When we’re stressed, even the thought of meditating can be stressful. We are in such a hurry to get rid of the things that we believe are causing our stress that taking time out to meditate is the last thing we can imagine doing. How could I possibly meditate now??!!  But I have come to believe that when we’re stressed, meditating for a moment is one of the best things we can do. The challenge is to realize that we don’t need special equipment, a peaceful place, or even a lot of time in order to meditate. We can do it wherever we are, and it only takes a moment. No one even has to know that we’re doing it.

Here's how to do it the Anger Meditation.

(For background on this meditation, see The Anger Meditation, Part 1.)

You must first pledge not to express or act on your anger for the duration of this exercise, and for a little while afterward. The reason for this is that this technique might make you feel even angrier for a while. It helps you to become more conscious of your anger, and this means that the anger is coming a bit closer to the surface.

Here are the steps:

At the heart of any attempt to use meditation in the field of leadership development is the idea of self-management. First, this means just being able to be appropriately in charge of your own mind, guaranteeing your ability to focus, solve problems, and behave appropriately.  At a deeper level, it means being able to develop your mind toward higher performance. 

According to this article in today’s New York Times (“How 1-Minute Intervals Can Improve Your Health”), High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) has significant physiological benefits.

HIIT is an approach to exercise that involves alternating short, intense bursts of exercise with equally short rest periods—for example, one minute on and one minute off—for a total of about twenty minutes.

Although athletes have been using HIIT to boost speed and endurance, according to new research, HIIT has other benefits, too. These include the improvement of blood sugar regulation and insulin sensitivity, improvement in the functioning of the blood vessels and heart, lowering the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes, and the “creation of far more cellular proteins involved in energy production and oxygen.”

The most attractive thing about HIIT, however, has to do with its user-friendliness. In general, the research subjects tested seemed more motivated to do HIIT than the longer, if less intense, forms of aereobic exercise typically recommended.

I was delighted to read about this research, not just because I am a fan of HIIT and do it regularly at the gym, but because  short, intense physical training provides a wonderful metaphor for the short, intense mental training that I have been teaching, which I call "One-Moment Meditation." 

The key idea of One-Moment Meditation is that short, intense bursts of meditation have some significant benefits. And taking a short break after a short period of meditation (before you do another such period, or before you go back to everyday life) has some interesting benefits, too.

For many people, shorter forms of meditation are attractive because they fit more easily into a busy schedule. Shorter forms of meditation are attractive to people who have tried longer forms of meditation and “failed.”

Beyond that, as with HIIT, there seems to be some value in approaching these short intervals of meditation with intensity. Indeed, when I train people in the first exercise, which I call the Basic Minute, I actually encourage them to “go for it”—to put some oomph into it.

It’s not that easy to move from multitasking to unitasking. Many people try and fail repeatedly.

To unitask effectively, we have to resist the multiple distractions of our environment—the emails, tweets, news streams and the voices of our children, friends, colleagues. We have to resist our own addictive habits. We have to get very clear about what we want to do, and very committed to doing it. But the mental state caused by multitasking seems to prevent us from being clear and committed. It’s a vicious cycle.

That’s why it’s helpful , before unitasking, to take a moment to untask.

Although the purpose of One-Moment Meditation^® is to help you to experience deep peace in just a moment, we start with a minute because a moment goes by so quickly that you’d have to be a master to notice one. A minute, however, is like a moment with handles on it. You know where it begins and ends, so it’s easier to grasp. So the first exercise is called the Basic Minute.

I am delighted to announce the launch of OMM365, a whole new way to learn One-Moment Meditation. I developed OMM365 after many people who had read my book or been to my seminars asked for a more gradual, sustained training—a training that would give them just a little at a time but would keep reminding them to "take a moment" and help them weave moments of meditation into everything they do. That's what OMM365 is – a whole year of training ... delivered in bite-sized pieces. A weekly audio lesson with an exercise that takes you no more than one minute a day. For more info, please click here.

Let me be brief, as there is a hurricane coming and I have lots to do.

But I really need to say this:

Over the last two days, I have heard many politicians and emergency officials on the East Coast reminding us to be "smart" or "cautious."  But I wish that one of them would also remind us to be kind.

Maybe that would be stepping outside the bounds of conventional politics—straying into a more spiritual kind of leadership. Maybe, in preparing for a disaster, kindness just isn't as important as smarts. But still, I feel the need to hear someone remind us about its value.

Of course, health and safety depends on many very practical factors, such as how well we have prepared and how effective the emergency services are in our area. But I expect that much of our experience of a natural disaster also depends on whether we have taken the opportunity to experience a moment of kindness with a stranger.

Let me back up a step.

On Thursday evening, my family and I were evacuated from Cape May, the first place in the Northeast to face a mandatory evacuation. When we heard the order, we had only a ¼ tank of gas, and there were already long lines at gas stations. Nonetheless, we had to join the bumper-to-bumper traffic getting off the Cape, with no sense of when or if we would get gas, or how far up the coast the traffic (or panic) would continue.

I noticed how easily tempers could flare in such a situation, even three days before the hurricane was due to hit. Once we did find a gas station with supplies and a reasonable line, two vehicles—a car and a huge RV--actually cut in line. The RV actually put itself in a position that made it impossible for even those people who already had gas to leave. This astounding and inconsiderate action caused other drivers to become quite angry, not surprisingly, and a shouting match ensued.