Mindfulness Mode

Costa Michailidis has spent his career consulting with some of the brightest minds on some of the world’s toughest innovation challenges, from NASA scientists and big tech companies, to young entrepreneurs and nonprofits. He has worked on initiatives to build synthetic cells, improve cybersecurity, and reform life science education. His focus is always on cultivating the kind of innovative thinking required for making breakthroughs. He has spoken at the United Nations in New York, served as a TEDx organizer and emcee, and helped accelerate innovation across industries. He co-founded Innovation Bound and has joined a team of academics, entrepreneurs, consultants, and other creativity & innovation experts just like him to help accelerate innovation efforts in science, business, and beyond.

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Website: www.innovationbound.com

Podcast: Are You Innovation Bound?

Innovation-101 Course: www.innovationbound.com/101

Most Influential Person

Dan Millman, Author

Effect on Emotions

So for me, because mindfulness was originally something I learned in sport, it changed my conception of emotions to emotional fitness. So I think of emotional fitness rather than emotional intelligence.

And fitness means you have to work out to stay in shape. If you don't work out, you're gonna fall out of shape. Having a good coach is useful. So fitness is a metaphor; if you use good techniques, you're likely to do it. Well. If you had bad techniques, you can get injured. So I think of it as emotional fitness, and that came from mindfulness in my sport.

Thoughts on Breathing

Focusing on the breath and staying in the moment is tremendous. And what's really wonderful about free-diving is you learn specific breathing patterns that can reduce your heart rate. The reason we do it in free-diving is; to do a more efficient free-dive allows you to be able to go longer on that single breath-hold.

So using those techniques from free-diving, ultimately using breath to become calm, to develop a tremendous sense of calm in order to achieve that.

Suggested Resources

Book: Way of the Peaceful Warrior: A Book That Changes Lives by Dan Millman

App: Loop Habit Tracker

Bullying Story

So the thing that came to mind for me for this was about bullying with love. And I think there was so mindfulness there. So my brother and I have about seven and a half years difference. So anybody with an older brother knows, they're your bully. You sort of inherit them when you're born. It's great.

And so we'd get into a scuffle here and there. It was just sort of a natural environment. But he was much bigger because he's seven and a half years older. And there was one time he was hanging on a pull-up bar, you know, one of the ones you set up in the doorway.

So he's kind of kicking at me, just sort of kicking me away, and I'm trying to get at him. I don't remember what we were arguing about. And he comes off, and I  swing to punch him and I end up hitting him in the nose. And he's got a nosebleed. He's checking his nose.

I said real loud, still yelling, I'm sorry, I was aiming for your stomach. His response was to laugh and be kind of proud of me that I was standing up for myself. So I think on his part, not retaliating was the mindful thing to do, and was ultimately good for our relationship.

I think when that sort of aggressive or assertive part of our nature comes at us, but it comes from a place of love, in this case, two siblings and whatever we're arguing about, you know, ultimately, we have long since forgotten.

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Special Offer

Are you experiencing anxiety & stress? Peace is within your grasp. I’m Bruce Langford, a practicing coach and hypnotist helping fast-track people just like you to shed their inner bully and move forward with conf

Michelle Hillier is trained in movement, meditation, and mindfulness and is a certified yoga teacher, trauma-informed movement educator, and meditation and social-emotional instructor. Using her personal story, she helps people to see that it’s possible to lead the life you dream of. Her journey has given her the gifts of insight and compassion, deepening her commitment to helping others connect to their breath—their calm—and ignite their fire and their passion. From large group activities to intimate training workshops, Michelle gives her audience a transformative and unforgettable experience with concrete tools and messages to practice in their own lives.

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Website: www.breathandfire.com

Most Influential Person

Thich Nhat Hanh

Effect on Emotions

Awareness of my emotions and being okay with sitting in them is important. The thoughts will come and they'll turn to an emotion that could turn to action. But it's been like a-Ha, there it is, there's that thought, there's that feeling, there's that emotion.

