Hey,
Thanks for sitting down,
And if you're still standing,
That's okay too.
What we're about to do is a short,
Mindful performance practice.
And by mindful performance,
What I mean is we're going to actively rest our minds.
How are we going to do this?
We're going to use our breath.
Pretty simple,
Right?
Before we get into it,
Why is rest so important?
Well,
You see,
We spend a lot of time stressing ourselves out with our thoughts,
Particularly at work.
And when we don't rest,
We never give our minds time to recover.
You see,
Our minds are quite complicated.
Actually,
They're super complex.
And we have different parts of our minds.
When we're working really hard on focused tasks,
We're using our task mode network.
It's a part of our brain that we use to logically work through things.
And it gets tired like any muscle.
And when we rest,
Give that part of our brains a break,
Another part of our brains kick in.
This is where a lot of the creative,
Non-logical,
Non-linear thinking happens.
And it's where we get creative breakthroughs.
It also means that we're resting the part of our brain that we use day in and day out,
Hour after hour,
To do the kinds of work that we need to do.
So by taking little moments of rest throughout the day,
Not only is it good for your energy,
But it's actually great for your performance and productivity.
So if you feel comfortable,
I invite you to just close your eyes and take a big breath in through the nose.
Just take your time and hold at the top for two,
Three,
Four,
And just let it out through the mouth.
Nice and slow until it's all gone.
I invite you to breathe in again through the nose and hold at the top,
Two,
Three,
Four,
And again out through the mouth.
And then just let your breath come to a normal resting rhythm.
What this practice is going to focus on is as you breathe in and breathe out,
Without holding at the top,
Just to breathe in nice and slowly and deliberately,
And breathe out.
When you get to the end of the out-breath,
Say silently in your mind the number one.
We're going to repeat this pattern until we get to the number ten.
So after number one,
You breathe in again and out again and drop the number two just before you breathe in for the third time,
And out again,
Drop the number three,
And so on and so on until we get to the number ten.
Once we get there,
We're just going to restart again.
We're going to do this for about three or four minutes.
I'm going to watch the time so you just relax and focus on your breathing.
If you find yourself wandering,
That's cool,
It happens.
When you catch yourself,
Just come back and restart with the number one and see if you can get to ten.
Look,
It's not a competition.
This is not something that you can win or lose at.
It's simply about creating a little game for your mind.
I'll talk to you very soon.
Have fun.
We're about halfway through the practice.
Keep going and remember,
If your mind keeps wandering,
Just restart back at number one.
It's totally cool.
It's all right.
You You You You All right,
And it's the end we had take a breath in Right through the nose nice and deep and really deliberate What you do to start coming back into just an awareness of where you are You might have drifted for some of you.
You might have gone nowhere and that's cool This seriously isn't a right or wrong way to do this Take that breath in and let it all out again and when you're ready just open your eyes This moment of resting I promise you will pay dividends When you get back to do whatever it is you need to do next For some of you you might feel relaxed Others might feel like going to sleep Or perhaps nothing happened The thing with the mindfulness practice is that the more you do it the more you get from it So keep coming back The practice is short and if you feel like doing this again in a couple of hours well Trust me Just press play Thanks for hanging out You
