sweeper (and do not posses the EGO of being the founder of your company) then you are on the path of success. Meditate, let go off your EGO; afterall its spelled as E-“Go”.
7) Become Clairvoyant. Become a Visionary
One of the tranquil experience of meditation is when you foresee things with your closed eyes, loose all your senses and get into different realms of life altogether looking at things beyond the obvious. The longevity and vision of a company is completely defined by the creator of it. That also, mostly shapes up the culture of the company and the way its being run. I wish all entrepreneurs to Dream Big, See beyond the obvious and become clairvoyant in their Vision. The purpose of your life (asking who am I) is no differently defined from the vision statement of your company, no?
8) From Observer to a Fighter
One of the most fruitful outcome of meditation is becoming an observer – of your thoughts, senses, actions, breath. This observation skills invariably leads you to observe your sufferings, melancholic incidences in your routine and lets you examine them closely and tackle them than merely finding a route of escape. Escapism is never a route for an entrepreneur. Its the war s/he has to fight every single day every single moment and that war can only be won if the root cause of the war is well understood. As an entrepreneur you need to graduate from being an observer to a fighter! You become fearless. Is when life screws you, you wake up and screw it back then getting screwed!
9) Journey is the Reward. Longer you travel, deeper you get
What most of the entrepreneurs share while giving away speeches? – Their journey of becoming an entrepreneur and what it took them to be where they are. Their experiences would over power the milestones they crossed and their learning throughout the journey would out perform their key achievements. So is meditation, the more time you give, the more rewarding it is. It matures you to be journey oriented and detach yourself from the dream of destination which is just an idea or illusion!
10) Your Guru guides your life as much as your Mentor guides your business
I am yet to experience the joy of having a Guru as well as a Mentor on personal and professional levels respectively but looking at the current shape of my life and business, I am in search of both. Meditation has got me aware about this void and showing directions to find them! It will happen when its meant to happen.
It is a general disciplined practice to maintain same posture and stillness throughout your meditation but I have been trying something unconventional off lately. Penning down my thoughts while meditating and they are helping me to seek answer to the most difficult questions, find solutions to one of the most insolvable problems and gets thoughts simplified. This is how I write with my eyes closed, yet open. 🙂
Few incidences from personal relationships have been keeping me disturbed from last night (or last few nights rather) and this is what I penned down during today’s morning meditation:
“We always quantify things, work, relationships on the basis of how much we get or gain and not on how much we give in the form of time, efforts and love. Change your thinking – before you Give Up, think how much you Gave and then decide. Give Up only when you feel you have Given ENOUGH.”
Breathe and let others Breathe!
OBO.
asha chaudhry
nice!
personally i prefer the headline “breathe and let breathe” because i think spirituality is a PART of anything you do, including entrepreneurship.
my view. i respect your pov!
divyesh – i am going to share alok’s post on meditation as well here as it’s relevant!
asha chaudhry
https://www.therodinhoods.com/forum/topics/the-10-reasons-you-should-meditate-if-you-want-to-succeed-as-an-e
The 10 reasons you should meditate if you want to succeed as an entrepreneur.
I’ve been meditating for over 12 years now, and I’ve enjoyed moderate success as an entrepreneur.
By meditation, I mean any practice; spiritual routine or training that could be broadly described as ‘meditation’. If you haven’t meditated before, I will mention a couple of options at the end of this column.
This is a summary of my belief in meditation and how it has helped me.
The 10 logical reasons
1. It’s just great exercise
I know most entrepreneurs barely get time to exercise. It’s a curse born out of chaotic lifestyles, constantly being committed to the business, and just not being able to prioritize what is good for you.
After a while, the body becomes stiff and bloated, and then getting down to some hard grinding exercise becomes a cruel option. A couple of years later, when you try to tie your shoelaces and feel like dying, you know you have hit the bottom of the fitness well.
All the meditation practices that I know of [Art of Living (AOL), Kriya Yoga, etc] have a simple built-in exercise routine in them.
The AOL routine I follow has a beautiful yoga cycle (called Padma Sadhana) that precedes my meditation. It’s very simple – lasts less than 7 minutes, yet keeps me fit, flexible and makes me ‘feel like’ I have exercised!
If nothing else, meditate just to keep your body alive.
2. If you don’t have a serious hobby, then choose to meditate!
As an entrepreneur, I’ve noticed that as business begins to ramp up, it begins to completely dominate an entrepreneur’s mindshare and break down the walls between ‘work and play’. The routine becomes ‘work and work.’
Having a hobby is a great way to get your mind off work; not just because it ‘relaxes’ you but also because it breaks down monotonous and rigid thinking.
So often I have noticed that taking a break from hard-core work and just going for a run or sitting down and doing some meditation infuses a brand new and fresh wave of thinking in me.
