Episode 175 – How to Use Meditation as Business Growth Tool With Anand Balasubramanian

In this episode of The Agent of Wealth Podcast, host Marc Bautis is joined by Anand Balasubramanian, a heart-based meditation consistency coach that helps founders, CXOs and other business professionals achieve their professional goals to attain uncommon growth. Together, they discuss how a meditative mindset can improve business performance… Because remember, a company’s growth potential is directly tied to its leader’s.

In this episode, you will learn:

The benefits of meditation.
What heart-based meditation (or heartfulness) is, and how it differs from other forms of meditation.
How to begin practicing heart-based meditation.
The benefits of heart-based meditation for business owners and entrepreneurs.
And more!

Resources:

Disclosure: The transcript below has been lightly edited for clarity and content. It is not a direct transcription of the full conversation, which can be listened to above.

Welcome back to The Agent of Wealth Podcast, this is your host Marc Bautis. On today’s show, I’m joined by a special guest, Anand Balasubramanian.

Anand is a heart-based meditation consistency coach that helps founders, CXOs and other business professionals achieve their professional goals to attain uncommon growth. Also referred to as a “Growth Coach,” Anand pulls from over three decades of meditation experience when working with clients to sharpen their self-leadership skills, make informed decisions, and drive their business towards unparalleled heights. His tech-savvy approach to coaching incorporates his 25+ years of Information Technology experience.

Today, we’ll discuss the inherent link between personal development and company growth, and how meditation can be used as a tool for business growth.

Anand, welcome to the show.

Thank you, Marc.

I think today’s discussion will be very beneficial for this podcast audience, as many of the listeners are entrepreneurs or business owners – like myself.

Can you start off by explaining the benefits of meditation in day to day life?

The Benefits of Meditation

There are many types of meditation, but the particular type of meditation I’ve been practicing is called heart-based meditation. From personal experience, I have found that if I practice heart-based meditation first thing in the morning – 10 to 15 minutes – my clarity and my deeper insight changes. It sets the entire compass for the day, helping me to be much more efficient in decision-making and how I can approach and connect with people. All of the changes come because of my meditation practice.

What makes heart-based meditation different, in comparison to other meditation practices?

What Differs Heart-Based Meditation From Other Meditation Practices

Heart-based meditation or heartfulness (heartfulness.org) has been in practice for about 150+ years. There is a spiritual guide, so it has the backing of a present, available guide.

Before we start this type of meditation, we make a supposition that there is a source of divine light that is present in our heart. Heart-based meditation doesn’t use any music or meditate on any particular location on the body – like the forehead or nose.

When practicing heart-based meditation, you set an intention, and state that you are meditating on the source of divine light in the heart. You let it flow naturally, and there’s no need to fight any thoughts or force yourself into a thoughtless state of the mind. That’s not the intention here. We just let the mind play out whatever the thoughts might be. We just don’t pay attention to them. That’s what makes this practice different.

If you’re curious, you can begin the meditative practice for free, using YouTube.

How to Begin Practicing Heart-Based Meditation

Do you still use a YouTube video or app as a guide when you practice?

To start off, you can use a YouTube video or an app called Hearts. But beginning on September 6, I will be hosting guided meditation sessions, drawing from my 30+ years of experience. I know the pitfalls of starting and stopping – consistency issues – so my guide will be beneficial.

And as you get consistent in practicing heart-based meditation, you don’t really need anyone but yourself. But these systems and videos help people who have difficulties meditating, or those who just need some guidance. I’m not an official trainer, but I can help people with any questions.

You mentioned some pitfalls, like consistency. But the hardest part is always just getting started, right? What are some tips you have for someone to take the first step and begin practicing heart-based meditation?

Most of the time, people will say they just don’t have time to meditate. My response to those people is to just give it five to 10 minutes. Whatever time you usually wake up in the morning, set your alarm 10 minutes prior, and just experiment with it.

As my guide says, the duration doesn’t really matter, it’s more about the attitude you put into it.

With any habit, you need to practice it for at least 21 days. So, try to meditate for at least five to 10 minutes a day, and journal it. Write down what you felt during the meditation or afterwards, during the day.

Going back to talking specifically to an entrepreneur, how can this help in their day-to-day life of running a business?

The Benefits of Heart-Based Meditation for Business

Practicing heart-based meditation allows you to get into an introspective mindset, which changes the way you think, approach problems, make decisions, etc.

And if you keep retrospecting and writing things down and trying to apply that also as you go about your day, your thought process, whatever you might be doing, your meetings, trying to take that condition, that meditative condition that gets given to you in the morning, try to carry that condition with you and then you’ll see that actually things do change. I have seen personally is my decision making has changed by the way I approach the business. Problem has changed and the way I connect with people has changed. I have a deeper connection with them. Go beyond moneymaking attitudes. I just don’t focus on, yes, I need to make money, I need to make a million, whatever it might be. But I’m also focused on how can I connect deeply with folks. They might be professionals in my own business or there might be people that I work with, my customers, whoever it might be. It really helps you to change the mindset and the approach and the focus areas.

Okay. And how can someone track their progress through time? Is there a way to do so?

