Hello, welcome to the next part of the course, which is called sustaining mind fitness. In this part, we will be going through a number of useful tools, and really important psychological process that we're going to cover now, that can be used to more or less sustain a healthy mind that can be used to reactively I can still be used to reactively deal with certain situations that might arise from certain confrontations or challenges. But more importantly, they can be used in order to really harness your innate capacity to retain information and use important mind tools in order to proactively cultivate which will in turn allow you to be resilient. In times of challenge or adversity, so again, welcome to sustaining mind fitness. So the psychological process that we're going to cover in this video, is what we call mindfulness, which I'm sure you have heard of it is really become an catchword, particularly in the last 10 years or so.

But there is still a lot of misconception about what mindfulness means and how it can be used. And whether it's a credible mind tool to use or whether it's just, you know, something that is a little bit I guess, left field or has sort of a fluffy perception or persona about it. But I'm here to tell you that mindfulness does indeed work. It is a process that has been around for thousands of years. Many people believe it's actually got its roots in Buddhism, but in actual fact, you had the ancient Vedic 's and Hindus practicing various forms of mindfulness, hundreds of years before Buddha's birth. And it is a process that was brought to the west, in the early 1900s, gained a bit of traction and became famous again in the 70s.

There's a gentleman by the name of Jon Kabat Zinn, who is very famous for bringing mindfulness to the east and he created the mindfulness based stress reduction process. And you know, you fast forward to today and there are thousands of studies that have now been done that confirm unequivocally, that practicing mindfulness making this a habit will have a positive effect on your mental health, your mental well being your mental capacity to lead healthier life. My personal journey with mindfulness I'll quickly share with you. I was a litigation lawyer practicing in the criminal jurisdiction for close to 10 years and as a result of that particular job I was burned out. I was stressed and had this habit of overthinking over engineering matters courtroom scenarios in my head when they didn't work out the way I had pictured them. It will cause me mental acts, you know, but it all came to a head for me.

One afternoon when I was getting a bad application in the Melbourne Magistrates Court, now I had a young client was Jordan themselves who I quickly identified him suffering from mental health concerns and his instructions to me were Paul kicked me the hell out of here. And so I went upstairs and did the bail application cross examine police informants was able to persuade the magistrate that this young man should be afforded bail due to his mental health condition and I had taken the liberty to basically line him up with a number of support services psych appointment that very next Monday, and the matter was adjourned for a hearing he was granted bail. So fast forward two months I give my client a call just to make sure that he's on route with site deployment. And to my surprise, his cousin picked up the phone. And she said, I'll call you.

Thank you. She said, after you got Daniel bio, on Friday afternoon, he stepped in front of a train and took his own life. And that for me was the straw that broke the camel's back. You see, I was dealing with this stuff day in, day out. But after that, I started second guessing myself. And I thought, Well, look, if I hadn't got bail, then you leave, he would still be alive today.

You know, and I fell back on my self sabotaging behaviors, which were changed smoking and drinking expensive whiskey at the time. And I was struggling, mentally, I won't lie to you. I was fatigued. Very low self esteem and confidence at that point. I was very fortunate to have had friend who was into mindfulness and he said, Paul, you have to give this a go. So on his recommendation, I attended a mindfulness meditation class that week, I have to tell you, I walked out of that class.

And my mind positively exploded. It was like a weight had been lifted off my shoulder. And I thought, what was that that I had just experienced? I suddenly, I will get to that class with this bird's eye objective perspective. And suddenly, my problems didn't seem that relevant anymore. So that sparked my curiosity into mindfulness.

And I took it upon myself because before I studied law, I actually studied behavioral science, always curious, insanely curious about the mind. So I started researching mindfulness, I looked at the evidence behind I found something called functional magnetic resonance imaging which detects blood flow in the brain. And it shows that when we're practicing mindfulness, two things happen in the brain, the middle ground which are spoken to you about before it actually shrinks, it becomes redundant. Okay, so we're not concerned for our survival fight or flight. I'm embracing mindfulness. And the only part of the brain that becomes enlivened when we're practicing mindfulness is the prefrontal cortex.

This is the most evolved part of the brain responsible for things like attention control, which is another term for mindfulness, but decision making, concentration, focus, also the regulation of our social behavior. It's the most evolved part of the brain that becomes activated when we're meditating or practicing mindfulness. It's because of this research that people in the known organizations in the know, most successful CEOs, athletes, sporting teams don't State Warriors, NBA team, companies like Google, Harvard University, they all practice mindfulness on a daily basis. Actually, think about Mind is a muscle. What you're doing when you're practicing mindfulness is you're strengthening that prefrontal cortex. Okay?

