Mindfulness And Right Effort For Athletes W/ George Mumford

What does it mean to be a mindful athlete, in sport and life? How do you cultivate mindfulness as an athletic superpower to respond and perform more effectively? In today’s episode of Your Life in Process, Diana and globally recognized speaker, teacher, and coach, George Mumford, discuss sport as a metaphor for life and how to employ spiritual superpowers to step up your inner game.

Transcript

What does it mean to be a mindful athlete?

And how can you work on your inner game so that you're more effective not only in sport but also in life?

That's what we're going to explore today on your life in process with George Mumford.

One thing you may not know about me is that sports dominate a lot of my life.

When I'm not podcasting or seeing clients,

I am often on a baseball field watching my kids play or watching basketball,

Baseball or some other sport at home.

And it's gotten me to think a lot about not just the physical performance of sport,

But what George Mumford calls the inner game of what's happening in your mind that helps you improve your physical performance as well as your life.

There's a long line of research on the application of mindfulness to athletic performance.

And in general,

It shows that when you practice mindfulness training,

It improves your mental and your physical game.

But George Mumford goes beyond that.

He also talks about how mindfulness improves you as a human.

He was one of the first mindfulness teachers in the arena of high level sport.

George taught Michael Jordan,

Kobe Bryant and other elite athletes on how to be what he calls flow ready and get into the zone.

And George has his own personal history of physical pain and addiction that led him to mindfulness.

In this episode,

George talks about five spiritual superpowers that athletes can employ to deepen their game,

But also deepen their life.

Superpowers like being present,

Concentrating the mind,

Knowing yourself with insight,

Acting with right effort and practicing trust.

Sport is such a metaphor for life.

There are moments that are exhilarating peak experiences,

But also the hard work of deliberate practice.

There's the letdown when things don't turn out how you hoped.

There's the identity shifts that happen when teams and relationships change over time.

And as I watched my kids and athletes engage in sport,

I truly am seeing that it is an inner game.

So it's great to have George Mumford on the show,

The author of The Mindful Athlete,

Secrets to Pure Performance with a Forward by Phil Jackson.

And I'll give you some concrete practices to help you develop your skills as a mindful athlete on and off the court at the end.

When I was thinking about having you come on,

Actually the way that I learned about you was through Inside LA Meditation,

Which is Trudy Goodman's center.

And a friend of mine who has worked with that center recommended you.

She said,

Oh,

You should have George Mumford on.

He would be a great guest.

Okay.

So who's your friend?

Her name is Angela Stebbs.

So she's just- Of course.

Angie baby.

Angie baby.

Oh,

Okay.

I didn't know she was that.

Yeah.

She recommended you.

She said,

Oh,

He'd be great.

But then when I didn't know about you,

I mean,

You're part of the mindfulness family,

But you've probably been in my life longer than that in that when I was growing up,

The only real sports that we ever watched were the Lakers.

And the reason why we watched the Lakers,

My parents,

My dad wasn't a big sports guy,

But he loved to watch the Lakers because he loved to watch Phil.

And he would always point out like,

You got to watch Phil.

He's a meditator.

He's doing something different.

And at the time he really was doing something different.

But you were behind the scenes of that as well.

So what were you doing there behind the scenes with Phil Jackson?

I mean,

So he's one of the greatest coaches of all time.

And if you listen to my dad,

He will definitely say that.

What was,

How did you meet him and what was going on behind the scenes?

It was probably,

It was after the season.

So it was probably July because they won a championship that year,

July,

1993.

And Phil used to do this workshop at Omega Institute,

Which is in Rhinebeck,

New York.

And he did a program called Beyond Basketball.

At the same time,

Jon Kabat-Zinn was teaching mindfulness-based stress reduction for healthcare providers and like social workers and folks like that.

So they were both at Omega at the same time and they knew each other and they were communicating.

And Phil's wife at the time,

June,

Was there.

So they were talking and Phil said he wanted somebody to come in and help the guys deal with the stress of success because they had just won three NBA championships in a row,

Which hadn't been done since Boston Celtics won eight in a row.

This is when he was with the Bulls,

With Jordan.

He was with the Bulls.

He was a coach.

Yeah.

