In This Episode…
Today is Sunday. It is supposed to be a day of rest. It is also supposed to be a day when you spend time with loved ones. My partner is pretty strong on the latter of those two.
Well today I blended rest with work – partly out of necessity and partly out of choice.
My jury is out on whether I managed the balance well enough but you’ll probably find the episode focuses more on the work than the rest.
I’ll leave you to decide if I was successful or not.
Episode Show Notes…
It Takes Practice
I meditate every morning. As soon as I get up I open up my Headspace App and do 20 minutes. This app is a fabulous resource for quieting the mind and helping you address a wide variety of thinking challenges through the power of mindfulness meditation.
I’m currently doing the Finding Focus course.
It has three 10 day modules and involves learning to move your focus up and down 7 key points on your body’s centreline. So it takes 30 days to complete the whole course.
I’m just about to finish it for the third time.
That’s right I’ve spent nearly 3 months on this one course in the Headspace App.
I’ve done that for a number of reasons. Meditating 20 minutes a day is part of my routine and so if it wasn’t this course it would be another one. As it happens I think spending time on this course has been very useful.
But 3 times?
Well that’s because the first time I completed the last of the three 10 day modules, I realised my focus was still very, very wayward. So I decided to complete the course again.
Even after the second time through I noticed I still had a lot to do, but I’d made progress. And as it is progress I am after, I will do the course again.
On my third time through I have noticed my focus is still wayward sometimes but not as much as the previous two run throughs. I’ve also noticed my awareness of the focus drifting has increased. So the repetition has helped.
In the past I might have just been temporarily satisfied with the completion of the course once. But I realise my development in this area is an ongoing journey. So I have embraced the repetition and can see the results.
It occurred to me this morning, that this is growth mindset thinking in action.
Capturing A Process As You Create It
Today I have had to create a new process about the way I record my Monday Morning Minute episodes. It is a bit of a pain because it slows things down in the moment.
But what I have saved is time in the future. The next time I will do this process is in about 5 weeks time. All I have to do then is just refer to the process I have just captured.
This will save me time then, it will give me consistent results and I don’t have to fill my mind with unnecessary information to hold between now and then
Batch Processing Saves Time And Produces Better Work
This morning I recorded 6 episodes of my Monday Morning Minute. It took 10 minutes to record 6 episodes. There is value in batch processing.
Sometimes You Just Have To Take A Nap
This morning I tried an experiment. Instead of setting my alarm for 5.20 like I’d normally do I didn’t bother. Partly that was because it was Sunday today and as I was extremely tired yesterday I thought I’d let myself wake up naturally.
As it was I was awake at 4:40am but dozed off and finally got out of bed at 5:50am which is half an hour later than I would usually get up. So after all these weeks of setting the alarm, my body naturally wants to wake up at the same time in the morning.
So I cracked on with the day’s work, had a late breakfast with my partner and then carried on with the day again. But around midday I felt a little bit snoozy and so lay down on the bed… and promptly slept for three and a half hours.
I must have needed it.
But it left me with all sorts of mixed feelings. On the one hand I was frustrated with myself that I’d succumbed to the temptation to nap and that it had effectively wiped out my day. That’s the knee jerk emotional reaction to the situation by the way.
On the other hand I kept telling myself I must have needed it.
How Do You React To Problems & Challenges
Once I managed to drag myself off the bed after my marathon midday snooze I discovered there was a problem with the recordings I had made in the morning. This got me kicking myself a little more that I’d already wasted a big chunk of my prime time having a nap.
But eventually I dived in to fix the problem. I won’t bore you with the details but it was a technical issue surrounding lip syncing my videos with the audio.
In the past I’d have thought it was a big thing to try and fix. But today I rolled my sleeves up and got stuck in to fix it. As it was the fix was sorted with in 20 minutes and within another 30 I’d recorded the episodes again from this morning.
I embraced the challenge and persists with the problem until it was fixed. Ironically todays Monday Morning Minute videos were about how the growth mindset embraces challenges and persists in the face of problems.
There’s Something We Can Do About Triggering Dopamine To Create A Growth Mindset
I watched a Tom Bilyeu Health Impact Interview with neuroscientist Andrew Huberman talking about how you can hack your brain to develop a growth mindset. It is interesting stuff and made me stop in my tracks. I’m going to digest it more and will share what I discover in a future episode.
You can find it here:
