Meditation with Raphael

MEDITATE WITH ME DAILY on Youtube! Every morning, I post a live meditation on youtube + more meditations during the day.

Welcome to another Transcendental Sound Meditation, guided by Raphael Reiter

This guided meditation is brought to you for FREE

If you enjoy them and would like to support the channel, you may hop on https://www.buymeacoffee.com/raph or make a direct donation via PayPal at this email address: [email protected] 

These meditations were designed to go beyond our current states of consciousness, into a transcendental state of consciousness, bypassing our egos, our intelligence and our concepts of time and space. We anchor our thoughts on the vibration that is proposed to us, thus being fully present in the here and now. 

These meditations were specially designed for his podcast and for the YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/raphaelreiter). They are vibrational meditations for transcendence. 

JOIN OUR NEW ONLINE COMMUNITY! (100% FREE)

https://raphaelreiter.slack.com

If you have any questions, you may contact me via my website: https://www.raphaelreiter.com or via my socials:

YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/raphaelreiter

I am looking forward to connecting with you all! 

RAPHAEL 

Podcast Template description

Hi everyone!

This guided meditation is brought to you for FREE

If you enjoy them and would like to support the channel, you may hop on https://www.buymeacoffee.com/raph or make a direct donation via PayPal at this email address: [email protected] 

PLEASE DO NOT MEDITATE WHILST DRIVING OR OPERATING HEAVY MACHINERY. There is a chance that you fall asleep during these meditations, and you are prompted to get into a deep state of relaxation. For your own safety, and the safety of others, make sure you meditate in a safe environment. Thank you.

These meditations were designed to go beyond our current states of consciousness, into a transcendental state of consciousness, bypassing our egos, our intelligence, and our concepts of time and space. We anchor our thoughts on the vibration that is proposed to us, thus being fully present in the here and now. 

These meditations were specially designed for his podcast and for the YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/raphaelreiter). They are vibrational meditations for transcendence. 

JOIN OUR NEW ONLINE COMMUNITY! (100% FREE)

https://raphaelreiter.slack.com

If you have any questions, you may contact me via my website: https://www.raphaelreiter.com or via my socials:

YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/raphaelreiter

I am looking forward to connecting with you all! 

RAPHAEL 

In his fantastic book Essentialism, Greg McKeown writes:

“Essentialism is not about how to get more things done; it’s about how to get the right things done. It doesn’t mean just doing less for the sake of less either. It is about making the wisest possible investment of your time and energy in order to operate at your highest point of contribution by doing only what is essential.”

This is a principle that I have tried to incorporate into my productivity systems. (I say try, because it is always a work in progress, and I wish to learn more and make 1% progress on that every single day… forever).

I want to paraphrase his sentence, by replacing the word essentialism, with the word productivity. And this is, so far, the best definition of productivity that I have yet found:

“Productivity is not about how to get more things done; it’s about how to get the right things done. It doesn’t mean just doing less for the sake of less either. It is about making the wisest possible investment of your time and energy in order to operate at your highest point of contribution by doing only what is essential.”

I want to emphasize this point here:

I have goosebumps just writing it again here. This is so important.

Productivity is NOT turning yourself into a machine. You are not a machine. You are a human being. It seems that employers (and entrepreneurs) sometimes forget that. You are a person, with feelings, thoughts, ambitions, purpose, challenges, and virtues.

This is why it is not realistic nor reasonable for employers to want their employees to be productive 8 hours per day, 5 days a week, tracking every minute of their time, so that their “productivity” can be inspected and approved (or improved?).

It feels like, in some situations, we are stuck in archaic productivity principles that might come from the very start of the industrial revolution — make more, make faster, make cheaper — while at the same time, expecting creative problem solving, innovation, quality, and of course a culture of joy at work.

We will need to soon shift our mindsets towards a new definition of productivity. Lesser hours is not the answer either, because… well how many? we are all different and operate in different ways.

The answer here?

Confidence comes from con-fidere = with intense trust.

When we have intense trust in the people that work for us, with us (or intense trust towards ourselves for that matter) then time management is quickly removed from the equation altogether and is replaced by:

Focus allocation.

What do you guys think? Let's start the conversation on twitter!

Yesterday I wrote an article about giving yourself permission to do your BEST work and make your highest contribution! Have a read here

JOIN OUR NEW ONLINE COMMUNITY! (100% FREE)

https://raphaelreiter.slack.com

If you have any questions, you may contact me via my website: https://www.raphaelreiter.com or via my socials:

YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/raphaelreiter

I am looking forward to connecting with you all! 

