Meditating Before An Important Event

This talk goes over how meditating before an important event can help you perform better. In this talk, I go over how meditation can help you perform better at sports, at work (such as in an interview), and in social interactions. As a bonus, you can also meditate *after* an event to reduce its importance and your attachment to it.

Transcript

Hey this is Ish and today I'm going to be talking to you about meditating before an important event and how it can actually help you. So a lot of people think of meditation as something that's very separate from the external world like going to work or taking care of your kids but in reality meditation can actually help you in all these different aspects of your life and I'm going to give you three different examples here so one is physical activities such as playing sports, How meditating before that can actually help you in your performance and then how it can help you in your workplace environment and then also just in social interactions as well. So starting off in in terms of like physical activities meditation can help a lot because it really clears your mind but in addition to that when you meditate properly you go into what is called a flow state and a flow state is where your mind shuts off and your body just acts and when I want to use a basketball for example so when you get into basketball you just have this flow state where you're just you know shooting the ball into the hoops as if it's nothing and there's you're not really thinking when you're going straight on and actually competing with other people and meditation really help you tap into that state a lot easier and this could be applied to any sports like running or lifting weights it's more of that mind and muscle connection that you build through meditation very similar to yoga as well and I found that you it you receive the same benefits in both meditation and yoga so you get that really nice flow state where your concept of yourself it disappears and you're just lost in in the activity itself and it also makes you better a better player in general because like I mentioned you're not overthinking things so you don't mess things up because of your nerves you're very calm and when you're in a state of calm you accomplish a lot more because you're not panicking or self-sabotaging and then in terms of how it can help you in workplace situations say you have an interview coming up meditation can make you very calm for that so if you meditate before an interview you are more centered in yourself you appear more confident which is very important and you're able to convey your ideas as if it is nothing right and you don't have that self-conscious part of you that usually likes to chime in so you have what is called your monkey mind or your chatter mind which spews in a lot of different things right and with meditation what it does is it quietens this part of your brain and there's a part of your brain that's called a default mode network and this is responsible for just like your mindless chatter and meditation actually quietens this down and in long-term meditators this actually this part of the area in your brain actually shrinks a lot so meditation has a good effect on that so anytime you're in a very stressful environment for work or you have an upcoming deadline meditation can not only help you deal with your thoughts that obviously cause you a lot of stress but it helps you with those challenges as well and that's why I like meditating before going to work and then in terms of social relationships meditation can help a lot so say you have a event coming up with your friends or maybe you have a date coming up meditation will help you again quieten those self-conscious thoughts that you have it allow you to be in the moment where you're connecting with other people and what I've also noticed through doing long periods of meditation a lot of people think that it's very isolating but it's actually the opposite because you have this very this nice feeling of bliss and you're able to connect with people on a different level through meditation it makes you a better listener so if you notice when people that meditate a lot or they're able to just sit back and listen to you and bring that full attention and you'll realize the power of presence once you actually meditate or you hang out with people that meditate because you'll notice that the quality of their attention is a lot different so when people who don't meditate they kind of have scatterbrain right they just they're on their phone while they're talking to you or they're just you know not even paying attention to you but you'll notice after a period of meditation whether it's yourself or other or another person that you're talking to they're very present with you and the one thing I've noticed a lot is the eye contact comments so people that meditate will give you a little bit more eye contact and that's a good thing because it's a sign that you're actually listening to the person in front of you so these are all just a couple different examples of how meditation meditating before an event can actually help you in these different scenarios but obviously you can come up with a lot of different you know ideas like driving or cooking or meditation can help with all that and it actually amplifies whatever you're doing so it'll actually make you better in whatever activities you're doing so that's like the power of meditating before an important event and as a bonus I'm going to tell you to meditate after an event too if you have time so going back to these examples if you meditate before a basketball game or lifting weights or going to the gym or whatever the case is something physical you'll get into that flow state but number two when you meditate afterwards what this does is that it reduces the attachment that you have with this particular activity so if you're playing a competitive game like wrestling or boxing or basketball right and you lose that competition well now you're kind of angry right well with meditation it'll actually blunt the blow of losing and if you do win it'll actually reduce the attachment as well so you're not as needy for it to occur again so you're fine either way whether you win whether you lose that's fine and it teaches you to reduce your level of attachments and same if you go to this interview and you actually bomb well meditation can be good because you aren't you're able to kind of let that let the emotions that sinking emotions let it go and just be with yourself same with social relationships sometimes someone just doesn't get you and you know things don't go well well you're not taking it as personally because you can sit through and meditate through it so this works in a lot of different ways because when you meditate after an event you reduce that that importance that you have so you're not as needy for that outcome so if that date went really well now you're not clinging for the next date or the uh that interview um went poorly you're not like clinging or needing for that interview to work because you're fine with who you are as a person so you'll notice that when you meditate before an event and after event you'll experience a nice steady buzz of just being being still and experiencing that spaciousness and that eventually permeates all areas of your life so it's a nice steady buzz rather than the peaks and valleys of life where it just goes up and you're going you're like experiencing a little mania and then you want things you're grasping for it and then you lose it and then you all of a sudden you're in like a little depression so rather than experiencing the ups and downs you have a nice permanent buzz of well-being and that's kind of the goal so when you do this this is actually like a reflection of life in a sense because now you're training yourself to be cool with the good good sides of life of your event upcoming event and also the doubt potential downsides and just being fine with both and eventually after doing this practice you'll experience just an overall buzz like i mentioned so i hope this helps and you take this into consideration thanks

Reviews

Great points thanks so much!

Another inspiring talk, with very useful advice! Thank you Ish 🙏