166. A Calm Mind is a Creative Mind

Foreign. Welcome back to Leadership in a Nutshell. I'm your host, Kenny Chapman, and I'm super stoked today. Oh, man, I'm always pumped to be with you. But today we've got episode 166, a calm mind is a creative mind. Let that land for a minute. A calm mind is a creative mind. Now, you and I are in the business of leadership. We have people attaching their lives to what we think, do, say and feel. We have people that are, we are their beacon of light. We are their guiding lights of their careers. And if we're leading effectively, then it goes far beyond the career. You with me? Yes or no? Give me a head shake. Right. And so, you know, I'm super pumped about this because I, I spent so much of my career just in that, you know, what some psychologists call the monkey brain and the different, you know, like, ah, the squirreling out and da, da, da, da, da. And the more calm I've been able to get my mind, the more I've been able to relax. The more I've been able to relax, release, surrender, accept some peace and calmness, the more creative I get, the more that things come to mind, the more I'm able to sit down and just rock a presentation, outline, the more I'm able to jump on our, say, an executive power meeting for the blue collar success group for our highest level clients. I do every other week with Chris. Like, it's just, I'm able to sit down and clear my mind and then just go deep and allow the flow. And if this is something that you're interested in, you've been paying attention to, you know, we have all these different areas that we get information and I love when I get people quoting Joe Rogan or, you know, I was listening to Rogan or I was listening to Howard Stern or, you know, this isn't all that people tell me. I get things from all over the place. But those two just came to mind because it seems, it seems like if Rogan or Stern says it, then people are interested in checking it out. I don't know what the deal is. I don't know what it takes for, for people to be interested. If Kenny Chapman says it, then maybe, maybe it's worth checking out. But since you're here listening to me, maybe we're in alignment there and maybe you're down to check this out. And I just want to spend a few minutes with you today and I'm going to speak to you in a little bit different tone. As I started out super fired up, right? And I'm still super fired up. But I want you to recognize, I mean, I am burning in my belly right now because I'm so excited. It's not because I eat jalapenos for dinner, because I love my hot food. That's not why my belly's burning. My belly's burning just with so much energy, so much excitement, so much love for you and what you're doing and the fact that you took a few minutes to spend with me. And I want you to remember that a calm mind is a creative mind. And there's a few ways that you can uplevel this. And one, you know, I've talked about a lot. I've done a couple meditation practices on, you know, during this show on leadership in a nutshell. But one of the keys is some mindful meditation and being able to slow your mind down and to. It doesn't have to be 30 minutes, doesn't have to be 20 minutes. It can be four or five minutes sometimes just an opportunity for you to slow down and observe yourself. That can help calm your mind. Now, as I say that, I want to caveat that sometimes when you first start slowing the mind down and if you take, you know, do some breathing and maybe you've got a little meditation app or you get on YouTube and find a mindful meditation practice or something, you might squirrel out, right? You might just be like, ah, I can't do it. That's what I said for years. Like years and years and years. That was the limiting belief that I told myself. And now I've meditated every day, at least once a day for almost four years. It just, it's like breathing for me. I can't start my day without taking some mindfulness for myself. Now I'm starting to uplevel it because I'm looking to do it like mid afternoon, just grabbing. I'm talking three, four minutes in the car, in a parking lot, just getting centered, getting grounded. So that's what I'm talking about. I'm not telling you what to do. Please understand. I'm asking you to just look at what is it going to help you to slow your mind? There's a lot of techniques, there's a lot of technology, there's a lot of tools. I'm not going to tell you what to do for you. I'm going to ask you to explore it. If it's important enough to you, you will explore it and you'll practice and work and find things. For me, it's different things of different, whether it's an app, Whether it's a YouTube clip, whether it's a podcast episode on Spotify or something where somebody's doing some guided meditation. And now I do a lot of meditation just with sound bowls or different music or whatever, where I'm just focused on allowing my mind to calm down. That is massive. Another way to create a calm mind, believe it or not, is exercise. If I'm not moving the body enough, sometimes I have all that energy that's just trying to bounce around in my head. So when you exercise, good things happen. I have massive creativity. When the lovely Christy and I are doing huge hikes, when we're, you know, when we're doing things that. That just, you know, are. Are, like, really engaged. Matter of fact, when I'm dropping this episode, we are in the rim to rim right now. Like. Like, this is. This is what I'm doing. Hiking. So deep and so mentally exhausted, because I'm physically exhausted. But there creates a space there, and that's an amazing thing. And I want you to just be aware of that. Where if you move the body, you free up that energy and you get it out of just squirreling around and squirreling and swirling. How about that? And so just be aware of that. I'm not telling you, oh, you got to go out and