Meditation and Mindfulness for Success in Business: Part One

Meditation and Mindfulness for Success in Business: Part One

This is the first part of a 3-part series of how to incorporate mindfulness and meditation into your life, and specifically, in order to maximize your career and business decisions.

I’m the first to admit that when I first raise the idea of mindfulness and meditation with my clients, I sometimes get a raised eyebrow in response. Not to be stereotypical, but this has been most true of my male clients who are in high positions (CEO’s, CFO’s, entrepreneurs who own their own companies, surgeons, etc.), and suspect that meditation might be too “woo woo” for them … until they do it. Then, every time, they are also the ones most likely to tell me it has changed their life.

I start by telling them about the billion-dollar hedge fund manager, Ray Dahlio, who is widely considered the most successful of all time in his position, and how he considers daily transcendental meditation to be the one thing he attributes most to his success. Meditation increases mindfulness, which can be most simply explained as “the state of being aware of something.” Mindfulness trains you to stay in the present tense which is where all the best decisions in life are made. In fact, think of every great thing that has happened in your life, and I guarantee it was while you were in the present tense, rather than when you were focused on the past or future. As soon as you are making decisions based on worrying or are ten steps ahead of yourself, you have lost the state of being mindful. Decisions based on fear or anxiety are never as good as the ones you make based on the present moment.

One of my clients told me a great story which highlights this concept. A client came to him offering a lot of money for the type job he does all of the time. His gut sent him warning signals that accepting this client wasn’t the right decision, yet due to the amount of money involved, he took the job anyway. He said the job turned out to be a nightmare which took him a long time to clean up and he wished he never accepted that “great paying client.” He began meditating daily, and soon after, a client came to him with a small job which almost didn’t seem worth the time or money to do the job, but he felt strongly that he should do it. This time, he listened to his gut, and did the job, and the client ended up recommending him to a much larger high-paying client which turned into a huge profit for him. This same client is well on his way to his first multi-million dollar year in income.     

What exactly is meditation anyway?

Meditation is a practice wherein you train your brain to “let go,” and is technically defined as an act of reflection or deliberation. I think of it as yoga for the mind. It brings about a state of relaxation, yet also heightened awareness at the same time. Some people use it along with prayer, but meditation itself is not inherently religious, and it has been incorporated into many spiritual beliefs. It dates back thousands of years and the earliest known record of it is in 5,000 year old Hindu scriptures.

Fact: If people fully understood the power within their brains, they would spend just as much time exercising their brains as they do their bodies. I will present a mind-blowing study which highlights this power in Part 2 of this series.

What are the benefits of meditation?

The benefits of meditation are numerous, but a few key ones include:

  • relaxation
  • increased focus
  • stress reduction
  • helps depression and anxiety
  • enhanced learning ability

One of the best benefits of meditation is stress reduction. When the body relaxes, the cortisol levels in the body drop, and meditation has also been found to increase the body’s “feel-good” neurotransmitters such as seratonin. In fact, many anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medications work by boosting the production of seratonin in the brain.

When you are under extreme stress, the stress hormones flood the body to create a “fight or flight” response, which means blood is going to your muscles and away from your brain. Under chronic stress with elevated cortisol levels, we are less likely to make the best decisions because our brains are not functioning at their optimal level. Daily meditation for just 5-10 minutes can make a drastic difference in how our brains work, and helps it to work for us rather than against us.

In next week’s post, we will dive into the science behind meditation (why it’s quite far from “woo woo”), and what your brain looks like on meditation. Until then… 🙂 Kristi

Reduce, don’t re-use, and don’t recycle: Stop the anxiety!

Everyone experiences anxiety at some point in their life, and some experience it much more often than others. Though we’re often aware what makes us angry, happy, irritable, or excited, it takes more work to look beneath these emotions to discover what creates – and maintains – that feeling. Anxiety is one of the core emotions that is directly related to the days of our evolutionary ancestors when humans survived based on their instinct to fight or flee. A person’s response time combined with their physical and mental abilities often meant the difference between life and death. So it stands to reason that those of our ancestors that survived (and passed on that agile chemistry) were either a) good at anticipating likely threats, b) strong, c) smart, d) really, really fast or, e) some combination of the above. It also meant that they responded immediately to their internal emotional system which prompted the need to react in the first place. Anxiety, then, was key to connecting anticipation with a response. More anxiety meant more awareness, faster thinking and quicker (or smarter) response. Anxiety itself is not a bad thing and has many adaptive components.

Fast forward to now, and far less of our day-to-day choices directly result in our survival. The decision whether to download that app, make it to the gym, or respond immediately to that email will likely not result in your demise (fingers crossed). And yet we strangely have this inclination to respond to many of our activities as if there is an immediate outcome that we either need to pursue (aka fight) or avoid at all costs (aka flight). And our internal system tells us that anticipating these outcomes will be best for our survival – hence the anxiety.

