Killing your own Kool-Aid

The power of meditation and truth

When you are Founder/CEO, your job is to be the constant optimist, the fearless leader, and the one everyone counts on to be right all the time. But how often are we drinking too much of our own cool-aid and ultimately lying to ourselves?

Ask yourself the following questions:

1. Is there someone on your team right now that you know in your heart you need to fire, but you’ve been putting it off?
2. Is there some project in your company that in your heart you know is off the rails, but you don’t want to admit it?
3. Is there some decision you’ve made that you know you regret, but for some reason you keep pressing forward?
4. Is there someone in your company that you feel totally bullshits you every time you talk to them, but yet you do nothing about it?
5. Is there an idiot that you’ve somehow give power over yourself?

If any of this sounds familiar, then you’re not alone. Many founders struggle with these types of things every day but don’t like to admit it.

So how do you break free?

Several years ago, I was suffering deeply from these types of struggles and I began searching for an answer. One day, while reading about the benefits of meditation, I read that it can help you tap into your subconscious. I wondered, if my outer-self was too much of a wimp to deal with admitting the truth, maybe I could befriend my inner-self.

So I tried it.

I tried meditating with the goal of getting in touch with the things that my conscious was afraid to admit, address, or say out loud. I did it in the morning, patiently concentrating on my breathing until I got into a zone of nothingness and then I popped the question.

So what’s bothering you?

The resulting conversation with myself was a total unlock. In fact I was utterly shocked at how my subconscious was able to deal, process, and output truth. I’ve always had a trusted and open relationship with my board, my advisors, and my friends, but this was somehow different. It was like having a fearless, egoless advisor that could tell me like it was without hurting me. It was information I could act upon.

So I wrote down everything.

And from that day forward I have been freed to lead fearlessly. I know include it as part of my every day practice . Over the years it’s transformed from something I did with pencil, a ruler, and some paper to what I used now — which is Apple’s Notes.

I’m not sure the medium matters. What does is the doing of it.

When I write my thoughts down, I try to stay in the moment of realization that I had during meditation. It’s often a brutal exercise and can result in sentences that begin with “I need to fire ….” or “I was wrong about…” and the worst of all “… was really my fault.”

Sometimes it’s only a paragraph or two, but every once in a while an outpouring occurs. For example Cult Creation, my 29 page essay on hiring engineers, was really just a result of one of these particularly productive sessions. But whether it’s one paragraph or the length of a book, the important thing is to write it down, and write it down honestly.

Here are some of just a few benefits of doing this exercise daily:

1. For obvious reasons, don’t ever let anyone else read your diary — ever.
2. Starting my day with quiet contemplation can really change the direction of the day. Choosing a topic, or theme, or problem to write about can often change my day from being a busy-body day to a day where I make substantial, meaningful changes.
3. I love going back and read my dairy from time to time. I’m always shocked by how often my subconscious had it right from the start. With several years now in the bag — I have a treasure trove of thinking, acting, and learning.
4. I’m always equally shocked by how long it took me to act even after I’ve written it down. I’ve had situations where I thought I addressed the problem within a week or so after I knew I need to act, but later found out it was months when I reviewed my notes.
5. As you read over my dairy, I often see patterns and anti-patterns of behavior. Sometimes I am able to see a problem in a different way by examining the pattern of my own thinking about the problem — thus seeing it from it’s macro instead of the micro.
6. Remember posting is searchable. I use keywords like OSWF for “Oh Shit We’re Fucked” for those moments where I’m most worried. I use “Boing!” for those moments where we are crushing it. It’s fascinating to search later and see how many times I was right, and perhaps more importantly, just how many times I was wrong for both OSWF and Boing!
7. Whenever I find myself writing about the same topic multiple times I know it’s an indication that something is either majorly wrong or majorly right. In those situations, I see it as confirmation to act on some of the most difficult decisions.
8. Having a place of 100% honesty, somewhere I can put it in a vault has been a Godsend for — it has really enabled me to scale my self, my worries, and my dreams.
9. I’ve found that when I write things down the problem I’m working on becomes smaller and I can think, process, and analyze it more clearly.
10. Below my meditation paragraph I put my two to-do lists. One is called “What Moves the Needle” and the other is called “My Perfect Day”. In the first I put 5 items that really are worth doing and usually address one or more of my meditation paragraphs. In the second list, I imagine the work day is over and it’s been amazing. Then, I write down what I did to make it amazing.