RAPHAEL 

Sometimes, we must be compassionate. Other times, we should be encouraging. Most times, we should try to feel empathy.

What is the difference? What is most suited in what situation? This is what I want to try to find out in this article. 

I don’t write to teach, but to learn and discover with you.

According to the dictionary, compassion means:

Compassion is something we have all felt in our lives unless we are sociopathic. It is closely related to empathy, although there is a difference here.

Empathy is the ability to put yourself in someone else’s shoes. It is a passive emotion. Compassion, on the other hand, brings us an emotion that compels us to help. It is an emotion that propels us to take action.

Encouragement literally means “to give courage”. Courage comes from the word heart.

It is on a whole other level than suffering, although actively, with another being. There comes times in our lives, where compassion is the way to go. We welcome in someone else’s suffering, whether it is someone we know or a stranger. It is very important to cultivate that value, but it is also important to have strong boundaries so that we are able to suffer with that person without being pulled below the ground with them.

When we care deeply about someone, we wish we could take all the suffering from them. If your child is sick, you would gladly be sick in exchange for their health. Unfortunately (maybe), this is not how life operates.

In Stoicism, we learn not to be affected by what is outside of our control. This does not mean you should not feel emotions, and it certainly does not mean you should not feel compassion. What it means, is that you have the ability to observe these emotions, and act, with reason and within the realm of your own control (action is taken only if action is needed, of course, which is not always the case).

One of the actions that you may take when observing the feelings and emotions of compassion, is to give heart. To give courage. That may be by acting as an exemplar in your own life or taking extra action in helping someone. It is important to note, that encouraging someone, does not mean acting in their place.

That is not helping, and it is not giving heart, but taking heart. This is something that can be very hard to do, especially if we care very much about the person we are trying to help.

As a life coach, I always try to be mindful of these principles. It is my job to listen to people’s problems, and without the right frame of mind, it can be easily overwhelming to take in people’s troubles. If we don’t have a proper distinction between compassion and encouragement, we cannot last long. Strong boundaries are not enough. They are essential for my own well-being, but for my efficiency as a coach, I need more.

The trick here is to act as a guide. I do the best I can to remove my ego from the interactions and guide the person to his or her own solutions. No two situations are the same. I have found that I have much more success when I guide my clients, by giving them tips and encouragement than ready-made solutions.

JOIN OUR NEW ONLINE COMMUNITY! (100% FREE)

https://raphaelreiter.slack.com

If you have any questions, you may contact me via my website: https://www.raphaelreiter.com or via my socials:

YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/raphaelreiter

I am looking forward to connecting with you all! 

RAPHAEL 

Hi everyone!

This guided meditation is brought to you for FREE

If you enjoy them and would like to support the channel, you may hop on https://www.buymeacoffee.com/raph or make a direct donation via PayPal at this email address: [email protected] 

These meditations were designed to go beyond our current states of consciousness, into a transcendental state of consciousness, bypassing our egos, our intelligence and our concepts of time and space. We anchor our thoughts on the vibration that is proposed to us, thus being fully present in the here and now. 

These meditations were specially designed for his podcast and for the YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/raphaelreiter). They are vibrational meditations for transcendence. 

JOIN OUR NEW ONLINE COMMUNITY! (100% FREE)

https://raphaelreiter.slack.com

If you have any questions, you may contact me via my website: https://www.raphaelreiter.com or via my socials:

YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/raphaelreiter

I am looking forward to connecting with you all! 

RAPHAEL 

Today we are going to talk about how to live by design and not by default, by creating agency within ourselves, by reflecting on time as finite and on mortality as inevitable.

We all have our defaults, and it doesn’t really matter if they were created by us in the past or by the surrounding influences that guide us to x or y-direction. It is time that we take control of our lives, starting with our decisions and our management of time and energy so that we don’t let ourselves be the victims of whatever “life” imposes on us.

Yes, to certain things we must surrender (mainly events and outcomes of events that are outside of our actionable control), but that surrender, must be also, by design and not by default.

Living by design does not necessarily mean that you cannot put anything on auto-pilot. That would be exhausting and not very effective. We need to design our auto-pilots, as well as design our awareness to our mental and physical actions.

To be clear, if you do not work actively on designing the course of your life, someone else will. That someone else might be a boss, a colleague, a family member. It can be someone that has your best interest at heart, or not. That is irrelevant. That person might even be you, when you fail to act as the best version of yourself, making cowardly and unwise decisions in the course of your life.

