[MUSIC PLAYING] Women in the 21st century are facing a crisis, a confidence crisis. Recent studies have shown that women's confidence actually decreases with experience, and 67% of women say they need more support in being confident. We're committed to changing this, one conversation at a time. Because when women show up to their lives with confidence, everything is better. Organizations run more smoothly, families experience more harmony, more things get done. And this isn't just some you can do at cheerleading session. This is a confidence intervention. We're your hosts, Stephanie Hannah and Whitney Abraham, two successful mothers and entrepreneurs that are here to help you understand what you need to do to capture your confidence. Welcome back to the Capture Your Confidence podcast. We are continuing our series, Habits of Confident People. And today we are talking about meditation and mindfulness. Don't knock it till you try it, you sassy eye rollers. I see you all across the internet being like, who has time for this? Does this really work? I, this single handedly, changed the game for my stress level, for how sharp I come across at people. Like I can't recommend this enough. Yes, and as we were brainstorming this episode, we also used the words stillness and thoughtfulness. And I thought that would be really good to introduce at the beginning of the episode so that you don't, if you're someone who hears the word meditation and kind of rolls your eyes a little bit, maybe these other words, stillness, thoughtfulness, will encourage you to stick around and take away some of the benefits. So first I want to talk about how we came into our separate practices of meditation and mindfulness. When did you first start dabbling in the concept of stillness? Probably a couple of years ago, and honestly it's when I saw the benefit of setting aside that time to focus on myself on the inside, and one, the therapist talked about it, but two, it was also me also thinking, how can I incorporate the good feeling of this on my own? So it wasn't until external therapy that you were like, oh, maybe I should bring this into a daily practice or like a frequent practice. Yes, I think it was something that I always, I did believe in the idea of it, and it always felt like something I should do, but it was always like on the bottom of the to-do list. It also was something that I maybe was expecting immediate results from, and so I would try it once or twice, and be like, I have a to-do list, I don't have time to listen to it. Time to sit in the stillness, much the trees move. And so it wasn't until the outside therapy also gave me practical other ways to do it, and almost like the permission that it doesn't have to be some 45 minute or deal where you're like sitting with your knees crossed, your legs crossed, and what you're imagining, it can be two minutes. Walk me through the first time that you did a meditation practice where you were like, ah, it worked. Like I feel, immediately I feel X, whether it's better, less stress, whatever. Yes, so I think I remember two distinct times. One was when I first started two minutes a day in the quiet in the dark when I first woke up, going like to the office and sitting there and not doing anything, and just like setting the timer on my phone and just starting two minutes. And honest to goodness, feeling like, hmm, that wasn't bad. Like I bet I could try three minutes and four minutes. And then the other time was when I started adding movement to it, so now, or I should say movement, but also outdoors. I think that was a big piece of it. So now I try to do it on a walk, first thing in the morning with no radio or podcasts or anything. - Okay, so talk to me about what your, is there a process that you go through when you're doing it? Is there like a flow where you're just like thinking of nothingness? Is there like a formula to how you're doing it? - So it's breathing. So she gave me a little like four breaths holding it for like a square box, but there you go, box breath. So doing that. - If you don't know what a box breath is, in for four, hold for four, out for four, hold for four. In for four, hold for four, out for four, hold for four. - Yes, okay, so doing that. And then being conscious of when outside thoughts come in and just like redirecting back to the nothingness. And I think also accepting that your brain is a thing that's gonna have thoughts coming into it. - Yeah, of course not. - And that's not a bad thing. - Yeah. - 'Cause then it always used to feel like, well, I failed in meditation. And then recognizing like there's actually no rules, and that's not failing. Like you're still actually doing the thing even if you're redirecting, like that's the practice. - Yes. Okay, so what does meditation look like for you today? As someone who's had a practice for a while? - Yes, so today, because it's the summer and because I have kids that are in camp and a little bit more flexibility in my everyday life, but also a person who works in an office three to four days a week. So it right now is a early morning walk solo for 20 to 30 minutes, and that's it. - And then there's no audio. - There's no audio, no nothing. - Yes, I have my phone, but it's like in a pocket, I don't look at it. It's just like a, I don't know, crutch safety. I don't know 'cause I'm walking like in the dark by myself. So that's why I have it. But no, it's like a nothing, I don't anything. And I just like walk in solitude. And what's funny is I really do think a lot of people meditate that way because I encounter a lot of people when I'm walking in my neighborhood that also do not seem to have any sort of electronic contraption with them and seem to be in the stillness. And we walk and like we acknowledge each other, but it's not, it's everyone's like in their zone doing their thing. - Okay, so I came into the concept of meditation. When I first started my first business and I was feeling really stressed. Like