Mindfulness Mode
 

Mindfulness Mode

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Increase your calm, focus and happiness so you can be more relaxed, contented and satisfied with your life. For business, entrepreneurs, educators, parents. Hosted by Bruce Langford.

Episodes

213 Social Media Mindfulness With Melinda Wittstock

May 3, 2017

May 3, 2017

40 min

Melinda Wittstock is an entrepreneur, journalist, and wonderful example of a mindful person. She runs a company called Verifeed, which uses story and true authenticity to help engage and convert new customers. She not only keeps her company running smoothly, she’s also a traveler, dog owner, and incredible mom. While keeping all these balls in the air, she has a regular routine that includes meditation, exercise, ample sleep, and a generous amount of time with friends.

Contact Info

  • Website: www.Verifeed.com
  • Special Offer: Free Consultation With Melinda Text the word 'Tribal' to 44222 We will help you find your believer tribe. This is for anyone wanting to learn more about how to use Social Intelligence to advance their business.
  • Email: info@verifeed.com

Most Influential Person

  • Trish Whynot, Therapist. Also Brene Brown, author.

Effect on Emotions

  • Level. Like not being guided by emotions. Realizing that emotions are not me. Thoughts are not me, they're passing things. I don't feel like I'm ruled by my emotions. I'd like to think of mindfulness as consciousness.

Thoughts on Breathing

  • That's huge. Just being able to relax and being observant and in the moment. Breathing is critical.  Ujjaji breath is a type of deep breathing I got into through yoga. With the 'Whole Aponopono' I've been doing there is a kind of box breath, where you breathe in and you hold it and then you're breathing out and you're holding it and it becomes meditative.

Suggested Resources

Bullying Story

  • I was the kid who was different in every way you could possibly imagine. I was the first kid to have divorced parents in my neighborhood and it made me very sensitive.
  • Some of my report cards say that I would just cry. Well, of course, because my whole life was just crazy back then.
  • I was also the tallest kid and kind of skinny. I competed in figure skating which meant that I missed a lot of school. So I was different on these accounts.
  • I used to get bullied and I used to have this sense of shame like there's something wrong with me. The issue with bullying is that it can last.
  • Speaking of limiting beliefs, that's the kind of thing that you can carry with you for your whole life.
  • It can leave you with the sense of 'I'm not enough' or 'I can't do it'; even if they're unconscious thoughts. These things sometimes happen very subtly.

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212 Transforming Lives With The Kindness Diaries Host, Leon Logothetis

Apr 30, 2017

Apr 30, 2017

22 min

Leon Logothetis is a global adventurer. He left behind the life of a stockbroker to break new ground and experience new discoveries. He’s now visited more than 50 countries and traveled to every continent on the planet. When anybody says the word kindness, I literally think of Leon - He’s the host of a terrific TV series called ‘The Kindness Diaries’, which has the subtitle; One Man’s Quest to Ignite Goodwill and Transform Lives Around the World. Before that, he had a show called the 'Amazing Adventures Of A Nobody', which follows Leon on his adventures travelling in America, The UK, and Europe on just $5, $5 pounds or $5 Euros a day. The bottom line is, Leon is all about kindness and helping others and of course that connects directly to the subject of mindfulness.

Contact Info

Most Influential Person

  • A teacher I went with on a journey to India a couple of years ago.

[show-notes-influence]

Effect on Emotions

  • Mindfulness has affected my emotions by enabling me to become more balanced and more centered.  And by enabling me to make better decision and not be so reactive.

Thoughts on Breathing

  • I never really realized the importance of breathing until I started doing mindfulness.
  • Often we forget, it sounds silly, but we forget to breathe.
  • I notice now as I give this talk, I'm actually breathing very shallowly. That's not good.  When I breathe as fully as possible, it kind of invigorates me.
  • Breathing is a really powerful and important part of mindfulness.

