Keith Bennett knows all about work-related stress. Until two years ago, he was the managing director of a well-established quality consultancy: Conquest Consultants, riding high on the crest of a wave when the company made a disastrous move into the US marketplace. The venture cost Conquest dearly. The company was liquidated and although Keith continued to work in quality management, it was in a much more contracted form, and from a more isolated position.
With the addition of financial worries, he was constantly exhausted, drinking and smoking excessively, eating irregularly and unable to sleep. A few months later, when his family collectively voiced their concern, he realised that he had a problem and would have to deal with it. He decided to enrol on an individual-based training programme which he had seen advertised in The Herald years before. The course was on TM or Transcendental Meditation…
“The results for me were astonishing,” he says. “Immediately I felt many of the stresses and strains that I had accumulated over the last 18 months, dissolve. Within the space of ten minutes I felt quite different – less pain in my head, my thinking was much clearer, neck muscles had relaxed and the constant nausea I had been experiencing just vanished. I was taken aback by all that. I remember walking back to the car feeling inexplicably happy in a natural kind of way.”
The first big test for Keith was trying to meditate at home on his own. He managed that, and then attended the other three days of the course. He was told that the changes would be so subtle that he may not even notice them, but they were instantly obvious to his family. After only two meditations, he had hardly touched the glass of wine his wife poured for him and had not smoked all evening.
That was last November. Since then he has found his approach to business is now totally different. Practising TM for 20 minutes twice a day he sees everything in a more positive light. He spends more time with his son, and family life in general is much better. He looks forward to going to work in the morning and gets through twice as much work as before, making fewer mistakes…
“When you are stressed you perceive negative, when you are relaxed you perceive positive, see things as a challenge rather than a problem,” says Keith.”When l took it up, I was told that my working life would become easier, and that is true. With clearer thought, I am able to achieve much more, so much faster, in an effortless way. This has become an extension of quality management in which I’m still involved.”
Keith Bennett considers himself living proof that the practice of TM is one very positive way to alleviate the built-up stress, create a satisfied workforce and to become more innovative in terms of marketing techniques, manufacturing techniques and in service and delivery techniques. “If you have some computer hardware that you want to run some more advanced software on and you cannot afford to buy a new piece of hardware, you upgrade your existing hardware, and when you do that you will be able to run more complex software,” he says. “With TM you are upgrading the human physiology in a simple, natural way. There is no mind-bending, no mind-altering. You positively look forward to doing it every day.”
This article was originally published in The Herald (Scotland)