What is it and How can it Benefit You? EP50

August 08, 2022

What is Meditation? Before I decided to learn more about this self-improvement practice, I have to be honest with you, my perception of meditation was someone sitting on a mountain side, on a flat surface, with their legs crossed, hands on top of the knees with one of the fingers, pressing against the thumb on each hand, making a circle, with a straight back, head tilted back slightly, eyes close, and with a calming hum, purring in a consistent cadence, Huuuuuummmmmmmm, Huuuuuuuuummmmmm. Maybe some of you out there have the same mental image. It seems that for every high performer I read about or listen to, the majority of them put meditation as a high-priority habit and dedicate daily time to the practice. This is all new to me and I look forward to understanding this world-wide healthy living tradition or method. Below are the books I'll be using to better understand meditation. Enjoy the Episode! Stress Less, Accomplish More Meditation for Extraordinary Performance by Emily Fletcher https://www.amazon.com/Stress-Less-Accomplish-More-Extraordinary/dp/0062747509 Waking Up A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion by Sam Harris https://www.amazon.com/Waking-Up-Spirituality-Without-Religion/dp/1451636016?tag=entheos06-20 Success Through Stillness Meditation Made Simple by Russell Simmons https://www.amazon.com/Success-Through-Stillness-Meditation-Simple/dp/1592409083/?tag=entheos06-20 Strength in the Storm Transform Stress, Live in Balance and Find Peace of Mind by Eknath Easwaran https://www.amazon.com/Strength-Storm-Transform-Stress-Balance/dp/1586381016?tag=entheos06-20

Episode Transcript

Meditation, What is it, and How it can Benefit You, presented to you by OnlineHockeyTraining.com and your host, Coach Lance Pitlick. If you're new here, please make sure you subscribe, so you won't miss out on any future episodes.

Before we light the match and start the campfire, if you want to learn more about me, my hockey experiences, what I know, and most importantly, how I've been helping hockey players get really good with a stick and puck, just head on over to http://onlinehockeytraining.com/ and gain instant access to my 10 part video series where I'll show you everything. Consider it my gift to you.

Over the last 6 to 7 months, I've been on this mega-learning trip, where I've dedicated at least 60 minutes per day, sometimes more, trying to listen to the stories of people who've gotten to the top of the mountain, in whatever sector that would be. From world leaders, pioneering innovators, to sports stars, business owners, artists, musicians and rockstar researchers to mention a few. The success formula for all of them is so similar, they figured out their long-term objective, broke it down into smaller, attainable action items, and began to execute the plan consistently over a period of time. The focus is all about the process and constructing rock solid daily habits.

But one habit most of them had as the highest of importance each day, was spending time meditating. Yeah, I'm not kidding you, they dedicate daily time to doing this activity. Before I decided to learn more about this self improvement practice, I have to be honest with you, my perception of meditation was someone sitting on a mountain side, on a flat surface, with their legs cross, hands on top of the knees with one of the fingers, pressing against the thumb on each hand, making a circle, with a straight back, head tilted back slightly, eyes close, and with a calming hum, purring in a consistent cadence. Huuuuuummmmmmmm, Huuuuuuuuummmmmm. Maybe some of you out there have the same mental image.

As I researched this topic, one of the things I did over a 2 week period, is ask the players I train on a regular basis if they knew what meditation is and if they regularly practice it? Of the 50 players I posed the questions to, very few could give me a definitive answer on what it is, and only 1 of the 50 said she dedicates daily time to the practice.

Well, I think it's time to crack the seal on meditation and spend some time figuring out what it is and what the benefits are from practicing it on a regular or daily basis? I'm not one to look in the rear-view mirror much, so I'm excited to push forward and learn more about this may be misunderstood method or self-improvement technique.

If something has ignited in me to investigate meditation, I'm sure there's a few of you out there that may be interested as well. I've found 4 books that really changed my perception of meditation and opened up a few new valves of curiosity, where I'm actually going to give it a go and make it part of my every day, for 30 days.
The benefits can't be denied, as you'll hear shortly.

