Tom Wang meditated daily for three straight months. “Okay, so I missed a day or two here and there but I’m pretty proud of myself for actually sticking to it,” he said. “I didn’t think I could. But hey, it’s working. Anyways, the biggest benefit that I received is mindfulness and awareness. Now let me explain what that means. You can not make a decision, a good decision, when you’re emotional.” Story continues below.
“You get caught up in traffic, it triggers you, you’re angry, you’re boiling up, if someone asks you something you reply back to them in a super negative tone,” he continued. “Whatever it might be, right? Or work is hard, you’re stressed out, you’re emotional, you’re like, ‘Ah, I don’t wanna do this anymore,’ or X, Y, and Z. Whatever it might be. We’re all in these different situations that trigger us emotionally. Now, what meditating does is that, when you’re meditating, it’s not that you’re not trying to think of anything.”
“That’s impossible. Your mind is always thinking. Thoughts are always coming through. The reason I started meditating is because I actually got a life coach through my friend and he’s the one that’s holding me accountable. Something he told me that I resonated quite a bit with is, think of your mind as like the sky. And there’s different clouds that are rolling through the sky. Try to be the sky instead of trying to be the cloud. Each of the clouds are like just a different thought.”
“If you’re stuck in the cloud, just stressing out or angry or happy or whatever it might be, right? Mindfulness and awareness is noticing that, hey, that situation is just a cloud but you’re the whole sky and there’s other clouds that are rolling through. I don’t know. Chad [the life coach] can explain it better than I can. But basically, when you’re meditating, these train of thoughts will come through and you can lift yourself out of them and let them pass on their way.”
That’s Tom’s understanding and experience with meditation ninety days in. He doesn’t claim to have it all figured out. But it’s something he plans on sticking with, probably for life. He believes it’ll help him think rational, stay calm under pressure, just not letting emotion get in the way. Whether it’s waking up to Amazon deleting all your reviews or a fight with your business partner or someone tailing too close to your Audi R8 Spyder, not getting rattled by it, not making a bad situation worse.
Note, it’s not the emotions, themselves, that are bad. After all, we’re human beings. We’re supposed to feel. Right? But the point is, you can’t let those emotions take over and cause you to do something stupid. Tom sees regular meditation as a way to bulletproof his short-term decision-making so that he’s always acting in alignment with his long-term vision. Not just when it comes to business, but life in general. If you’re interested in trying it out yourself, there’s so many different forms.
“Honestly, just start with whatever you find the easiest,” Tom said. “You can go on YouTube, there’s apps like Headspace. It doesn’t really matter. Just start with something. Start with five minutes a day, and then work your way up to ten. Right now I’m doing like twenty, twenty-five minutes a day. Ideally, I’d like to get up to forty to sixty. I think that would be really cool. So that’s really it. It’s been a great habit, I’m really glad that I added it in. And uh, yeah, I just wanted to share that with ya.”
