Mindset Monday - Meditation isn't working?

This is episode 119 of the Empowered Team Podcast. Welcome to the Empowered Team Podcast where we explore how to optimize your performance in career, sport and life. And now your host, vitality and peak performance coach, Kari Schneider. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. Happy Monday, everyone. We are pretty, pretty excited right now because we just started our third reset and we started it this morning. And I can just feel the energy, I can feel the group, I can feel the excitement and how this is going to build into such incredible four weeks that will really transform people. So we're bouncing off the walls today. We've done two power up calls this morning already. One for our team group, one for our reset group. And yeah, so many amazing things. So today we're going to talk about meditation and is it working for you? So what do I mean by that? I don't know if you've ever meditated before, but you might be like, I was where you feel like it does not work or you get frustrated by it, or you feel like it's just not working for you. And you know that so many people meditate. You've heard more and more about it. Maybe you've even heard some of the research about it about how fantastic meditation can be. So what's the deal? So I want to run by just a couple things for you so that you can really consider and see whether this is something for you in your life. So I had a client once who just an amazing human being, but life was full to the max. We're talking kids, we're talking medical practice, we're talking just busy, the whole thing worked out all the time, just go, go, go. And the true epitome of an achiever, and this person just kept going all the time and never had time for anything. And ultimately they took this course called a Transcendental Meditation course. And I watched them change. I just watched the calm, the peace, the reduction in that frazzled feeling happened for this person. And now I have not done Transcendental meditation. It's a pretty extensive course in meditation. But I watched what happened to this client of mine and they just turned into this more true, deep version of themselves. And now, and this is years ago, and now they still do this meditation every single day without fail. They will carve out time for it no matter what. And there's other people who really find this to be something that they will never go without. Like Jerry Seinfeld is another Transcendental Meditation person. So these are people who swear by this and attribute their success, attribute their connections, attribute really all of the good things in their life to this type of meditation. So why would they really find such an abundance in this kind of thing? I'm going to go through a couple of things for you. So most of us don't do it, especially if we're achievers and a lot of people in this group are achievers. And because of these three reasons, this is what I had for myself and this is what I hear from my clients. Too busy or it's a waste of my time because I have so many other things to do. That's why I wouldn't meditate. Number two, lots of thoughts. Every time I try to meditate, I sit there or I lay there or whatever and lots of thoughts keep popping in. They're just all over the place. Number three, and this was very much for me, I am a fill in the blank. For me it was, I'm an athlete, I'm a coach, I'm a business person person. And those identities, they didn't really feel like someone who meditated. To me, I thought if someone meditated, they're a yogi, they're, you know, they're a hippie, they're whatever. That's what I used to think about meditation. And then I had this experience where I was at a fitness or exercise physiology conference and I went to a workshop and it was meditation. And I did the meditation thing and I thought I was just kind of, you know, same thing, thoughts popping in, yada yada, But I'm listening to the person. We're in a room full of probably a hundred people. There was a ton of people there and this was probably 20 plus years ago. And I'm in this room with all these people and I'm like, okay, this is lame. Why did I sign up for this one? I should have signed up for the other thing in this conference. And I end up laying there and what felt like a moment later, I kind of woke up and I had the most profound feeling of peace with clarity. There was no grogginess, there was complete focus, complete clarity. And it felt like I had just woken up and I didn't know. I think I fell asleep. I didn't know if I'd fallen asleep for a minute or five minutes or 10 minutes. I had no idea. But I had this profound feeling of recovery, recharging, rejuvenation. Like I'd come awake from the most wonderful 8 hour sleep or 10 hours sleep and just felt fantastic. And that was my first real experience with what meditation could do. And I was in A situation where I was even resisting it when I went into it. And I even probably fell asleep for a moment, but I just became so relaxed that I just let go and, you know, released my brain, if you will. So those are the. That's. That's one of the most first profound experiences that I had. But again, it's too busy, waste of time, lots of thoughts popping in, or you have an identity with something. Those are usually the reasons why you wouldn't meditate. So I want to give you three apps that I use that have helped me a lot, and I want to give you also a couple of the reasons why you might consider going into this again, because don't think that the way that you've tried before might be the way that really works for you yet. Or maybe you have something that is a little bit different than someone else. Maybe you like to lie down and meditate, maybe you like to be in nature to meditate. There's all sorts of different things. But the number one reason why I would encourage you to play with this is because of neuroplasticity. I've been learning a lot about neuroplasticity, and if I put it into one word, really simple. It's learning. It's your brain. Learning brain rewiring and meditation, like sleep, can be one of the most profound ways to allow your brain to really get into its best states, but also do the repair and also rewire in order to learn. So it's that neuroplasticity you are allowed to. You allow. Sorry. When you meditate, number two is to do your brain cleanup. You're cleaning up your brain, you're literally discarding connections and that don't work or are faulty connections within your brain. So that's literally what's going on, this brain cleanup while you are meditating. Number three, when you meditate, once you get into a state, could be even for a minute, could be for 10 minutes, could be for 30 minutes, whatever. But once you get into that state, you allow your brain to have more clarity, direction and intention. So if you've