Mindfulness for Peak Performance - joining the dots with Kerene Strochnetter
Recently I overheard a conversation between two young men… “all the successful people I know eat right, sleep right, exercise regularly and meditate!”
And I happen to agree with them. We all know the benefits of maintaining healthy habits.
So why is it so hard? What’s wrong with us!?
Why can’t we seem to manage the demands of the modern workplace (and life generally) without resorting to alcohol, cigarettes, over-eating, binging watching Netflix and endlessly scroll-scroll-scrolling on our phones?
The short answer is, whenever we’re under pressure (or feeling stressed) our brain interprets that as a threat - and without a way of interrupting your knee-jerk responses – most people usually find themselves going for the quick fix!
Anything to make the discomfort go away, right?
And it seems to work, but over time those unconscious automatic ‘fast brain’ responses limit our lives, careers, and relationships, and seriously impact our physical and mental health.
We operate at our best when we’re feeling relaxed, energised, present and connected.
The key is knowing how to get into this ‘slow brain’ state more often and that’s where mindfulness comes in.
Despite the bad press, mindfulness is not just learning how to meditate, and it isn’t purely a stress reduction technique either!
Mindfulness includes a robust set of practices that are generated from comprehensive research, which produce unprecedented levels of engagement, performance, health, and well-being.
Mindfulness helps you to:
- manage your ‘quick fix’ brain so you’re not so yanked around by your mind
- make friends with your emotions (instead of trying to distract yourself, get rid of or numb uncomfortable feelings)
- tap into your clever pre-frontal cortex (your genius potential)
- let go of what’s urgent by reconnecting with what’s more important (in the long-term)
- notice your negativity bias (without letting it rule your life)
- manage life’s endless distractions and sustain your attention
- grow inner resilience (bounce back from adversity)
- accept your reality as it is (not how you think it should be)
- treat yourself and others with kindness and respect (drop the inner cattle prod!)
- be the best person, partner, friend, parent, colleague, and leader you can be!
The good news is, that you don’t have to meditate for hours or run away to a monastery, but you do have to commit to doing a few things differently.
Gandhi said, “be the change you wish to see in the world.” The real change always starts with you!
And the only way to change anything keeping you stuck is by learning how to manage your inner world.
To find out about and read more from Kerene Strochnetter visit her website.