Either I like it, or I don't like it. I'm just gonna sit in it, and let it either pass or act on it.

So I'm just more highly aware of my emotions through doing mindfulness practices.

Thoughts on Breathing

I've just got into breathwork and I have an amazing teacher, Rebecca Llewellyn, Shamanic Breathwork. So I actually experienced a full hour of breathwork. I never thought that was a thing until I got into it. Wow, the breath is powerful.

So I like to think how one breath can make a difference in a moment that you're feeling so that you're in that fight, flight, or freeze state where something's going on.

When your body's going into something, one big inhale can completely reset you physiologically. It just tells your body you're okay. So the breath is super powerful.

There are different breath forms, of course, that I like to share with people in my ‘Breath of Fire' workshops, including circular breathing. The traditional ‘let's just breathe' is also great.

I like to share the power of one breath, and how that can change your body.

Suggested Resources

Book: The Pocket Thich Nhat Hanh (Shambhala Pocket Classics)

App: Insight Timer

Bullying Story

I personally haven't had a bullying experience. When I look back, I may have been a bit of a bully. The competitiveness was sort of part of me.

When I look at my son, I can use him as an example. He's not in an actual bullying situation, but the mindfulness piece around awareness of self and the work I've done in schools with kids around mindfulness. I think it's good if we're just mindful and present and tapped into who we are.

That authentic self, I think that's where the heart really shines, and we can't do that to somebody else. I think it's a bullying prevention mode. I don't think it's like, oh, I'm being bullied, I need to meditate. It's like if we can teach our children especially if we can get them to understand mindfulness and awareness of self and love for others, we can prevent bullying.

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Are you experiencing anxiety & stress? Peace is within your grasp. I’m Bruce Langford, a practicing coach and hypnotist helping fast-track people just like you to shed their inner bully and move forward with confidence. Book a Free Coaching Session to get you on the road to a more satisfying life, feeling grounded and focused. Send me an email at [email protected] with ‘Coaching Session' in the subject line. We'll set up a zoom call and talk about how you can move forward to a better life.

My mother, Edith Langford, passed away this week and today’s episode is a tribute to my mom. The funeral was yesterday and as you can imagine, I'm flooded with emotions. There are so many sad thoughts and emotions that I feel as I create this tribute to my mother. We had a very special relationship, a lot of great talks and special times together. I thought back to something she told me a few years ago, which had a huge impact on me, and a huge impact on the direction of my career. I was talking to her about the past and I said, remember back in the 1960s, you had a lot of a lot of trouble with anxiety. You really had a tough time. You had psoriasis as a result of it. It seemed to go on for a long time and it was a real problem. I asked her, what was the thing that ended this part of your life, that situation where you had so much anxiety?

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5 Words of Wisdom

She answered this question in five words, a five-word sentence. I thought so much about this afterwards. I thought, wow, this is staring me in the face. Every time I look at an appliance, an LG appliance, I realize the LG stands for their slogan, Life's Good. The five words she told me were, “I learned to let go”. So when I said LG, let go, every time I look at one of those appliances, I think, “Let Go, Life's Good. And letting go allows our life to be good. And I thought, wow, that was incredible.

Beautiful Smile

I asked my mother, ‘how did you come to that conclusion?’ I wanted to know how she landed on those five words. But to her, there wasn't really a lot to say, she just said ‘I learned to let go’. And then she looked at me and she smiled that familiar smile. I said to mom, you know, that's mindfulness. That was long before I started working in the field of mindfulness. And she looked at me in a quizzical way and I said, Yeah, it's a thing they call mindfulness. It's about letting go. It's about not being so concerned about the past or so concerned about the future. It's about living in the moment, and letting go of so much of what holds us back and causes anxiety and issues. And she was good with that.

