[00:01] Welcome to The Focus B Show, where Katie Stoddart, high performance coach, interviews experts around the world in performance and mindfulness. Now here's your host. Katie.
[00:34] Welcome to a brand new episode of the Focus B show. I'm absolutely thrilled today to be talking about one of my favorite topics meditation. Looking back, I realized that I haven't dedicated one full episode to this topic, which is why I am creating one right now. First I'll explain why I feel it is so fundamental to have a meditation practice and then I'll go through different method that you can use to build your meditation practice today. The main reason why meditation is so important there are so many reasons. The main reason is that it will help you to increase your mental awareness. And from this mental awareness, from this gap, this mental space, you will be able to better manage your emotions. Because you won't be as reactive to the external stimulus. You'll have a bit of an internal pause. In a similar way, this will help you in your communication, in your relationships. You won't be as triggered so easily from different comments and reactions from the people you're talking with. It will of course greatly increase your focus. This is why I'm mentioning it here as the focus be. I am passionate about focus, and meditation is so intrinsically linked with our ability to focus, to be efficient and productive, but also to get more enjoyment from what we're doing. And it will help you to be more present in your life, in your business, and to be more grateful for what you're living. These are just a few of the benefits of meditation. If you read the list of all the benefits, if it was a pill, you would take this pill. I remember the first time I heard about all the benefits of meditation. I thought, is he trying to sell this to me? Because I'm sold. It is really magical. And yes, it takes a bit of effort and discipline to build a meditation practice, but it doesn't need to be as complicated or difficult as it might seem. Why does it help us to increase our mental awareness? The essence of meditation, it's bringing your attention back to your breath. It can be to other things, it can be to what you're listening, it could be to certain aspects in your body, to feel your body and different parts of your body. But most of the time it comes down to bringing your attention back to your breath. What's happening when you're doing this is that you're every time shifting your attention away from a thought, letting it go, and bringing it back to your breath. This strengthens your meta attention, which is your ability to notice how you are paying attention. If you think about it, in each and every moment you're focusing on something. Maybe you're focusing on your thoughts, maybe you're focusing on a conversation you're having, maybe you're focusing on this episode. Maybe you're trying to multitask and focus two things at once, but you're focusing on something. The difference between living extremely intentionally and living on autopilot is being aware of what you're focusing on. When you're living with intention, you choose ahead of time what you want to focus on, and then you can calibrate as the day goes on, as the moments derive and unravel. Are you still focusing on this? Let's say you want to focus on writing a report. Start writing your report and then suddenly you shift gear and you go and check your emails. If you have a strong meta attention, which is this ability to notice what you're paying attention to, you will come back to your report because you'll remember that was what you wanted to focus on most. If you are driven more by your monkey brain on autopilot, you might notice half an hour later, oh, I was supposed to be writing this report. How did I end up on my emails? Again, this ability, this meta attention, is really strengthened through meditation because your brain is constantly practicing coming back to your breath. And this is what helps you to be more focused, this is what helps you to be more present. And it also is what helps you to manage your emotions or your stress during the day. Because you won't be reacting to external stimulus instantaneously, but have a bit of a pause, a bit of a gap to think, how else could I respond to this? Or just to breathe through it and stay calmer and grounded while you're being triggered. It is really worth the effort to build your meditation practice in order to reap these types of rewards. You've no idea how grateful I am for my meditation practice. It is the only thing that I never, ever skip. I sometimes skip exercise maybe once or twice a week. I don't exercise. I tend to aim for at least five days a week. I sometimes skip journaling. I never skip meditation. So how can you put it in place? Now you're sold. Now you know you want to have a meditation practice, or I hope you do. If not, continue listening to a lot of different topics and episodes and podcasts and YouTube channels on meditation to hear different perspective. But unless you start and you try, you won't see how magical this is. And it helps to increase your perseverance, your consistency in your work, feeling calm and grounded, your happiness. Okay, you're sold. You want to put this in place. You've tried a few times