For the following books, I'm going to reference, know that I'm only scratching the surface of all the learning nuggets in each of the titles. If something resonates with you from a certain book, by the end of this episode, I highly encourage you to pick up a copy of your own and read it in its entirety. I'll put the links to each of the titles in the description. Before we get to the book wisdom, let's see what some popular websites say about meditation.

Wikipedia says Meditation is a practice in which an individual uses a technique - such as mindfulness, or focusing the mind on a particular object, thought, or activity - to train attention and awareness, and achieve a mentally clear and emotionally calm and stable state.

Collins Dictionary dot com defines Meditation as follows - Meditation is the act of remaining in a silent and calm state for a period of time, as part of a religious training, or so that you are more able to deal with the problems of everyday life.

And finally, Live and Dare dot com describes it as this - Meditation is a mental exercise that involves relaxation, focus, and awareness. Meditation is to the mind what physical exercise is to the body. The practice is usually done individually, in a still seated position, and with eyes closed.

Three different web sources and three different definitions, but similar. Now let's dive a little deeper and see what's being said by some of the experts in the field.

Book Number 1
Stress Less, Accomplish More
Meditation for Extraordinary Performance
By Emily Fletcher

Quote #1
“Stress Less, Accomplish More is designed to serve as an introduction to not only meditation but also to the three mental tools that make up the Ziva Technique: Mindfulness, Meditation, and Manifesting. This book will give you an explanation of what they are and the science behind how they function as tools for high performers to improve their cognitive function and creativity, while simultaneously releasing stress and improving overall mental and physical health. ... It doesn’t matter what your profession, ambition, religion, expertise, or experience is. Meditation is simply a tool to help you reach your goals; it’s never the goal itself. The main point is this: We meditate to get good at life, not to get good at meditation. If you want to elevate your performance—to eliminate the effects of stress, improve your mental energy, increase your physical health, expand your creativity, and hone your intuition—you’ve come to the right place. All it takes is the desire to uplevel your life and fifteen minutes twice a day. Are you ready to invest in yourself?” (End Quote)

Quote #2
STRESS MAKES YOU STUPID (AND SCARED)
“In 2012, a team of neurologists at UCLA’s Laboratory of Neuromodulation and Neuroimaging published a study that clearly demonstrated the thickening of the corpus callosum in people with regular meditation practices. Even more interesting, in 2015, a team from Harvard published findings from an experiment in which they conducted baseline MRIs on participants before starting half of them on a regular, daily meditation program. The subjects were selected on the basis of their overall health; all subjects, however, reported dealing with the effects of stress on their lives. During the course of the experiment, subjects answered questions about their moods and emotional states; those in the meditation group reported more positive overall feelings and a reduction of stress. At the end of eight weeks, the scans were repeated, and the brains of those who had begun meditating showed unmistakable physical changes, including shrinking of the amygdala (that is, the brain’s fear center), which expands when the brain is steeped in cortisol or other stress hormones, and expansion of the brain stem, where dopamine and serotonin—the chemicals responsible for feelings of happiness, love, and contentment originate. Just think about that for a minute: In only two months, meditation can change the brain enough to be visibly detectable by MRI, shrinking the fear center and enlarging the centers responsible for happiness, love, and creative problem solving.” (End Quote)
Quote #3
THE 3 M’S OF THE Z TECHNIQUE
“As a system, the Z Technique consists of three M words: Mindfulness, Meditation and Manifesting. Each aspect contributes something important to the overall practice. And the whole is indeed greater than the sum of its parts. To recap: Mindfulness helps you deal with stress in the present moment; meditation gets rid of stress from the past; and manifesting helps you create your dreams for the future. I like to think of the three parts of the Z Technique as the appetizer, main course, and dessert.” (End Quote)

Quote #4
MEDITATION: THOUGHTS ARE NOT THE ENEMY
“The single most important piece of meditation advice you can hold with you as you dive in is this: Thoughts are not the enemy. Remember that the mind thinks involuntarily just like the heart beats involuntarily, so please don’t try to give your mind a command to be silent. Instead,know that thoughts are okay—they’re actually a useful part of this process and now you have your trusty anchor, one, to come back to when you notice you’ve taken a mental field trip.” (End Quote)

