In our company, we face the normal everyday pressures of businesses. We always work hard for our clients and are continually seeking ways to improve. We don’t let ourselves forget that we are humans as well. We get excited and happy when our ideas become reality and we get frustrated and stressed when we just can seem to find the answers. So how do we overcome periodic downturns of creativity?
We find our success is due to our culture and our attitude toward our work. We love what we do and we always strive to do better. One way we maintain our positive approach is through a technique we call here “Math and Meditation”. Everyone on our team is given the opportunity to meditate, in any form, whether its a seated meditation in a private space set aside for meditation, or a walk in the nearby park.
Meditation allows us to be mindful of ourselves and our surrounding and allows us to realize we are part of something bigger, enabling us to put our temporary issues in perspective. We don’t ignore the problems, we just let them be, and remind ourselves of our place in the world at this time with each other and with our clients and community.
Studies have shown that meditation, even for beginners, increases creativity, awareness and promotes healthier living (Colzato, 2012). We have experienced this effect first hand. If you ask any of our employees, you will find, almost all of them have in some way encountered a solution to a nagging problem after meditation.
Meditation is not a way of making your mind quiet. It is a way of entering into the quiet that is already there – buried under the 50,000 thoughts the average person thinks every day. – Deepak Chopra
Dada Nabanhilananda, a.k.a The Monk Dude, speaks about how meditation “enables you to tap into the source of your creativity”. Seeking answers to complex problems sums up the entire mathematics and analytics discipline. Various techniques for tapping into this creativity are certainly available, but the mind is a very interesting entity and sometimes we need to still our mind. In the buddhist discipline, the constant thoughts in our minds is refereed to as “The Monkey Mind”, i.e. the cluttered , constantly unsettled mind. The Zen missionary, Shunryu Suzuki, said that the Monkey Mind is the Small Mind, and the Small Mind must be controlled by the “Big Mind”. When we meditate, we are realizing the bigger part of ourselves and allowing our Big Mind to tap into that creativity, while silencing the Small mind that clouds our ability.
Mathematics and analytics are very detailed disciplines, but this does not minimize other fields. Every person encounters stresses or droughts of creativity. Meditation we believe is a good way to return back to a state of calm and allowing the natural creative forces to be attracted. We dont believe there is a “right way” to meditate. Its not something that you do, its something you practice, and experience each day either a few minutes at a time or continuously.