Stress-Relief Meditation: 3 Benefits for Busy Entrepreneurs

Think you have too much going on to meditate? If so, you might be the most in need of stress-relief meditation.

We know exactly what you’re thinking: “I could never meditate! I’m too antsy to sit still in silence. I live in the real world, not at a monastery!”

The truth is, the busier you are, the more you can benefit from stress management. Meditation doesn’t have to take place on a cushion surrounded by candles. In reality, meditation is more accessible than you might think, and it has some major benefits for busy, stressed-out entrepreneurs.

In this article, we’ll show you an easy, common-sense way to start meditating today—without buying incense or going to a silent retreat—and then go over three benefits that make self-care worthwhile.

Incorporating stress-relief meditation into your day

You can start by meditating for just five minutes per day.

Find a comfortable place to sit in a quiet room. Set a timer for five minutes.

Focus on your breath, and try not to dwell on the thoughts that pass through your mind. If you’ve never meditated before, your mind will seem noisy. Be patient. Eventually, you’ll get used to feeling the contours of your thoughts without letting stress drive your thinking.

Your first goal is to get to a point where your thoughts are present but distant, and your stressors are identifiable but powerless.

Once you start to feel comfortable sitting for five minutes, you can start increasing your timer in five-minute increments. You’ll hear stress knocking on the door, but, with practice, the knocks will become quieter and occur less frequently. With stress-relief meditation, you’re practicing the ability to put space between you and your stressors.

If you like using apps, then you may want to consider using a guided meditation app like Headspace or Calm. Or you could search YouTube or Google for meditation techniques until you find something that resonates with you.

Whenever you feel tempted to skip stress-relief meditation, think about these benefits.

1. Improved sleep and energy levels

Entrepreneurs need all the sleep they can get. With your email inbox filling up and a stack of business problems to solve piling higher, it can be easy to delay sleep in order to get a few more things done.

That ideal seven or eight hours of rest can feel like an impossible goal.

When you meditate regularly, you sleep better, so you can optimize the time you spend in bed. When you get better-quality sleep, you feel more energetic, more motivated, and have less stress and lower blood pressure. Investing time and effort in stress reduction now will pay off during the day.

2. Improved focus

Do you often wish you could be more productive? Mindfulness meditation won’t just relieve you—it’ll boost you.

Working smarter instead of harder is often easier said than done. When stress dominates your workplace, your focus can scatter. You’ll feel like you’re getting a lot done, but, in reality, you’re putting fragmented bits of effort into many different activities. You’ll work a lot and get little done.

Meditation can help improve your focus, so the time you spend working is not lost to scrolling on Facebook or Reddit. Meditation relieves stress and puts you in the right mind-set for focus. Get more done in fewer hours.

3. Improved clarity and decision-making

When you’re stressed out, overthinking starts to look like regular thinking. You’ll find yourself reading and rereading the same emails, scripting phone calls, double- and triple-checking your work when you know it’s all right.

Stress-relief meditation gets stress out of the way so you can think clearly. This is especially important when it comes to communication.

As an entrepreneur, you’re likely also a leader, delegating tasks to employees or contractors. When you meditate, you’ll improve your clarity of thought, so you can spend less time thinking about how to communicate with people and simply communicate with them. Furthermore, you’ll reach decisions quickly because you’ll see the clear path ahead of you.

Remember: Meditation may feel awkward at first, but once you start to feel the benefits of meditation, you’ll wonder how you ever did business—or life—without it.