8 Minutes of Mindfulness

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Welcome to the Mike Hartman Show. Mike is a performance coach and former Stanley cup champion with the New York Rangers. Topics on this show are focused around stories, mindset and champions. Mike will also go into details about helping you with your pain points and struggles and finding motivational solutions on how to have the mindset of a champion. Now, here's your host, Mike Hartman.

Welcome back to another episode. Today we're going to talk about just a very short conversation of mindfulness and we've talked a lot about this in the previous episodes. But I really want to be clear on what mindfulness is in ways to practice it. So I'm going to do a lot of these short little segments on mindfulness and I have a little three step process that, that you could focus on because there's so many tips around mindfulness. Yes. We said be in the moment, be present. If you're working, you know, in a company, be aware, be focused. You work in a dental practice and somebody comes in to the office and you work at the front desk, be engaged with that person. Don't look at the computer and so many other things. Focus one on one on that person. If you're an athlete and you're on a team and let's say you're not playing much and you're a baseball player, you're in the dugout, be engaged but not fake. Maybe you're not playing as much. Mindfulness can be good body language and there's so many ways around it. So I'll just give you three little mindful tips that I think you could work on. One of them is very simple. We've used this a lot in sports and even in business. But getting out of your comfort zone, sometimes we have to feel uncomfortable. And I was just talking to a friend of mine the other day and he was sharing a story with me about his daughter. And his daughter actually met somebody that she ran into that she just had an interview with and she approached this person and his daughter's arms were folded. She was closed off. Instead of really being engaged with the person and not closing off your body. Yes, some of us close our arms by habit, but sometimes we do that. We're closing the world off. Open yourself up. And I'm not saying being an open book, but being mindful the situation. Wow. You just met somebody that interviewed. You show them how bad you want it or a coach or your coach. Not that you always have to try to prove yourself, but do everything you can to get in the lineup. That baseball player is sitting there and I Even talked to this ballplayer, and we never say names. And he sat out a lot of games, and he's being mindful of his teammates, but sometimes we have to get out of our comfort zone and do things we don't like. So I told him, hey, approach the coach, but not putting the coach on the defense, saying, hey, coach, I'm a big part of this team. I should be in the lineup. I came here to play. I didn't come here to sit on the bench game after game. But that's a different scenario. But sometimes we have to get out of our comfort zone. I talked about breathing techniques and how important breathing is, and I've been practicing yoga for quite a while now, and it's the first thing I do after I take care of my self. Care in the morning and make my bed, of course, and all the things that we talked about and being mindful and making our bed because it's the first positive thing that we do. But working on your breathing. I told it in one of the other episodes about the baseball player, that he just needed to take some deep breaths. And I share that all the time. You hear that a lot. But really focusing in on it, going deeper into it, learning about your breath, learning about breathing techniques that will help you. Sometimes we, you know, we have a hard time doing a little bit too much. You know, we're working on our breathing, and we're focusing so much on it, like I want you to do, but just relax your body, like, take that deep breath sometimes. Like, feels good. So we talked about that, and we talked about, like, again, being fully present. That's the third one. Like, really being. Being available, like, pay attention. You know, sometimes it's hard to slow down in this busy world we live in today. Right? It's. It could be chaotic, or we're always on the go. We're in a rush, rush, rush. Slow down a little bit. Take that deep breath. Take these three things that I just gave you, these three little nuggets. And I know they could help you. And it's important that you're living in the moment. We're living for today. That's important. I did a Facebook live about my son, and my son really helped me. You know, he went to school up. He was accepted to a boon in Appalachian. Gorgeous. I love it. I'm one that loves mountains. It's up in the mountains, two hours from Charlotte. It's gorgeous up there. And I shared the story on one of the rare Facebook lives I did, how I kept asking my son Questions all the way there on the two hour drive. So have you done research with the school? What do you think? And we're not even there yet. Instead of really enjoying the moment for the ride, I don't want to get too deep into that story. I may save that for another day. But just really being in the moment, driving to where we're going, being engaged with my son, that would have probably been the right thing. And even as a coach, we sometimes need a little kick in the butt every now and then and say, can I get. Come back to getting focused again? You know, get that recovery back and, you know, start thinking about, you know, what we're supposed to do and not thinking too far ahead and accept yourself, treat yourself the way you know you believe you should be treated. And I'm a realist and I tend to tell little stories and I tell a lot of sports stories, but I was very realistic with myself and I knew when I was younger, you know, competing against average athletes, not so much the elite athlete, but when I was a young kid, I excelled after 14, 15 years old. And then as I got older, I realized I had to alter my game a little bit because players were bigger, stronger and faster. So I had to adapt to a different style within my game. So when people ask me, hey, tell me about your career, I said, well, it was really a career. Third and fourth liner, mostly a fourth liner was known to try to get the little things done. Be mindful of my teammates, be mindful of the situation that I'm in, be grateful for what I had so we could do that within mindfulness. So I had to accept myself for who I am. So I want you to accept yourself for who you are. But if you take this mindful approach, I could promise you it will help you, it will further you along within your life and within your game. And just the littlest things like that. So here are some tips. I'm going to continuously throw out these little nuggets, these little tips to you right now. What is it? Friday the 13th? So. Well, have a good Friday the 13th. I try not to be too superstitious. Let's be in the moment and have a fantastic rest of your day.

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