Bonus Quote #5
MANIFESTING: START WITH GRATITUDE
“We start the manifesting portion from a place of gratitude. This doesn’t have to take a long time. Simply ask yourself the question What am I grateful for right now? Practice gratitude for the relationships in your life, for your home and health, for your family and for opportunities, for the beautiful sunset last night, or for making your bus by the skin of your teeth this morning. Whatever is on your heart that makes you feel thankful, acknowledge it. Nature/God/higher power—whatever you call it—likes to be paid attention to, just like the rest of us. You know howwe all have that one friend who never seems grateful for anything—they just ask and ask and ask, and you eventually stop doing favors for that person because they don’t seem to care enough to give you a shout-out or offer help in return? Don’t be that person. Recognize the beautiful gifts in your life, no matter how insignificant or clichéd or esoteric or shallow they might seem. There is no wrong way to show thankfulness for your blessings except not to acknowledge them at all. This may seem simple (are you noticing a pattern of simple-but-powerful tools here?), but there is some fascinating neuroscience research coming out about gratitude. Scientists are finding that even on the days when you don’t feel like you have anything to be thankful for, just asking the question ‘What am I grateful for?’ is enough to change the chemistry of your brain. This simple practice trains you to look for everything that is going right in your life so you can start to moreeffectively water the flowers and not the weeds.” (End Quote)

Bonus Quote #6
HEBB’S LAW OF NEURO-AWESOME
“The more you stimulate the neural pathways through practicing gratitude, the stronger and more automatic they become. On a scientific level, this is an example of Hebb’s Law, which states, ‘neurons that fire together wire together.’ But it’s also something you can see plainly in everyday life: If you’re forging a new path through the woods, the first trip is the most challenging, and you have to be deliberate. But the more times the path is traveled, the more defined it becomes and the easier it is to follow. Your brain works the same way: The more times a certain neural pathway is activated (neurons firing together), the less effort it takes to stimulate the pathway the next time (neurons wiring together).” (End Quote)

Book Number 2
Waking Up
A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion
By Sam Harris

Quote #1
“Twenty percent of Americans describe themselves as ‘spiritual but not religious.’ Although the claim seems to annoy believers and atheists equally, separating spirituality from religion is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. It is to assert two important truths simultaneously: Our world is dangerously riven by religious doctrines that all educated people should condemn, and yet there is more to understanding the human condition than science and secular culture generally admit. Our purpose of this book is to give both these convictions intellectual and empirical support. ... This book is by turns a seeker’s memoir, an introduction to the brain, a manual of contemplative instruction, and a philosophical unraveling of what most people consider to be the center of their inner lives: the feeling of self we call ‘I.’ I have not set out to describe all the traditional approaches to spirituality or to weigh their strengths and weaknesses. Rather, my goal is to pluck the diamond from the dunghill of esoteric religion. There is a diamond there, and I have devoted a fair amount of my life to contemplating it, but getting it in hand requires that we remain true to the deepest principles of scientific skepticism and make no obeisance to tradition.” (End Quote)

Quote #2
MINDFULNESS
“There is nothing spooky about mindfulness. It is simply a state of clear, nonjudgmental, and undistracted attention to the contents of consciousness, whether pleasant or unpleasant. Cultivating this quality of mind has been shown to reduce pain, anxiety, and depression;improve cognitive function; and even produce changes in gray matter density in regions of the brain related to learning and memory, emotional regulation and self-awareness. ... Mindfulness is a translation of the Pali word sati. The term has several meanings in the Buddhist literature, but for our purposes the most important is ‘clear awareness.’” (End Quote)

Quote #3
MEDITATION
“Happily, the benefits of training in meditation arrive long before mastery does... Again, the problem is not thoughts themselves but the state of thinking without being fully aware that we are thinking. As every meditator soon discovers, distraction is the normal condition of our minds: Most of us topple from the wire every second—whether gliding happily into reverie or plunging into fear, anger, self-hatred, and other negative states of mind. Meditation is a technique for waking up. The goal is to come out of the trance of discursive thinking and to stop reflexively grasping at the pleasant and recoiling from the unpleasant, so that we can enjoy a mind undisturbed by worry, merely open like the sky, and effortlessly aware of the flow of experience in the present.” (End Quote)