Share With The World

I was working in the field of bullying prevention at the time and I just thought so much about what my mom had said to me about this. I had already been thinking about the fact that with bullying prevention, if I can teach children and teachers about mindfulness then bullying would decrease. And I thought, wow, this worked in my own mother's life. She was able to come to this conclusion without meditating, without reading self-help books. She didn't listen to podcasts. She just came up with this herself. “I learned to let go.” I thought, what if I could share these five words with the world?

A Visual Gift

My mother has always been a visual person. Whenever I watch the sunrise, which is many, many mornings, I think of her because she loved the colors. She loved orange, brilliant yellows, golds, pinks, fuchsias. All colors I see in the sky when the sun is coming up; brilliant, beautiful colors. She loved these colors and she used her incredible skills to weave and to crochet and to create beautiful items like placemats, dishcloths, and tea towels. She seldom used a pattern and even if she had a pattern, it usually ended up being adapted to the ‘Edith Version’. She had her own thoughts and her own ways of doing these things and she would work away until she had something beautiful.

The Edith Basket

She always had a basket of placemats and dishcloths and she would always get this basket out and offer something. And she made 1000s of finger puppets. So every night, after supper, she would sit down and she would crochet a finger puppet. It was for children in the hospital who were about to have their finger pricked or have blood taken and so the nurse would give them a finger puppet.

Vesta Love

One of the things that came to mind about my mom was her special love for her

Jennifer Ibbotson Rodriguez is a consulting hypnotist who works with trauma survivors to help them heal, thrive and enjoy their lives. Her longest recovery came as a result of the collapse of the ‘twin towers’ back in September 11, 2001, after which she married a disabled combat veteran who was struggling to heal his own traumas. For years Jen has been fascinated by the brain and the power of mindset, so it comes as no surprise that she will be delivering a presentation at the National Convention of The National Guild of Hypnotists this August called: Hypnosis: The Bridge Between Neural-plasticity and Quantum Realities.

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Website: www.HypnosisHaven.com

Podcast: Hypnosis De-Mystified

Most Influential Person

Above all, it's my father. He handed me the book, The Way of the Peaceful Warrior back in 1991 or 92. That is to say from that point on, we always said, What time is it? Now? Where are you? Here.

Effect on Emotions

Emotion comes in and emotion goes. Likewise, the breath, there is no start and there is no end. Therefore, it is cyclical, so whatever I'm feeling in the moment, is the gift of life.

I know what numb feels like so I think it's as close to death as we can get. Therefore with every feeling I'm blessed with at the moment, I accept it for the wisdom that it is sharing.

Thoughts on Breathing

I was very fortunate very early to learn Buddha belly breathing, but I was confused. In the beginning, I thought that's how we were supposed to breathe all the time.

It wasn't something I was able to do all the time. And as trauma overtook my body I learned that breathing became shallower and shallower.

However, trauma-responsive breathing doesn't allow for the holding of the breath, because that actually increases adrenaline. So the way that I choose to breathe when I need to breathe out trauma, and breathe in peace happens when I release my jaw.

I exhale first because the body can always exhale even when it can't inhale. And then after the inhale, I exhale for as twice as long as the inhale. To sum it up, it always starts with an exhale, whatever the inhale is to the belly, and then exhale twice as long. That's me, that's my breathing technique and how I

Suggested Resources

Book: Buddha's Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom

Book: You Are the Placebo: Making Your Mind Matter

Book: The Hidden Messages in Water

Bullying Story

Certainly, the story that I was coming to was that gentleman with his dad.

Every single one of my clients, technically bullies themselves until the day they stop and enjoy the gift of the present.

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Special Offer

Are you experiencing anxiety & stress? Peace is within your grasp. I’m Bruce Langford, a practicing coach and hypnotist helping fast-track people just like you to shed their inner bully and move forward with confidence. Book a Free Coaching Session to get you on the road to a more satisfying life, feeling grounded and focused. Send me an email at [email protected] with ‘Coaching Session' in the subject line. We'll set up a zoom call and talk about how you can move forward to a better life.