just so much pressure and so many what is and like the frustration of maybe not moving as fast as I wanted to move, right? And so I had to do something with all of this mental energy because I recognize, oh, this frenetic worked up energies actually not serving my business. So I got to figure out a way to process that so that I can show up to my business the way that I want to show up to it. Plus I have little kids at the time, I was like cast. So I came into meditation and I like you, started with this idea of needing to cultivate the space of nothingness. But the nothingness didn't work for me because I didn't feel like it helped me process things and I wanted to leave meditation feeling positive, rejuvenated, excited, happy, whatever. Like it was just like a space to calm down but I didn't need a space to calm down. I needed a space to move through. So I ended up taking a class from a meditation specialist her name is Emily Stella Fletcher. It's called Ziva Meditation. And I took this class and it taught me the core fundamentals of a mindfulness and meditation practice and it changed things for me deeply. Much like what you're saying about the idea that the brain is going to have thoughts, of course it is. The way that she teaches in her program how to respond to that in like a kind loving way was revolutionary, but also what really changed for me was the fact that I was meditating with an intention of reconnecting with my body, manifesting and meditating what I want for my future the way I want to feel, building in gratitude inside of it. So there are these steps that I moved through in my meditation practice that are almost taking all of the boxes of things that I need to be a whole happy person. So I'm not sitting thinking of nothing. I am taking different steps inside my meditation practice to reconnect with my body and then to let go of the things that are like weighing down on me and then to focus on the things that I really love about my life and then to call into fruition the things that I want for my future. - I love this. - So I have a whole process that I move through now and it took a while to get to this place, but today the way my meditation practice looks are two different touch points. I will do like a 20 minute daily meditation where I am sitting and I am usually, if it's summertime, you're sitting in my garden because I am obsessed with my garden. But if it's winter or whatever, just somewhere that's like free of clutter and eyes closed but I can feel cluttered so whatever. In my being, I feel that shit. So 20 minutes of meditation and then I also will do a transitionary quick meditation. I think of this as I'm taking off the work hat and I'm putting on the mom hat. So I literally give myself a couple of moments to congratulate myself on what I did that day and let go of the things that I couldn't get done that I really wanted to and to then usher myself into the next step of I'm leaving work circumstance and I'm stepping into mom's circumstance. This is how I want to show it for my kids. This is what I want to be. This is the kind of mother that I want to be and then I move into that next phase of my day. So two different practices, one is 20 minutes and then the other one's usually about three minutes. - Yes, so that transitionary one is great and reminds me of when I worked with a health coach who or maybe a life coach. I don't know what she calls herself but it encompassed all of it and the idea was that transition and taking like that two to three minutes when you're doing one thing to another and it was very closely tied to waking up kids and leaving like the stress of your workday but getting ready to enter a totally different type of stress. So I think that's another great place that it comes in. So when you're meditating, are you listening to something or you just know to walk yourself through these steps now? - I am no longer listening to something unless I'm trying to do a specific kind of like maybe like a meeting of your higher self meditation. Like I might do a specialized meditation every now and then but when it comes to my daily practice there's I'll put on like a, I'll put on a track that's just like an instrumental or a nature scape if I'm inside or if I'm outside then it's just the sounds of birds, whatever. - Yeah. - And no one else is moving me through that process but I have a system, right? So the first part, the mindfulness part, I'm getting back inside of my body. So it's like seeing what I can see through my eyelids, hearing what I can hear, playing with that depth perception of like closest sound to my body. Maybe it's my breathing or my heartbeat or like the sound of leaves the furthest, right? What can I taste? Maybe it was like the coffee that I had that morning or whatever, what can I smell? What can I feel the clothes on my body? That kind of the thing. So you're walking through the process of getting back into your body and regulating with that breath work. So a couple of different breathing exercises I do just drop into my body and just really like be where I am and then I move into the meditation part. And so when we were talking before about this concept of nothingness I found that I was meditating for a purpose and sometimes my purpose is to lower my stress. Sometimes my purpose is to come home to myself. Sometimes everybody has their own different reasons. So I will have one mantra word for whatever style of meditation I'm doing that day. So if I'm trying to let go of stress then my meditation word is release. And so my goal is well like I'll mentally say the word release to myself, my shoulders drop and my like jaw softens. And then if I have an idea come to me 'cause I'm a human and ideas are gonna come to me then I will gently release, right? So I'm always like coming back to that one word and that helps keep me centered in that middle portion. And then when it gets to the tail end where I'm trying to submit gratitude and I'm