If you don’t have a serious hobby, choose meditation. It’s simple, portable (you don’t have to carry your guitar around the world), and can be enjoyed anytime during the day or night.
3. Practicing Patience
One of the biggest challenges that entrepreneurs face is cultivating patience. We live in a world of instant gratification and apply the same rules of ‘instant success’ to ourselves. We revere startup stories of entrepreneurs who have become overnight success stories and benchmark ourselves against them.
I truly believe in Malcolm Gladwell’s theory of “Taking 10,000 hours to become good at something” (central theme of his book ‘Outliers’).
Now, patience is not easy to cultivate.
If I tell you to sit and stare at the door everyday for 20 minutes, you will break down the door, go insane or come to my house and break down my door!
I would rather suggest that you learn to meditate to develop patience.
Immediately the focus changes to observing your thoughts, your breath and other such techniques, and the process isn’t boring! It’s fun and challenging!
Once (sometime in 2003) Guruji (Sri Sri Ravi Shankar) made us (a public gathering) do a ‘Death Meditation’ in an open ground at the Bandra Kurla Complex.
Guruji requested us to close our eyes and asked to think of how we had traveled to the grounds. Then he asked us to focus on what we had done a few hours ago; a bit later on what we had done yesterday; then on what we had done a few days before; a month ago; a year ago; so on and so forth. Essentially Guruji tried to take us back in time as far as we could recollect. He was taking us to the time of our birth, if we could remember it!
Later, when the meditation was over, he requested us to gently open our eyes and asked us to guess how long we had meditated. Most of us (including I), assumed that the process had lasted 20-25 minutes; but we were shocked to learn that we had mediated for over an hour!!
Now, imagine sitting patiently on a public ground, on a sunny evening with your eyes closed, without anything to think of or do…
4. Lateral thinking
As a long-term meditator, I have begun to enjoy the benefits of the creative and lateral thinking that meditation stirs up in my brain.
For instance, for a certain period of time, I was terribly affected by the sound of traffic that I would hear while meditating. The problem became so acute that I would constantly try to hear the traffic sounds rather than meditate on what I was supposed to.
One day that frustration inspired me! I actually began to meditate ON THE TRAFFIC and made that my meditation. I decided that I would become ‘Traffic Monk’!
This was a lateral thought that was born out of compulsion. Soon, I got TIRED of meditating on traffic and began to enjoy my regular routine again.
This training of using what was affecting me to actually assist me was taught to me by meditation, and I now regularly use the same concept while doing business!
Mediation not only calms your mind. It inspires it too!
5. Concentration
Guruji always says, “Meditation is not concentration, it’s ‘de-concentration’.”
He is so right.
But to get to the point of understanding something so subtle and profound, you have to practice meditation first.
Let me take the example of a simple meditation technique that involves closing your eyes, sitting in a comfortable position and just observing your breath.
You will be able to observe your breath (how it enters your nostrils, fills your lungs and comes back out) for a few seconds, or maybe minutes, before your mind wanders to that e-mail whose response hasn’t come so far. When you become ‘aware’ that you lost your concentration, and come back to the breath, a few moments later the evasive VC and his hide-and-seek games will pop up into your mind.
Just observing the vacillations between what you are supposed to concentrate on and what actually the mind prefers to focus on, helps increase your concentration. It essentially makes you practice ‘concentrating’ between 2 things.
In business, you then easily apply this learning and focus (or defocus) on one or more issues that demand your attention.
In this way and more, meditation trains your mind and makes it more focused.
The other 5 fuzzier reasons
6. Celebrating being helpless
As one matures, one begins to understand that many things in life are not in our control. What we ‘intend’ may or may not happen, and what was unintended also happens.
As you go deeper into a meditation practice, this clarity and ‘acceptance’ of being helpless begins to manifest itself without mental conflict.
As an example, consider the new book launches, product introductions and the Nasdaq IPOs that were scheduled in the week that was hit by the monstrous Hurricane Sandy.
The entrepreneurs and business people involved got severely affected, leaving them with a feeling of being ‘helpless’.
Amongst them, those who meditated would have handled the situation better.
At a certain point, mediation deepens into a subtler understanding of spirituality and when that happens, “helpless situations” become easier to handle.
7. Understanding cause and effect, aka Karma
Very clearly, if you meditate regularly and with utmost dedication, you begin to appreciate ‘cause and effect’.
For instance, I have begun to notice that my intuitive ability has increased significantly over the past few years, which I believe is a result of my meditation.
That intuition really helps me in my business. I can ‘sense’ things – what is affecting people around me, etc more acutely than other people. I would say that is a direct, measurable benefit of meditation.
But I also now seem to understand subtler reasons of ‘why’, not just ‘how’ and ‘what’.