Suggested Resources

Bullying Story

  • As a kid, I felt very disconnected. At school I was bullied very badly. I had very few friends. I would go to school and feel profoundly alone.
  • Not just the kids were bullying, but the teachers as well, which I could never understand. It was very disempowering.
  • I made a commitment to myself that I would do my very best never to disempower someone but to empower them.
  • When it comes to kindness, people at school specifically were unkind and I didn't understand. I thought, why are you doing this to me? Why are you behaving like this?
  • I made a commitment that I would give back to people, come from a place of love. That's really how it all began.
  • I could have dealt with this bullying better by sharing my pain with my parents and with other people that loved me, and I never did. Not until I was 16 or 17. When I started to share it, things started to shift.

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211 Change Your Thinking, Change Your Body With Lucia Ferraro

Apr 26, 2017

Apr 26, 2017

46 min

Lucia Ferraro is a people person; passionate about connecting, learning and growing. One of her specialties is weight loss and her mission is to build a community of women (and men) who have experienced sustainable weight loss by fostering good relationships with food and their bodies. She’ll help you use the power of your mind to change the way you think, so you can change the way you feel. Lucia has created a summit called Change Your Thinking, Change Your Body which will feature 28 speakers who focus not only on how to take care of our bodies, but how to have a healthier mind and spirit.

Contact Info

Most Influential Person

  • Tony Robbins

[show-notes-influence]

Effect on Emotions

  • Mindfulness has helped me. The emotions that stand out are always the negative ones.
  • In this space that I'm in, I've reconciled just by talking to my mother's picture. I reconciled our relationship that I didn't see. I realized my role and responsibility in that.
  • Mindfulness has shifted everything even though she's passed. It was a moment of surrender. I released my mother from that.

Thoughts on Breathing

  • I breathe when I take time to meditate and I definitely breathe when I'm walking.
  • I will put on a certain song or instrumental music and I can focus in on my breathing and my tempo. I find that important even when I'm teaching my class.
  • There's a way to do it, like when we do abdominals. I'm always telling people, 'hold your abs like I'm going to punch you in the stomach'.
  • There's something about the way you need to breathe so that your body performs the way you want it to perform. Oxygen needs to go to your muscles so that you can do an aerobic activity

Suggested Resources

Bullying Story

  • I personally wasn't bullied by an external source but I certainly bullied the crap out of myself.
  • It was the 'not enoughness' things. It was the quest for perfection. And the 'why can you get to that?'
  • I needed to attend to the self-care of me because I realized that I would be able to parent better and also take care of Lucia. I modelled what that needed to look like to my children.
  • I bullied myself in the thoughts; the thoughts were thugs.
  • The thoughts that could come up and nurture me, were pushed down for sure.
  • Everything comes down to nurturing and honoring yourself.

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210 Purposeful Millionaire Success Story with James Nowlin

Apr 23, 2017

Apr 23, 2017

39 min

James Nowlin is a successful businessman, author and mindful entrepreneur. At age 26 as a corporate attorney, he walked away from a six-figure practice as an attorney to start his own business, Excel Global Partners. Later he faced the challenge of dealing with the economic downturn, but forged ahead, becoming even stronger and wiser while growing the company to greater successes. In 2012 he barely made it through a near-death drowning accident on a stormy lake while kayaking with a friend. That was a major change-point in his life and he has not only become stronger, he now helps others live lives that are more purposeful, abundant, and epic than they ever imagined.

Contact Info

Most Influential Person

  • Dr. Robert S. Brown (University of Virginia College Professor and Mentor)

Effect on Emotions

  • Mindfulness has affected my emotions in such a way that there is control. In business, I feel that I had a competitive advantage when it comes to negotiating because I bring mindfulness to the table. (See Thoughts on Breathing below).
  • So mindfulness is not about ignoring emotions or putting those emotions in your pocket, it's about controlling things for the situation. For me, it's manifested itself in such a way that I can take control of the situation and end up being in the position of power and the universe and others respond to me because of my control of those emotions.
  • I bring mindfulness to everything that I do in order to, not ignore emotions, but to tap in to a higher purpose and a greater understanding of how emotions can serve us. They can serve us very poorly or they can serve us very well. I want my emotions to serve me well.

