The School of Greatness - 681 Calm Your Mind with Andy Puddicombe

Episode Date: August 17, 2018

PUSHING AGAINST A SITUATION WILL CAUSE IT TO OWN YOU. In today’s world, it’s easy to get swept into other people’s emotions. Social media, news, and even just a hectic lifestyle can make it challenging to ever feel at peace. But it’s something you need to concentrate on. When your mind is always cluttered, it’s difficult to make the right decisions. Opportunities became unclear, unfocused. I’m sure you’ve heard taking time to meditate is important for you. And sure, for those 5 or 10 minutes you may feel like your mind is clear. Then what? Meditation should go well beyond a specific time frame. It’s a practice that should be implemented throughout your day, especially when you feel a flood of emotions or thoughts. Calming your mind is a skill you need to develop and use all throughout the day - everyday. Knowing that things are often more drastic in your mind than in reality. That some things happening to you are meant to be and our resistance only makes them worse. To go deeper into what I mean, and the importance of keeping your mind calm, I’ve brought back this clip from Andy Puddicombe. If you aren’t familiar with Andy, he’s a truly unique individual. Not only did he spend time living with monks, but he studied at the Moscow State Circus and got a degree in circus arts. He shared some of his inside tips on how he keeps his mind clear and peaceful, even when he’s got a lot going on at work, or things seems to be stressful in her personal relationships. Get ready to find peace and clarity in this hectic world, on Episode 681. In This Episode You Will Learn: How you can navigate your emotions in a busy life (00:48) What Andy does when his wife is agitated (1:49) Andy’s go to mantra (2:43) How to handle tense situations (3:48)

This is 5-Minute Friday! I am very excited to introduce you to Andy Putakom, who is a meditation and mindfulness expert. In his early 20s, he made the unexpected decision to travel to the Himalayas to study meditation. It was the beginning of a 10-year journey which took him around the world, culminating with ordination as a Tibetan Buddhist monk in northern India. He later decided he wanted to transition back into the real world,

and he trained briefly at the Moscow State Circus, where he then returned to complete a degree in circus arts. What happens when you feel like you're about to have an emotional breakdown or you feel the motions turning or something how do you navigate the process now in a busy life yeah i think the the beauty there is of training consistently is that it tends to kind of last like there is a training last yeah the training last so there's an element it's not like you leave the monastery and you leave your mind at the monastery and all the training at the monastery kind of comes with you and that's really the idea

same with meditation in everyday life it's the idea is not to kind of make it all about the meditation those 10 minutes because what about the other 23 hours and 15 minutes, right? So it's how do we take that and kind of carry it into our life in the same way? How do you take those years of training? And after a while, there isn't really any kind of effort required. It's kind of inbuilt. It becomes an effortless thing. It doesn't mean like I'm definitely no kind of master here.

So, of course course i have moments and if the baby kind of hasn't slept for a number of kind of nights then how do you handle that when you're just like agitated or you're frustrated or something yeah what's your process yeah i i don't really have a kind of okay right now i need to do this definitely stopping pausing and doing some meditation will make a difference it kind of helps to reset the the mind a couple minutes uh 10 minutes yeah i think look in in the night kind of a few genuinely so 10 20 30 seconds is enough to kind of let go and be aware of the frustration of kind of being awake because if you think about it anything in life it's really just our resistance towards it is wanting it to be a different way as soon as we realize oh yeah it's just because of

that and we kind of let go of it it doesn't mean that we kind of love the situation yeah but at least now we're not pushing against it resisting causing even more stress and it's not owning us exactly exactly interesting do you have like a go-to mantra or meditation practice like in these situations yeah i mean your app obviously you have like all these different uh i guess kind of like chapters and categories but what do you personally do in that moment when the baby's crazy or something you know someone says something to you or the car you know traffic what is yeah what's the go-to for you there's a little bit at the end i know you've used the the app this is a little bit at the end of whatever one you're doing that i always say okay right right now just let your mind do whatever it wants to do so it's

a sense of on the one hand giving the mind total freedom to do whatever it wants and at the same time there's a sense of awareness you can't really do that let your mind go free unless you maintain a certain degree of awareness so for me that is the the shortcut it's in there because i think it's just an incredibly valuable tool it's so short because if you leave it too long then the mind will start to wander and lose that sense of awareness so it's kind of just getting the balance right but if you do that even 10 20 seconds yeah it's game-changing if you think if you're in the middle of a really intense situation and someone's like oh just learn meditation like you're struggling to even deal with and never mind learn new stuff so it doesn't

mean we can't use it for for those things but i think if we can get into a cycle and a habit in the same way we don't wait for our teeth to go really well in britain we do um exactly right so we get into this kind of pattern of hygiene and in the same way i think it's hygiene of the health of the mind you know how do we just kind of keep it fresh and sharp and calm and focused and if we do it consistently that happens