And he had won the first three championships.

So that was the context in which they were operating and I guess they were showing the work that was being done.

And I was working at the Center for Mindfulness,

Which at that time was called the Stress Reduction.

And relaxation program helped establish it in the city clinic.

And I also was teaching in prison.

I was a program manager of the prison project.

So we were in the Department of Correction facilities teaching mindfulness-based stress reduction to people in substance abuse units.

And so when he saw and he said,

Well,

How about this guy?

And they said,

He'd be great.

Yeah.

He went with Dr.

J in college.

He's from the same place that a lot of these players are from.

He would probably be able to connect with them.

And so then we talked and it was decided that we'd come in at training camp,

Which is in October.

And we had this conversation in July or August.

And then in the interim,

Michael Jordan's father got murdered and then Michael retired.

And so when I got there,

They were in a full-blown crisis.

And that was almost 29 years ago come this October.

Almost 29 years ago.

So you thought you were coming in to work with the stress of success.

Teached them how to deal with the stress of success.

Yeah,

But you hit the crisis of change in terms of what are they going to do without their star player.

Yes.

You're talking about now we're getting into identity and belonging and that sort of thing.

So that's always a challenge because no team is ever the same.

It's always changing.

But when you're a leader and you're identified as Jordanaires,

That's challenging.

And so we had,

It's like,

This is what life is.

Life happens and then whatever's happening is happening because the conditions are right for whatever's happening to be happening.

And then the question is,

Are you going to react to it where there's no space between stimulus and response or are you going to respond to it where in the space you create,

You can choose.

You have the power and freedom to choose.

So in those early days when you were brought on to the crisis,

What were,

I mean,

It seems like,

And this was back in the day,

I mean,

You're talking to 1993.

Yeah.

There wasn't Mindful Magazine in the grocery store.

This was like new,

New,

New,

New for you to probably come in to these teams and you sort of chosen because you could relate to these players.

But you're also bringing something maybe new and fresh to them.

How did you translate some of these teachings?

What were some of the skills that you were teaching them early on?

Same skill to teach everybody how to be still and know.

How to meditate,

How to use your mind.

We're talking about right view here.

We're talking about right intention and right thinking.

And we're also talking about right speech,

Right action,

Right livelihood.

But the main thing is the mental discipline of right effort,

Right mindfulness,

Right concentration.

So I was actually training them in traditional Buddhist trainings of the mind,

Purifying the mind.

Basically mindfulness,

The four foundations of mindfulness in action and housed in everyday language and framed in the context of athletic competition in the sport.

And so,

Yeah,

So I had a lot of experience teaching these principles to anybody from Yale to jail,

The locker rooms,

The boardrooms.

So I had language did in a way where they could get it and they could understand it.

But the basic fundamentals,

The basic requirements are still the same.

You have to be able to direct and sustain attention,

But you also have to be cognizant of the mindset or the attitude of what you're doing.

There's a certain quality of mind,

What we would call right view.

You have to have the right view.

You have to have your mind in the mood to learn.

Mainly it was housed in being a spiritual warrior or go and flow,

Just talking about how mindfulness makes you flow ready.

So everybody knows what it's like to be in flow and to be in the zone.

And so I talked about that,

But I also talked about training like a warrior,

Like a spiritual warrior.

In your book,

The Mindful Athlete,

You break these down into these five superpowers of spiritual warriors.

And I thought it might be interesting to go through some of them and you share about how you've used them in your own life,

But also how we can use them,

Whether we're athletes or whether we're just trying to get through our lives.

And the first one is mindfulness,

Which I think a lot of people are familiar with at this point.

A few years later,

That's a pretty common term.

But I also think even though we're familiar with it,

We have a hard time actually doing it and using it and applying it when we really need to.

So we know what mindfulness is,

But then when we're in the heat of the moment,

We lose our mindfulness.

So how do you work with players where there's,

I guess there's just so much physical energy and emotion that shows up on the court.

And I see this with my kids who are both baseball players,

Actually in the coaches,

They can lose it really quickly.

And they're working with nine-year-olds.

Now,

We actually put it in stressful settings.

So how do you work with players in cultivating that skill of being present no matter what?

