80% of top business leaders meditate, at least according to entrepreneur and author Tim Ferriss who has interviewed over 200 world-class performers for his weekly podcast The Tim Ferriss Show.  Ferriss said that the number one common thread these top performers had in comparison to most other people is that more than 80% of them were using some form of daily meditation practice to get better results in business.

Ferriss himself practices Transcendental Meditation and said, “I find that meditation is very very helpful for avoiding anxiety and it’s the reset button for the rest of the day… it’s basically a warm bath for your brain.”

Ferriss admits that he was initially a little reluctant to learn to meditate himself saying,

“Rick Rubin and Chase Jarvis convinced me to bite the bullet on the cost when I was going through a particularly hard period in my life. I’m glad they did.  The social pressure of having a teacher for 4 consecutive days was exactly the incentive I needed to meditate consistently enough to establish the habit,”

Meditation has become popular on Wall Street in recent years with thousands of Wall Street professionals taking up the practice.  Most prominent among those is Bridgewater Associates founder Ray Dalio who has been meditating for 40 years and 8 years ago introduced the practice to his 700 employees.

Dalio credits Transcendental Meditation for his billion dollar success, saying, “Meditation more than any other factor has been the reason for whatever success I’ve had… It’s the ability to be centered and to approach things in a calm, centered way without all those fears, just analyzing what’s true.”

Meditation has gone coast to coast in America, with Silicon Valley adopting the practice as a means to increase creativity, reduce stress and improve health.  Recently Google invited Meditation teacher Bob Roth to speak at their Google Zeitgeist event where Roth spoke about the numerous scientifically documented benefits of meditating.

“I’m data driven. I don’t want to have to believe in anything on face value… You don’t have to believe in anything, you can be 100% skeptical. It’ll give your body deep rest, it’ll wake up your brain.”

Sounds like something we can all use.

This is a guest post by Gregory Lyons. Gregory is a teacher of Transcendental Meditation in Brighton, UK. To find out more about TM in Brighton visit Transcendental Meditation Brighton.

Reposted from www.dailycupofyoga.com