Three years ago, I came to Mount Madonna Center for a yoga retreat. Three years, and a seemingly lifetime later, I am back. Not only do we live through a global pandemic, a beginning of an economic downturn, but more importantly, I now have my own startup! If back in the day the retreat was “recharge and relaxation”, now the retreat is more like a necessity. I reflected on what I learned and experienced these days and concluded that founders (and pretty much everyone), should practice yoga and meditation regularly. Here are the reasons.
1. True strengths come from within
As founders, we are constantly hustling with and toward others. We need to convince investors. We need to acquire customers. We need to encourage our employees. We even need to support and at times, encourage our co-founders. We need a lot of mental strength and power to carry on.
What about ourselves? That’s why we need these alone moments to recharge, regain our power and seek our power from within. One of the teachings of yoga is everyone can do it. Everyone has strength within. You just need to open the door and let the strength out.
In the daily constant grind and buzz, where most things don’t go your way, most attempts fail, and most people say no, we truly need to allow ourselves the space and time to regain our internal strength. Have faith that we have it, and have a daily practice, be it yoga, meditation, or even sitting quietly for a few moments to clear our head. This way we can remain the best CEO, co-founder, and family member of our team and our family.
2. Find the right mix of strength, flexibility, and balance
As founders, we must have strong beliefs and passion. We need to have a tremendous amount of energy to convince people of our dream and bring it to reality.
However, as Jeff Bezos said, we need to be “stubborn on vision and flexibility on details”. Founders often talk about pivoting. It’s not just a buzzword. It’s blood, tears, and actual price paid on wasted work. However, we must remain flexible and listen to the market. If we are too in love with our initial idea, we may lead the team to a path of no return.
Similarly, in yoga, it’s never about pure strength. It’s always a combination of strength, flexibility, and balance. Having a daily practice reminds us to stay flexible yet gain strength, and ultimately always remain balanced and centered. Physical tenacity is a reflection of mental gracefulness.
3. Live the present one day at a time
Buddism, among many other doctrines, frequently discusses the notion of “presence”. The truth is, what happened already happened, and there is nothing you can do about it. What is about to happen hasn’t happened yet, so all that you experience is oftentimes useless fear and worry for something purely speculative.
Of course, I am not saying that we should not have plans. As a matter of fact, we’d better have a plan A, a plan B, and a plan B of plan B. However, planning and forecasting are different from fear for the future. We should not live in fear of things that may happen. As startups, many things could or may happen. But we should not let this fear interfere with today’s best performance.
That’s why yogis always say, live one moment at a time, one day at a time, with peace. Trust that the current peaceful step will lead you to the next way, and watch the future unfold with hope and optimism.
4. Have faith that the path will unfold
This leads me to my last point: have faith that we are where we are for a reason. Steven Jobs said in the 2005 Stanford commencement: “ you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever.”
We are building our startup in the sector, using the approach and building our product because we walked on the path to take us here. It’s what we did, where we worked, who we met, who we ended up working with, getting investment from or even selling to. It may or may not be successful. We may or may not need to pivot again. We may end up doing something entirely different. But it doesn’t matter. Trust that we are on this road for a reason, and we are going somewhere meaningful. The meaning will reveal itself on the path.
So, every morning, take a moment, breathe, meditate, practice yoga, jog, and continue building your startup. Need a practice buddy? Drop me a line.
5. What’s good is never comfortable; what’s easy may not be good
When we get into yoga poses or just practice meditation, it’s always a struggle.
Of course, we don’t want to get up early and set aside an hour or more for yoga and meditation. And of course, lots of poses we get into are difficult and challenging. In one of my sessions, my yoga teacher got us to do something really difficult and joked, “you are probably freaking out about this, but please don’t. Just breathe, and you’ll get over it.”. The point is, these things are hard.
The sentiment is the same as founding a startup. We all had easy, cushy jobs. We were all at places where we don’t have to worry about payroll next month, funding next quarter, or the future next year. However, we were not content, and we chose to do more difficult things, just as we choose to get into difficult yoga or meditation practices. Because we know, in the long run, this is good for us. We sacrifice short-term comfort for long-term benefit.
The flip side is also true. Sometimes it may feel easy to just give up. But is that really the right thing to do? Yoga and meditation teach us to have discipline and self-control, and make short-term sacrifices, all for the longer-term good.
6. The body is the boat. Take care of it.
When we talk about all these big ideas of faith, vision, and ideal, we often forget that it must be carried on by a concrete, physical body, your body.
At the yoga retreat, we were taught, “the body is the boat”. Without it, everything falls into the water.
A similar saying is the body is the 1 and the rest just adds the zeros. So without the one, doesn’t matter how many zeros you have; they are all just zeros.
It seems very straightforward. But in the chaos of our daily lives full of challenges and obligations, we forget to eat healthy meals, sleep more than seven hours, not even to mention to exercise regularly and practice yoga and meditation daily. But just know that this is a debt that you will eventually repay. My dad used to tell me that taking care of your body is like making deposits. And not doing it is like taking out debt. Eventually, it will catch on to you.
Ultimately, yoga is a state of mind. It’s a routine, a habit, a way of life. We always face moments of life such as Covid that throw us off the wagon. What matters is to realize that and hop back on. Going to the retreat is me doing it. I hope to continue for many years to come. I also hope to draw strength and wisdom from the retreat so that I can become a better founder, mother, and wife.
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