by AmyD | Nov 29, 2018 | mindset, Sports Performance
In my last blog post, I discussed how meditation impacts your brain, and ways long-term meditation can strengthen the brain against aging. Mental awareness impacts the brain and physical performance. The thoughts we tell ourselves can become reality, a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Take for example, the L.A. Clippers. They have been plagued by what has been dubbed “bad luck.” According to Shaun Powell, the Clippers NBA team is often plagued by bad luck; however, some of the team’s woes have roots in poor management. The L.A. Clippers aren’t reaching their peak performance due to embracing a negative mindset. They’re prone to injuries, setbacks, and failure. When those occur, they blame the team’s bad luck history, a mindset that is self-fulfilling.
Professional athletes aren’t the only ones who suffer from the lack of mental discipline and blockages to success. Meditation and mindset are important to overcome these blocks to self-fulfillment and success. Self awareness will help you to understand how to work out environmental factors that might be impeding your performance. Investment in yoga and meditation can improve mental fortitude and focus.
Many CEOs and entrepreneurs also utilize meditation in their business practices as well as personal lives. According to Business Insider, Panda Express Founder, Andrew Cherng, said of meditation, “I want to fix my people from the inside.” He once stopped a business meeting to encourage an upset manager to meditate. Entrepreneur and Def Jam Founder, Russell Simmons, credits transcendental meditation with changing his life. He said, “It has changed my experiences in meditation and therefore my life.” Another example, Green Mountain Coffee Roaster founder, Robert Stiller, brought in meditation instructors for his employees. He said, “Meditation helps develop your abilities to focus better and to accomplish your tasks.” For these individuals, their success is connected to meditation and positive mindset.
With so many successful individuals using meditation to stay focused and move beyond unproductive situations, bad luck, and inherited mindsets, it seems a no-brainer to implement. The lyrics “if it weren’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all” have been sung by the likes of Ray Charles, BB King and on a regular clip from HeeHaw, a 1970s variety show. As in the case with the Clippers, some simply buy-in to the prevailing mindset of bad luck. It then becomes all too easy to validate. What you believe is what you look to validate.
If you’re in a career that requires you to be on top of your game, at all times and all places, meditation and mental conditioning is what puts you at a competitive advantage. Ask me about Peak Performance Mentoring that can catapult you to a place among the elites. Visit my contact page or email me at [email protected]. I look forward to hearing from you!
by AmyD | Sep 23, 2018 | Mindfulness, Success
In 2012, the New York Giants’ future seemed destined to end without a post-season berth. They were 7-7 and drowning in penalties, sloppy play, and low morale. After a particularly awful game, the next night the players attended chapel. There high school teacher, Gian Paul Gonzalez, spoke to them about being all in. According to Gonzalez, when playing poker and you feel confident in your hand, you go all in. Being all in became their rallying cry to action, and a call for each member of the organization to re-evaluate their commitment to success. Gonzalez challenged them to be their best selves. The Giants’ team players successfully went on to win the Super Bowl. When you know you have a winning hand, you don’t hesitate to take the risk. That’s the feeling leaders should inspire in those around them and in themselves whether they can clearly see the winning hand or not.
Throughout the course of our lives, we lose focus. At those times, we don’t present our best. That loss comes for a variety of reasons. For example, during the last few weeks, many have been tested by the throes of Mother Nature. Hurricanes, wildfires, and earthquakes have left many in our communities feeling harried. In these challenging moments, we have two choices—to present our best or not.
When we shift our energies from a negative focus, we reconnect to our goals. We can do so via mediation, helping others, and utilizing the team around us. When we do, we find success. We are able to rediscover inspiration and reignited spark. We must avoid being swept away in the sea of emotion that forces us to lose sight of the shore. Having a solid team to hold you accountable can help us remain tethered to our being our best.
One of the other ways we can remain focused is to train our brain to be focused on a singular task. According to David Rock, co-founder of the NeuroLeadership Institute, we should train our brain like a muscle. The ideal of multitasking has trained our brain to be unfocused. To train our brains to focus, we should start by spending small chunks of time concentrating on completing a singular task. Practice daily. If your mind wanders, redirect it back to the task at hand. Increase the time as you would when implementing a new workout regimen.
