Crush your rivals while you change the printer toner!

Hi, welcome to Relax your Way to Success in the Office! I’m Dr Jonathon Straub, author, psychologist and father. You might recognize me from such self-help mediation aides as Break Bread with Buddha: Relaxation for Today’s Bakery and Waste Away and Win: Make Anorexia Work for You!

In a moment I’ll begin and you’ll hear three chimes. But first, remember, if you can stay calm and keep the right attitude, you can go from the mailroom to the boardroom in an afternoon! There’s literally nothing to stop you!

[Brief pause]

[Ding! Ding! Ding!]

For this meditation, if it is possible, sit on a firm cushion which raises the buttocks off the floor so that your body makes a stable base with your head held erect and so that your upper half rises up in a straight line. However please use a chair if this is a strain.

Gently allow your eyes to close and bring your attention to your breath. Just observe your breathing. Allow your body to be still and calm. Allow yourself to be whole and complete in this moment.

And as you sit, picture the most beautiful mountain that you know or have seen or can imagine. Hold this picture in your mind’s eye as you breathe in and out.

Picture the quiet dignity of this mountain rising into the clouds. Imagine the pure white snow that elegantly caps its highest reaches. Now gently, like a sweeping bird, close in on that snow. Feel its coolness. Appreciate its brightness as it reflects the sun perfectly.

Now notice a small pattern of red drops on that snow. Follow those drops across the beautiful snow until you come to a burnished golden throne. Now notice who is sitting in that throne. A King. A King with huge bronzed rippling muscles, with long black hair and a chiseled jaw. He is wearing a leather loin-cloth and a leather breast-plate which can barely contain his awesome frame. He is holding a huge double-headed axe which stands almost as high as the throne and which is the source of the drops of blood you have noticed on the snow. Take a moment, as you gently breathe in and out, to fully comprehend this King in all his awesome terrifying but dignified wholeness.

Now look at his feet. Lying there is a slave girl, shivering slightly in her fur bikini. Her pale mounds of white flesh are wrapped around his giant leather boots. She is gazing up at him, adoring, with large blue eyes. Her golden hair spills around the toes of his boots like melted snow.

Now, become that slave-girl in your mind’s eye. Hold her beautiful image then merge with her to become her in your deepest essence. Imagine her quivering shape as your own.
Now imagine that your boss at work has come to you. Imagine that he or she is this terrible King and you are his slave-girl. Stare up at him with adoring eyes and mentally, spiritually wind yourself at his feet like a compliant snake.

Now imagine he or she has brought you a business proposal, a new project, some software to be customized in-house, whatever you are working on at the moment, whatever is in your minds eye. Read this project plan, read every word of it.

Now, carefully, in your mind’s eye, take every flaw in the plan, every unsustainable idea, every piece of inadequate research or wishful thinking or incomplete financial guess-work and roll them into a ball along with the bloody snow that surrounds you and your King. Scrunch this pink snowball up tightly, scrunch up every valid misgiving you have about this project and hurl it off the mountain into an abyss far below. Now smile at your boss and adore him.

Take this otherwise modest project plan, now free of error, and imagine that is actually a brilliantly conceived plan to conquer the barbarian continent of Entha’Gor and subdue its warlike inhabitants. Hold this plan up so that the sun shines through from above and the snow reflects onto it brightly from below.

In your mind’s eye, say to your boss: ‘I am your loyal slave-girl. You are my awesome King. I lie supine at your feet – in awe of your terrible powers and of the peerless brilliance of your project plan. You will crush Entha’Gor like a bug and I will remain at your feet always.’

Now picture other slave-girls at his feet. Onto their faces, place the faces of your co-workers. If for some reason Entha’Gor remains free and your armies suffer a terrible and humiliating defeat, know absolutely that it is their fault.

You are now ready to succeed in the modern workplace.

Take a few moments to come back to awareness of the room around you. Take as long as you need.

[Ding! Ding! Ding!]