Quote #4
AN INCREASINGLY HEALTHY MIND
“The traditional goal of meditation is to arrive at a state of well-being that is imperturbable—or if perturbed, easily regained. The French monk Matthieu Ricard describes such happiness as ‘a deep sense of flourishing that arises from an exceptionally healthy mind.’ The purpose of meditation is to recognize that you already have such a mind. That discovery, in turn, helps you to cease doing the things that produce needless confusion and suffering for yourself and others. Of course, most people never truly master the practice and don’t reach a condition of imperturbable happiness. The near goal, therefore, is to have an increasingly healthy mind— that is, to be moving one’s mind in the right direction.” (End Quote)

Bonus Quote # 5
YOUR MIND AS A VIDEO GAME
“Having spent years observing my mind in meditation, I find such sudden transitions from happiness to suffering both fascinating and rather funny—and merely witnessing them goes a long way toward restoring my equanimity. My mind begins to seem like a video game: I can either play it intelligently, learning more in each round, or I can be killed in the same spot by the same monster, again and again.” (End Quote)

Bonus Quote #6
CULTIVATING YOUR CHOICE
“Of course, a house is a physical object beholden to the laws of nature—and it won’t fix itself. From the moment my wife and I grabbed buckets and salad bowls to catch the falling water, we were responding to the ineluctable tug of physical reality. But my suffering was entirely the product of my thoughts. Whatever the needs of the moment, I had a choice: I could do what was required calmly, patiently, and attentively, or do it in a state of panic. Every moment of the day— indeed, every moment throughout one’s life—offers an opportunity to be relaxed and responsive or to suffer unnecessarily.”

“We can address mental suffering of this kind on at least two levels. We can use thoughts themselves as an antidote, or we can stand free of thought altogether. The first technique requires no experience with meditation, and it can work wonders if one develops the appropriate habits of mind. Many people do it quite naturally; it’s called ‘looking on the bright side.’” (End Quote)

Bonus Quote #7
ACCEPTING + STRIVING
“Merely accepting that we are lazy, distracted, petty, easily provoked to anger, and inclined to waste our time in ways that we will later regret is not a path to happiness. And yet it is true that meditation requires total acceptance of what is given in the present moment. If you are injured and in pain, the path to mental peace can be traversed in a single step: Simply accept the pain as it arises, while doing whatever you need to do to help your body heal. If you are anxious before giving a speech, become willing to feel the anxiety fully, so that it becomes a meaningless pattern of energy in your mind and body. Embracing the contents of
consciousness in any moment is a very powerful way of training yourself to respond differently to adversity. However, it is important to distinguish between accepting unpleasant sensations and emotions as a strategy—while covertly hoping that they will go away—and truly accepting them as transitory appearances in consciousness. Only the latter gesture opens the door to wisdom and lasting change. The paradox is that we can become wiser and more compassionate and live more fulfilling lives by refusing to be who we have tended to be in the past. But we must also relax, accepting things as they are in the present, as we strive to change ourselves.” (End Quote)

Book Number Three
Success Through Stillness
By Russell Simmons

Quote #1
“The purpose of this book is to show you that you can control which of those worlds you live it. You can decide that no matter what is happening around you, the sun will always be shining in your world. Or you can decide that your world is always going to be a cold, dark place. The point is, the external world doesn’t make that choice. You do. Obviously most people would prefer to live in the sunshine. The problem is that they just don’t know how to step into it. I’m here to tell you that meditation can take you there. That sitting in silence fortwenty minutes can be a tool to wash away the pain, frustration, and insecurities that have been coloring your existence and allow you to get back to the state of happiness that is your birthright. The path that I will lay out in this book represents the simplest route between yourcurrent state and that happiness. As your guide, I will not lead you on any detours or suggest that we take the scenic route. No, this is a simple and straightforward guide on how to use the tool of meditation to get the most out of your life—written with the authority of someone who has used that very tool every day for the past fifteen years himself.” (End Quote)

