When I was in graduate school at the University of Texas in 2019, our MBA program’s class president recommended reading a book on mindfulness. I didn’t know what exactly “mindfulness” was, but I knew it was supposed to be good for you. So I actually read the book and even learned how to meditate by following along with the exercises. Some of my normal anxieties started to fade away. I practiced one of the meditations for a few months afterwards since it made me feel a lot more calm. Then the pandemic happened, and I forgot all about meditating as I rotted my brain while watching hundreds of hours of Netflix and Youtube.
After bouncing back from the crazy time that was the pandemic lockdown, I went on a spree of reading over a hundred books on personal development. Yet, these books felt like they were missing something. A lot of self help books are just memoirs to help promote the author’s business, and other books just have a narrow scope that doesn’t mesh well with other frameworks. My best friend from the Army, Jay Tiegs, and I decided that we could write a much better book based on high performance coaching methodology. We’re working on a section now that just covers mindfulness techniques. Below is the summary of our tips from the book on some easy ways to practice mindfulness.
Gratitude
Mindfulness begins with gratitude. Brian Tracy, a motivational speaker and self-development author, employs a simple and effective framework known as the “Four A’s of expressing gratitude.” You can use these four items as a base to maintain an “attitude of gratitude” in daily life.
Appreciation: Recognize the value of someone else
Approval: Give praise for good effort and support an idea
Admiration: Compliment someone on an accomplishment or trait
Attention: Listen intently with full attention and patience
Positive Self Talk
A powerful way to avoid negative thoughts is to deliberately think positively during transition points throughout your day. You can practice these transitions through doorways, before new meetings or appointments, and when you are preparing for any focused task. Feeding your mind positive thoughts either mentally or through talking out loud to yourself primes you to focus more on your present moment.
Another tool is to make a mantra or short mission statement. This statement should inspire you and help you focus. Throughout the day, you can use your mantra or a specific affirmation to help keep your thoughts positive and moving in the right direction. I often use simple statements like, “Do HARD things,” “I have been through more pain than this before,” “I have overcome more difficult challenges than this one in the past,”and “I am here to help others.” These simple statements will do a lot to keep you on track.
Meditation and Prayer
If you don’t already have some form of meditation or prayer built into your schedule, think about when you could do this on a daily basis. Meditation can take many different forms, so you have a ton of options. You do not have to do it with your eyes closed, seated with your legs crossed, and palms on your lap facing up. You can meditate however you deem fit: standing, lying down, or even walking. Heck, I find a relaxing walk or bike ride on a safe road to be a form of meditation.
Here are some different meditation techniques that you can try out in your own personal routine.
Resolve stressful and distracting thoughts: Think through any issues that have been bothering you.
Have gratitude: Just remind yourself to be happy for what you have instead of sad or angry because of what you lack.
Breathe: If you can’t find anything to be grateful for, you can at least enjoy breathing. Focusing on inhaling increases your alertness and exhaling will help you relax.
Scan your body: Being aware of all of your aches and pains from head to toe can help you resolve them. Address your pain or create a plan to prevent it from affecting your mood and other people.
Listen to music: Get in the moment and enjoy it by listening to music. Music can help you relax or bring your energy level up.
Practice mindfulness: Focus on the present and decrease your anxiety. There are countless guided mindfulness meditations online to help you be fully present.
Visualize the future: Visualization allows you to focus on what you want, further clarify your vision, rehearse for an event and prepare to accomplish your goals.
Focus externally: You can focus your vision (with your eyes or just in your imagination) at different distances away from yourself to help you feel more grounded.
Transcend: Many serious meditators consider the trademarked version of this style to be the pinnacle of meditation techniques. The internet has a ton of free guides to help you “transcend” while meditating.
Pray: There are infinite possibilities with prayer.
Journaling
While young officers in the military, Jay and I were recommended countless times by senior leaders to journal so that we would remember the tactics that worked and the ones that didn’t. The idea was to learn from our experiences so that we would become more effective leaders. Journaling is now our preferred technique to reach higher levels of self-awareness and track our progress.
The challenge for many is that they don’t know how to journal. This was the case for both of us. Journaling can take on many forms and if you google journaling, you will find all sorts of color-coordinated, beautifully written diaries with flowery sentences. In reality though, you don’t need to do any of that. Just grab a notebook or open a text document on your phone or computer, and simply write down your thoughts. Brain dump and word vomit your thoughts onto your notebook.
Feedback from Others
If you want to optimize your performance in anything, you need feedback. Getting input on your own thoughts is no different. Journaling can help you hone in on the items you want to talk to other people about. Then you can ask your best friend or partner for their opinion on the subject. Some of the best feedback you can get on your thoughts might come from a professional. Just like seeing a doctor for your physical health annually, it is a great idea to regularly check in with a pro who can give you feedback on what you’re thinking. Finally, coaches are a great resource to help you specifically with getting in the right mindset to achieve your goals.
I also could use your feedback. My goal is to make this newsletter as valuable as possible for you. Please let me know if you find some of these mindfulness techniques useful or if you have any recommendations based on what works for you. Also, let me know if there are any topics I can write about for you.