Another way to remain focused, in addition to brain exercises and mediation, is to pay attention to where you do your best work. According to Rock, most people do their best thinking when not in an office. So, pay attention to the location in which you are most focused. These are your touchstones, your focal points. Revisit these areas when you feel unconnected and need to reconnect to your goals.
When you feel unfocused or drifting from your goals, be an advocate for yourself. Seek out your team to help you reconnect and recommit. Getting the help you need when you need it is part of the success. That success can in turn, lead you to being your best. And, keep in mind, your team is generally well defined when you consider work, but in personal matters, your team can be advocates from a wide range of family, friends and even acquaintances that share a mutual concern or interest. Remember to accept your advocates and support from those unlikely sources so you can maintain your Power of Yes.
by AmyD | Oct 6, 2017 | Entrepreneurship, Mindfulness
Bridges are constructed to make connections. We make connections every day in our professional and private lives. As long as the beams and foundation of those bridges remain intact, we remain comfortable as we travel them daily. We grow to trust them. They’re familiar, thus we feel safe leaving them as they are.
When those proverbial bridges begin to break down or destabilize, they threaten our mental and emotional safety. We can clearly see the danger. We recognize it, and we know we must make a decision. Often times when making decisions, we become mired in the bog of indecision, unable to move forward. The larger the decision, the harder it is for us to put our car into drive. We’re parked on a bridge that’s failing us. Or we’re at the onset of a new road, and unable to select a path. Many of life’s natural situations can create this huge indecision: marriage, relocation, promotion.
Dan Caldwell, the co-founder and president of TapouT, said, “Burn the bridges behind you.” Once the bridge is burned, even if it is rebuilt, it’s never the same. While this may sound like a negative, it is in fact, an act of commitment. Think about how fully that speaks to your commitment once you’ve burned the bridge of the past interactions and entanglements.
Now you’re dedicated to the new path presented before you. That means you’re positioned to be the best. It means being the first on the field, the court, or in the cubicle, and the last to leave. By leaving those bridges behind, we build relationships, sometimes from existing ones and sometimes from new ones. We may need those new bridges to last a lifetime, like in marriage, or for the duration of a career. Regardless, we must possess the mental flexibility and the courage to pursue new goals and new paths fully. Practicing this art of burning bridges to create full commitment will manifest what we desire.
We discover new relationships and opportunities by being strategic. We must also be open to receiving them when they become available and patient when they are not. Mental flexibility begins when we make time. When we let go of our physical fears and frustrations, we can see the path, the one we’ve chosen, more clearly. Once we acknowledge that we are more than our material possessions, we expand into something greater. A practice of meditation and reflection can guide us to this place.
Dan Caldwell’s philosophy is what he calls, “No Plan B.” The idea is you attack your life without the idea of a safety net and burning the bridges behind you. By doing so, you are dedicated to the path or choice you’ve selected. Whether that be entrepreneurship or walking down the aisle, you are committed to seeing it through. In his words, “It doesn’t matter what your past was, your future is what you want to be.”
In reading this blog, does it make you think of your next journey? Find clarity and the ability to connect and commit by reaching out to me, AmyD, the Peak Performance Expert and Trainer.
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by AmyD | Apr 25, 2017 | Leadership, Mindfulness, Spirituality, Success
In my last blog post, I discussed how your emotions impact your physical health. Your body is an entire system of thought, that communicates with itself so it can heal from illness and injury. Right now I’d like to shed more light on how mental awareness and long term meditation not only impact your brain, but also your mental and physical performance.
Studies reveal that meditation has an age-defying impact on the the brain. Those who commit to long-term meditation have more gray matter in the regions of their brain that are responsible for sensory perception, memory and decision-making. Older meditators, around 50 years old, had the same amount of gray matter in their cortex as 25-year-olds.