Yes.

Talk to them about the idea of directing and sustaining attention.

Everybody knows when they're focused,

When they're locked in,

When they're concentrated,

They can do well.

So I talked to them about mindfulness,

Which if you really think about it,

And I've been doing this for a lot of years,

Which 40 years,

And mindfulness is just no one definition of it.

People have their own ideas about what mindfulness is,

But I think the most important is the opposite of mindlessness,

But it's really mirror mind.

So you want your mind to be like a mirror and whatever is being reflected in it,

You need to get rid of all the extraneous data.

So you're actually just letting the raw data speak to you in its own language.

Back in those days,

People knew,

If I said Zen,

They knew kind of what it was,

But mindfulness was a little bit challenging.

But you said that Zen stuff or Zen people had,

Even though they couldn't tell you what it is,

It puts you in the neighborhood,

It puts you in approximation.

So I talk about the mood of wonder.

There is the unwilled willingness to meet what is utterly strange and what is most familiar.

It is the willingness to step back and let things speak to us,

A passive receptivity,

That means being alert and relaxed,

To let things of the world present themselves in their own terms.

So we can get the characteristics,

We can get the raw data without interpreting it,

Without embellishing it,

Projecting ourselves or associative abstract thinking.

You want to get as much time as you can where you're just like a mirror or a mountain lake and it's placid,

It's serene.

And you can see the image of the snow covered mountain.

It just shows you the image of the mountain without any ripples,

Without anything between you and the actual thing.

Heather Teysko Yeah,

I love that.

It makes me think of a mantra that Thich Nhat Hanh has taught over the years,

Which is the breathing in,

I'm water and breathing out,

I accurately reflect.

I really didn't understand that one.

But the way you described it is really helpful because it's the accurate reflection without the interpretation because we're so addicted to interpreting.

We're so addicted to storytelling and adding on and complicating the situation and then getting ourselves so lost in thought we're out of the moment.

And I think about that in terms of for you,

And I think it's helpful for you to share a little bit of your history here and the role of mindfulness in that because one of the places where it's really helpful is in things like recovery from an addiction because the story can get us into all sorts of problems when we're struggling with addiction.

Can you share a little bit about that?

Darryl DMC I'll be celebrating 38 years in July,

July 30.

When I went into detox,

That was in there 21 days and they came out.

So obviously,

You have this,

You know,

People don't realize if you look at in those days,

I'll talk about how I saw recovery in those days.

So we talk about threefold disease physical,

Which is pretty obvious,

You get dope sick or you get cravings.

So and,

You know,

The associate of thoughts and,

You know,

You could walk by and you could smell a match,

The self-assessment of a match and that could trigger something.

And then the spiritual component of it,

Which is connecting to something about wholeness.

Some people talk about it as being a service contribution and meaning.

So there's threefold disease.

So in the mental realm,

I had to realize that my best thinking couldn't get me out of trouble because you get trapped and you get into it.

So I had to behave my way in a proper thinking.

So we call it stinking thinking.

So you have to have what we call right intention,

Right thought,

Which is predicated on right view.

And it's predicated on this idea that,

Okay,

Here's a simple principle.

If you don't drink,

You won't get drunk.

If you don't take drugs,

You won't get drugged.

But the thing is,

It's not knowing the difference between the mind and the body.

So you have to actually start to see that there's what we call building up,

Budding,

B-U-D-D-I-N-G,

Building up to a drink or a drug.

So you really have to start looking at yourself and your thoughts and how you're seeing things.

And when you get triggered,

You need to understand,

Okay,

I got triggered.

Now I have this obsession or compulsion to do something.

How do I arrest it or how do I manage it?

So being able to start to think about,

Well,

Why am I going there and what am I doing?

And so in the practice,

The cause of suffering is what we call craving,

Attachments,

Ignorance.

So the practice is really helpful with self-regulation,

Knowing when this negative thought,

I call it the negative committee,

How to,

And this is right effort,

How to notice that and to abandon them or to understand that there's certain triggers that are going to happen.

And when I get triggered,

What's my remedy,

How am I going to offset that trigger?

And so for me,

When I got out of the detox,

I have this compulsion to use drugs or alcohol.