In fact, many of those secondary emotions we feel (angry, happy, irritable, or excited) depend an awful lot on the underlying level of anxiety we experience beneath that emotion. For example, we might get angry at our young child because we lost sight of them in a store, but beneath that anger is the fear – anxiety – that something could happen to them. We get irritable when we run out of time to get a task done, yet beneath that irritability we hold the anxiety that somehow we either won’t accomplish our task or that we will be perceived by others (or ourselves) as “less than” for being unsuccessful. Think about this with other emotions you feel. When do you feel them? What’s the underlying prompt, and how is that then connected to your emotional reactions? The pattern is there if you can find it.

So where is YOUR anxiety? Not unlike the Princess finding that pea wedged many mattresses below, it is not until we find the underlying issue that we can do something about it. Finding and removing the pea returns our restful night sleep – as does finding and dealing with our underlying anxiety. There are many ways to manage anxiety, enough that it would take another whole blog post. However, a few potential options to consider: self-discovery, mindfulness, & meditation.

Still struggling to uncover or address your anxiety? Let’s find it – and find a way to help you relax again.

DrToddHelvig@gmail.com

Happy 2017: Goal Setting and Career Coaching for the New Year

 

Happy 2017! This is Dr. Kristi here, and I know you’ve seen Dr. Todd’s post about goal setting earlier this week, so this is my spin on approaching the new year. I will admit that even as a very upbeat person, the end of 2016 was rough for me on several levels. I attended several funerals for people who died well before their time (ages 39 and 18 respectively), as well as saw the deaths of many of my beloved childhood icons from Prince to Princess Leia. This combined with the political ugliness of election season made me really happy to see the end of 2016.

Yet, with every ending comes new beginnings, and I believe that going through emotional pain often causes self-reflection and allows you to view the essence of what is most important to you. For me, that has always been family and career, in that order, and where I will continue to put my energy in the coming year. I’m not a believer in resolutions as they don’t tend to stick for a lot of the same reasons extreme diets don’t work. However, I am a believer in creating goals and then taking small steps each day toward reaching them. At the beginning of each year, I create a goal list and then do some reverse engineering to figure out what steps I need to take, and in what order.

One of the great things about hiring a life or career coach is the accountability factor, as there will be days you don’t feel like taking steps. I have awesome (and very honest) clients who sometimes tell me they only took their next step because they knew they had a Skype session with me that week. That’s great, and I’m a firm believer in the notion that ‘slow and steady’ accomplishes a great deal over time. Ask any financial planner about saving for retirement and they’ll tell you the same thing. If I wasn’t married to another psychologist/coach who holds me accountable (but only when I ask him to or we’d have problems), *grins* you can bet I’d hire one too. In terms of my goals for the year, I have a fiction anthology coming out in the Spring, and another completed novel in production now, also for a Spring 2017 release and need to work on a marketing plan for both books. By the end of 2017, I want to have another novel written and ready for production, as well as complete my non-fiction book on career coaching. This means I have to write about 500 words per day, which is very doable.

In terms of personal goals, I want to continue a consistent yoga routine as well as increase mindfulness through more meditation as I feel healthier when I do it, and have found more creative ideas flow easily as a result. I use a tracking sheet to mark my progress in all areas each week, and am in love with the Conquer Your Year planner, and will give more updates as I use this throughout the year. Note: I am not receiving any compensation to endorse this planner; I just started using it myself and love, love, love it.

I hope that you have a happy, healthy, and prosperous 2017, and that you reach all of your desired goals in life, love, and career. As always, please let me know if you have any questions about coaching, and I’ll be happy to answer them for you.

Live long and prosper,

Kristi

Replace those New Year’s resolutions with daily success!

I’m not a fan of New Year’s resolutions. Never have been – never will be. The reality is that very few people set attainable resolutions that they are able to maintain over an entire year. What happens? Life. Daily life provides the twists and turns that can make a day feel like a week or a lifetime feel like a brief moment. It’s meant to be that way. After all, if nothing ever happens…not much fun for Nemo (yes, I’m quoting Dory from Finding Nemo).

However when life happens, typically the first thing that gets chucked out the window are those nagging annual resolutions. Sure, you meant to get in shape, planned to be more understanding of others, or were going to save more “safety net” money in your account. But when life happens we revert back to the same thoughts and behaviors that we’re comfortable with – like that comfy old sweater you keep on your shelf despite the holes – and how it looks. Face it – we are truly creatures of habit.

A much more productive approach, however, is to wake up in the morning and focus on 3 truly achievable goals for the day. Three things that you know that no matter what happens you will find a way to complete. Some people like to write down their goals for the next day the night before. That’s fine. As long as your first act of a new day is to focus on your 3 achievable goals and visualize how you’re going to get them done. You may even want to close your eyes and do a little meditation on it. This should only take 5-10 minutes – and believe me – it will be the best spent 5-10 minutes of your day because it will set you up for being successful. Each time you do this – and follow through on your goals – you’ll be reinforcing new patterns in your life. Patterns that extend from your thoughts and behaviors through your emotions right down to your very physiological makeup.

Now, instead of worrying about what may happen throughout the week that may get in the way of your “resolutions,” you are focused on specific goals that you can begin to look back on – and take credit for. You are building confidence in your daily success and creating meaningful change in your life.

Give it a try, and let me know how it works for you!