No one understands the laws of Karma better than a startup entrepreneur.
In the first few years that I started my online contesting business, the pain, the toil, the sweat and the tears were almost all in vain. No one understood what I did and what purpose I was serving. What kept me going? What gave me untiring stamina? What was my magical fuel?
Well, it was the belief that if you do good things sincerely, then you are rewarded!
Now, that is not some dictum that is written in text books – it’s the simple law of Karma that was reinforced in me like steel, thanks to meditation.
When you do observe subtler things and laws, you become more careful in your conduct – both in business and in personal life.
8. Accepting change
Nothing is tougher than change.
It’s very nice to read bumper stickers that say ‘Change is the only constant’ and the other blah blah blah… But Change SUCKS.
In many ways, meditation can help deal with Change.
To explain it simply, the practice of meditation, its effects, its highs and benefits only increase with time.
Meditation is the only practice, resource, wealth, hobby or profession that rewards you increasingly as you invest in it, despite other things changing and diminishing around you.
If you begin to meditate early and put some solid years behind you, then the routine ups and downs of business, wealth, fame and fortune will not affect you that much – because the wealth, benefits and rewards of your meditation will have only grown over the years.
Meditation balances your losses as you grow up.
9. Developing faith
Some anonymous person made fun of me on a public post ridiculing my belief in a “Baba”.
How I wish I could meet that person and explain to him or her, the real benefit of such a belief.
First the basics. Most entrepreneurs are NOT uneducated, under-exposed and suppressed prisoners.
Errr, I mean I do read the news, I understand a bit of technology, can manage a business on myself and can even afford to hire and retain some people! I am not a blind, bumbling idiot that believes in voodoo because the maid who brought me up injected me with some demonic spirits!!
I believe in my Gurus and Gods and Baba’s because I choose to believe in them.
And I choose to believe in them because as my meditation has progressed and deepened, I have realized that there is a lot that faith and belief can do! What we call serendipity, chance, luck, circumstance, grace and just ‘being in the right place at the right time’ has a certain law of spirituality wrapped around it.
I try to embrace these laws with faith as my currency!!
When I meet Guruji and request him to tell me ‘what do’ or to ‘guide me’ I have blind faith that he understands the spiritual laws of the universe much better than I do and will point me in the right direction!
It’s like he is my professor asking me to study a particular set of textbooks to max my exam! We never doubted our professors and teachers, did we?
This cultivated faith helps in being a great entrepreneur.
In many ways, it helps to vanquish the ego, and makes the entrepreneur open and more accepting.
You have to learn to believe in people more accomplished than yourself and follow their instructions almost blindly. That is ‘faith’.
10. Embracing purpose
A couple of years ago, I noticed that despite meditating with utmost devotion, I wasn’t experiencing a ‘high’. What was worse was that even if I missed my meditation for a couple of days, I wasn’t experiencing a ‘low’.
Something was wrong and I met my teacher to ask her the reason. She said, “Alok, your cup is full to the brim. You need to empty it to experience a sense of replenishment. Go and give back.”
That really struck me like a thunderbolt and it occurred to me that I had to give back to society – from whom I had received everything.
The problem was that when I tried to do the conventional charity stuff (going to hospitals to donate medicines, etc), I was repulsed. Those places made me uncomfortable. I was puzzled on how to ‘give back’.
That’s when it hit me that as a digital entrepreneur who had been lucky to survive 14 long industry years, I had seen and done a lot. I had the knowledge that so many entrepreneurs needed. I had the scars on my back that needed to be shared.
This ‘realization’, coupled with the gentle yet firm prodding of my VC – Sumant Mandal inspired me to start blogging and to start sharing!
I launched ‘therodinhoods.wpengine.com’ – a social network for Entrepreneurs and that was the take off point.
Entrepreneurs from all walks of life found a platform and a place to share, discuss, learn and give back! TheRodinhoods began meeting up on Fridays in my conference room – we named it the Open House! Initially about 4-10 entrepreneurs would turn up. Within a year we moved to the National Stock Exchange Auditorium with 150 attendees!
Today, TheRodinhoods has over 3700 members, 1600+ blog articles/discussions and a very vibrant, real community that meet as often as they can. So many Rodinhoods work and co-operate with each other!
Meditation helped me find my ‘real’ purpose in life. Beyond the making money and getting famous, I found out that my real fulfillment lies in helping people.
Dedicated at the feet of my Gurus and Gods.
If you want a basic introduction to meditation or want to figure out if you like it, I would strongly suggest you do the simple, Part 1 ‘Basic’ Art of L…
In just a couple of days you will have learnt the most precious secret in the world!
asha chaudhry
and since you mentioned “lonely” i’m sharing this one as well!
https://www.therodinhoods.com/forum/topics/7-dark-secrets-of-entrepreneurs-revealed
7 dark secrets of Entrepreneurs – Revealed.