And I knew enough because I had been going to AA for three months before that I knew that I had to seek a power greater than myself because no power on this earth could stop me from drinking or drugging.

So for me,

I went into the men's room,

Into the stall,

And I recited the serenity prayer.

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

The courage to change the things I can,

And the wisdom to know the difference.

I said it as a mantra,

And I kept repeating it.

Don't ask me how I knew how to do that,

But I did that,

And the compulsion was removed.

So that's my first spiritual experience,

I mean,

A real profound spiritual experience in the sense of the spirit was able to overcome the physical manifestation and the stinking thinking.

And by doing that,

I changed the thinking,

But I also changed the spirit or changed the mindset,

And got me into a wholesome mindset,

Which allowed me to be able to notice,

To let go,

And to actually.

.

.

And I've never overcome that compulsion before.

That serenity prayer,

I feel like,

Embodies so many things in just those simple lines.

It has everything from acceptance,

Like this sort of radical acceptance of what is,

And that it also has a bit of behaviorism,

Like change the things I can change,

The element of right effort in it,

And the real just surrender,

Like I'm powerless over this thing,

And trying to fight it is digging me deeper and keeping me actually hooked in it.

Yeah,

So you're talking about serenity,

Acceptance,

And wisdom.

So those are spiritual,

If you wanna think about those as spiritual values or spiritual powers,

They have a certain positivity to it,

Has a certain energy to it.

And so when you align yourself with a spiritual power,

You align yourself with how things work,

Then the functionality and our ability to perform,

Our ability to do what we say we wanna do is enhance tremendously.

But we don't really look at it that way.

I never looked at it that way.

I never looked at.

.

.

You're an addict or alcoholic and you focus on the physical,

You don't understand that the mind and the body interact,

And that the spirit or the soul or this connecting to higher power or higher level of consciousness,

A higher vibration,

Those things are huge when it comes to being able to overcome substance abuse or chronic pain,

Or just being in a bad mood or being in an unwholesome mood.

It's really about understanding how to,

What I call self-regulation,

Self-regulated thoughts,

Feelings and behaviors that allow you to actually transform your consciousness.

And those three things,

The serenity,

Acceptance and wisdom are also.

.

.

It's like when you're at the lowest of the low,

You're fighting an addiction or you're recovering from addiction,

But also the three things that you also need when you're at the highest of the high,

When you're in those high pressure performance moments is also when you need to let go a bit too.

There's something that you wrote in The Mindful Athlete that I underlined and I was like,

Ooh,

I want to read this to my kids.

I'm actually encouraging my 12-year-old to read your book.

He's really into sports and I'm like,

It has some drugs and it has some bad language.

You'll love it.

He's like,

Ooh.

I didn't think about it that way.

That was the buy-in for him and just like a whole lot of mindfulness.

But you write,

Wanting to beat the other team or go faster or throw better than someone can be a great initial motivation,

But it will wear out quickly and eventually wear you down because there's always someone else to beat.

If you stay focused on tearing something down instead of building it up,

You won't end up feeling great because you'll simply be consumed by hatred,

Anger,

Contempt or other emotions that lead to distress.

So that kind of right effort also applies to when we're caught up in the win,

Which is just as problematic as when we're caught up in an addiction.

Most people are guilty of trying too hard or wanting something too badly.

And so it gets in the way.

So you actually,

And this is beyond sports,

This is just all of these superpowers help us from moment to moment.

You can't develop the mindfulness without the other powers,

Without diligence,

Without wisdom,

Without being able to focus or concentrate.

And then the faith where you have enough trust to even make the effort.

When I talk about these five superpowers,

Your ability to be mindful,

Your ability to be diligent,

Your ability to be concentrated,

Your ability to have insight or wisdom,

Your ability to generate faith or have faith,

Be in touch with faith.

Those superpowers are working together,

Like a Tintin and Haim would call,

They enter our.

How would you describe that to someone,

For example,

You worked with Kobe Bryant,

Right?

Or someone like Shaquille O'Neal.

There's just so much reinforcement for the win.

And if you're trying to help people get focused on the inner game and the right effort,

It feels like a big pivot against what culturally is being reinforced.

No question.

