Hurry up and meditate

I remember once being on a Zoom call, discretely replying to an urgent Teams message, thinking about the next meeting, while also mentally flagging an email I forgot to answer. Then my phone pinged with something completely unrelated and I found myself thinking “what the hell am I doing?” I’d been online since before 7am, and somehow I still felt behind.

This wasn’t resilience. It was ‘busyness’ and slow-motion burnout disguised as dedication.

We tell ourselves this is what high performers do - push through, grind harder, skip lunch. But it’s costing us too much. Creativity. Focus. Energy. Empathy. And sadly, our health.

Burnout is up. Attention spans are collapsing. And yet, we keep trying to solve our exhaustion by pushing harder.

It sounds like grit, but it’s swimming upstream without the stamina to get through the whitewash.

The opposite of this is a pause. A breath. The space that allows us to gather our mental and physical strength. That’s meditation. And meditation isn’t a luxury. It’s a performance edge.

Because a short pause in our day can reset our focus, recalibrate emotions, and give our mind the clarity its desperate for.

Stillness is not the enemy of achievement. It’s the foundation of it. And in a world addicted to speed, the real power move might be… to stop.

Just for a minute. Just long enough to remember who’s actually in control.

I love a quick fable.

There’s an old Zen story about a student who went to his master with great enthusiasm.

“How long will it take me to become enlightened if I meditate every day?” the student asked.
“Ten years,” was the response.
The student, shocked, said, “What if I work really hard and meditate all day?”
The master smiled, “Then it will take twenty years.”

The student didn’t get it, and maybe neither do we. In a world where speed is worshipped and output is king, the idea that slowing down might actually help us go faster feels like BS.

And indeed it is somewhat paradoxical, but it’s true. The stiller we become, the sharper we get. In fact, meditation (this ancient, deceptively simple practice) might just be one of the most powerful productivity tools we’re not using often enough.

So, what exactly is meditation?

At its core, meditation is attention training. It’s the act of ‘noticing’. Noticing our thoughts, our breath, our surroundings, and then returning to the present moment. Noticing... and returning. Again and again.

It's not about emptying our mind or becoming a monk. It's about becoming less hijacked by the noise of our own thinking so we can respond, rather than react.

Why does it matter at work or school?

Because the whole world (including the workplace and the classroom) has become a warzone for our attention. Emails, Slack pings, back-to-back meetings, performance pressures. It’s all impacting our burnout rates, stress levels and overall mental health. Meditation isn’t a cure-all, but it is a powerful way to build internal resilience.

Here are three specific benefits meditation brings to professionals at every level:

1. Sharper focus. Meditation strengthens the prefrontal cortex which is the brain’s control center for planning, decision-making, and concentration. In short, it helps us stay focused, which is a superpower in a world designed to distract us.

   Want to try it? Before starting a deep work session, take one minute to sit still, close your eyes, and focus on your breath. This isn’t wasting time - it’s investing in priming the brain to be more efficient.

2. Calmer reactions. Tough meetings, frantic deadlines, or unexpected feedback. The modern workplace serves up stress on a regular basis. But meditation can lower reactivity by increasing our ability to pause before we respond.

   In one study, employees who meditated regularly reported significantly lower emotional exhaustion and higher job satisfaction. This is because they were less reactive to stress. What that means is that they didn't spiral. They responded with clarity. I see it within myself too – the days I don’t meditate are the days I am shortest with my kids.

3. More empathy and improved leadership. Meditation increases activity in brain regions linked to compassion and emotional regulation. Leaders who meditate tend to listen better, speak more thoughtfully, and lead with steadier hands. If you look at some of the best athletes in the world, you’ll find that many of the best leaders are also players who meditate – LeBron James and Tom Brady among the GOATs list. That calm leadership style helps build resilient teams, and great leaders model what it looks like to regulate emotions and stay grounded.

Where to start

No need to overcomplicate it. Here’s a beginner-friendly 2-minute meditation anyone can do at a desk, on a park bench, or even in your parked car.

2-min meditation:

1. Sit comfortably. Close your eyes. Try to focus only on your breath.

2. Inhale slowly through your nose for a count of 4 counts.

3. Hold your breath for 4.

4. Exhale gently through your mouth for 6.

5. Repeat 3-4 rounds, focusing only on the breath.

Thoughts will come and that’s okay. Just gently return to the breath each time you drift. That returning is the practice. Start at 2 mins and work your way up to 10 mins a day.

Back to the student who wanted to meditate harder and faster to speed up enlightenment. His mistake wasn’t ambition. It was thinking that “more” equated to “better”.

That’s like turning up the volume of a terrible song to see if it sounds better.

So the next time your brain is buzzing with urgency, and everything feels like it needs to be done yesterday, we should hurry up and meditate.

Until next time friends, stay resilient

Carre @ Resilient Minds

PS - “Hurry Up and Meditate” is such a cool little line, but I can’t take credit for it. It’s actually the title of a book I read in my twenties which is an excellent intro into meditation. If you’re interested, check it out here.

PPS - Fancy a session on burnout for your team? Click here for a bit more info or simply reply to this email.