Quieting The Noise: The Surprising Leadership Power Of Daily Meditation

Forbes

a day ago

Shekar Natarajan is the founder and CEO of Orchestro.AI.
As a CEO, I spend most of my time making high-stakes decisions. I must balance a barrage of variables with a lot of unknowns. In high-pressure moments, the most valuable thing I can access is clarity. And the most reliable way I have found to create clarity is through meditation.
This is not about wellness trends or personal transformation. It is about sharpening your ability to think, act and lead when it counts. Over the last decade, meditation has become one of the most important leadership tools I rely on. It has helped me make better decisions, inspire others in times of crisis and recover faster in moments of stress.
My meditation journey began in 2015 when I attended a 10-day silent Vipassana retreat. Ten days with no speaking, no email, no phones. Just 10 hours of silent meditation every day. Your back aches, your knees hurt. On day three, you want to cry. On day four, you want to just pack up and leave. But by day seven, something shifts. The silence begins to reveal what's really going on beneath your waking consciousness. By day 10, you begin to understand how often your mind interrupts itself. You begin to understand yourself.
Since then, I have returned to that practice several times. In 2017, after a period of personal and professional exhaustion, I spent 28 days at an Ayurvedic retreat in India. My mother had just emerged from a medical coma. I was still processing the loss of my father. I needed space to think and reset. I left behind everything, including my phone.
By day four, I had energy again. And with that energy, I started painting. What began as a simple desire to learn how to draw eyes turned into hours of uninterrupted creative focus. I studied watercolor, acrylic and traditional Indian goldwork painting. The untapped creativity that was swirling in my busy brain now had an outlet and, as a result, my mind grew still, my attention exact. The combination of meditation and art gave me both discipline and expression.
I have kept the practice ever since. Every nine months, I take time away to reset. Two weeks of uninterrupted mental clarity. No meetings. No noise. No decisions. And when I come back, I am sharper and ready for the uncertainties that are part of everyday life.
During Covid, that clarity made a difference. While many companies paused, we moved quickly. Our team was being asked to shut down distribution centers. I took my five-day-old son and met with the governor of Kansas to make the case for staying open. I laid out a plan to protect our teams, support local businesses and serve the community. We stayed open.
At the same time, I started writing daily notes to our associates. Honest, reflective and grounded in reality. Those notes spread through the company. People waited for them. That connection was only possible because I had created space to reflect each day.
Courage is not about public displays or bold statements. It is about being willing to act when the path is not certain. Meditation gives me the ability to hear my own voice clearly enough to trust it. That kind of conviction is not noisy. It is quiet. But it is powerful.
Most people say they do not have time to meditate. In my experience, you cannot afford not to. Meditation does not need to be sitting in silence for hours. It simply means creating intentional space for focus.
I practice meditation in three ways. I start each morning with 20 minutes of meditation. I paint when I need a creative outlet. And I carve out time during the day to read, think and work on the problems that matter most. No multitasking. No distractions. Just clean, focused thought.
These habits help me sort the signal from the noise. They help me see what matters. They help me act with less hesitation and more resolve.
We talk a lot about physical health in leadership. Mental hygiene deserves the same attention. You cannot lead clearly if your mind is cluttered. You cannot make hard decisions if you are too exhausted to think. Meditation trains your mind to slow down. It teaches you to observe instead of react. Over time, that becomes your default.
It also wakes up your intuition. As a leader, you are rarely working with perfect information. Often, you are making calls based on what feels right. Meditation helps you learn the difference between gut instinct and fear. It makes your decision-making more consistent and more courageous.
This is not a soft skill. It is a performance skill. In a world full of pressure and speed, silence is a superpower. When everything demands your attention, the ability to be still is what sets you apart.
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