No question.

All breakthroughs are break withs.

And so you have to be in that 1%,

10%,

Whatever it is,

Where you're not doing what everybody else is doing.

You're doing what your heart is telling you to do.

You're doing what you need to do to be in the moment,

To be yourself,

To be loving,

To be empathetic,

To be compassionate.

You have to be able to understand that it's an inside job.

It's what I call the inner game.

And that's a challenge because we're so used to doing it.

We want to be like Mike.

We want to be like Susie or Diana rather than being who we are.

The world will tell you who they think you should be or who they want you to be.

It's up to you to choose to be who you are,

Regardless of what other people think or feel about it.

And that takes a tremendous amount of courage to do that.

And to do that,

You're confronted with anxiety.

It's one side of the coin is freedom.

The other side is anxiety.

They come together,

At least according to Soren Kierkegaard back in 1846.

He calls it the alarming possibility of being able.

The alarming possibility of being able.

And even though you said,

Yeah,

These guys are making money and this and that,

But at the same time,

They have the same self we have and they have to play that in a game.

And there's always another level.

So as great as Shaquille was,

As great as Kobe was,

As great as Michael was,

As great as Tom Brady is,

And I could talk about the Williams sister or Mia Hamilton,

Whoever the athlete is,

Jew Lloyd,

Breanna Stewart,

Any of these folks,

Diana Taurasi,

There's always another level.

And so there's a,

But there's an inner game and what you choose,

The goals you set and how far you want to go beyond your current capacity is on you.

But if you're a lead performer,

Like the people I talked about,

You're always pushing that envelope.

You're always playing on the edge.

You have to get comfortable being uncomfortable.

The anxiety is just telling you that you're out of your comfort zone,

But if you embrace it and work through it,

You get stronger.

It's just really,

It's like,

Well,

What do you want and what are you,

Who are you willing to be to do what you want to do?

It's really that simple.

You know,

It's interesting when you were talking about,

In your book,

You were talking,

Actually no,

This was in an interview I heard of you with Tim Ferriss and you were talking about Phil Jackson and how you appreciate that he coached the whole person.

Yes.

And that that's the approach that you have too.

It makes me feel,

It makes me feel like that's the direction that I would hope all coaches,

All managers,

All leaders look at their,

You know,

The people that they're working with is a whole person,

Not just as something that's producing something for them that they want.

And part of that is because,

Especially with these athletes,

They're such huge role models for kids and for our kids.

If you're not coaching to the whole person,

Then we miss out on this opportunity to also influence our youth in certain ways.

So I'm just wondering how for you,

When you've used these mindfulness and spiritual superpowers with athletes,

How you see it also changing their lives outside of athletic performance,

Like how it impacts their relationships or their parenting or just being good humans.

If we leave out one aspect of being the physical,

Mental,

And the spiritual,

I brought in the emotional,

The four component,

Which is the heart.

So that's emotion and social,

You know,

Part of us,

The heart.

And so if you leave out any aspect of that to the person you're dealing with,

Whether it's your significant other or your child or somebody who is leading you,

Physical,

Mental,

Emotional,

Spiritual,

If you leave out any one of those,

Then you're relating to that person as a thing,

Not as a person.

And so this whole idea is about being able to see the whole person.

And that's why Phil and I have gotten along so well.

That's why I said yes to him,

Because he was,

Even though they had won three championships,

He was still wanting to help the guys deal with the stress of success because he looked at the whole person.

I want them to excel as a human being.

And so to be a mindful athlete,

You've got to be a mindful person.

To be a compassionate athlete,

You've got to be a compassionate person.

So ideally there's a consistency with how you were being and not having these multiple selves within the niche role,

You're compassionate in the niche role.

You don't know what compassion is.

You start to be able to have that consistency of how you're being and having a principle centered life where you're actually always thinking about,

Is this loving or is this not loving?

Is this helpful or is this not helpful?

Is this wholesome?

Is it not wholesome?

People forget that a big part of this practice is knowing what's wholesome and what's not,

Knowing what works and what doesn't work.

So of course it works with athletics.

It works with everything.

If you're interested in having a great experience or performing at a high level,

Which is another way of saying having a great experience.