Whether you’re a professional athlete or a CEO, you can benefit from habitual meditation and awareness exercises, which not only strengthen your brain against the impacts of aging, but also increase your peak performance. Here’s how:
Hyper-Awareness
My clients who practice meditation and mental awareness report dramatic, positive changes in their perceptions. Through a disciplinary practice, they’ve cultivated a mindset that is clear, free from distraction, and responsive to changes in their environment. My professional athletes in particular have integrated mental awareness into their physical training regimen. The increased awareness of their surroundings allows them to anticipate their opponent’s next move with more precision than before. They know the drill. They can predict, with laser-like accuracy, when their opponent is interrupting the flow that they’ve established through their mental and physical rituals.
This altered state, called a “flow state” by experts, elevates them to a peak performance that gives them the ultimate advantage over their opponent.
Physical Well-being
Meditation inhibits chemicals like cortisol, which are associated with chronic stress. Stress hormones like cortisol and epinephrine wreak havoc on our bodies, and keep our brains from sustaining that healthy gray matter so crucial to our mental focus and our memories. Chronic stress also creates a buildup of negative energy in our bodies which increase wear-and-tear. It’s why some professional athletes report being more injury prone when they’ve stopped meditating or practicing mental awareness.
Long term meditation can act as preventative for the harmful stress placed on the body. Discipline in the art of meditation and mental awareness allows you to react quickly and gracefully to everything around you. You begin to “think on your feet,” which prevents career-ruining injuries and promotes the holistic healing of your body, mind, and spirit.
If you’re in a career that requires you to be on top of your game, at all times and all places, meditation and mental conditioning is what puts you at a competitive advantage. Ask me about Peak Performance Mentoring that can catapult you to a place among the elites. Visit my contact page or email me at [email protected]. I look forward to hearing from you!
by AmyD | Apr 13, 2017 | Health
Recent studies have shown that negative emotional and mental states, including anxiety and depression, can increase your risk of injury or illness. Professional athletes in particular are susceptible to these devastating self-fulfilling prophecies. Did you know that athletes who are stressed out about getting sick are 5 times more likely to get injured?
The good news about self-fulfilling prophecies is that they have the opposite effect. You can re-direct your emotions and your thoughts so that you can be free of illness and injury. If you’re a professional athlete, these techniques can make or break your success as a competitor. Here’s how it works.
Each part of our body sends out a chemical signature, an energy vibration that directs other parts of our bodies to follow its lead. For better or for worse, depending on our emotions, this phenomena creates a perfect symbiosis. For example, it’s proven that stress hormones, fueled by negative mental states, actually increase your risk for heart disease, diabetes, and obesity.
Catabolic energy that arises from negative mental states also manifests as pain. You know that tight, squeezing feeling you get in your chest, when you’re in emotional distress? That feeling is caused by trapped energy lodging itself into your emotional core, forming what’s called a Heart Wall.
We often think of the mind and body as separate. This is a figment of our collective imagination. There is no boundary between the mind and the body, because every part of the body has neuro-pathways that are perfect communication with all the other parts. Did you know there are so many neurons in our gut that scientists actually call it our “second brain”? The body is an entire system of thought, and that means that we have more control over what occurs within it than we ever imagined.
Instead of increasing our risk of injury or illness through negative mental states, we can encourage our body to maintain it’s health and well-being by giving off positive, anabolic energy signals instead. For example, if you practice the art of gratitude even when you’re sick or injured, your body will follow suit- acting as if you’ve already been healed and are well!
It’s up to you. You can either manifest disease and injury, or healing and wellness. If you’re a professional athlete, the choice is pretty clear.
How can you improve your physical health? Here are the very basic ways that all individuals, athletes and non-athletes alike, can begin manifesting positive energy today:
- Exercise regularly
- Get plenty of sleep
- Meditate and practice mindfulness
- Maintain well-balanced diet
- Practice gratitude
- Practice mental resilience
Some of us must be free from illness or injury in order to advance our professional careers. If you’d like an Energy Assessment, to find out where your energy is blocked and preventing you from abundant physical and emotional health, visit my website and send me a message on my contact page. Let’s start this journey together, today.
