From Microsoft to meditation – Why I became a mindfulness teacher | Part 2
Opening hearts and minds
Still wary from my first meditation flameout five years earlier, it took me until the Spring of 2017 to find the courage to lead a few teammates and my manager at Microsoft through the hour-long “Mindfulness at Work” curriculum I had created; fortunately, they received it well. I then learned that Google had been teaching mindfulness at work for years, and got funding from my team’s training budget to attend one of their “Search Inside Yourself” seminars in Portland. Their combination of mindfulness and emotional intelligence was tailor-made for the corporate context, and I went home wondering if I could port it to Microsoft.
The next day I realized I didn’t need to - a few months prior Charles Morris developed and led a Mindful Growth course around Microsoft’s growth mindset core value, and had recently posted a proposal to grow it into a company-wide initiative. We met soon after, and suddenly it became a realistic possibility that I could teach mindfulness at work one day a week.
But was I actually ready for that?
As part of a newfound passion for criminal justice reform, I had joined the board of Yoga Behind Bars, an NGO that trains yoga teachers in trauma-informed yoga and sends them into prisons to guide classes for people behind bars. The healing that their devoted volunteers provided both inspired me and cautioned me how important proper training is for this deep work. Moreover, I felt far from being a model of mindfulness; mutually reinforcing cycles of stress and rumination dominated my mind and had just destroyed my once-promising relationship. That was my first wake-up call.
As the pain began to clear and sanity returned, I realized that meditating on my own clearly wasn’t enough; I needed to restart serious training.
I got more funding for back-to-back retreats run by a local non-profit, Mindfulness Northwest: to attend their “Roots of Compassion” silent retreat and to then observe the September kickoff weekend of their 9-month teacher training program (I had been too late and hesitant to join). As the retreat approached, I was both excited for my first full days of intensive meditation in five years and nervous that they wouldn’t match up to the mind-blowing experiences of my first retreat.
They did.
Some people have a hard time getting comfortable with love and compassion meditations, but I felt their power immediately to blow my heart wide open, allowing my personal worries to dissipate in love for the world. Sure enough, I was buzzing with energy again. A close friend once told me that if you want to make a serious change in your life, often it’s not enough to tinker around the edges – you need to center your life on your goal. At that retreat, I rediscovered my commitment to a life centered on meditation.
I quit my job and dedicated myself to make these practices accessible to all, particularly those who couldn’t afford expensive mindfulness classes and were put off by the religious overtones of free Buddhist trainings. Our world is reeling with fear and hate, and I believe that with our hearts and minds open from meditation we can discover that we share much more than what divides us. With this new mission, I requested to join the teacher-training program that was just beginning and was welcomed with open arms by the wonderful lead teacher Tim Burnett and the caring cohort that would become my mindfulness family over the coming year.
Suddenly, I was in flow. I sent out an impassioned e-mail announcing my departure and new mission to over a thousand colleagues, and dozens volunteered to join the effort. I got to meet two of my favorite meditation teachers – Chade-Meng Tan and Dr. Tara Brach – and (via Adam Grant) leading researchers in Self-Compassion, Compassion, and Growth Mindset to get their input and support. I started teaching more at Microsoft, at a friend’s startup in San Francisco, for students at Penn, and even in Tokyo and Nagoya. I connected deeply with incredible new friends wherever I went, including falling in love with Yorie from Japan at a Nonviolent Communication “Awakening to Life” retreat.
But as 2018 arrived, something was still off. I still couldn’t sleep. My passion project energized me but also stressed me out. Once the buzz of each retreat faded, I would again start falling into old habits of anxiety and self-absorption. As I returned home in January after a difficult ending to my first visit with Yorie, I started to wake up to this pattern. Yorie did too – she told me that I wasn’t the man she fell in love with on retreat.
That really woke me up.
Happy holidays! We’re heading to Plum Village Thailand today to ring in the new year with a week of mindfulness. Check back when we return next week to read about my path to healing in the series conclusion – Part 3: Letting go.
If my story resonates with you, you are welcome to join our upcoming Mindfully Connecting 1 day retreat on Feb 28 in Ise, which will also stream live online on Feb 27 in the US – more details here https://www.facebook.com/events/571737339935946
In the meantime, you can bring in the holiday spirit of connection with my version of the traditional loving-kindness meditation here – https://soundcloud.com/smilingshadows/loving-kindness-25-min