Yeah.

I think that for a lot of athletes,

Even if they're athletes that play into the collegiate level or play beyond that,

It's only a portion of their life.

There's so much,

I mean,

Even if your athletic career ends at 35,

You're only 35.

You have a lot more.

So what are you investing in during those years?

And if you're investing in the whole person,

Then you've grown these capacities and lots of parts of who you are.

And I think that that's exciting.

It's also,

Like you said,

It's a little counterculture in terms of the win and the focus on outcome that many of our young athletes are focused on or they're getting into a college.

I think it's easy to say to folks,

It's how you play the game.

It's not whether you win or lose.

But when I say that I get lots of eye rolls.

Yes,

You have eye rolls because they don't have a direct experience of it.

Remember when I talked about wisdom,

They have the information,

But they don't believe it or they don't have a direct experience.

And this is what the Buddha talks about.

Don't believe me.

See if it's true.

This is where you investigate and say,

OK,

Diana says that that's true.

Let me see if I can have a direct experience of it or my intuition or my heart,

The other side of my brain that sees the patterns and connects with the whole picture,

That sees it's the melody of the song,

Not the words.

And when you have the melody,

Then the words make more sense.

So that's exactly right.

People will say things.

I can't tell you how many athletes I have.

I won't mention names.

But recently I talked to a couple of athletes that I work with.

They're both during their 30s now.

Well,

Then they come back to me and say,

Hey,

You know,

I'm working with young kids and you taught me all this stuff.

Now I understand what you were teaching me.

See,

It's like so it's what we call implicit or non declarative learning.

You don't even know you're learning something until it expresses itself.

It's not conscious until now.

They understand all of that stuff.

And then they come back.

And that's why my approach has always been the Johnny Appleseed approach,

Planting these seeds.

And I think that's what's happening.

I'm trying to get them to have a willing suspension of disbelief and just see if it's true or act as if it's true and see what kind of experience you have.

And that's the thing the Buddha never said.

You have to believe in me.

He said,

See for yourself.

You have to have a direct experience.

That's part of the wisdom,

The inside part.

The intellect part we get,

You can reflect on and say intellect.

That makes sense.

But some things are counterintuitive.

So you can't it doesn't always the thinking can't get you that you got to behave your way into it.

But once you have the direct experience of it like me,

Once I had the direct experience of being clean,

Not having the impulse removed,

The compulsion removed,

Then my thinking would change and catch up with with it.

So I behave my way into proper thinking.

And so it's the same thing.

It's like,

OK,

Don't believe me.

Let's check it out and see if it's true.

Investigate,

Explore it instead of just blowing it off out of hand.

And that's what a lot of these athletes said.

And what they said to me was,

Wow,

I was immature back then.

And that's so that's the the insight part of it is is exploring for yourself what what works and then seeing the benefit of being present or the benefit of letting go of the wind and being in the flow.

And another thing that you also teach athletes,

Which I think is counter to what athletes are being taught in other places,

Is actually listening to the body,

Paying attention to the physical body as opposed to trying to distract or just override the body signals.

You shared a bit about how that has been part of your own healing your body as well.

So I'd like to just talk a little bit about that,

Because I think a lot of athletes are taught to override physical pain or taught to just keep on pushing.

Yes.

Yes.

So I believe one of the reasons why I think people don't want to be aware,

Because if they're aware,

Then they got to be responsible.

So for myself,

When I got clean,

I had this idea that why I grew up in the hood so I don't get stressed.

I just got this idea,

Man,

The stress is weakness.

If you're talking about something stressing you out or you can't handle it.

That's a problem.

So when I got into recovery and I started learning about mindfulness,

Then I saw myself,

My reaction was,

Yeah,

Man,

We don't get stressed.

And then I heard my body saying,

Dude,

I don't know about you,

But there's stress in this body because your shoulders are up around your ears.

So maybe you need to check,

There's some stress in here.

So then you see what I'm saying?

So then I started listening to it and it would tell me things.

It would say things,

Even on a different level.

I remember I was in this job when I was working in corporate and I went into my boss's office and I had a great relationship with this woman.

But when I went in there,

I crossed my arms like this.