trying to like manifest the things that I want I'll spend some time cataloging core memories from the previous day or that day that I wanna lock in, right? Maybe it was like the twinkle in my kiddo's eye when she was like running out the door to get on the bus and I called her name and she turned around and looked at me or maybe it was like the cardinal that flew in front of me in my garden, right? So I'll submit these moments of the day that I was truly grateful for. And then I'll like future cast. So whether it's a daily future cast or it's like a long range future cast, like I will literally envision the things that I want in my life and what they will look like, what it will feel like to have those things, what it would mean to be that kind of person. And I will literally just sit in the visual, the mental visual of what that looks like and then I will go about my day. - Oh, I love that. Okay, so one thing I forgot but you reminded me, I do try to at the start do a gratitude of three things. I do try to pick out three things that happened the day before and make sure that I am like reciting those kind of mentally and recalling them 'cause you can go through the day and not notice anything and how unfortunate for you, right? - Okay, so obviously you've heard the way that we do this now and we're season, we've got practices that we do with frequency, but there are so many things that we want to explain to you if you're the kind of person that hasn't started this or is leery about starting. - Yes, and I would say because look, I used to be you, right, of the two of us, I was the one, probably more than you that did not think this was gonna work. So I would say my biggest tip would be just push through, don't expect immediate results, like just stick with it, they will come and you have to, it happened. I used to, I'm doing this for two days and nothing has happened. - Oh Lord. - Right, that doesn't work. So you gotta push through, you gotta do it, you gotta commit to it. - Yeah, the rule is absolutely no quitting, but also know that not every method works for every person. So we're talking specifically about a literal, still or a quiet practice, right? But maybe journaling, is it for you? Or maybe, like she walks, I sit with my eyes closed, right? Try different modalities of just not speaking and clearing your mind, if you're trying one of the two that we've presented and it doesn't work for you, try a bunch of different things, until when you walk away from doing it the first time, you think, huh, maybe, right? All you need is just like a maybe. If you're like a screw this no, or I don't enjoy this in any way, shape or form, of course, you're not gonna stick with it, so don't do that. - Yeah, and even starting small, like incorporating stillness for 60 seconds, it can even be sitting at your desk in the middle of the work day, and just looking, setting a timer and just like sitting there and doing nothing and just doing the box breaths or picking three things you're grateful for. - Go out two minutes. - Yeah, go outside, look up at a tree, watch the leaves move and let your gaze just soften. Let your gaze blur out as the trees move and don't think about anything. Everyone loves to day drink, right? - Okay. - That's really God, you can do that for two minutes, right? - Yes, and give yourself permission to do it and don't write the whole idea off. Like you have to tweak, if it's not gonna work, you have to tweak, but there is something for everyone that they can incorporate this into their normal routines and rhythms and experience benefits from it. - Yeah, and I would also say to get really clear about what you want to come out of your meditation practice. Do you want it to help you get back in touch with your body and start to pay attention to the way that your body feels? Do you want it to help you lower and mitigate your stress? Do you want it to elevate your mood and increase your energy? All of those things are great, but no one meditation practice is gonna do all of those things for you at once. So get clear about what your goals are and try and tailor the process to help you get the outcome that you want. It's a good one. - Yeah, 'cause I mean, listen, if I wanted to get my energy up, me sitting quietly for 20 minutes is not necessarily gonna be the kick in the pants I need. Like to me, that's where Lizzo comes in. Like I can't expect miracles from something. Be realistic. - Yeah, and I would just say, give it a try. Like you would be amazed at just how many incredible things can come to you, business ideas, clarity, peace about things that were heavy on your heart. And I mean, you guys know that I'm the woo-woo of the two of us, right? Like the signs that come to me are the confirmation that comes to me while I'm coming out of my meditation practice. I'm sitting in my garden and I've meditated on something and then I feel like there's a nature sign that solidifies or gives me hope, right? There's just so many positive benefits to this. - Yes, and I think to it, for me, it has a ripple effect because it shows me the benefit of cutting out the noise and then I find other areas that I can cut out the noise. - So we want to encourage you to find some stillness in some way, shape, or form. And tell us what your practices are. If there are people that you follow that you love, tell us who those people are. We want to champion them too. This is important work, especially in our busy time. - Yes, we will talk to you guys soon. - Thank you for listening to The Capture Your Confidence podcast. If you've loved it, do the thing you do. Share it with a girlfriend, subscribe, rate, leave a review if you would be willing to do that. We are so happy to be able to support you on your journey to confidence and we will not stop until every single woman that we come in contact with knows her own power and she walks firmly in it. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (gentle music) [BLANK_AUDIO]