Thoughts on Breathing

  • When somebody wants something out of a negotiation and I want something out of a negotiation, I will take a second at that boardroom table and breathe, to inhale for ten seconds, to hold it, to exhale for ten seconds.
  • To slow down my thought process and to move from the reactive which is in the emotional part of the brain to the rational side of the brain.
  • By doing that I am elevating the conversation and I'm changing the tone that I'm speaking in and the other person elevates their conversation and I'm changing  their tone. So the entire conversation changes.
  • Mindfulness in traffic means breathing as well. When someone cuts me off now, I can laugh, instead of wanting to curse or flick that person off. I even talk about road rage in the book and about distracted drivers.

Suggested Resources

Bullying Story

  • Mindfulness started for me at a very young age. The bullying taught me to be mindful.
  • Being in a household in which some of the circumstances were just dreadful forced me to be mindful. I didn't know what it was called back then but I knew that if I spent time alone, if I closed the door to the room, and if I just sat in silence, that something about me changed.
  • The vibrations within my body and the vibrations within my mind actually changed.
  • That practice has translated into other areas of my life including when I went to college I had the opportunity to study under Dr. Robert S. Brown who is a mentor to me to this day. 

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209 Hug Your Bully To Your Heart Urges Lily Wong

Apr 19, 2017

Apr 19, 2017

40 min

Lily Wong is a teacher, podcaster, and a world traveler who strives to find ways to give back. Her life’s journey has been fascinating and she continues to add shimmering layers to her experiences. Her Chinese podcast called, Learn English So You Can Travel has been downloaded more than 20 million times, and is recorded in her native language of Mandarin. Her newest podcast is called ‘Fly With Lily where she shares bits of her life’s story so listeners can benefit from her beautiful story-telling abilities.

Contact Info

Most Influential Person

  • Dr. Wayne Dyer

Effect on Emotions

  • A lot of people might be jealous of my life right now because I can do whatever I want and I can go wherever I want but travel is not always so sexy. I find [I can be] very negative or very anxious. I was constantly looking for a place to stay and when people tell me, oh sorry, Lilly you can't stay here anymore because my parents are coming to visit, you need to find your own place. That message makes me feel very anxious; makes me feel not loved. I think mindfulness makes me feel like I can recognize these messages. They can be a trigger to my past. I can work on that next time when I hear the same thing. How do I transfer; how do I make it different?

Thoughts on Breathing

  • Breathing - I haven't thought about that. Especially breathing during meditation where they ask me to notice my breathing. I also like to practice yoga as well. I notice that I kind of held my breath when I practice yoga. Then I ask myself to breathe more; to enjoy the air when it's morning. Breathing is kind of like a tool to help you to live in the moment.

Suggested Resources

Bullying Story

  • When I was a teenager I was at the lowest point in my life because I was so focused on myself and I constantly liked to beat myself up. I wanted to; I liked to beat myself up. Then I wrote a lot of suicidal messages in my journal. I felt I was in the dark. I felt really good to beat myself up.
  • When I was a student I got all straight A's and I worked really hard but deep inside I was not happy. Several people liked to pick on me. They called me names and they tried to hit me.
  • They wanted to do stuff to me and I was scared but I also found myself fearless at some points because I was already beating myself up. What worse could happen? It was that mindset that helped me avoid physical abuse.
  • After a few years, I learned that people who bully people; they are actually the biggest bullies to themselves. They say mean stuff to others in order to make them feel good. In my head, I was judging people and I was judging myself too. I'm much better now; I don't judge people so much. I can really tell whether my message is from my ego or my intuition or from love.
  • If you've experienced a bullying in your life, I want you to hug those bullies in your heart. Try to be nice to those bullies in your heart. Try to see them as your family in your heart.

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208 Hurtful Experiences Can Lead To Nuggets of Growth Says Jared Angaza

Apr 16, 2017

Apr 16, 2017

44 min

Jared Angaza is a philanthropist, philosopher, and all around mindful individual. He has an amazing ability to create brands, innovate, and think outside of the box as a way to help people and organizations he believes in from the heart. And Jared truly has heart, beyond what most of us can imagine. He loves to discuss consciousness, culture, andscience. Jared is the host and creator of the Inipi Radio Podcast. The Inipi ceremony is a type of sweat lodge; a Lakota purification ceremony, and one of the Seven Sacred Rites of the Lakota people. It is an ancient and sacred ceremony of the Lakota people and has been passed down through the generations of Lakota. We talk a lot about philanthropy, science, consciousness, politics, and culture.

