Last week I was on my friend’s couch watching the Finals — the best players on the planet, performing at the absolute edge of what’s possible, with everything on the line. And the guy sitting right next to me — a founder of an 8-figure company, leading hundreds of people — had just spent ten days in total silence.
Two ends of the same idea. The loudest stage in sports, and the quietest discipline a leader can choose. Both come down to the same question: who are you when the moment asks everything of you?
He’d just gotten back from a 10-day Vipassana retreat built for leaders. No talking. Multiple sittings a day. Everything stripped away until the only thing left in the room is you. Your thoughts. Your feelings. Your aversions. No phone to reach for. No meeting to duck into. No escape.
So I asked him the question I always ask. Now that you’re back in real life — inbox, calendar, noise — how is it actually showing up?
The first thing out of his mouth: “So much more awareness.”
Awareness is one of those words that stays abstract until you’ve lived it. You can read about it for years and still not have it. Then one day you catch yourself watching your own reaction instead of being swallowed by it. You’re standing above the battleground instead of bleeding out on it. And suddenly the word means something.
Here’s what I keep coming back to. Awareness is the first domino.
Intention→
Focus→
The Process
With awareness, you operate with a higher level of intention. That intention leads to focus. And sustained focus is what unlocks the power of the process.
Then I asked how he’s keeping it going now that the retreat is over. One hour every morning. Another thirty minutes at night.
This is a busy executive running a multimillion-dollar company. He had every excuse available to him — and they’re all legitimate. Too many people depending on him. Too many fires. Too little time.
He uses none of them.
It reminded me of what Gandhi is said to have told the people around him when the days got heaviest leading India toward independence:
“I have so much to accomplish today that I must meditate for two hours instead of one.“
— Attributed to Mahatma Gandhi
Read it again. Not despite the workload. Because of it.
People like my friend understand something most of us have backwards. Meditation doesn’t take time. It gives you time. The hour you sit is what makes the next fifteen sharper, calmer, more decisive. That’s the return on awareness and intention. You don’t lose the morning. You buy back the day.
I’ll be honest with you. My practice pales in comparison.
And sitting there with all of this, I thought of one of my favorite Jim Rohn lines: we become the average of the five people we surround ourselves with the most.
In that one conversation, my friend called me up to another level. Not through comparison. Not by telling me what I should be doing. Just by demonstrating what’s possible — by being who he is. More awareness. More intention. More focus.
I’m not at sixty minutes in the morning. My night practice is still a fight. But I’m committing to more, starting now. Not because of what he said. Because of what he modeled.
It was never about the meditation — although build the practice and you’ll reap every bit of it.
It’s about proximity. Surround yourself with people who call you to another level simply by being in your life. People who raise your ceiling without ever asking you to. People whose presence makes the next version of you feel less like a fantasy and more like a decision.
That’s the company that changes you.