The reason why I am very interested in the way stoic philosophers ponder daily on their mortality is partly because when we do so when we deeply internalize the fact that today might be our last day, and this action, this task might be the last thing we do, we completely change our mindset towards what is really important, what is really essential. And so, by reflecting on your mortality, you start feeling the agency needed to start designing your life (or re-designing, improving, self-actualizing). You start having the urge to say no to certain defaults that you would not accept if you knew you only had 24 hours left to live. That’s a really good thing.

We often see, in movies or in novels, a hero that lives past a near-death experience and starts living his or her life on their own terms, doing what is most important to them: spending time with their families and friends, leaving the soul-sucking job with the micro-managing boss, going into nature to breathe in deep the smell of flowers and trees.

Remember, that every breath you take, is a near-death experience. That breath might be your last. If you’re young and healthy, sure, the chances are very slim, but they are there anyway. You might choke, your heart might skip an extra beat, you might fall and break your neck. It doesn’t matter how slim the chance, the risk of dying is still there. Use this to your advantage. Take in the momentum of this fact. Of course, it’s freaky and scary. Face that fear, because there is no other choice. If you don’t, then you choose to fight against reality, and I can guarantee you, that you will lose 100% of the time.

“The risk of dying is always there, use this at your advantage” — Raphael Reiter

You don’t have to wait until the very last moment to take a nap on your own death bed. Fluff that pillow and choose your favorite sheet fabrics, because that’s your last stop. Lie down there, right now, just for a few minutes. Close your eyes and imagine what it would feel like. Chances are, if you have lived your life by your own design, there will be fewer regrets than if you have followed every single default imposed upon you. I know that it’s easier said than done, and I also acknowledge the fact that very few people take the time to do this kind of exercise. But you have taken the time to read this article, and I believe that you know the reason why you’ve read it so far already.

Remember the wise words of Krishnamurti that once said:

“It is no measure of health to be well adapted to a profoundly sick society.”

Use these words wisely, every day, as you design your life. Take the decisions that are in sync with your values and virtues, and not to what is common in our society. This goes with easy things, such as nutrition and filtering input, to more complex tasks such as designing a lifestyle that might not be the norm to today’s rat race, always on, always faster society, as well as committing to respond to stimulus with virtue, no matter the circumstances, and no matter the repercussions.

Let me know, either in the comments or on twitter, what your first step will be in designing your life, and how the exercises above felt to you.

JOIN OUR NEW ONLINE COMMUNITY! (100% FREE)

https://raphaelreiter.slack.com

If you have any questions, you may contact me via my website: https://www.raphaelreiter.com or via my socials:

YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/raphaelreiter

I am looking forward to connecting with you all! 

RAPHAEL 

Hi everyone!

This guided meditation is brought to you for FREE

If you enjoy them and would like to support the channel, you may hop on https://www.buymeacoffee.com/raph or make a direct donation via PayPal at this email address: [email protected] 

These meditations were designed to go beyond our current states of consciousness, into a transcendental state of consciousness, bypassing our egos, our intelligence and our concepts of time and space. We anchor our thoughts on the vibration that is proposed to us, thus being fully present in the here and now. 

These meditations were specially designed for his podcast and for the YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/raphaelreiter). They are vibrational meditations for transcendence. 

JOIN OUR NEW ONLINE COMMUNITY! (100% FREE)

https://raphaelreiter.slack.com

If you have any questions, you may contact me via my website: https://www.raphaelreiter.com or via my socials:

YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/raphaelreiter

I am looking forward to connecting with you all! 

RAPHAEL 

It takes courage to eliminate the non-essential in our lives. It takes courage to throw away a sweater that has holes in it, and it takes courage to donate these 12 pairs of jeans you’ve not worn in years.

To eliminate often has a connotation of loss. We don’t want to lose anything, loss is painful. And so, it takes courage to eliminate what is not essential to our lives, to our joy, happiness, to our eudaimonia.

But still, it is something that we must do, every day, or we might lose it altogether — indeed if you don’t learn to face your fears and false limiting beliefs, and start eliminating non-essentials right away (starting with time and energy-consuming non-essentials), you are consuming your life away.

Time is all we really have, and time is something that, even the richest man on earth cannot buy more of. Time is finite. Today might be our last day on earth, and as Marcus Aurelius points out “This task could be your last”.

Think of it that way. This task, what you are doing right now, might be the last thing you ever do. Ever.