Contact Info

Most Influential Person

  • Lau Tzu and also my daughter

Effect on Emotions

  • I am a passionate dude and have always been that way. Consequently, I've struggled with rage and angst. Being mindful has helped me to step down off that. People like Pema Chodron have taught me not to take the bait and to step down from that rage, and not to kill it, not to squelch it, but to learn to transmute it into love.

Thoughts on Breathing

  • Yes, [breathing has been part of my mindfulness] probably most over the last year. I had this chant going on in my head, I don't really know where it came from. It was, 'find your breath'. It was coupled with this other mantra which I deliberately put together of, 'In this stillness, I am'. So 'in the stillness I am also able to find my breath and to become more still. Right now I'm practicing counting my breaths as I'm meditating which has helped a lot.

Suggested Resources

Bullying Story

  • I don't think I was ever directly bullied in the traditional bully sense. However, I was ostracized at times because of my creative nature; because of not doing well in school.

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207 The Future of Happiness With Amy Blankson

Apr 12, 2017

Apr 12, 2017

42 min

Amy Blankson is a happiness researcher and consultant. She has worked with Google, NASA, and the U.S. Army and also served as a professor in Oprah’s Happiness course. Amy has been acknowledged by two former U.S. presidents for creating a
movement to activatepositive culture change. Increased technology can interfere with our efforts to be mindful and Amy’s recent book entitled, The Future of Happiness [5 Modern Strategies for Balancing Productivity and Well-Being in the Digital Era], addresses this issue head on.

Contact Info

Most Influential Person

  • Chandra Moyer, Life Coach

Effect on Emotions

  • Mindfulness calms my mind and helps me to be able to deal with deeper emotions in a more measured and thoughtful way through balance and just being able to take a step back and see myself from the outside so that I can choose a different path for myself.

Thoughts on Breathing

  • Breathing is crucial to my mindfulness. Breathing is something that I tend to stop doing in the moment when I get stressed out. I don't even realize that I am getting more and more anxious and intense. Because I'm an anxious person naturally, breath is the absolute most essential key to helping me to get oxygen into my system so that I can think clearly and straightly. It's amazing and super important.

Suggested Resources

Thoughts on Breathing

  • A couple of weeks ago I was at the Wisdom 2.0 conference in San Francisco, and by far the best speaker that I heard at the conference was Jewel, the singer-songwriter. Jewel talked about how when she was younger; she had a lot of family trauma going on in her world.

  • Alcohol, abuse, parents in and out of her life and it led her to being rough and tough and she wound up, at the age of 16, living out of her car for quite some time till her car was stolen.

  • It was one thing after another of awful things happening to this poor girl who didn't have a lot of support in her life at that point. She stumbled upon mindfulness and meditation at that young age as a way to deal with this world around her.

  • She talked about how she found herself in the dressing room one day where she was trying to steal a dress and she was trying to hide it under her clothes by stuffing this dress that she found in a store window. She loved it. She was stuffing it into her jeans pants and trying to put a big jacket on over her outfit because she just felt this was something she couldn't live without, and it would make her world so much happier.

  • It was a lovely white dress that made her feel clean again. As she was doing that, she looked into the mirror, and she realized who she'd become and how it had recreated this cycle of poverty and this systemic violence and thought pattern that she didn't want to have in her life.

  • She said that she felt like she had gotten to that place in her life through mindfulness. Even at that young age there was so much going on in her world; the ability to step back and see herself from the outside really created a different perspective on her life.

  • She talked about how she was that bully. She was the individual who was trying to protect herself from so many things entering her world and encroaching on her own sense of self-efficacy and self-worth that she reacted and responded.

  • I think that really spoke volumes to me about how she was able to come to that place of awareness. I think it's not always such an elevated story. We often hear young people who are going through the bullying process, and you try to steal yourself against the bully.