decided to have a focus focus in your meditation, you can guide your brain toward that. So for anyone in sport, anyone in business, anyone who wants to accomplish something very specific, guiding your brain towards that is going to get you there far faster than just driving away with all these actions that your brain is not aligned with. So you've got to get that brain in the direction that you want to go first. So when I first started meditating, I started with guided meditations. Because I couldn't ignore all of these thoughts that were popping up. And so I started to listen to a guided meditation, an app that I could hear someone speaking and their voice would guide me to something. And then I found that if I listened to the same thing, then again my mind would wander. And then I found focusing on breathing really made a big difference for me as well. So I started playing around with things, and as I was doing this and playing around with different things and trying different apps, and I started trying it every single day because I knew my body needed recharging, I knew my brain needed recharging, I was really burnt out at the time. That's what prompted me to do it. But I started playing around with different things every single day and for as little as 10 minutes every day. And once that that happened, and once I started doing that consistently, I started noticing something. I started to get to this place every once in a while where it was literally white stuff space. And in that white space, it was really, really peaceful. And then I started noticing something else that I could be with the thought that came in and let it go and just notice it without diving into being involved with that particular thought or going down the path of that thing to do or whatever it was. So instead I could just be with whatever that thought was and allow it to come or to go or whatever that is. So that was the second thing I noticed. And then the third thing I noticed, and this was kind of a, an insidious thing that came along. The third thing I noticed was that if I went for a few days without meditating, because I had been trying to do this for about 10 minutes a day, just something small. And if I went a few days without meditating, this would often happen on the weekend because we'd have kid activities. I wouldn't be alone at lunchtime to be able to meditate. So then I noticed that after a couple, two, three, four days, if I went without meditating, I'd have this kind of agitation, more annoyance, I'd have this just maybe a little more anxiety built up. Whereas I had been becoming more peaceful, I'd become more clear and more focused in my day to day activities. So then that's when I started realizing, holy cow, this is actually having an impact on my life. This is having an impact on how I show up for my family, how I show up in the world, how I focus, how I produce, how I do the things in my business. And that is what helped me keep going. Now, as I kept going, that's what allowed me to go a little deeper in various meditations. So I'm going to give you the three apps that I tend to use. But if I didn't have an app or I was alone, I might just use different techniques that I've learned along the way. That because I've been practicing this now for a few years. So the three apps I use are Bootify, it's B U, D D H I F Y, I believe, and the second one is Oak, and the third one is called Waking up by Sam Harris. So those are the main ones that I use. There is headspace. You may have heard of headspace before, but I tend not to use that one I didn't want. I used it for about a couple months, I would say, and then I liked the other ones better. And those are some options for apps. Now don't think if you are trying to meditate that you have to stick with one boring thing. Try some different things and see what resonates with you best. And then revisit the things later as you practice for a while. Revisit the things that didn't work for you to see if now they might land for you more. So you could sit and just focus on breath work. You could lay down and put on a guided meditation or sit or do something like that. You could even put on a guided meditation when you're going for a walk. You could use nature to meditate and get in touch with just emptying your brain, because instead of really mindfulness, what we're really going for is mindlessness. We're emptying our brain. Instead of being so, so consumed with all the thoughts and all the things that are going on in our brain. Now there's another form of meditation called Yoga Nidra. And yoga itself is a form of body mind meditation. And breath work is a form of meditation. And Yoga nidra is just a meditation of body awareness and very, very relaxing, especially for people who have trouble with sleep. Sleep. And remember that I've done some talks on meditation before, but the, the results, the benefits are abundant. The research, the validity is all there. It's profound in what you can do. So if you haven't meditated before or you're struggling with meditation, try out these particular things that I've suggested. So might be yoga, might be nature, breath work, try the apps that I'm suggesting. So the Bootify, Waking up with Sam Harris, Oak. And when you try some different ways of doing it, there's for certainty for sure you're gonna find something that opens up for you something that may work that didn't work before. And remember, it's just a practice. It's just to continue to practice, to have greater awareness, to empty some things out that aren't working for you and allow that recharging for your mind. Allow that recovery as well. So I hope this serves you today and gives you a few tools in case meditation's been a challenge for you and hasn't worked for you in the past. Remember, it's a practice. It's allowing yourself to open up to something new and allowing you to become more aware of what's going on within you. So I hope this serves you today. Use a little meditation today or this week. Have this Monday. Kick off your week into something powerful and be your best step into your best today. Today in our reset was all about taking responsibility and today I'm using some meditation to take responsibility for my thoughts and my awareness of myself. Have a fantastic day guys. If you're just popping in now, please listen from the beginning and I hope you have a wonderful day to kick off an incredible week. Happy Monday guys. If you enjoy listening to the Empowered Team Podcast, you'll love being on the team. The Empowered Team runs year round. It is our group coaching and accountability program where we take mindset and physical performance concepts and break them down to usable action steps that optimize results. To join, email us@infompowerconditioning.com with subject line Team. That's info at Empower Condition.