A super short summary of Google spirituality
What would you do to have a super sharp mental focus like Eddie Morra (Bradley Cooper) in “Limitless”?
Would you dedicate 10 minutes a day to develop such a beneficial skill?
I mean, you already dedicate a few minutes a day to personal hygiene and maybe a few more to exercise.
And if I told you there was a department at Google dedicated to mind hacking with the purpose of mentally augmenting their ninja programmers, would you want to learn their ninja ways?
Every year, thousands of Googlers take one of a dozen company courses on mindfulness meditation, the increasingly prevalent practice of having a “balanced awareness” of what’s happening around you. Focus.
It’s the brainchild of Chade Meng-Tan, a Singapore-born engineer who was hired as Google employee №107 back in 1999.
“Google wants to help Googlers grow as human beings on all levels,” Tan said in his presentation. “Emotional, mental, physical and ‘beyond the self.’”
But he hopes that one day, his role will become commonplace. A growing awareness of the importance of our emotional fitness, he says, is mirroring the same journey of acceptance that physical exercise took in the last century.
And he believes that scientific evidence of the benefits of the Buddhist practice of mindfulness will be instrumental into catapulting it into the very heart of the business world.
You can be like Google, and maybe even Eddie, and learn to control your ninja mind, but start easy and then keep going. Here are some videos, short ones to get you interested and long ones to get you started and a program to instruct you.
Dan Harris Hack Your Brain’s Default Mode with Meditation 3:43
How Not to be a Slave to Your Brain: Mindfulness for Mental Health | 4:38
Chade-Meng Tan: “Search Inside Yourself” | Talks at Google 54:14
Mindfulness with Jon Kabat-Zinn at Google 2007 1:12:04
And when you are really interested, you can attend the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute program in Barcelona November 9–10
And of course, there is an excellent app called InsightTimer which is like Strava for mindfulness.