  • Mindfulness really makes me think about how the bully can transform.

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206 Love Yourself Says Can I Pick Your Brain Host, Daniel Gefen

Apr 9, 2017

Apr 9, 2017

59 min

Daniel Gefen is an online entrepreneur who has had crazy, wild successes. He seemed to know what he wanted at the crucial times, how to hold out and when to moveon. Yet, he’s also had times in his life when he felt burnt out and unsuccessful. Daniel truly knows how to connect with people and how communication can help you and can boost your business.

Contact Info

Most Influential Person

  • Rabbi Gersey

Effect on Emotions

  • When I'm in a mindfulness space, so my emotions are calmer. Mindfulness doesn't necessarily take away an emotion, but it kind of calms it down. It makes the emotion just a little bit more manageable.
  • So a person could be really angry and you can get into a mindfulness place and it doesn't mean the anger's going to go away.
  • You have a right to be angry sometimes. There's reason to be angry. The difference between being angry and out of control and [rooooooar] I'm just going to smash everything down and I'm going to break relationships and I'm going to regret things that I do and then there's [deep breath], I'm feeling angry but it's okay.

Thoughts on Breathing

There's a few things I would say about that. Number one is, scientifically, the more we breathe, and the deeper we breathe, the more oxygen we get. First of all going through our blood and to our brain.
Scientifically that by itself biologically calms the body down. It's impossible for the body not to calm down when you just breathe deeply and you slowly let it out, like when you breathe and breathe and breathe, the body just feels calm. The other thing that breathing does which is really good is it gives you time to respond and reflect. A lot of times I might be in a situation where I kind of just ... the classical example is the one I gave [earlier] when I could have just opened up the door to my house and just gone in, would have literally head-butted the chaos.
I would have just gone 'boom' and it would have been reactive. It would have been an argument. It would have been a fight. And there's fight or flight. It would have been a fight, or me just leaving the house because I just can't deal with it. Instead of the fight or flight, I was able to create a space of time where I just became aware that I don't need to fight and I don't need to flight [sic].
I could just be in the moment and bring, through my energy everybody else into the moment with me, into my calm. In other words, you can either be pulled into someone else's chaos or you can pull them into your calm. You try to pull others into your calm rather than let others pull you into their chaos.

Suggested Resources

Bullying Story

I was bullied in high school. I was bullied emotionally. I had this big mole on my face and it had hair growing out of it. As you can imagine, as a high school kid, that's not fun. All the kids would point at it and make fun of it.

They'd call me spider face and all sorts of names. My teeth stuck out and they would call me Goofy. When I got braces I was made fun of for that. I was actually kept down a year for my misbehavior and also they said they didn't have room in the year above. I don't know how true that is.

It happened to be that my younger brother is a year younger than me so I ended up being in the same year as my younger brother. People would ask us all the time; "are you twins?" And I would say, "no, I'm a year older than him". And so they would say, "oh, so you must be really dumb".

I remember walking into a new class once and there were a few seats available, but everyone put something next to them so I couldn't sit next to them. That was my wonderful, beautiful, high school experience.

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205 I Can Survive The Zombie Apocalypse Claims Solopreneur Hour Host, Michael O'Neil

Apr 5, 2017

Apr 5, 2017

34 min

Michael O'Neal is a speaker, content creator, athlete, coach and on-line entrepreneur. He’s well known for his popular podcast, The Solopreneur Hour where he interviews interesting people who, as he puts it, Zagged, when everyone else Zigged. Although he appears to be fast-paced with many balls in the air at any one time, I see him as a guy who's centered and grounded, mindfully working towards his desired outcomes. You are going to love learning more about Michael O’Neil and how he seems to keep on nailing life.

Contact Info

Most Influential Person

  • David Wood (Host of The Kick-Ass Life Podcast)

Effect on Emotions

Thoughts On Breathing

  • No suggestions on breathing

Suggested Resources

Bullying Story

If I could time travel I think I would go back and stand up for myself, so I probably wouldn't be mindful. There were 3 or 4 incidents in my life where I was a bit bullied. I'd be the opposite of mindful. I think mindfulness can be considered a very mature concept and even a lot of adults don't understand it and they can't mentally get to where they need to get so they can remove themselves from the equation.