James Crews is the author of THE PATH TO KINDNESS – a collection offering more than 100 poems of connection and joy from a diverse range of voices…including a poem by the current U.S. Poet Laureate – Joy Harjo. He has also authored 4 prize-winning collections of poetry and is the editor of the best-selling anthology, HOW TO LOVE THE WORLD – more than 90,000 copies in print and featured on NPR’s Morning Edition, in Boston Globe, and The Washington Post. Crews' work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Sun Magazine, Ploughshares, and The New Republic, as well as in former US poet laureate Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry newspaper column.

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Website: jamescrews.net

Book: The Path to Kindness: Poems of Connection and Joy by James Crews and Danusha Laméris

Most Influential Person

Ted Kooser

Effect on Emotions

I'm able to name the emotions. However, I think it wasn't ever the case before. Likewise, anxiety and shame. It's so useful to be able to name what's coming up and to really distinguish. My marriage has helped with that, too.

Thoughts on Breathing

Most importantly, the kind of meditation I do tends to really focus on the breath.

I usually, when I'm meditating, have a very busy mind. For instance, I count my breaths, you know, one in-breath, out-breath, one in-breath, out-breath two, and do that in sets of fours, when I'm especially caught in my mind and my thoughts.

Suggested Resources

Book: Poetry of Presence: An Anthology of Mindfulness Poems by Phyllis Cole-Dai

Book: The Path to Kindness: Poems of Connection and Joy by James Crews and Danusha Laméris

App: Headspace

Bullying Story

Firstly, I was never really the recipient of a lot of bullying. I think that was the result of real efforts that were not very healthy to kind of hide myself and be as invisible as possible, and to be quiet.

I was already shy and introverted, but I think I made myself even quieter, and really tried to blend in, and not call attention to who I really was, or what I really loved doing.

Therefore, I don't have a lot of stories about that as a kid. I will say one memory that came when you talked about bullying; it's not quite the same thing, but when I was in grad school in Nebraska, I was walking down the street, and just feeling really happy. I was really embodying who I was at that point, teaching poetry, writing poetry, not being afraid to dress a certain way.

As I was walking down the street to the pharmacy, and these guys in a pickup truck that was passing by called out these terrible names, just like these anti-gay epithets and I sort of stopped for a minute, but then, didn't want to engage or anything like that. But when I got home, I realized how much that affected me.

That is to say, I was more in tune with that, probably because I had been meditating and was really practicing mindfulness. But it really disturbed me. And not just that I had to experience it, but that other people, especially younger people, were probably experiencing that all over the country and the world at the very same moment.

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Special Offer

Are you experiencing anxiety & stress? Peace is within your grasp. I’m Bruce Langford, a practicing coach and hypnotist helping fast-track people just like you to shed their inner bully and move forward with confidence. Book a Free Coaching Session to get you on the road to a more satisfying life, feeling grounded and focused. Send me an email at [email protected] with ‘Coaching Session' in the subject line. We'll set up a zoom call and talk about how you can move forward to a better life.

Zehra Mahoon is a master mindset and law of attraction coach and manifesting expert. She is the author of twelve books on these subjects including Reaching For Joy and the creator of the Unlimited 40-day law of attraction workout and the Unlimited 365 Mastermind. After committing to completely transforming her self-worth in 2006, she went from being massively in debt to owning multiple properties and creating a thriving business, as well as healing her relationships and reaching for joy. Zehra’s books are based on a visual, diagrammatic approach to the law of attraction. She breaks down complicated concepts into small bite-size pieces linked to analogies that make them easy to remember and apply.

Zehra’s courses and programs help individuals to identify the blockages that are keeping them from achieving success. She helps them to change their self-talk and develop new thinking habits that open up a world of new possibilities.

Zehra believes that all things are possible in other words you can start from where you are and create a better future once you start understanding how to use the basic law of attraction concepts. She is committed to making it easy for you to understand and apply the law of attraction.