As featured in the September 12 issue of the “Entrepreneur” (India) Magazine.
Think you know entrepreneurs? Ha! Think again! These are seven dark secrets that entrepreneurs will never reveal about themselves:
1. Entrepreneurs are insecure.
For many years, I felt insecure.
First about not being an engineer, but just a lowly B.Com graduate. Then about not being an MBA while all my friends became one. Next came a sinking feeling of not having worked for a Fortune 500 Company (I worked in my dad’s socks factory for twelve years).
It was only when I broke out and became an entrepreneur that this feeling started fading. I tasted some success that made me feel somewhat secure and confident of being able to survive in the otherwise ‘formatted for success’ world.
2. Entrepreneurs are lonely.
Honestly, entrepreneurs are their own best friends.
Yes, family comes close and there is almost a reverse dependency on family (I feel I depend on my wife and 2 daughters more than they depend on me), but there is really no one else.
Maybe I speak for myself, but the gigantic tasks of the day leave no room for hanging out with friends or acquaintances. In most cases, it’s going out with the office crowd.
Entrepreneurs speak to themselves in their sleep. They sell proposals to themselves in the shower and negotiate term sheets in their mind while they are eating sev puri. There is little time for other friendships.
3. Entrepreneurs are selfish.
I can never forgive myself for one incident.
Neither can my wife. The day my younger daughter was born was also the day I was supposed to sign my final shareholding agreements to close my first round of funding. I chose to sign those documents instead of bringing my wife and new born baby back home from the hospital.
This just pointedly shows how selfish entrepreneurs are.
4. Entrepreneurs are about the glory, not about the money.
I always told my wife that I would be really elated the day I made my crore rupees and that “life would change after that”.
I made one crore in a sale transaction 6 years ago and I still remember working doubly hard that day. Nothing changed the next day or the week after. And as I see it, nothing will change in the decade to come.
I realized that entrepreneurs do what they do for the glory of it. The money just happens and gets silently ignored.
5. Entrepreneurs are those people who walk into dark basements with the lights off.
Whenever I see a movie where a person who hears a noise slowly starts walking down into a dark basement with no lights (to investigate), I get the jeebie-jeebies.
It’s just that very often, entrepreneurs love chasing ideas and concepts till the very end. Almost fanatically, like someone obsessed; oblivious to fears and dangers to the point of almost getting killed in the bargain.
In the beginning of my entrepreneurial career, I would call 500 clients everyday and say, “Hi, I’m calling from contests2win.com, can I meet you?” No one bothered to speak to me, forget meet me. But I just kept on calling, ignoring the dark fear that I may not have been on the right path in the first place.
6. Entrepreneurs don’t mind their own business. They want to mind yours.
My wife and kids have given up on me.
It’s because at a restaurant, I lecture the manager on how to speak on the phone. Or because I spend forty minutes at a premium clothes store explaining to the saleswoman, how she should sell shirts to men. When the person at the toll booth doesn’t have change, I have a problem. When the car showroom sticks a ‘serviced at x garage’ sticker on my car – the manager, his boss and boss’s father get a lecture on how they cannot treat other people’s cars as media properties.
Entrepreneurs just can’t keep their noses to themselves.
They have to poke and intrude into other people’s business, and that’s not because they are curious or jealous; it’s because they want to participate in the other person’s business. They want to contribute and they want to inspire that entrepreneur to be the best.
7. Entrepreneurs love C.S.I
I love C.S.I (the investigative programme on TV). It’s not because I love to solve crimes, but because I love detail. I love the nitty gritty, the tiny hooks and sinks, the finger printing of attention, the DNA analysis of ‘why’!
In my father’s factory, I spent years writing an algorithm that calculated the cost of everything that went into making a sock – including the cost of the electricity of the lightbulb in the watchman’s bathroom.
Details are the ocean in which entrepreneurs swim to find hidden treasures.Sometimes the treasures are found and sometimes not, but the addiction to detail just becomes permanent.
Entrepreneurs are dangerous, lonely, crazy people. They are like Vampires. Either you stay away from them, or become them.
Divyesh Panchal
Asha,
Thank you for sharing those articles, I have already read and re-read them in the past. (I read almost all articles written by Alok 🙂 )
For the point where you spoke about spirituality is a PART of anything you do, one of the things I penned down during yesterday’s meditation is as below (“purpose of life” was on my mind):
How well people understand the purpose of life who dont meditate and are yet successful? – God invariably supports them because unknowingly they are performing their worldly duties more responsibly. Afterall performing your worldly duties responsibly is ultimately serving your purpose of life which itself is the biggest form of meditation!
Thank you respecting my POV. 🙂
God Bless us all.