I’m hoping I haven’t offended anyone (too much) by that headline.  Does anyone self-identify as a “hippie” anymore, anyway?  We’ve all got a picture in our head, though, right?

What I’m thinking of are people that are a little bit out there:  they might play a little too much hacky sack or burn a little bit too much patchouli incense, maybe they’ve participated in a drum-circle once or twice.  And they’re always going on and on about how it’s so great to take time out to meditate and “expand [their] consciousness, man”.  Does that ring a bell?  Maybe I hung out with too many stoners in high school or something…

The way I understand meditation to work is that a person essentially concentrates all their effort on not concentrating on anything at all (except for their own breathing, or a mantra or something).  The mind is to be emptied so as to allow some great revelation of wisdom to occur.

This never made a lot of sense to me.  I’m not much in agreement with the concept that’s implied here:  if you wait long enough without doing anything, something great is going to happen to you through no effort of your own.  That’s complete and utter nonsense, in my opinion and experience.

Change is what is required for personal, emotional, or spiritual development.  Without change, there is no improvement.  It requires work on your part.

That being said, I’ve recently begun doing some meditation of my own.  It’s quite a bit different from what I’ve already described, though.

Here’s a step-by-step guide to “Meditation for Non-Hippies”:

1.  Find a quiet place. This isn’t any different from what you would do in “normal” meditation.  You don’t have to turn off the lights unless you want to, you don’t have to light any candles or incense unless you want to, you don’t need any Enya playing in the background unless you want to.  The one thing you do need, however, is to remove distractions.  That’s why I said it needs to be quiet.

Now, my 18 year-old self would have said “I’m fine with music playing in my headphones while I do my homework; it’s not distracting”.  My 33 year-old self knows better, though.  If you need it quiet and dark, then make it quiet and dark.  Don’t sabotage yourself on this step.

2.  Lie down. I know some folks like to sit up, and are concerned that if they lie down they’re going to fall asleep.  If that’s you, go ahead and sit up.  Personally, I like to lie down on the floor in my office.  My floor supports my weight evenly without being comfortable enough to cause me to drift off to sleep.  When I sit up, I find that I have a little part of my mind that pays attention to the way my body is positioned.  It’s distracting.

If you really want to get into the lotus position, I guess that’s your prerogative.  Just don’t ask me to join you; I’ve never been able to bend like that.

3.  Think about something that’s truly important to you. Here’s where we turn meditation on its head.  Rather than focusing on “Om Shanti Om” or on the rhythm of your breathing, you need to focus on your most pressing challenge.  Notice I didn’t say “WORRY about your most pressing challenge”.  You need to approach the situation head-on, with the confidence that you can come up with a solution.  Allow your thoughts to go where they will, as long as they remain focused on the issue at hand.  If you start thinking about the laundry you need to do, gently push your thoughts back to where they belong.

What you’re doing here is allowing your subconscious mind to work on the challenge, as well.  This is when truly creative problem solving occurs.  I know that so many times when I’ve tried to “distract myself” into creativity by doing something else, I’ve never gotten back to the issue I was concerned with in the first place.

What if you don’t have anything really pressing at the current time?  Well, then this is the time for you to get ahead of the game by filling your thoughts with positivity.  For some (like myself), meditation is a time to focus on finding out what God would have that person do with his or her life (Joshua 1.8).  For others, you may want to focus on your daily affirmations, what you want your future to look like, or just on whatever is most important to you.

Look, I’m not trying to pick on people who sincerely believe in the type of meditation I’m opposed to.  I think you’re wrong, and I’ll be willing to discuss it (civilly) and attempt to convince you of your error if you’d like, but I don’t hate on you.  I know you think I’m wrong too, but I’m hoping that we can all agree to disagree and still focus on what we do have in common.

However, I do get a little tired of the “I’m not religious, I’m spiritual” crap that I hear a lot of today, and I think other folks do, as well.  It comes off as insincere and trite, as well as demonstrating that the person who said it doesn’t have a basic grasp of the English language.  If you believe in and revere a set of beliefs about some reality that can’t be quantified or demonstrated, you have a religion (or a “faith”, if you will).

