Feel anxious or overwhelmed? Take a moment to listen to this episode.
This episode goes hand in hand with Episode 64 where we talked about interpretations.
We talk about:
- Two reasons you've been “doing it wrong”
- The cumulative effect of meditation
- What it means if you meditate
- Why we can't stop our brain
- I walk you through a quick, easy and effective meditation you can do anywhere
- The question I ask when I start my meditation
- I give you a challenge this week
LINKS MENTIONED
- Free 5-Pack of Guided Meditations These 5 meditations are short and sweet and intended to give you a taste of different styles of guided meditations out there. If you like my voice on the podcast, then you may enjoy these. 🙂
- Soul Roadmap #37: Meditation for People Who Can't Meditate
- SRP #64: Problems & Interpretations
TRANSCRIPT
Hello, my friend. How are you doing today? Are you ready to talk about meditation? I know meditation is probably your favorite topic. It took me a long time to get into meditating regularly, so that is why I wanted to talk about it today. I did a podcast, oh I want to say not quite a year ago on meditation for people who can't met a feat. So that is a more in depth podcast about meditation and if you want to listen to that, it's going to be linked in in the show notes at dinacataldo.com forward slash 65 along with some free guided meditations that are waiting for you there.
But I wanted to take the time out for this particular podcast because I was thinking about meditation and how it is scoffed at by the legal community. It's always something that sounds really nice. Like I hear people say, “Oh yeah, I really want to try that.” “You know, it sounds like it's probably really good.” “I don't have time and I can't meditate. I tried it and it just doesn't work for me.” And I wanted to take the time out to debunk some things that I hear, especially because it has such a huge benefit and I talk about those in the other podcasts. In terms of the last podcast I did, episode 64 we talked about interpretations and meditating really helps us see how the interpretations that we're making of our world are impacting us, and so that's one of the reasons I really wanted to talk about meditation.
I do a whole course on meditation and visualization and the lawyer's soul roadmap. That's something that's going to be rereleased in the upcoming months, so keep an eye out for that. That training to me is so essential because if we do not learn it, if we do not attempt it, we are missing out on so many benefits. And it's not just the health benefits, it's the benefits that we have when it comes to relationships with the people around us. It's the benefits of feeling good. So many people that I talk to, especially those in the legal community, have this underlying anxiousness about them. They're overwhelmed, they feel like they have the weight of the world on their shoulders. And honestly, when I started meditating regularly, I noticed such a huge impact because yes, you can see some influence of meditation on you if you're just doing it a couple minutes one day, but it's a cumulative impact.
So if you start tonight, two minutes before you go to bed, just sitting up straight, and I'll do a whole little demonstration on the podcast and just like breathing for just a minute, maybe to do that every night for a month and you will see a cumulative impact. Now you do say 30 minutes in one night and you might feel really good, but if you don't do it again, then you're not going to have that impact on you. It really impacts our chemistry in our brains, the wavelengths and our brains such that it helps us not only see where we're making false interpretations in the world, but it also helps us slow down our brain enough to pause before we react. Those interpretations. It's really amazing and you know this podcast really goes hand in hand with the last podcast because meditation is like a booster shot to our efforts to understand how our brains working, the interpretations that we're making, the ability to pause and reflect before we react to an interpretation.
That's why this is so important and one of the things that you need to know about meditation is that this is the ultimate act of you helping everyone around you by saying yes to yourself. Usually we say yes to everyone around us. Yes, I will do that for you. Yes, I will take time to do this for you. Yes, I will make this cake for you for the day of your party even though you're finding out about it the night before. Those are all things that we say yes to. So rarely do we stop and say yes to ourselves. “Yes, I'm going to take 10 minutes tonight before I go to bed to just breathe and watch my thoughts.” “Yes, I am going to be quiet with myself for five minutes and I'm not going to do anything else.” I want you to keep in mind that when I walk you through the meditation that I'm going to walk you through today, it's real simple one that the point isn't to shut off your brain because our brain is constantly working.
It's like our heart is constantly beating. How can we possibly expect that our brains going to just shut off and stop thinking? That's not the point of meditation. The point is to learn how to just watch our thoughts and then we can reap the benefits of that meditation in the future because it has that cumulative effect because we'll be able to use what we have gained from meditation in ways that we can't even recognize when we're doing it, so the cumulative effect that I was talking about. While you might notice that good effect after doing it once, I want you to notice that if you do this every single night this week that you are going to be more in control of what you think and then you can start making changes in your life. You're going to notice that you're going to have more time between your thoughts and how you react in a situation and then you can change your behavior quicker and this is something that's important.
If you notice that you snap a lot at people, then take a look at what you're doing. Take a look at are you meditating regularly? I know that when I don't meditate regularly, like if I skip a few days, I definitely noticed an impact. I notice that I'm a little shorter with people and it allows the anxiety that I would have or maybe frustrations that I would have to pop up sooner then they would when I meditate regularly. So that's why I do the best that I can to stick with the regular meditation plan. So it's every night before I go to bed, I meditate. When I do that, I am a much nicer person. I know the people around me notice, but more importantly I notice I noticed the difference between how I behave when I do and don't meditate and that's why I meditate. So I highly encourage you this week, just experiment.
So last week we experimented with watching your thoughts and doing that interpretation worksheet every night. This week I want you to experiment with just finding a couple minutes every day to meditate. It could be morning, noon night for me. I like nighttime meditating because it just feels really good. I'm very relaxed and that's what I want to do right now. I am going to describe for you a very quick meditation. Now remember the point of this is not to fall asleep. So you're gonna want to be seated. You can either be sitting in a chair, you could be sitting on a pillow, whatever feels comfortable to you. And if you're in a car, don't do this obviously cause you need to drive. But if you are someplace where you can do this, maybe in your office, you can have your feet planted on the ground, your palms facing up and your hands are just resting on your thighs.
I like to sit on a pillow and I sit cross legged. I put my knees so that they are lower than my hips. And then I rest my hands on my knees with the palms facing up. And then you're just going to close your eyes and breathe. And when you're breathing, just notice your breath going in and out. Let's do that for a few breaths and you're going to have your eyes closed. And as you do that, you're going to recognize that there are other spots in your body that could use a little attention that could be relaxed a bit more. So just start scanning your body. Maybe it's the space between your eyes, your job, your shoulders, and just release. Every time you exhale, I'm going to release something else so you can just do this for a minute. I noticed the difference when I do this for extended periods of time.
Yes, I will meditate anywhere from two minutes if I'm not having a great day to 30 minutes, it doesn't really matter, especially if you're just starting out. Just do it for a couple of minutes. You don't have to be sitting on a mountain top for this, have any impact on you, so just take a few moments every single day to do this and just watch your thoughts and you're going to notice that they're crazy thoughts and that's okay. Just breathe, just follow your breath in and out and then if you want to get a free five pack of guided meditations and to really learn more about the benefits of meditations, go to Dina cataldo.com forward slash 65 there. You're going to find the podcast I did on meditation. For people who can't meditate, you're going to find those free meditation or guided meditations, which I know a lot of people I talked to find really helpful because they don't know what to do and it's really not that hard.
I just want you to know that. Just take a few minutes. That's it, and this is the best way you can show yourself. I think that you really matter and if you're working on that, if you are working on showing yourself that you really matter, I highly encourage you to start this practice because by acting on your own behalf, you're reinforcing how much you matter. So I really hope that you take this to heart and that you start meditating regularly and it doesn't matter what it looks like. If anything, what I want you to take away is if you do this for a couple minutes a night, you're going to be just fine. That's going to make all the difference in the world. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day and I will talk to you soon. Bye.