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Website: www.zmahoon.com

Blog: www.zmahoon.com/blog

Most Influential Person

Dr. Wayne Dyer

Abraham Hicks

Effect on Emotions

I'm a totally different person.

There is no such thing as procrastination in my life anymore. Therefore, ideas and creativity flow freely, and my anger issues are gone. However, if you ever wanted to meet someone with a bad temper, you should have met me when I was much younger.

Thoughts on Breathing

Firstly, breathing is the easiest thing for us to focus on. Breathing is important because you can take all your five senses and focus them on breathing. After that taking your five senses away from the world around you, is what is the basis of bringing peace into your heart and reaching for joy.

Certainly, you can take all five senses from the world and focus them on the sound of your breath. Your breathing is always with you and you have to breathe in order to come down and reach for joy because when you breathe in deeply, you automatically open up your connection with the source.

Our breath is the channel of communication with the collective consciousness. After that, my consciousness is connected to me as a drop of water is connected to the ocean, all because of my breath.

Suggested Resources

Book: Unlimited By Zehra Mahoon

Book: Thrive By Zehra Mahoon

Book: Peace Within: A Law of Attraction Guide to Meditation By Zehra Mahoon

Book:How to pray so that God listens (B/W): 100 prayers for ultimate joy & success in life By Zehra Mahoon

Book: Reaching for Joy: A Law of Attraction Workbook for Alignment & Manifesting

Book: The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself By Michael Singer

App: Rain Sounds

Bullying Story

I was talking to a neighbor who just had major surgery and was telling me about the medical system. After that I went away from that discussion, thinking, sweetheart, if I could just explain to you that you create your own reality. That is to say,  if you encountered that experience, you created it, it didn't come to you out of the blue, it came to you because you created it.

What we really need to look at is what is your habit of thought that resulted in the creation of this experience. It applies even to little children. Moreover when a child is fearful of something, everything in that child's life will gravitate toward the vibration of fear, and will bring those people into that child's life that will subject the child to bullying.

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Are you experiencing anxiety & stress? Peace

Winnie Chan Wang is a lover of science and spirituality. Her vision is for all medicine to join as One! She is a trauma-informed licensed acupuncturist, teacher, shadow worker, Reiki, and open-hearted Tao healer. She is also a professor in acupuncture at Alhambra Medical University. She is passionate about empowering people with chronic pain to step into their source power to heal themselves. In her book “Honoring Darkness: Embrace Shadow Work To Nourish And Grow Your Power”, she and her co-author searched deep into their traumas and made lemonade out of the lemons. As they navigated the darkness, they gained trust and purpose.

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Contact Info

Website: www.mindfulhealingheart.com

Podcast: Integrated Healing Circles

Book: Honoring Darkness: Embrace Shadow Work To Nourish And Grow Your Power By Winnie Chan Wang

Most Influential Person

I'm gonna say me, okay. You know to clarify, it's choosing me over and over again. Because we all have a tendency to check out Brene Brown who talks about showing up in the arena. It's kind of like, okay, well, I checked out of my mindfulness yesterday.

But today, I'm gonna see if I can stay in the mindfulness longer. It's this idea that I'm just going to keep showing up day after day. That's just like my discipline, you know, no matter what, I'm gonna stand behind myself, Yes, I'm gonna say me.

Effect on Emotions

Emotions are full of gifts. Right? For example, anger is when I feel anger, that's when I should set boundaries with the bully. So it's really funny, Bruce, as an Asian girl growing up in Asia, I was told I have to be nice and people-pleasing, and I was completely disconnected from my anger.

I talked about this in my book, how, even in the moment of rape, I  shouldn't be angry. But I am not angry. So like, I should fight back, but I don't. Therefore the gift of anger, you know, my trauma responses, freezing and thawing. You know, those are kind of like the conditioning, but if I own my anger, I can really love my emotion.

Emotions are the most powerful thing. Definitely embrace and appreciate all the protection that comes from your emotions.