Sometimes there's not enough self-awareness for people to be mindful and so I think that's a bit of a rich concept for a kid whose being bullied. That's not to say that it's impossible.

I'm thinking about this one incident. He was probably one of the bullies of the school and he would do that move where he would hit shoulders in the hallway and he would nail me like a hockey cross check. He would check me as we were walking down the hallway.

He was the kid who could do thirty pull-ups. He was really ripped and super strong. I don't know if he did anything other than have great genetics. He was just a jerk, a jerky kid.

As I'm thinking now, I would probably go to the principal's office and say, look, this is happening and I'm not going to tell you who it is, but don't surprised if I end up in this office. I never did that. I was always scared of the kid.

Knowing what I know now about every one of the incidents; it probably only happened 3 or 4 times when somebody was a jerk to me repeatedly. It's just standing up for yourself a little bit that makes them go to somebody else. I wouldn't have had the capacity (that I have now), to say, I know you're in a lot of pain and I can tell that you probably don't have a very good home life and you're looking at me and you're feeling like you can take advantage of me. Ok, but I bet we've got some stuff in common.

That's where I would go now with it. But that's about sixty percent of what I would do now. The other forty percent's still in Philly and I would fight back now. I'd say, we can talk about it or I can whack you over the head or something.

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204 Utilize All You've Got By Being Aware Explains Meditation Minis Host Chel Hamilton

Apr 2, 2017

Apr 2, 2017

36 min

Chel Hamilton is a hypnotherapist and has worked in this field for over ten years. She is an expert at helping people overcome their anxieties and fears using her deep understanding of human conscious and subconscious brain functions. She also hosts the Meditation Minis Podcast of short, guided meditations for overcoming anxiety and stress and achieving deep sleep experiences.

Contact Info

Most Influential Person

  • Me. The times in my life when I feel the most unsteady or the most crazy or the most triggered, those have been massive learning experiences for me.

Effect on Emotions

  • Mindfulness has definitely made me less reactive. I've definitely gotten calmer. Maybe sometimes to the detriment. Sometimes in our interpersonal relationships with a partner when they're being really passionate about something and when we go to the pure, calm, logic side, they're like, omg, you don't get me. What's wrong with you? I'm like, I'm not a Vulcan, I swear. I think sometimes we have to say, oh my god, that's amazing and then go to our calm place.

Thoughts on Breathing

  • One of my favorite little breathing meditations is I do on my podcast; it's Eckhart Tolle nose-focused breathing where you just focus on the edges of the nostrils. That was revolutionary for me because the whole idea of having to pay attention to all of my breathing felt like too much work. Just paying attention to the feeling of the air was really easy to do in any situation in life whether walking from one room to another or while in the middle of an argument or anything. So that is the one practice that is both breathing focused as well as meditation focused. If I could just tell people to do one thing, that would be it.

Suggested Resources

Effect on Emotions

My bullying story had nothing mindful about it. It was fourth grade. I went to inner city schools during desegregation. There was a girl there who was not happy with me and she used to beat me up after school, pretty much every day. She didn't stop until one day I hit her over the head with my lunch box. I don't think mindfulness had anything to do with that. She definitely stopped when I whacked her upside of the head with my lunch box.

My son was bullied in middle school as well as my neighbor because we didn't live in the big houses in the fancy part of our district. We lived in the rental homes. I think that, for him, the thing that helped the most was him beginning to understand through some work that he did with me that if he didn't allow them to see any reaction in him, it didn't give them as much pleasure to do the things that they were doing. Learning how to not react in the moment but then to respond.

That's not to say that if somebody is being physical or overly threatening that you need to tell the adults. We actually had to switch schools because adults were told and the bullying got even worse at the school. The shame involved in all of that; because when the kid gets bullied, it's usually shame-based, it's fear and shame-based. The less that they respond in the moment, the less juice it gives the bully.

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