Quote #2
DON’T HAVE TIME TO MEDITATE? MAKE THE TIME.
“‘But Russell, I just don’t have time to meditate.’ I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard this. I’m always getting approached by people looking for advice on how to ‘get ahead,’ but when I simply say, ‘Start meditating,’ they act like I just tried to duck the question! ‘Come on, Russell, I don’t have time for all of that,’ they’ll say in protest. ‘Give me something real!’ But I couldn’t be more real with someone looking to improve their life than to tell them to meditate. So when they claim they don’t have time, I always come back to them with that old saying about meditation: If you don’t have twenty minutes to delve into yourself through meditation, then that means you really need two hours. So if you’re one of those people who claim that they would start meditating if they just had the time, my message to you is: Make the time.That’s because while your mind is the part of your body you use the most, it’s also probably the part you spend the least amount of time taking care of.” (End Quote)

Quote #3
QUIT JUDGING YOUR MEDITATION. JUST BRUSH YOUR BRAIN.
“Another misconception that trips some people up is the belief that they’re not ‘good’ at meditating. These people make the effort to sit down and meditate but then don’t stick with the practice because they feel like they’re ‘doing it wrong’ or somehow aren’t having the sameexperience that ‘real’ meditators do. ... I’m going to talk about the technique of dealing with your thoughts in much greater detail later on in the book, but for now I do want to say this: Meditation does not mean the absence of thoughts. Meditation does not mean going into a trance. Meditation does not mean forgetting who or where you are. If you’re worrying that you’re not ‘doing it right’ because none of those things happen when you meditate, then please stop worrying.” (End Quote)

Quote #4
FIXING YOUR BRAIN’S ALARM SYSTEM
“Meditation also has a powerful impact on what’s known as your limbic brain. It’s the part of your brain where your most basic emotions are generated, in particular your fight-or-flight responses. ‘Guarding’ the front of your limbic brain is a smaller, almond-shaped structure called the amygdala. Its job is to assess every new situation you encounter and then tell your limbic brain whether it’s dangerous or not. To use an analogy, think of your limbic brain as a car owner and the amygdala as a car alarm system. Every time the car alarm detects what it perceives to be a threat, it’s going to go off and make a lot of noise. Then it’s up to the owner to decide if he’s just going to deactivate the alarm and go back to sleep or actually get up and investigate.” (End Quote)

Bonus Quote #5
FINDING YOUR FOCUS
“So if being more focused and productive is something that sounds attractive to you, then consider the studies that have proved people who meditate are able to hold their attention on tasks much longer than those who don’t. For instance, recently the University of California—Santa Barbara conducted a study on how meditation affects test-taking ability, which requires tremendous focus. In the study, a group ofcollege students were asked to take the GRE. Then the students were split into two groups; one group took an intensive meditation class, the other an intensive class on nutrition. After two weeks of class, each group was asked to take the GRE again. The group that studiednutrition didn’t show any improvement, but the group that had meditated saw their average GRE score go from 460 to 520. The meditation group also showed improvement on tests they were given on memory and focus. If you’ve ever studied for the GRE or the SAT, then you know jumping sixty points is a big deal. The kind of improvement that people often spend thousands of dollars on tutoring or classes tohopefully achieve.” (End Quote)

Bonus Quote #6
THE SNOW GLOBE THAT IS YOUR BRAIN
“But there’s nothing accidental about accessing the good ideas you have inside of you. Remember, those ideas are already there, you’ve just had trouble finding them because all the junk in your mind has been obscuring them. Meditation will help you clean out that junk andfind those good ideas. How? Think of your mind as like one of those snow globes you used to play with as a kid. When you’d shake them up, the snow would be everywhere and it would kind of obscure what was inside the globe. But when you just let the globe sit still, eventually all the snow would settle down to the bottom and you could clearly see what was inside it. When you use meditation to allow your mind to be still, it’s the same thing. Eventually, all the distractions are going to settle down and you’ll be able to see clearly what’s inside of you.” (End Quote)