I can speak from my personal experience… Without going into too many details, I started practicing heartfulness about five years ago. Again, I wasn’t regular. I’ve gone through the pitfalls of starting and stopping myself. But it was about five years ago that I decided I would be committed to doing this every day. As I did it, I journaled.

About 31 days after I started doing this daily, I had a spiritual experience. That’s the day that things changed for me. Something happened on that particular day, on the 31st day after the practice started, which kind of proved to me that this is the possibility. And I journaled that.

The journal basically acts like a progress report. You don’t have to ask somebody whether you’re progressing or not – you can just refer to your journal to see how far you’ve come.

Earlier you mentioned that heart-based meditation doesn’t require thoughtlessness. I think that’s a benefit to this practice, because hard-working people can have trouble turning their thoughts off.

Exactly. This practice doesn’t force the mind to do anything. The mind is designed to think, right? So we never block that from happening. What we have is a second tool to help with the thoughts. Meditation again is one tool. So it’s almost like a Swiss army knife. There is a second tool called cleansing, heartfulness cleansing, which you do it in the evening time for again to go from 10 to 15 minutes max, where what happens is whatever, and we go with the natural cycle. We try to meditate in the morning, and we do try to do this cleansing in the evenings after work. So what we have found with the cyclical approach, the thoughts don’t come up as long as you have done your cleansing the previous in the evening, the thoughts really die down.

They’re already not part of your consciousness, and it does help a lot and with not having that many thoughts. But then for, let’s say for example, today I have a major, this interview, major presentation, I have an interview, I need to be ready for it. Those kind of thoughts will come and if you have some major deadline that you’re going to be facing today, if you have a major exam or you’re taking, you’re going and meeting some major client and there is so much to be deciding about, those kind of thoughts will come. And what I have found personally is I do get some solutions to my problems also during meditation. So that’s why we never force it to not have any thoughts, and we let it flow naturally and as much as possible, we try not to make any attention to it, but there are some days where I just cannot meditate, right?

I’m like, all I get are thoughts. So then what I do, what do I do is I basically try to take a break. I say like, you know what? Five minutes, I’m just going to open my eyes and not meditate and just be chill and then retry it after some time. Or sometimes I just wake up, I’m like, okay, I’m done. I can’t meditate anymore. So that’s why we leave it naturally. We don’t force it because you don’t want to ever force the mind to not have thoughts because then it’s completely an opposite effect where you are completely not meditating. All you’re doing is concentrating on the mind to not have thoughts. And guess what? You completely missed the purpose of the entire meditation itself.

Now, I know we’ve been talking about heartfulness meditation. Do people get to the point where adding in other types can help? Some people will use meditation for sleep. Some people will use, I mean, there’s all different reasons why people use meditation. Do you recommend you just do heartfulness meditation or that other types of meditation can help as well in conjunction with it?

So what we advocate is trying to do it just that, right? Don’t mix and match the systems. And again, at the same time, we are not saying, don’t go to the church or things like that, religious practices, whatever you’re doing, that’s fine, but as much as possible, try to just do one type for those 90 days and just record that in your journal and then make your determination. And of course, any clarifications and any doubts, you can always reach out to people like me.

Why did you decide on 90 days? Is that when you’ve found that people start seeing the benefits or heartfulness?

Yes. Once you do it for 90 days, there is even a tracker that I shared with my folks on LinkedIn to keep track of it, like a Google Sheets. Once you do that, and once you have done that for those 90 days, you see things opening up and you don’t stop you. Basically what we have seen in the past is people just keep going. It comes second nature to you and you just keep going on. It’s just like going to the gym or any other thing that do consistently every single day. That’s why we say try it. Seek for yourself.

What can someone expect from a coaching engagement with you?

As I mentioned, beginning September 6th I will be taking a 90-day challenge. People can join me every weekday at 8:00 AM central for a guided heart-based meditation. I will also share the tracker I’ve spoken about.

As a growth coach, I am in the process of designing a course that is expected to launch in February 2024. It is going to be like a spiritual entrepreneur type of course where I am inculcating, heartfulness meditation practices along with becoming a better business person,

I also offer a complimentary, 20-minute consultation with individuals. In that consultation, I work to determine an individual’s day-to-day challenges (in business and life) and see how a meditative lifestyle can help them from that point forward. I offer one-on-one coaching from that point forward.

For a beginner in heart-based meditation, what’s the best way to get started with you?

Definitely the daily meditation guidance that begins September 6th. If any of your listeners are motivated to learn more about heart-based meditation, I recommend the book: Designing Destiny: The Heartfulness Way. This book is like the foundation, and it includes everything I spoke about today. I’ll be using that book as part of the 90-day challenge, as a framework to build upon.

Well, that sounds great. Anand, we’re just about out of time. I’d like to thank you for being on the show. You gave some great info on how entrepreneurs and business professionals can incorporate heartfulness meditation into their lives. How best can someone find out more about you?

Your listeners can find me on LinkedIn or on my website, www.growthcoach.co.

Great, well link to those in the show notes. Thanks again, Anand. And thank you to everyone who tuned into today’s episode. Don’t forget to follow The Agent of Wealth on the platform you listen from and leave us a review of the show. We are currently accepting new clients, if you’d like to schedule a 1-on-1 consultation with our advisors, please do so below.

Schedule an Introductory Call