Clearing Your Mind Through Meditation

By Gina Lopez, Leadership Gilroy Board of Directors

I was surprised to learn that Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce.com, Ariana Huffington, the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Huffington Post, and Jeff Weiner, the CEO of LinkedIn all have regular meditation practices and give credit to meditation as a key ingredient to the success of their businesses. Even large companies such as Google have incorporated meditation spaces within their campuses for their employees to meditate during the workday to help nurture creativity. All of these cutting-edge leaders seem to know this secret, so I say, "If meditation is good enough for these billionaires, I'm hopping on board!"

I began meditating several months ago and found that the benefits far surpassed my expectations. Today, I find myself more centered with an increased ability to focus, more creative in my problem solving skills, as well as better able to handle stressful situations in a calm and controlled fashion. All of these qualities were inside me all along, they were just buried under hectic schedules and mile-long to-do lists. There is a confident, grounded person with vision and clarity emerging from deep inside all of us and every day I become more excited to watch my true leader come shinning through.

My State Farm Insurance business, as well as my Travel business, are both flourishing as a result of this new practice I've put in place, and the greatest thing is that the expansion all seems to be happening so seamlessly. I've been an entrepreneur for as long as I can remember, but now I'm an entrepreneur on fire - having more fun and finding more freedom than I imagined was possible. I used to think that clearing my schedule would bring me peace and abundance; now I know it's clearing my mind.