Bonus Quote #7
SOAKING OUR SOULS IN THE GOOD STUFF
“The famous guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi—who taught the Beatles to meditate and started the Transcendental Meditation movement—once described the process this way to Science of Mind magazine: The situation is as though we were able to take a white cloth and dip it in yellow dye. We bring the cloth out and put it in the sun and the yellow fades away. Then we put it back again and again into the color and back again and again into the sun. In the dye it keeps on becoming yellow and yellow, then fading, fading, fading in the sun. But over time the color becomes permanent. That happens to the mind through regular practice. That unbounded awareness, that pure consciousness, the field of all the laws of nature, becomes ingrained in all activities of the mind
... This is why it is important to practice meditation every day. Gaining lasting happiness can only come through sustained, consistent effort. You’re not going to get muscles from one pushup. Just as you’re not going to lose twenty pounds just by skipping one meal. Or let go of theburdens of the world after sitting in silence for twenty minutes just one time. In order to achieve lasting happiness in this lifetime, you must make a real commitment to this process.” (End Quote)

Book Number 4
Strength in the Storm
Transform Stress, Live in Balance, and Find Peace of Mnd
By Eknath Easwaran

Quote # 1
“‘Emergencies and crises,’ the psychologist William James observed, ‘show us how much greater our vital resources are than we had supposed.’ This is the opportunity that crises and challenges offer us. Every one of us has capacities inside us that we have never dreamed of, which we can learn to draw on in our daily lives. That is our legacy as human beings. The purpose of this book is to help you get started on the great adventure by claiming this legacy. As a meditation teacher, I have to point out that this is the purpose of meditation, which I have explained in other books. Here I want to focus on skills you can apply right away: simple techniques that anyone can use to banish worry and anxiety, stay calm under pressure, and live each moment to its fullest — and most significantly, radiate that new-found calm to everyone around.” (End Quote)

Quote #2
“I LOVE STORMS” - GANDHI
“Few human beings are born with the skill to weather storms and stress with grace. Yet everyone can learn. We can’t control the weather outside, but we can control how we respond. ... For it is in the mind that the storms of life really blow. What matters is not so much the turmoil outside us as the weather within. To a person with an agitated mind, something as minor as a rude driver can cause enough stress to ruin a day. By contrast I think of Mahatma Gandhi, who gave himself away when he confessed, ‘I love storms.’ Gandhi began life as a timid child, but he learned to keep his mind so steady that he could face tremendous crises with courage, compassion, wisdom, and even a sense of humor. This steadiness of mind is one of the most practical skills. Without it, no one can face the challenges of life without breaking. And life today is challenging to say the least. We live in the midst of conflicts — within ourselves, at home, in the community, even nationally and internationally. This is an age of conflict, which makes it an age of anxiety as well. Nothing is more vital than learning to face this turmoil with confidence and compassion.”
(End Quote)

Quote #3
EUDAIMANTRA
“You can draw on the power of the mantram like this at any time, wherever you happen to be, whatever you happen to be doing. But if you want the mantram to come to your rescue when you need it, if you want it to steady your mind in times of turmoil, you need to practice, practice, practice in calm weather. Whenever you get a moment free, unless you are doing something that requires attention, repeat your mantram to yourself silently, in your mind—while waiting, walking, washing dishes, and especially when falling asleep at night. Constant repetition drives the mantram deep into consciousness, where it can anchor your mind so surely that no amount of agitation can sweep you away. I must have given this advice a million times, but it can never be repeated too often. Throughout my life, no matter how assiduously I practiced this skill, I have always been able to find more time, additional opportunities to put it to use. This is how we can gradually extend sovereignty over the mind.” (End Quote)

Quote #4
WANT TO END ALL BOREDOM? ATTENTION IS THE KEY
“Then I made an even more surprising discovery: by giving them my full attention, such jobs actually lost their drudgery. Many even became interesting. I had got it backwards: attention doesn’t wander because something is dull; life seems dull when attention wanders. Again, fullattention was the key.”