And she knows,

She says,

Why are you crossing your arms?

I said,

Yeah,

Yeah,

You're right.

So I overruled it and crossed my arms and then she opened her mouth and then I said,

That's why I crossed my arms.

And that's the thing,

There's a wisdom of the body.

The body don't lie.

It tells you things if you listen,

But you got to be still and you use it.

And most elite athletes,

Most athletes know when they can push themselves and when they need to back off.

Sometimes they don't,

But this is what you listen to.

You have to listen to yourself.

And this is the thing when you can be still,

When you can be in the eye of the hurricane,

Serenity or equanimity,

There's a knowing that comes out that goes beyond all understanding.

All resources we talk about,

That piece that goes beyond all understanding.

There's understanding that goes beyond all understanding.

When you can be still and know,

There's a knowing when we can just allow ourselves to see and express ourselves.

And that's the thing that we don't do because that's still small voices.

It's easily drowned out through the noise and the clutter and that's overriding it,

Like you said.

And that's what we do.

We override a lot of things the body tells us to do.

And sometimes pushing beyond our current capacity,

That could be helpful because the body will adjust to the new level.

But there's some things where we need to not push forward,

But to pull back.

So if you're doing any kind of yoga or stretching,

You warm up the body,

Then you ease into the stretch.

And then by getting to that limit where there's discomfort,

Not a lot of discomfort,

But a little discomfort,

If you just breathe with it and be with it,

Then you're able to move beyond it.

And that's on a physical level,

But that's also on a mental,

Emotional,

And spiritual level.

We have to have that sensitivity to know we can get comfortable being uncomfortable,

But not so uncomfortable being uncomfortable that we can't move ahead.

That's how we expand our capacity.

That's how we develop more wellness.

And that discernment that comes from when you listen a lot and you pay attention a lot to the body and then the action and the consequences of your actions,

Then you get better at being able to discern,

Okay,

If I push myself here,

It's going to injure me.

If I push myself here,

It's going to grow me.

And the only way to kind of know that I think is an inner job.

No one else knows your body.

No one else knows you.

And we do it by trial and error.

You can investigate.

You can explore.

But the investigation and the exploration is so huge.

And so we can use our minds in ways where we're discovering things.

We're seeing things in new and fresh ways.

That's what makes life alive.

And that's what most children do.

They live in that sense of wonder and excitement.

Then at some point,

They get out of that sense of wonder.

It's just like some people think,

Okay,

I graduated from college.

I'm done learning.

Instead of realizing that learning is a lifelong process,

That you're learning things.

And especially now that you,

With all of the gadgets,

Everything's on your smartphone,

You have to continue to learn and grow and not have fear.

Impermanence,

That's the first law.

Things are changing and we can stay hold true to our values.

But how we express those values have to be adapted to the current reality,

The current now.

The attunement to body,

The attunement to nonverbal,

The attunement to the present moment,

The learning and the openness that I think mindfulness cultivates.

And we can learn a lot from,

I think,

From athletes,

Good athletes,

In terms of how to be in states of flow and mindful.

And then also we can apply that to our lives.

For those of us that maybe want to do one small thing to start to build into our rituals to help cultivate some of these spiritual superpowers,

What would be one small thing that we could do on a regular basis that could help with?

Things you talked about today.

Recognition between reacting versus responding.

So when you react to something,

There's no space and it's habitual behavior.

Now don't get me wrong,

There's some things like when you're an athlete,

You want to perform in a way where you can read something and react because you train yourself to react in a way automatically.

That's positive.

But when I normally say between stillness and response,

That means when something happens,

Can we just pause and can we see that,

Oh,

I reacted to that.

And just thinking about,

Okay,

What's my intention?

Is my mind that positive or negative?

Or it's just really simple things like am I reacting to life or am I responding?

And so when we react in a life,

That's an opportunity to say,

Okay,

Did I get the outcome I got?

I want it?

Yes.

And then how did you do that?

So you reflect on it and then you develop that habit pattern.

The habit to pause and notice the space.

That's the goal.

That's the intention is to be able to notice,

Oh,

I'm reacting,

I'm responding.

Uncritically,

Not saying all that was bad because that's what we do.

