Interested in meditation? Tried to start meditation before, but couldn't developt the habit?

You're not alone, it can be hard to build the regular habit, however, it does not have to be.

In this bite-sized session we talk through why meditiation is a key habit for high performing individuals and walk through some practical steps for you to follow to ACTUALLY starting regular meditation. 

Now is your time to start mentally training yourself and unlock your true potential. Let's do this! 

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Additional Meditation Resources:

• Book - "Everywhere You Go, There You Are" by John Kabat-Zinn
• Book - "The Practicing Mind' by Thomas M. Sterner
• Apps to help - Search for  "Calm"  and  "Headspace"
• Blog - "The Magic of Mindfullness" by Tim Ferriss
• Podcast - The Tim Ferriss Show, Sam Harris on Mediatation and Neuroscience

Have more resources you'd like to share? Comment below, would love to see them!

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-------- Below is the transcription of the video ---------

Hello! Hello!

Welcome to Keyy.io Bite-Sized-Bits where we serve up bite sized ideas to help unlock your true potential. Today we are talking about some practical thoughts on how to start meditating and why one would start meditating in the first place.

So, my name is Luke Summerfield. You can see for those watching YouTube behind me I am coming to you live from Harvard Yard in Boston Massachusetts, USA just down there where I live in the state. So, I want to start off by just talking about why would one want to meditate and I think there’s few different ways that you can approach this question depending how you want to get of it. The frame of reference that I am going to talk about is the idea of how do we and the world of technology, this world of stressful jobs, situations as work.  Trying to be high performer within job within family and all those things. how do we take the idea of meditation as a way to mentally train ourselves. Just like we go to the gym, we physically train ourselves, to become better from our physical same point how do we mentally train ourselves. So, that’s the context that I am going to about how do we mentally train ourselves then applied at into better performance mentally and other areas of our life.

So, this is idea of , you know think about why you want to meditate, this is idea of having essentially within your brain, you have two voices, two prospective. You have prospective Okay here’s the world I am observing and here’s kind of high level what I am seeing and then you have the other areas okay what my reaction to that. How do I go out and talk to that. So, its kind of think it is you have your stimulus and other side you have your response. I think it is very much stimulus side of the brain is monkey brain, that the side of the brain see something and has this immediate reaction. And the other side we have kind of reflection this response side, okay how do we take that and respond t it. And very much many of you, myself included before starting meditation I started about 2 years ago meditating 20 minutes every morning.

Those two things were very inseparable, they were very together and it has only once the stimulus that came it, this problem. Your boss sent you an email, your co-worker sent to you something, your husband, and wife or significant other said something this stimulus came to you and immediately you have theses response really processing that information.

And the interesting thing is this comes from Victor Franklin book. He talked about that the beauty we human have that we can actually separate these two moments. And between that two moments from your stimulus to response that area in between is where we determine our outcome. We can determine that response and that’s what separates us apart from animal, that’s what separates us apart from many different people.

I see that the way I look at it that meditation and being mindful of your thought is the way for you to expand the window between the stimulus and responses that you can better determine what responses that I should give, what is the way that I should interpret with that and perform. So that’s kind of high level answer of course you can take that and applied to many different ways.

I have noticed it in my personal life that meditation opening that window up where I have that stimulus and responses allow me to better adopt, better deal with stressful situation, It will help me with areas with I need to be mindful about what’s going on in my life.

If I am trying to grow in certain situation, I can be mindful and cognisant when I am settling, when I am stagnating, when I am not growing anymore because I can interpret with those thinking. Now there’s bunch of other reason the why you would do it again. I think just the idea of stimulus and response meditation allowing you to open up and be more cognisant on your thought so that you can have better idea of how to respond to it. Again there can be many many different things.

So the question becomes I heard it a lot and I struggle with it a lot is how do you get start with meditation. Even if you are into the kind of WuWu, which I think is cool I am into that for some degree. But if you are just looking the practical I want to start implementing this in my life, practical application how do I start with meditation.

When I start it maybe lot of you watching this you struggle with, taking it in a practice. All of a sudden you think like okay I have to get a strict routine 20 minutes every morning, 20 minutes every night or I have to do this long, hour long or even weekend retreats so the things like that truly gets benefit from meditation. Here’s the formula that really worked for me and I think you can take this, take some golden nuggets out of this and find a formula that will help you get start with it.

