Jeff Howell: Meditation Is A Game Changer!

Hey, everybody. How’s it going? This is Jeff Howell coming at you with another mindset Monday and today, I want to go over a few things that have come to mind after having a weekend kind of to myself. Kind of internal. Just working and spending time at home. Just relaxing and chilling out. That was after last weekend where I went through a phase of flow, as I mentioned on The Last Mindset Monday, where I was going to a business event on Thursday night. And then I did some personal stuff, a personal event on Friday night, and then I had a volunteer event on Sunday night, and just like all aspects of my life, were seeming to come together in that moment and divine flow, and it was just amazing. So the last week or so, after being kind of out and about and doing all that stuff last weekend, I just didn’t have anything on the calendar and I just stayed at home and focused on work and different projects that I’m trying to bring, bring, forward, move forward in my life. And what happened was on both Friday, Saturday and Sunday night, I had like very, very intense, deep meditations. And what it really kind of inspired in me was just the realization of how important meditation is in my life. And if you haven’t heard the story before, I had a mentor about seven or eight years ago.

It was very successful travels around all the time and I see him on Facebook or was seeing him on Facebook and he’s taking flights back East. And then as soon as he lands, he’s in a yoga class and super early in the morning and different things like that. And I’m like, Wow, how do you do that? I was having coffee with him like, you know, why do you do that? Like, how do you do that? And he’s like, Well, it’s the most important thing I do every day is yoga. And so that kind of inspired me to get into yoga. And then later he challenged me to start doing meditation, and he actually taught me a form of meditation through different teachers that he was going to when we live closer together, who taught sort of a meditative approach to yoga. And that’s how I got into meditation. So he challenged me to do that. And so I’ve developed this practice over the past seven or eight years, and it’s just gotten deeper and deeper. And so the last or this this past weekend and just having that practice of just going deep and experiencing it over and over again and reminding myself why I do this, like, why do I do this? Maybe it’s the most important thing I do. I don’t know. I don’t really frame it that way, but I definitely feel the benefits of it.

And so the three benefits that came up for me in the moment were that meditation gives me presence, gives me purpose, and it gives me a sense of possibility. So I want to go through each one of those just briefly, just to kind of let you know where my head’s at on it. So with presence, what meditation does is when I’m going into a deeper meditation and kind of removing the more superficial egoic thought patterns and, you know, programming that is usually pretty prevalent in our mind where we’re running programs or running thought patterns on a consistent basis. But as I go into deep meditation and start removing those things, I become a lot more present with what is in the moment, and that may be thoughts around what the meetings that I have, the the interactions that I had with people that day, the different things that I accomplish, the things that I’m, the goals that I’m shooting for, what I was able to accomplish in that sense, different things like that. And then that inevitably inspires the thoughts of, Well, what do I want to see in the future? What’s happening tomorrow? What meetings do I have? What interactions am I going to have? What opportunities am I going to have to push the relationships and the goals that I have for myself forward in the moment? And so it allows me to be a lot more present with those things and also kind of like seeing the maybe challenges that come up when I think about those things and just being present and just being like, wow, like this is amazing.

I have these opportunities, I have these people in my life. I have these things that I’m working on that are really powerful for me, and I’m also very grateful for what I already have. Like, look what I was able to accomplish, you know, remind myself, celebrate those wins. So that’s the presence part of this. It brings me into the present moment of where I am, what I’ve experienced immediately in the past, immediately in the present, and the feelings that I’m getting for that in the present moment. So then purpose. So meditation also gives me that sense of purpose because when I’m thinking about these things, that reminds me, well, why am I doing that? Why am I, why am I why? Why do I want to do that goal? Why? Why is that important to me? Why is this relationship important to me? Why is this interaction important to me? What’s the meaning behind it? So it gives me a lot more sense of not only purpose, but it reminds me of the intent.

Tension and the intentionality that I have between behind almost everything that I do nowadays is way more intentionally intentional than it used to be. I used to be pulled in all different directions by all different things and allowed myself to be that way because I wasn’t grounded in that present truth of what I was doing for myself, what was important to me personally, and the energy that I wanted to put out into the world so that I could push my own goals forward. I let everybody else’s goals take precedence over mine, and I think that was a learning process. Good. Call it a mistake. I learned a lot from it. It was definitely a learning process and it helps me frame it better in my mind now so that the purpose that I have behind the things that I do must be very clear in my mind before I’m willing to put time and effort and energy and resources behind it now to for anything so I don’t do anything anymore. That’s not intentional and that’s just the way it’s become because I’m so much more aware of these things. So the third thing that meditation has brought to my awareness over the weekend, it does all the time. But these are the things that are hitting, hitting, hitting home for me right now is possibly sense of possibility. It’s like, wow, like, look at all these things that I’m doing.

Look at the purpose that I have behind these things that I’m doing. Anything is possible. Look at these relationships that I’ve developed. Look at these business challenges and opportunities that I’m working on. Look at the people around me that are supporting me. Look at the skills that I’ve developed over time. Anything is possible. What are those bigger goals like we talked about last week, it was late last week when Tom Shipley at that business event, he was talking about, you know, add a couple of zeros to whatever you think your your big goal is. I got a couple of zeros, too. Let’s get serious. You know, it’s like that sense of possibilities don’t necessarily have to for me anyway. It doesn’t have to be a monetary goal, but it’s like the sense of possibility of making something so big come to fruition that it’s inspiring and exciting and it elicits a level of motivation and, you know, sort of that inspired action that helps provide the energy within me to continue to keep me continuing to go after those goals. So as I come back into this meditative state on a consistent basis, I mean, I’m doing this not every day in deep meditation, but it is definitely a practice that is very consistent for me. And some sometimes it’s seven days a week and some times it’s five days a week and sometimes I’m traveling in.

It’s one day a week and sometimes it’s no days a week. But the the general essence of it is that if you can come back to this kind of awareness and intentionality to get to gain that presence, to gain that purpose, to gain that reminder of your purpose, to gain that that sense of possibility over and over and over again, you’re literally reprogramming the cells in your in your being to be more aware of these opportunities, of opportunities that that come up and to move these things forward and all of that. So I feel like the consistency is key in that sense. So if you haven’t meditated, I highly recommend it and I think a lot of people tend to go into it with some preconceived idea of what it’s supposed to look like or what, that they’re doing it wrong because they’re thinking, you know, your thoughts or are kind of out of control. It’s normal for me anyway. It’s like I believe, you know, the the lungs breathe, the heartbeats and the mind thinks you’re not going to stop it. It’s it’s not about stopping thinking. It’s about pushing the boundaries of your consciousness into a state and state change. Like I changed the state of my thoughts and consciousness in real time and meditation.

It’s really about changing that into a sense of emotion as you’re transitioning that thought, those thoughts into transmuting those thoughts into an emotional state that is going to ground into your system and give you a level of emotional intelligence about the things that you are thinking about. That’s going to give you that better awareness. That awareness is going to give you more clarity. The clarity is going to give you more intention. The intention is going to give you motivation. The motivation is going to give you energy. The energy is going to give you the opportunity. To take action. And the action is what’s going to get you to where you want to be. So that’s the way I think about it. And I would just say, if you if you are or aren’t in meditation, start where you are and, you know, explore. There’s there’s there’s a whole there’s a million ways to do it right. And there’s a million ways that are maybe could be improved upon, you know. So take it for what it’s worth. I’ve seen massive, massive changes in my life based on the the practice of meditation that I’ve developed and cultivated over the past year or so. That’s Jeff Howell Mindset Monday for today. And I’d love to hear your comments in the chat, and I’ll see you on the next one. Peace.