The Coach & the Monk



One from the archives – This show was originally posted on April 18th, 2018

This week I have two amazing guests: Danny Creed and Craig Marshall. Together they are on a mission to help entrepreneurs make the most out of their ventures. Join us for a truly inspirational talk!

On today’s podcast:

  • How to deal with everyday stress
  • The benefits of meditation
  • Nevermind your failures
  • How to be comfortable with yourself

Links:

How to deal with everyday stress

Danny works with a lot of executives and entrepreneurs, and he realizes that now that we have access to technology 24/7, most of us think that we should do everything. One of the first steps in professional relief of stress is to organize your day.

If anybody tries to sell you time management, run. You have to learn to prioritize the things you need to do and then manage your time accordingly.

A German philosopher once said, “Never allow the most important things in life to be at the mercy of the least important things”.

For thousands of years, yogis have known that most of us think, on average, about 1000 thoughts an hour. The goal of yoga is to slow things down so that we can go deeper and think more creative thoughts.

Yogis developed very simple breathing techniques. When you meditate, your heartbeat slows down and your thoughts slow down as well.

Nevermind your failures

Danny’s philosophy on a mistake or a problem is that it’s a failure only if you don’t learn something from it.

Danny’s four-step process to overcome your failures is:

  1. What happened? Be very honest and don’t point any blame at someone else
  2. Why did it happen?
  3. How will it never happen again?
  4. See you later aka move forward and don’t look back

It’s not a big deal to reframe our challenges if we really understand the need to look at them from another level.

We are all creating our own reality. Our thoughts are turning into things, so it’s really all about focus. If we frame something as a failure, we’re going to get more of it. It’s a spiral and there is no happy ending to an unhappy journey, as Craig likes to say.

We all have inner self-talk. Through meditation and mindfulness practices, we can reframe who we think we are.

Most people live a “circumstantial life”: they believe that once they get all their ducks lined up they will be happy. When we’re at peace, we draw all the circumstances we want.

How to be comfortable with yourself

We’ve been trained to give the easy answer instead of the right answer in life. Danny asks people “Do you live your life in survival mode or possibility mode?”

The Life Success Chart is a pie chart broken down into nine areas of life that Danny and Craig use. They ask people to put a dot in every one of these slices. If you put a dot in the middle of the pie, it means 0, if you put it on the outer side, it is a 10. So if you reply with a 5 at a specific slice, you would place your dot somewhere in the middle.

You end up with 9 dots on the pie chart. If you connect all these dots, it’s an amazing graphic picture to look at.

The word “yoga’ from Sanskrit literally means union. Yoga is a lifestyle, it doesn’t have to do just with the body.

In order to get a hold of our minds, we have to first recognize that sometimes our minds cannot control our minds.