“This task could be your last” — Marcus Aurelius

Nevermind the fact that you are what you consistently do, you are the sum of your choices and decisions. Choose what you do wisely, because the world might freeze over, and you might be remembered for your last task at hand.

I know that it seems simple to say: act wisely. Choose what you do wisely. That is so vague, and so hard to follow.

So let’s try something else:

Use courage to eliminate the non-essential, and do only what is the most important thing to do at that moment.

Remember that courage is not the absence of fear, but the ability to act in the face of fear.

Courage comes from the word heart (cœur in french = heart).

This is the basics of what we learn when we study Stoic Philosophy — we act with our core, cardinal virtues (justice, temperament, wisdom, and courage) no matter what situation we are in, no matter what vice we might face, and no matter the consequences and repercussions. Our minds, our conscious will always be safe when we act with virtue.

And so, to eliminate the non-essential in your life takes courage. Use that courage. Practice courage every day by making decisions that are synchronized to your virtues and values.

Acting in the face of fear creates strength. It creates wisdom, and it creates even more courage to continue going further on our quest to Eudaimonia.

JOIN OUR NEW ONLINE COMMUNITY! (100% FREE)

https://raphaelreiter.slack.com

If you have any questions, you may contact me via my website: https://www.raphaelreiter.com or via my socials:

YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/raphaelreiter

I am looking forward to connecting with you all! 

RAPHAEL 

Hi dear meditators!

This guided meditation is brought to you for FREE

If you enjoy them and would like to support the channel, you may hop on https://www.buymeacoffee.com/raph or make a direct donation via PayPal at this email address: [email protected] 

These meditations were designed to go beyond our current states of consciousness, into a transcendental state of consciousness, bypassing our egos, our intelligence and our concepts of time and space. We anchor our thoughts on the vibration that is proposed to us, thus being fully present in the here and now. 

These meditations were specially designed for his podcast and for the YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/raphaelreiter). They are vibrational meditations for transcendence. 

JOIN OUR NEW ONLINE COMMUNITY! (100% FREE)

https://raphaelreiter.slack.com

If you have any questions, you may contact me via my website: https://www.raphaelreiter.com or via my socials:

YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/raphaelreiter

I am looking forward to connecting with you all! 

RAPHAEL 

“Only once you give yourself permission to stop trying to do it all, to stop saying yes to everyone, can you make your highest contribution towards the things that really matter.” Greg McKeown — Essentialism

Have you ever been so busy, that you forget what really matters in your life?

I know you have, and I have to.

I often ask myself, what is the point of life, if we live without purpose. That’s a stupid, meaningless question, haha. There is no point. We NEED purpose to thrive.

How can we possibly live with purpose, when we are taught to “take every opportunity”, because “we never know, maybe sometime in the distant future, this could be a good thing”.

We need to do a little bit of editing in our lives, so that we can live with purpose, on purpose.

We read about it all the time, it’s logical, and it makes great sense. So then why? Why do we often to make ourselves so busy that we forget to live with purpose?

That busyness, is not only a form of procrastination: if we feel we are busy, it means, by definition, that we are doing a lot of things, tricking our brains to think that we are not procrastinating.

But it is actually worst than that.

We say yes to every opportunity, every meeting, every social event, because we are unconsciously trying to numb our minds so that it cannot realise that we are scared to give ourselves permission to make our highest contribution.

We are scared to live with purpose, for a multitude of reasons, mainly false and limiting beliefs, such as:

Being scared to fail when we do what really matters, because it might hurt much more than failing doing what doesn’t matter.

Being scared to succeed (yes this is really a thing) because we don’t want our peers to be jealous or judge us.

Having impostor syndrome, where we have a little voice in our head that tells us: “Who the hell do you think you are to be engaging in this important task?”

There might be many more reasons to why you are not doing your best work, and living on purpose. Living with purpose is a subject that I talk a lot about in my life coaching practice.

Here is something that I have found, that I had not thought about before:

When people come to me asking how they can find their passion, how their can find their purpose, 60% of the time, they have found it, and it is very clear to them what that purpose is.

The challenge is that they have not yet let go of limiting “inner-myths” which are keeping them from giving themselves the permission to pursue their purpose, their passion, and their highest contribution to the world.

Let go, give yourself permission. You have only one life, and it can end at any time.

JOIN OUR NEW ONLINE COMMUNITY! (100% FREE)

https://raphaelreiter.slack.com

If you have any questions, you may contact me via my website: https://www.raphaelreiter.com or via my socials:

YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/raphaelreiter

I am looking forward to connecting with you all! 

RAPHAEL