For those of you in that boat with me, I hope that you’ll consider that meditation as I’ve described it above is a great tool for use in your personal development, as well as in your problem solving.

You know what to do.  Some may rip me to shreds, and others might back me up with the first group.  Just keep it respectful, folks, and steer clear of Godwin’s Law, shall we? Let the comments begin…

Here’s another TED video I’d like you to take a look at.  In it, we get to hear the consequences of allowing your life to become monotonous, and one very unique way to deal with that issue.

Stefan Sagmeister owns a design studio in New York that’s garnered a lot of commercial and critical praise and success, and he has a rather unorthodox approach to work/life balance that he credits with keeping his work fresh and unique.

First, Stefan discusses the fact that our employment falls into one of three categories:

1.  Job:  Trading time for money.  It’s a 9-5 (or, more likely, 7:30-6:30) commitment, but without much (if any) positive emotional investment on our part.  A person in this scenario needs a hobby on the weekend to balance things out, because what they’re doing isn’t really what they’d like to be doing.

The challenge comes when you’re so exhausted from your job that you have no emotional energy to do anything when you get home.  You collapse on the couch and channel surf until you go to bed so you can wake up and do it tomorrow.

2.  Career:  It’s still a job, but you’re doing it for advancement and promotion.  You see where you’re at currently as a stepping-stone to something better.  It’s a means to an end, whether that end is a better position within the same field, or gaining experience to be able to go out on your own.

This is a little bit better, but only if you can constantly remind yourself of your long-range goals and how your current position is going to help you do what you want to do.  Speaking from personal experience, this is pretty tough to do all the time, so you may end up a little frustrated in this area, as well.

3.  Calling:  This is the proverbial “I love it so much, I’d do it for free” position.  Those folks who have these types of positions are constantly envied by the rest of us because they seem so lucky.  They arrive home excited about what they were able to accomplish during the day, and they can’t wait to get back out the door tomorrow to do the same thing.

The interesting comment that Stefan makes is that, with enough time, even the most powerful “calling” will turn into merely a “job”.  He would get bored and repetitive in what he was doing, even though he loved being a designer.

His solution was to begin to take sabbaticals every 7 years.  He would close his design studio in New York for an entire year and go do something different.  No clients, no sneaking in a project here and there.  He quit doing what he was doing and focused entirely on something else.

Did it work?  According to Stefan, the answers is a resounding “Yes!”

1.  His job became a calling again. The old saying “absence makes the heart grow fonder” certainly seems to be the truth in this case.  Because he spent the entire year away from doing the kind of design the was accustomed to, he began to miss it.  His creativity was sparked again.

2.  He had fun. Who wouldn’t have fun taking an entire year off to spend in Bali?  I think this one speaks for itself.  There’s nothing wrong with enjoying yourself.

3.  Over the long term, the idea was a financial success. Because of being refreshed, he found that his ideas and design concepts were being received even more positively than before.  He was able to raise his rates as a result.

4.  Everything his studio designed during the following 7 years had roots in something that occurred or was experienced during that sabbatical year. This demonstrates what, in my mind, is the key take-away.  This “creative pause” in his life produced such a well-spring of refreshing thoughts and unique experiences that he was able to sustain it for 7 years after (coincidentally enough, right up to the time he was supposed to take his next break).

Sure, it’s fine for the self-employed to do something like this, but what about those of us who work in big, soulless corporations?  Well, companies like 3M and Google have long embraced the idea that employees work better when they have the option to work on projects they enjoy.  Employees at 3M invented Scotch Tape and Post-It notes on the 15% of their time that’s to be allocated to personal projects.  Gmail came out of some Google employees’ 1 personal day a week.

Plenty of other companies allow their employees to take sabbaticals (I’ve got a friend at Intel that just took three months off to travel around Europe).  Whether those are paid or not are another story, of course.  My point is, it’s not unheard of to find a position with a company that understands that it’s in their best interest to allow their talent to do something that they enjoy.

What kinds of benefits could you see accruing to you if you took some time away from your work?  How would you spend that time?  Have you ever had the opportunity to do something like this?  How did it go?  Let us know in the comments…