run. I'm telling you. Find what works for you. But movement matters. Another thing that I found that really has worked for me, and it happens to work for the lovely Christie really well, too, is getting out in nature. So we're an interesting pair. Because I love the ocean. I was born in San Diego. I don't know if that has anything to do with it or not, but I love the ocean. She loves the mountains. So we really jam when there's ocean of mountains, right? So that's one of the reasons we love Costa Rica. That's one of the reasons we love the Hawaiian Islands is, you know, these things. You know, we did a trip to Kauai earlier this year where it's just incredible mountains. Hiking the Nepali coast, and there's, you know, going up to 5,000ft in these cliffs and then right down into the water, and it's like something about being in nature. Now, here's the key. If I'm busy, if I've got a lot going on, I'm living in, you know, Scottsdale now. And so I can just hop in my car and in 20 minutes, I can be up in the mountains. In 15 minutes, I could be at a hiking trail and just get off Onto the side, whatever. Like getting in nature. Now, if you live in the middle of the city, you might need to go to a city park, but even that. When I lived in Grand Junction, I used to do coaching. I had a life coach there. And we would meet at this place called Sherwood park that was right in the middle of town. Like, the radio station was right there, the lumber yards right there. And there's houses around, but there were some trees and there were some picnic tables. And we get out there and we just sit on the grass and just something happens. I don't know what it is. I'm not going to try to pretend that I know what it is, but it works for me. So I don't understand how cell signals work either, but they work to make it communicate. I don't know how this video is getting translated or the audio that goes to you through the app that you're listening. I don't get that stuff, but it works. So I use it. Same with this. Get in nature some way, shape or form, Listen to the birds, pay attention, be aware of it. Because what happens is, oh, I go on a hike and you, you know, people pass us on the hiking trail, jamming radio, blaring the radio, and I'm kind of like, I used to have judgment. Now I'm like, whatever. They're doing their thing. I just don't see that in my world because I'm out there trying to focus. They're distracting themselves. It's a technique they're using. And I get it. It's just. It's interesting. As I. As I'm recording this today, I've got, you know, the lovely Christy has a big flower that's blooming on her desk, which is right across from mine. And I, like, I'm just, I'm. I'm. Take a deep breath, and I'm just breathing in the. The beauty of this flower through my nose. And it's like, oh, my God, this is. It just reminds me of the incredibleness that we get to live. I don't know if incredibleness is a word, but it is now that we get to live with every day. And you're like, kenny, this leadership. Yeah, but when you calm the mind, it gets creative. And then you can lead better and more powerful and better ideas and eliminate some, quote, mistakes, perhaps things that you don't need to do, lessons that you don't need to learn, perhaps. Another one that works for me is forms of visualization. When I, you know, I think about goals and manifestation. And I used to Be really deep in like just creating everything in the most vivid way possible. Now I'm in a place at the time I'm recording this. I'm going to give that caveat because I reserve the right to evolve my consciousness and I reserve the right to learn and grow. But now when I use creative visualization, I just kind of focus on what I want and I see an ideal and I set intentionality and then I just give it up. You know, I just allow God, universe, source, spirit to just jump in and help me co create. Like, I don't get stuck. I don't have these strong boundaries. I know that everything is here to help me. I know that life is happening for me, not to me. And when I'm able to release, when I'm able to now, it doesn't mean I don't get up and bust my tail every day. It doesn't mean that I'm not fully engaged in life. I'm not life, you know, spiritual growth and leadership. Growth is not about renunciation. It's about elevation. It's about getting beyond the little stuff. You know, remember the book, I forget the author. Don't sweat the small stuff. And it's all small stuff. Little did I know how applicable that was to my life. Like, it's just so true. Like, it doesn't matter if you get cut off. It doesn't matter if you had a bad month. It doesn't matter if you had some turnover at the business. Now, don't discount that. I'm not like, please understand. I'm not saying that it doesn't matter at, like, you got to take some action, you got to do some things. I'm not saying that, like, yeah, it matters at that level, but it doesn't matter at the big, big picture. And that's where we find that slowing the mind down. If I'm tripping over everything. Oh, my God, we had a great. This was me in the past. Oh my God, we had a great month. I'm going nuts. I'm going none. Oh my God, we had a shit month. It's terrible. It's terrible. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. We had an average month. We're not average. What the. Like, no, that's. No, there are no. Creativity's coming from that. How about, you know. Yeah, that's cool. We had a. We had a barn burner. Had our best month ever. That's amazing, man. We missed the mark. We didn't have budget this month. That's interesting. Well, we've got some things to Learn. That's cool. And, you know, and I'm a passionate guy. I'm changing my inflection to just show you. Like, these are. This is how I go on a roller coaster ride with myself. I'm not saying don't have passion, don't have excitement, don't have energy, but just don't live there all the time. You're going to burn yourself out. That's why we have so many heart attacks and heart disease and, you know, and scripts and depression. We're not, we're not listening to ourselves. Just be mindful of what. Slow your mind down. And that allows creativity. Number five, deep breathing. I begin every morning. Yes, I do meditation, but I also do some deep breathing. And there's all kinds of different ones out there. Again, I'm not telling you what to do, but I'm telling you, you know, whether it's box breath, whether it's deep breath, whether it's, you know, diaphragmic breath, you put place, you can't see me, but you place your hand on your, you know, down on your stomach and another hand on your heart and breathe in. And your heart doesn't, you know, your chest doesn't move that much when you're in diaphragmic breath because you're breathing down in the diaphragm. That's where it's meant. But most of us are running around with shallow breath and we're in anxiety all the time because it's fight or flight. And it's like, no, slow down, breathe. It's okay. And man, it's just amazing. Just do that. Do that with me one, one time. Deep breath from the bottom, from down in the, in the bottom, in your diaphragm. Purse your lips and let it out. Tell me that doesn't change your blood flow, your physiology, slowing your heart rate down. If you do that, you know, five, ten times, it's just amazing. It's just you're changing the physiology of your body. That's how it works. It's. It's incredible, man. It's incredible. And last, I'll leave you with journaling. You know, I've talked about that a lot, but it's in your. It's in your mind. One of the best ways I'm able to calm my mind is by getting out the crap. Get this stuff out. We run these, you know, these programmed loops. We run default loops that psychologists talk about in the brain. Like, oh, and I used to have default loops. I'm not good enough. I'm too fat. I'm not smart. I don't make enough money. I'm not, you know, whatever. Fill in the blank. My God, you wonder why I had addiction problems. Holy crap, dude. Chill out a little bit. You're a good dude. You're doing the best you can. You got some stuff to learn in life. So what? Chill out. When I start getting that out, when I start breathing, when I start visualizing, when I start setting intentions, when I start journaling, when I start really, you know, just. Just taking some time for myself, then the mind calms down. And when the mind calms down, you create space. And when you create space, there's a place for inspiration. I think I recently read a book where they were talking about the two things, and I forget. I read a lot of books. I don't remember exactly where this came from. So I'm not going to quote who it was or what it was, but you have two things that I believe that we come from. And we come from either fear or we come from inspiration in the Christian faith. I believe the devil is the fear, and I believe that God is the inspiration. And I believe in a yoga practice. I believe that fear is the ego, and I believe that inspiration is love. And I believe that there's no reason that we don't spend more time in that inspiration. And just because the world is running around in fear doesn't mean that you have to either. I was recently on with a client and I quoted and I'll generalize again, but you know, it's around the point of you being well adjusted to a world that's full of sickness does not make you healthy, right? So when everybody's running around crazy and drinking too much and eating too much and smoking too much and not spending time with their children and not having healthy relationships and because they're building businesses, if that's the mo, I'm out. And that's why I wrote the success laws, and that's why I spend this time. And I don't have a ton of guests on here. I just want to speak my truth is one of the reasons I do this, and if you want me to keep doing this, just do me a favor and just, you know, comment or, or send us an email. Let. Let us know if you're enjoying the podcast. I've. I've. I've talked off and on about how do I keep doing it or do I not? And then every time I throw it out there, I have several people go, no, please keep. Keep doing it. And that's the thing If I'm reaching a few of you every week, I mean, obviously we have hundreds and hundreds of people that listen to the show, but I just. I'm doing this for me and I'm doing this for you. And that's why I don't have a ton of people on, because I just want. I want us to have a conversation. And really, I want to have a conversation with your higher self, with your deeper self, with your greatness. So you allow that to come forward. Can we do that? Can we do that a few more weeks? How about that? Can I give a head nod? Oh, man, I hope you feel good because that's the intention and that's why we do this, man. Episode 166 A Calm Mind is a creative Mind. I'm just so honored to have this time with you. I'm so honored to spend a few minutes. If you focus on clearing the mind, get some meditation and do some exercise, move around, get outside, be around nature, do some visualization, find those things, do some deep breathing, journal, get things out of your head. You'll create a calm mind and you'll be more creative, you'll be more happy, you'll be more peaceful, you'll be more joy. And then comes the bliss. And that, my friend, is the high that I never experienced from anything that man made feel good. You got this. Please let me know if you're enjoying the show. Kennykennychapman.com or kenny@thebluecollarcoach.com you know, just kick this episode to somebody that could just calm their mind just a little bit. I would be honored and grateful. Until we talk, make it a better than fantastic week. Can't wait to see you next time. Thank you.