Have you ever been attacked by the intrusive negative thoughts inside of you? In this week's Insights episode, I talked about how meditation is the best form of self-defence from these negative thoughts and how you can easily practice it.
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Topics Discussed in this Episode:


The power of meditation


Meditation as a form of self-defence


Easy ways to meditate and breathe exercise


 
Key Takeaways:


Meditation is the best form of self-defence there is. We are constantly attacked in our mind by the intrusive negative thoughts that we have.


Meditation is probably the most powerful way I know to alter your physiology. By that I mean, you can change your nervous system state from sympathetic, fight-flight-freeze, to parasympathetic which is more rest and digest. So, it can get from agitated stress state to calm state pretty quickly.




Meditation makes me more calm, reflective, less reactive. You got to sit there with your eyes closed, trying not to think about anything for 10 minutes. And for most of us, it's a huge challenge.


Meditation helps to build resilience, for just having the discipline to sit with your eyes shut. Try not to think about anything, the stuff that you do, how you might get there from A to B later on, whether or not you are trying to squeeze in before that. So, for that reason alone, I think meditation is very very powerful.


Actually, it does help you calm down. And if you can practice doing that, when those intrusive thoughts come in or nerves come in:


-You are about to give a speech, maybe it is a wedding day.
-You maybe learning something new and just nervous about that.
-Maybe in a very simple manner level, you maybe got a low level anxiety or high level anxiety, just leaving the house to go out and do a day's work or walk down the road.
These can be stressful events for you and you start to get those negative thoughts shooting in, shooting through the mind, paralyzing you. Using meditation as a way to combat that could be an incredibly powerful form of self-defence.


I also think that it is part of the whole martial arts thing. My partner, for example, does Kung Fu. And she said that they are meditating at the end of each session is a key part of that fighting discipline.


It's another way to think of meditation. It's a way of arming yourself against yourself. And against the negative pressures that could come in, whether through social media or the media in general or the people around you, but usually from us, ourselves.


It's really easy to get into meditation. I think it is very simple. You can just sit in a corner of the garden or corner of your room, anywhere where you are uninterrupted and meditate. It doesn't require an app or an expenditure.


There are easy ways to get started, maybe start to sit there for two minutes and practice let the thoughts to come and go. Then you make that five minutes, then maybe you make that ten minutes.


What I do at the same time is I do a deep breathing exercise. That slow regular breathing works wonders with the nervous system. It can get you from that stress agitated state, even if you don't feel particularly stressed or agitated, it can quiet the nervous system down. So that you can be more rested-digested state. That's the optimum state that we want to be most of the time.


 
Action Steps:


Find your quiet place where you can not be interrupted.


Close your eyes and meditate.


Do deep breathing exercise.


 
Leanne said:
 
"If have not tried meditation and have preconceived ideas and notions of what it is all about. It's for yoga teachers, it's for zen buddist monks, it isn't. It is for everybody. There are huge figures in the business world who tribute a large part of their success to their ten plus years of meditation practice. So, it is for everyone. Give it a try."
 
Links to things mentioned in the show:
 


Headspace


Calm