So, after failing try to get meditating by doing this long half hour strength of trying to meditate, I decided to break it down and go for bite sized chunks. So what I did was I started by finding a song, you know we have this idea that you need to be completely silent, there can’t be any sound you have to be in your mind, kind of sitting there upright and all that. It’s true that where we want to get to but to start to jump into and go to that level is hard. So, what I did is I found a 3-5 minutes song that when I listen to that song it was very calming, it allowed me to pull myself from my day to day get into it almost like trance like state where I can calms me.

It relies certain emotion in my brain that’s very calming, relaxing and reflecting. So, I found a song that’s ambiance voice, there’s no vocal, no drum or anything like that. There’s a smooth ambiance noise for you who knows maybe it is AC/DC or you know it’s something totally different. So you need to pick what type of songs release those emotions in your brain. And then all you do is honestly you could sit in a chair, when I first started I sat up against a wall, I sat my bed against the wall. You could sit in a chair, you could just go right to free sitting. I notice for me personally without putting my back against the wall. ..my back was just started to ache about 2 minutes in and that’s all I could think about that is in itself a good mental exercise and how to recenter your thoughts.

As you get into that but when you first starting it out you don’t want to jump right into that. So, I start into that and literally I just sat, I was very calm, you could start by listening to the song also then pulling back into your breathing. When you think about the air coming through your nose and inhale-exhale through your nose I really focused on that point of air going in and out. And anytime your mind starts wondering, thinking about things like we say “oh it’s bad, you shouldn’t do that”. You might should be clear but the reality when you start it like that’s going to happen and that’s okay. But the goal is you notice when it happens, you notice thoughts, when you are thinking about the things of the day and then be able to say okay this is what I am thinking of, that’s okay.

Let's put that in my back pocket, lets think about that later, let’s just back in and start focusing on your breathing. That’s really where the key is, when you first start up. It’s not necessarily completely going that whole time without thinking about the things. It’s being noticing, it’s being mindful when your mind thinking about the things how do you pull it back that’s the key. That’s the great skill that later down the road you can start separating that stimulus and response because you start seeing how your mind is thinking before your mind respond. So that’s how I started which is just stayed 4minutes song and after while once I got comfortable with that I get through the whole song, my mind was feeling pretty good then I added another song to the player.

Now I have two songs then I have three songs and you know it was maybe a month with a song then a month with two songs, then a month with three songs and four months in I am up to 20 minutes songs and that was really great way for me to slowly progress to that. The next step once you get to that point now what I did was I started decreasing the volume of the songs. So I started with just kind of back ran noise and I slowly made it quieter and quieter and quieter so that over time it's barely noticeable if it at all.

And once I got through that then I was at a point I could sit without the songs. And now it’s just me and my thoughts. And again even to these days 2 years later I still wonder my minds all the time that’s totally okay, I just need to be cognisant in where and when it wonders and pull it back into where in my breathing and into being mindful when my thoughts are wondering. Now here’s one other last little thing that I want to throughout here and will wrap it out for today.

I think again we start off with the idea of whole goal of when you do mediation properly, it’s so quiet, it’s just you and your thoughts and I think that’s a good place to work when you are first start but that’s not the end goal. So what I mean by that when you think of when you first start you go through that activity, you going through and adding songs even if it’s not completely silent, you back up against the wall, it’s not kind of the thing you dealing with for meditation but eventually you get it where you can win yourself, get to a point where you sitting yourself in silence. It’s just you and yourself, you trying to be mindful. Now the end goal though is to not to be able to take that response, take that type of mental thinking to be able to apply that in any situation.

That’s the key, so true people in my opinion, in my experience who are true masters at this are able to be in menace crazy situation. You know they just found out they are faulted all alone, they are in this crazy storm and after figure out what they need to do, they are battling with all kind of factors and all those chaos, noises all these things coming out them, they able to centred out their thoughts, pull back their mind, be calm and be able to determine okay how can I process this things that are coming into and to have a good outcomes.

I think that’s the ultimate goal to work overtime to be able to take that training that you are doing in isolation without variables, without all that craziness in that but be able to eventually work with, being very very mindful in those crazy situation. So, that’s kind of next step once you get comfortable being mindful within those quiet zone, you start going to that state in other areas in life, in construction zone, go for a walk, do those things. Your mind will be very cognisant, being able to pull things back in and interpret it.

So that’s what I have for you today. Hopefully you enjoyed it some practical tips on how to get started with meditation and why you would want to do that. If you did find it helpful and you think other people would feel free please share with friends, colleague, family members that may be interested in it. Make sure you subscribe either YouTube or Podcast both of them depending on the platform you prefer and check out Keyy.io for more great tools, resources and trainings to help you unlock your true potential.
Thanks so much. Talk to you soon.