and you haven't managed, for example, or you've never tried and you want to start from scratch, which is also great. First of all, you can begin a meditation practice by only doing a few minutes a day. We want to first build the actual habit of it and then you can increase the length. Finding a slot that works well for you would be the first step, think, do you want to do this first thing? When you wake up? I literally jump out of bed and go onto my meditation mat. So it could be very first thing in the morning. You can also do it very last thing in the evening, or during the day, or before breakfast, or after breakfast. But find a moment where you think this would be the perfect moment for you to have a few minutes of just deep breathing and help you to regain your focus. Find a slot that works well for you. Then we can use the Two Minute Rule by James Clear that he explains in Atomic Habits, which is that when you build a habit, start by just doing it for two minutes a day. I did this with my meditation practice. After trying and stopping and trying and stopping for a number of months and years, I went back to the basic and thought, ray, I'll just dedicate two minutes every day at the same time to meditating. And then after a few weeks or a month, you can increase to five minutes, then ten, then 15, then 20, and then you can stop at what feels like a good length for you. I'm doing 20 minutes every day. I'd like to increase it maybe to half an hour every day, but really it doesn't really matter. Once you're doing it at least 15 minutes a day, you can just stay at that. And it might take you months to build up from two or five minutes to 15 or 20 minutes, but that doesn't matter because you will have built the consistency of this habit. So how do you meditate in practice? You might have this strange image of AUM and chanting and monk spiel. That's great, and you could do all of that, but you really don't need to. It can be as simple as sitting on a chair, closing your eyes and just breathing in and out. And every time you have a thought, the idea isn't to have no thoughts. Every time you have a thought, you come back to your breath. You just focus on your breath coming in and going out. You can use colors, visualization. Sometimes I imagine that when I'm breathing in, it's golden light, when I'm breathing out, it's silver light. Often I count to ten, but when I breathe in, it's one, breathe out, two, breathe in three, breathe out four till ten. And that's it. That's literally all you need to do to build a meditation practice. Sit down. You close your eyes. You can even do it with your eyes open. And yes, you can sit in a lotus position, but you can also just sit on the seat and you just breathe in and out. And when you have thoughts, you come back to your breath. And if your first meditation, or first ten meditations or first month of meditation, you realize that you've only thought and you haven't come back to your breath, it doesn't matter afterwards, you'll get better at it. First. You might not notice how little you're focusing on your breath, and then you'll come back. And I still have entire meditations or half the time of meditation where I realize I was just thinking about my business and strategy and not at all focusing on my breath, but then I come back. The idea is to be able to accept this and not be judgmental around our thoughts really is magical. I could go on about it all day, but to be honest, that's really all there is to it. It's magical. It'll help you in so many ways, and it's simple. That doesn't mean it's easy to build it. If you want some extra accountability, you can use the app inside timer. It's free. I really love it. You can have silent meditations there, or have some music in the background, or even guided meditations. And this will help you to track the days you meditate, the days you don't meditate. I have zero missed days since I've begun using it. I've been meditating now for maybe four or five years, but I've only used the app for maybe two months, and that ensures that I have consecutive days and never, ever miss a day. So that's a very powerful way to have the accountability. I'm really curious to know, are you going to build your meditation practice? Have you tried already? What's worked well? What hadn't worked for you? What would make it a must? And what will you put in place to ensure that you build your own meditation practice and reap the rewards and benefits that comes from daily meditation? I am not the only person to talk about this. You will find it is extremely common and there's a reason why so many people meditate. I hope you've enjoyed today's episode. I really love this topic. I'm so curious to hear. Please leave me a review. If you're listening to the podcast or comment, if you're on my YouTube channel, I'd love to hear. Are you meditating? How is it working out for you? Do you use any other apps such as Headspace or Calm? And please let me know, how is this helping you in your life and why would you recommend it to other people? Thank you so much for tuning in today and wishing you all a wonderful day.
[13:11] Thank you for listening to the Focus B show. We would love to hear your feedback. Let us know in a review how this episode inspired you. Keep buzing.