Mindfulness Mode

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.

• Website: www.SoloHour.com (www.SolopreneurHour.com)

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

• It allows me to not stress out over things I had no control over to begin with. It's like The Four Agreements [by Don Miguel Luiz]. I don't stress out about things I have no control over.

• No suggestions on breathing

• Book: The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

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.

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.

• Website: www.ChelHamilton.com

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• Book: The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom by Don Miguel Luiz

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.