“Most of us on the faculty had a tendency to postpone paperwork, and as for reaching student papers, my mind would usually come up with the same old thought: ‘I don’t like this! If we can’t put it off, let’s get it over with as quickly as possible so we can do something interesting.’ You should have seen the look on my mind’s face when I began to reply, ‘I don’t care if you don’t like it. We’re going to give complete attention to this task even if it seems like drudgery.’” (End Quote)

Bonus Quote #5
TIME AS AN INFINITE COSMIC CARPET
“Time has been illustrated to be an infinite cosmic carpet that is always rolled up behind and before us. One day comes and it is unrolled from the future, and that evening it is rolled up again. The only part of the carpet that is open is the present moment. The Buddha would go farther. There is no such thing as the past, he would say. It has been rolled up; it doesn’t exist. Nothing remains of it but what we hold in our minds. And there is no such thing as the future; it has yet to be rolled out. That is why attention flowing to the past is energy wasted. We are dumping our vitality into a black hole! The same is true of the future: looking forward to pleasant events, worrying about unpleasant ones, fantasizing about dreams coming true is simply energy drained away, like letting your car idle in the garage all night. When the mind stays present, all this vitality comes back to us.” (End Quote)

Bonus Quote #6
THE SECRET OF LIFE (IN ONE SENTENCE)
“All of us want to be completely alive, to live one hundred percent in the present moment. What prevents us? More urgently, how can we bring about such a state of mind? The great American psychologist [William James] gives us a clue in a quotation I found in a mostunexpected place, Vogue magazine. (Actually it was Christine who found it) This is a direct quotation: ‘The faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention, over and over again, is the very root of judgment, character, and will. An education which should include this faculty would be the education par excellence.’ In that one sentence we have the secret of life: the key to genius, to success, to love, to happiness, to security, to fulfillment. We live where our attention is. If attention wanders all over the map, our lives cannot help being scattered, shallow, and confused. By contrast, complete concentration is the secret of genius in any field. Those who can put their attention on a task or goal and keep it there are bound to make their mark in life.” (End Quote)

Bonus Quote #7
HOW TO MAKE YOURSELF FEARLESS (GANDHI 101)
“Today we would ask, ‘What kind of therapy did he undergo? What workshops did he attend?’ But Gandhi never set out to make himself fearless. He simply began trying to serve those around him, spending less and less time on indulging himself and more on helping others. And the primary skill he used to support himself in these efforts was repetition of the mantram. Effort and the mantram together changed fear into fearless, anger into compassion, hatred into love. That transformation is the reason I consider Gandhi a beacon for our times. ‘I have learnt through bitter experience,’ he said, ‘the one supreme lesson to conserve my anger, and as heat conserved is transmuted into energy, even so our anger control can be transmuted into a power which can move the world.’ He added, ‘I have not the slightest doubt that any man or woman can achieve what I have, if he or she would make the same effort and cultivate the same hope and faith.’”
(End Quote)

Alright then, a little goodness on meditation. As I finish this podcast, which I've been working on for a couple weeks, I'm going on day 5 of doing a little morning meditation session myself before I start my day. I started with 5 minutes, because I know the first week of beginning something new is really important, but also know it's really hard the first 4 or 5 days to stick with it, so I made the first week totally doable, and I'm going to increase the time to 10 minutes the second week.

Here's a little insight on what I've been doing each morning. I begin by focusing on my breathing, each breath in and each breath out. After doing that for 60-90 seconds, I then start going through everything I'm grateful for in my life, and then, the last minute, I spend manifesting what kind of person I'm going to be when I interact with others. Well, all I can say is, the experiment is working. The last 5 days, I get out of bed after each meditation session, again, only 5 minutes each morning, and I'm happy, excited for the day, and focus all my attention on one thing, just being present moment to moment. And guess what, I've had 5 great days, so I'm not going to change anything, only dedicate a little more time each week to this new habit, and we'll see where it takes me.

Well that concludes another episode of the hockey journey podcast. I can’t thank you enough for stopping by and listening. I hope you enjoyed this segment on Meditation and are curious to learn a little more and maybe see if you want to give it a try? One last thing, If you think there’s someone in your circle of family and friends that might like this episode as well, please share it with just one person, it will really help me in growing this hockey community.

Again, I appreciate you being here, don’t forget to subscribe, rate or submit a review, I hope to see you back here soon, and do me a favor, make someone close to you smile today. All the best my friends!!

What is it and How can it Benefit You? EP50

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