SENIOR EXECUTIVES CRAVE DANGER, FEAR MEDITATION

I know at least 7 senior executives in Hong Kong who race motorcycles.  Even a really really high-end motorcycle isn’t as expensive as let’s say, a Ferrari, and each of these gentleman has quite a stable of high-performance bikes.  I imagine they choose which bike they will race that day in the hills of Hong Kong, or on the racetrack in Malaysia, like one might choose which suit to wear in the morning.

You have a few that you wear all the time, a couple that don’t fit quite perfectly but they look okay so you don’t throw them away, and there’s that one that fits perfectly, the color looks great on you, and is essentially your lucky charm for big meetings, big dates, and job interviews.

One must be careful about wearing one’s best suit to work.  I remember vividly, oh it must have been 15 years ago now, wearing a new suit I was quite proud of and a senior manager in the company coming up to me and saying “job interview today?”

But we are were talking about how these captains of industry like things that go fast.  And things that are dangerous. 

These two qualities often go hand in hand.

It seems to me quite admirable to compete in a triathlon. The running I get.  If you practice running a lot, you will presumably get better at running. The biking I get.  Most of us can ride a bike.  If you ride a bike in a triathlon you presumably just peddle faster than I did when I rode a bike in 3rd grade.  And it’s a better bike than my BMX no doubt (but I’ve never seen a triathlete do a wheelie or a bunny hop.)

But swimming?  Really?  That seems dangerous as hell to me.  Especially those insane races where one is swimming in a natural mass of water, i.e. the ocean.  Am I the only one that doesn’t like to go in the water when I can’t see what is beneath me?  You have heard about the giant squid right?

I know a lot of senior executives that compete in triathlons.  Way more than I do that ride motorcycles.  A buddy of mine in Tokyo tells me that he’s “off” for 2 weeks after one of those feats.  Apparently many triathletes suffer mental fatigue along with the extreme body fatigue, extending to mild post-race depression in some cases.

You know what is possibly more dangerous than motorcycles and triathlons? Working hard, really hard, for 5 days a week, and then on Friday night getting really really wasted.

I spent a couple days working with a group of private bankers recently, and part of the training session was on “Executive Resilience.”  There was a survey that everyone took to rate themselves poor/average/good/excellent in several different areas.  One of the assessment questions was “I regularly get 6 hours of sleep per night” which seemed a perfectly reasonable question to me when I first read it. That evening as I was reflecting on the session, that “6 hours” question gave me pause.   

I realized what was bothering me. Since when did we drop from 7 hours a night to 6?  Hasn’t conventional wisdom for the last howevermanyyears dictated 7 hours a night, or even 7 and a half hours?

I should note that none of those private bankers rated themselves as “Excellent” at getting 6 hours of sleep a night.

So it plays out something like this.  You have a lot of business trips, you have a lot of email, there’s no way you are getting 6 hours shut-eye on the reg when you are managing a team of 12, visiting 3 different Asian counties every month, and have a number to hit. While this certainly doesn’t apply to everyone, a good several handfuls of those same executives are getting hammered in the wonderful restaurants and bars of Hong Kong, Singapore, KL, and Tokyo on Friday night, who cares how much they slept that week.  We need to let off some steam! You should see the queue INSIDE the men’s toilet at most posh Hong Kong bars on a Friday night.  By that I mean the queue for the sit down toilet, not the stand up one.  There is a line 5 deep, and no one flushes, because well frankly, they aren’t going inside to use the bathroom.  If you get my drift.

This behavior is certainly not healthy, and perhaps we could go so far as to call it outright dangerous. Can we agree that there are a good portion of senior executives who crave danger?

I would now like to go on record to say that I have never suggested that someone meditate. That seems quite personal, sort of like telling someone that she should brush her teeth more often, or change her bedsheets regularly.

I do meditate myself and that occasionally comes up in conversation. It rarely comes up in the “spiritual” context so to speak, but more in the pragmatic one, i.e. 20 minutes of deep diaphragm breathing can really lower one’s heart rate when nervous. Aside from a couple of executive coaches, yoga instructors, and zen priests that I know, I have not met many meditators.  This is especially interesting to me in light of the evidence of the physical and mental benefits of meditation, and some very big successful names going on record to say that the secret to their success is meditation.

Why aren’t more senior executives meditating?

Because senior executives fear meditation. Many senior executives fear spending 20 minutes in their own heads.  It’s a rat’s nest in there! The thoughts, the thoughts!

Some of the objections I’ve heard are, “It’s impossible for me to sit still and think about nothing” or “That doesn’t work for me, I’ve tried” or “I just fall asleep” or “I think it would be useful but I don’t have the time.”

I have no disagreement with any of those objections, but I do wonder.  Since you are in such powerful control of your life, so successful, have such strong intellect and will, so capable of accomplishing what you set out to accomplish, are you not interested in controlling your own mind?

Because isn’t that kind of what meditation is?  Mind control over your own mind.

This video, self-filmed by modern American philosopher Ken Wilber, is stunning.  Ken connects a bunch of electrodes to his head to measure brain waves, and then demonstrates an unreal ability to control his brain waves on an individual level by switching between different “types” of meditation.  And he can do this in a matter of seconds, there is no long setup.  In about 10 seconds after closing his eyes he tunes all his brain waves to zero.

I do not yet know what I would do with that skill, but I do know that I would like to have the ability to zero out all my brain waves.

I take that back.  I would like to have that skill so that when someone says “I have some bad news” I can say “Hold on for 15 seconds and then start talking.”  And then I zero out.

Certainly nothing could be too unsettling if your brain waves are turned off? 

Questions for self-reflection:

1. What are my 3 greatest fears?

2. How do I distance myself from those fears, or bring them close to me?