Chaining on you,

I shouldn't have done that.

My practice is not so good.

I should be able to do this simple thing without reacting.

So it's just as simple.

Am I reacting where there's no space between stillness,

Response,

A reaction,

And there's usually a reaction that's habitual,

Has nothing to do with reading the situation and then responding appropriately.

So how do I program myself?

How do I learn how to not react by understanding what's the triggers and understanding how I can self-regulate so that I can have that space and then say,

Okay,

My value is to be loving and to be compassionate in this sense.

So can I choose with that alignment?

Yeah,

So the pause,

The creating the space,

And then the choosing of the values.

Responsibility and choice.

That's what we have.

And we're responsible for how we're relating to things,

Even though you could say,

Well,

He made me do it.

No one makes you do anything.

You're reacting to it.

And if you own it,

Then you can change it.

Well,

I think those are good words to end on.

If you own it,

You can change it.

I really appreciate you,

George,

For taking this time with us.

And for those that want to learn more about you,

You have the Mindful Athlete book where you break all of these practices down.

And you also have a course that people can do.

Yeah,

Online course,

The Mindful Athlete course.

And you can learn all about that stuff on my website,

Georgemonfort.

Com.

And I also have on YouTube,

I have a YouTube channel where I call it Being at Home with George.

I have these weekly video.

It can be anywhere from 6 to 12 minutes.

I talk about different aspects of practice and being.

Cool.

Well,

We will definitely link to those.

Those are another little short snippets that people can use on a weekly basis.

That's great.

Yeah.

So I haven't been,

Because of COVID,

I haven't been to LA,

Especially inside LA,

As much as I'd like.

But it'd be great to see you when I come out here.

It'd be nice to meet you in person.

I know you're doing amazing things there.

So it'd be great to just see you person to person.

Yeah,

That's always nice,

Too.

But it's wonderful to meet in this way.

And I think,

Again,

From my home to your home and wishing you a wonderful rest of your day and your week.

Yeah.

Love and blessings.

Love and blessings.

Thank you.

OK,

Bye bye.

So we talked about a lot of different things in this episode.

And I want to boil it down to three practices to strengthen your spiritual superpowers.

One practice for mindfulness of discomfort,

Another practice for knowing yourself,

And a third practice for right effort.

So for mindful awareness of discomfort,

I would love for you to purposely put yourself into a physically uncomfortable situation and practice the skill of opening up and allowing and breathing into and being with.

One of the best ways to do this is with a plank.

If you are physically able and if you are not physically able to do a plank,

I would recommend an extended exhale.

So with a plank pose,

You can get on your elbows or you can be on your hands with your body outstretched.

I'll put a link in the show notes to show you how to do a plank.

And in an extended exhale,

All you're doing is taking a deep breath in and then breathing out for as long as possible and holding your breath for as long as possible.

Now while you're in plank or while you're in your extended exhale,

You could do this right now even as I'm talking,

What I'd like for you to do is allow your mind to settle in and be aware of just the sensation,

Not adding a story to it,

Not adding an interpretation to it,

But just practice pure awareness of sensation,

Mindfulness,

Noticing if it changes over time,

If it gets worse over time,

If it strengthens over time and try doing this mindfulness of discomfort exercise multiple times this week to see if it shifts for you.

If you do it repeatedly,

As I've been doing in my HIIT training and my breath work over many,

Many years,

You may find you even look forward to the challenge of it.

The second practice that I want you to do this week has to do with knowing yourself,

Knowing yourself.

And I think one of the best ways to get to know yourself is through a journal practice.

If you have a sport you engage in or you're a coach or some other physical activity,

Begin a little journal or a note section where you take a little note after you practice or a game and just write down a few things that you learned about yourself.

Get to know yourself,

What works for you,

What doesn't.

And then finally this week is the practice of right effort.

What are the wholesome qualities that you want to bring to your sport?

What are the things that you want people to remember you for?

On the field,

On the court,

And your interactions with others.

See if you can boil it down to a few wholesome qualities and make a little inner intention before you get on the yoga mat,

Before you go out to the tennis court to bring those qualities to life in your life.

Okay,

Thank you.

Look forward to seeing you next week on Your Life in Process.