Thoughts on Breathing

One of my favorite breathing techniques is to put one hand over the heart and one hand below the belly button. And just really picturing myself as Santa Claus with a big belly. So when I breathe in, I'm like, okay, when he gives me the biggest Santa Claus belly you can, because the lower abdominal breathing really grounds and anchors.

I want to talk a minute about the recycling program. Shinzon Jung talks about this; we have all the positives in the world. That's like loving forgiveness, compassion, and light. And then we have all the negatives in the world, like shame, fear, anger. We don't actually get to the emptiness condition by love and light, we get to the emptiness condition or the oneness condition or the zero, by mathematically adding all the plus, all the negative, then we get the zero.

So true power, true source. Certainly, true oneness is when we put together all the positives and all the minus and get zero. So how we do that actually is below the belly button. In Chinese martial arts, we call that the dantian. And in yoga they call it the Kundalini center navel point. There's a lot of different names for this practice.

That is to say, when we breathe in, we breathe all the love and light. And we can source and connect to all the anger and fear and all the negative things in our body; cancer, whatever you want. Channel that into the dawn tan, and mix the light and the dark together into oneness.

Above all that is how I want all the listeners to try breathing. You know, when you feel angry, or scared, be like, Oh my god, I have the raw ingredients to make a powerful ball. You know, it's kind of like if I'm cooking a pot of soup. I need all the ingredients. I need the sugar, and I need the lemon to make lemonade.

Suggested Resources

Book:

C von Hassett and Rachel Reid Wilkie are, as they say, co-conspirators in all things – with a heavy emphasis on spirit – which together they’ve been exploring since the day they met. Throughout the years they have collaborated on numerous projects in the Arts, both in Los Angeles and New York City. Their time in the East Village culminated in a monumental exhibition, Documents of Love, at the famed Hosfelt Gallery in Chelsea, where the couple exhibited a diverse body of work – poetry, paintings photography, a short film – to the attendance of thousands. Upon returning to Los Angeles, C von & Rachel founded Riot Material magazine, a now thriving and widely read literary-cultural magazine with its eye on Art, Word, and forward-aiming thought.

Rachel and C are the rare married couple who not only work and create together but practice together day after day, side by side, often knee to knee, in the singular pursuit of knowing the deeper self beyond the conceptual self – that timeless, eternal Being which births forth the temporal one. To that end, the Pandemic Years saw the couple in contemplative retreat at their high-desert ranch in the Northern Mojave, a sacred landscape that sits just below the 12,000-foot peaks of the Eastern Sierra Nevadas. Here, beyond their full immersion into meditative practice, C von wrote Entering the Mind, while Rachel delivered to the world her inaugural spoken-song album, titled XI. 

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Contact Info

Website: www.enteringthemind.com

Podcast: Entering The Mind

Book: Entering the Mind By C von Hassett

Most Influential Person

Norbu Rinpoche, Sonia Rinpoche, and MinGi Rinpoche

Effect on Emotions

I have found during the last two years  where we have really emerged ourselves into this practice during the pandemic, my emotions have transformed completely.

I'm a very passionate person. I spent many years in Italy, so I learned from the best. I get ecstatically happy and I get very emotionally sad, but I have an incredible new relationship with them [my emotions]. My emotions are almost like an old friend, you know, waving at me saying, Hey, Rachel, I'm back again. This is happy, this is me, this is happy.

What happens at that moment is that I'm still within that ecstatic happiness and I'm also calm in the center of that ecstatic happiness. When I feel really, really sad; if I hear some sad news, I get a sense of the deep sorrow within me. But it's still within a calm container. So I've learned that without even trying too hard, this is the practice that has definitely installed itself within me. I've become less much reactive and I don't react instantly to those emotions.

On the rare occasion, when I do react instantly without a thought, then I recognize it immediately. And I go, oops, okay, I see you, I see where you're coming from. It's okay, let's just sit down. Let's just take a moment. Let's hold hands. Let's see where we're going with this. And so bringing mindfulness to my emotions has been one of the biggest transformational experiences I have had in the last few years.

