What a Ten-Day Vipassana Meditation Retreat Taught Me About Joy and Leadership

I’ve spent a lot of my life thinking about joy.  I’ve often wondered what makes one person joyful and another one – with similar life experiences – grumpy?  Are we just born that way?  Or are there things we can do to increase the joy in our lives?  After all, joy is the gateway to a life of satisfaction, meaning, and true success.   

It was at a 10-day Vipassana meditation retreat taught by the late S.N. Goenka that I first experienced profound truth about joy.  Joy is an inside job.  It is a state of mind cultivated from within.  And it is not dependent on external circumstances.   

The retreat was a world away from my busy life as a working mother.  I lived like a monk, practicing noble silence and meditating over 100 hours.  Each day I sat with my eyes closed and focused all my attention on my breath and body.  It was one of the most difficult things I have ever done in my life but was also life changing, and I learned a lot about joy (and myself) in the process.  Below are four things I took away from the experience:     

(1)   Be responsible:  Surprises, setbacks, and failures are part of everyday life.  When things don’t go according to plan, we typically react in a negative way.  But that just generates more suffering.  We often make things worse by blaming external circumstances for our misery.  The truth is that while external circumstances can affect our moods, our level of joy is a product of our own thoughts and actions.  I experienced this firsthand at the retreat.  Instead of feeling peaceful, I felt miserable for the first day and a half.  But with no one to blame, I realized I was 100% responsible for what I was feeling, and I had the power to turn things around.  

(2)   Be mindful:  Most of us are living on autopilot, rushing from one thing to the next.  A better way is to slow down and look inwards from time to time.  With no electronic devices, work, or any other obligations, I was forced to slow down in a way I had never done before.  As I looked inwards, I noticed that my thoughts of fear and doubt ran on a repeat loop.  I expected them to go away, but they never did.  They finally stopped bothering me when I realized they were not the truth.  They were just mental chatter that came and went like clouds in the sky.   Observing my breathing and body helped me to not get caught up in their stories.  Afterall, our mind and body are like two sides of a coin – when a thought arises, our body responds accordingly.

(3)   Be realistic:  We all have expectations about how things should unfold.  A lot of us tell ourselves we need things to be a certain way for us to be content.  But clinging to expectations robs us of peace of mind.  By appreciating the moment, rather than being only focused on expectations about the future, we can change how we experience the world.  We can also open the door to more joy.  This doesn’t mean settling for mediocrity, but it does mean that recognizing that even things that don’t go exactly as we planned can have merit.  At the retreat, I thought my meditation would end with me being a bliss-out yogi.  And when I didn’t see results, I was annoyed.  It was only after I let go of those unrealistic expectations that bliss finally arrived.

(4)   Be hopeful:  We are all incredible beings.  We have powers beyond our wildest imagination.  But most people are closed off to their potential because of stories they tell themselves.  Instead of believing in possibilities, they believe in fear and doubt.  Because the stories we tell ourselves ultimately become our reality, we should choose what we believe wisely.  At the retreat, I learned that I could counteract my negative thoughts by believing in the opposite.  When my mind worried about failing, I visualized success.  When my mind was afraid of getting sick, I pictured perfect health.   And when my mind was bored, I imagined that I was fully engaged.  Believing in the power of thoughts not only got me through the retreat but also changed the way I approach life.  

If you leave this blog with one takeaway, it is this: we have everything we need inside ourselves to experience an infinite amount of joy today.  We don’t need to wait for any external circumstances to change.  All we need to do is be mindful in how we deal with our thoughts.   For more information on the retreat, visit www.dhamma.org.  

Please reach out to me if you need professional assistance with this matter. Drop me a note through the Contact page if you have any questions.