Thoughts on Breathing

Up until a few years ago, I really kind of poo-pooed the whole breathing practice. I didn't put much stock in it. I've always been intellectual and I love the intellectual approach to meditation. Over The past year I've just come to recognize the utter importance of the breath. And in fact, the breath is the one thing that transitions between the body and the mind, body and the spirit, the body and awareness. You can be sitting down in a meditation practice and still be fully involved in your day and in your world.

You have your breath. Then as you settle, and you move into your awareness, the breath is still there. The breath is the beautiful bridge between the two beings. I'm now just absolutely certain that the breath is one of the keys to moving from one perspective to the next. It's like the rope that you pull through in the dar

Nick Jonsson is passionate about helping executives deal with a problem that is often hidden away: loneliness and isolation. This goal led Nick to become co-founder and Managing Director of one of Asia’s premier networking organizations, Executives’ Global Network (EGN) Singapore — a confidential peer group network providing more than 600 senior executives and business owners a safe haven to share their challenges, receive support, and learn from each other. Nick is also the author of the new book, Executive Loneliness: The 5 Pathways to Overcoming Isolation, Stress, Anxiety, and Depression in the Modern Business World. Nick has worked across Asia, Australia, and Europe representing major international firms, and is active in charitable and fundraising organizations to give back and support his local community, along with volunteering and fundraising for the Samaritans (SOS) – a suicide prevention hotline in Singapore. He is here today to share how to conquer executive loneliness.

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Contact Info

Website: http://www.nickjonsson.com

Book: Executive Loneliness: The 5 Pathways to Overcoming Isolation, Stress, Anxiety & Depression in the Modern Business World By Nick Jonsson

Most Influential Person

Just as we came out of the hard lockdown here in Singapore, I was looking at meditation and I signed up for a local Buddhist temple here. They had a meditation class in the evenings.

I  knew about mindfulness and meditation, in the sense that I had an app, I tried some things, but I never really mastered it. So I saw this as a chance to master it. So while I don't know the name of this Buddhist monk, I have to say he had a huge impact on my life, because I started to really appreciate meditation.

That made me connect better with a power greater than myself, connect with myself and really get a break and post my life and discover how to conquer executive loneliness.

Effect on Emotions

Mindfulness has made me much more aware. By being able to meditate and also to do prayer, I now try to pray in the morning and in the evening, just to hand things over which are challenging. It has really helped me to do that.

And I will say it helped me to put my ego in shape and that sense that you know, I'm not the one running the show. It has made me grounded and helped me to manage to conquer executive loneliness.

Thoughts on Breathing

Breathing is super important. And one of my friends who I cycle with tomorrow when we go down, it's a long Ale, airline straight, basically 20 minutes place where we can cycle straight. He even managed to count his breathing the whole time. So he's so mindful of the breathing that he knows after the breath 266 times, for example. I cannot keep going that long. But it makes it more I'm getting at Bruce it makes a huge impact and he's a fantastic athlete.

My coach is eight times the top 10 Corner finisher in Hawaii. He says that breathing makes the biggest impact on him in the sport as well. And he reminded me that when I wait for the bus or wait at the airport, that I should do some breathing exercises.

Suggested Resources

Book: Executive Loneliness: The 5 Pathways to Overcoming Isolation, Stress, Anxiety & Depression in the Modern Business World By Nick Jonsson

Book: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment By Eckhart Tolle 

App: Garmin

Bullying Story

As a child, I experiences both I was part of the kids who are bullying Iverson, I have bullied myself, it was very common back in Sweden when I grew up, born in 1975.

So we're talking in the 80s here, and there was no way of dealing with it or working with it. At that time, there was not much awareness about it. I understand that these days, things have improved, luckily.

I changed schools quite a lot and moved from one village to a bigger city, so you would normally team up with the kids who, perhaps were into sports, and others who were into studying and you would find your own li