When we're not practicing mindfulness, the mind is extremely sporadic in terms of its activity. You have synapses firing, in every which way direction, practicing mindfulness. And I can tell you this from personal experience, because I've been doing it consistently now for about 12 years. It anchors your consciousness to the here. And now. You see, for most of our lives, we are on the receiving end of information that comes to us.

And there was a Harvard research paper that came out a few years ago that said, we spent 47%, you may have heard this, you might have not, we spent nearly half our waking lot either thinking about things that have happened in the past. In the previous video, we're speaking about overthinking over engineering matters, or thinking about things that happened in the past or may or may not happen in the future. And it's this mind wandering That has become the root cause of our unhappiness and our mental health concerns. I don't have to tell you that mental health is an epidemic. World Health Organization has stated that depression is the leading disease on the planet as we speak as you're listening to this. So mindfulness is a great way to stop that pendulum from swinging and anchoring your consciousness to the here.

Now, how would I define mindfulness? Well, mindfulness is a psychological process, okay? It's a deliberate thought process, whereby you bring your complete and undivided attention, complete focus in your thoughts, to your internal and to your external experiences as they are appearing in the present moment. Okay, so put very simply, it's about having awareness about everything that is happening in this world. present moment, including when your thoughts begin to wander. By practicing mindfulness, you're able to control your thoughts, as opposed to your thoughts controlling you.

And you're able to stop that pendulum from spring from swinging. And you're able to anchor your consciousness, your awareness to the present moment. And again, remember when you're doing sir, you're operating from the most evolved part of your brain, the pre frontal cortex, sounds incredibly powerful and important tool, which is why it has become a catch word. And again, people don't know that there's a healthy body of evidence confirming unequivocally that mindfulness does work to enhance your mental well being, if you clarity and to also allow you to operate successfully within the crucial gap between stimulus and response between a challenge to carrying in our physical environment and our response. We've spoken about the subconscious program And how we're wired to act out or react in accordance with how we're programmed. Mindfulness will allow you with prolonged practice will allow you to identify that gap will allow you to exercise things like critical thinking and emotional intelligence, which we've Canvas in the previous section.

And it will allow you to make informed, educated, logical decisions, reactions, and create the reality that you want. It's a very powerful tool. So how do we practice it? Well, maybe three ways right now in this video, and this will be included in the downloadable document. In this section. The most powerful way that we know how to practice mindfulness is meditation.

Okay? And I know that simply by saying that word it might conjure up images of as a Buddhist monk meditating in the purpose But I'm here to tell you there are so many different ways that you can meditate. I recently completed a, a meditation retreat at a Buddhist temple here in Australia. And I was surprised or not really surprised, but I was just, you know, blown away as to how many ways that you can meditate. It's not necessarily about sitting in a room, trying to keep your thoughts still, that's why a lot of people have tried it and throw it in the too hard basket, right? You can meditate while you walk.

You can meditate once you talk to people you can meditate or send me a cup of tea. You can meditate whilst you're writing. Okay, now, a lot of people ask me, Paul, what's the difference between mindfulness and meditation and there is a there is a huge overlap, because it's both deliberate thought processes, but when we're meditating, we're focusing on one or two things such as the effect of the breath coming in and out of our bodies, or it might be focusing on a mantra that we're repeating, which is what Transcendental Meditation is all about, which you may have heard of, or, you know, we might be focusing on a particular object, pain or flower. So that's meditation. And mindfulness, though, you have the capacity to be a little bit more creative, because you can delve into anything that is occurring in the present moment. And mindfulness, but mindfulness based meditation combines the two.

So it's acknowledging that and appreciating that there is so much going on in the present moment. In fact, my friends, there is a sensory banquet happening in any given moment. But the way we've been programmed we've developed these blinkers these filters. We live in a bubble of our thoughts. What mindfulness will allow you to do if you take up this challenge and start meditating, it will remove those blinkers. So your problems don't seem that problem So you can look at life with with, you know, a renewed, renewed lease, you have a new lease on life, you take things less personally, you're less likely to stereotype things.

But that's a meditation, there are heaps of ways you can meditate. I would encourage you if you haven't meditated before, to start by perhaps a guided meditation. You know, there are a number of apps out there at the moment, calm. There's a new one by Sam Harris, which is waking up, I believe it's called. There's a lot of mindfulness and meditation apps that you know, you just give it a go and see what resonates with you. And, again, I'll add some resources in order for you to access if you're intrigued as to some different ways you can meditate.

But that's number one, the most powerful way we know how to practice mindfulness. Number two, is that you can practice mindfulness during any pro long, prolonged acts that you might do what I mean by is a habitual act that you do during the course of your day. During the course of your day that you've repeated so many times that indeed, it's become habitual. And what happens is that the older we get, we become desensitized to our environment. If we repeat a certain act frequently, right? In our brain knows our body isn't under any threat when we're doing it.

And what happens when we're in this autopilot mode is that our mind begins to wander, right? So this will be reversing the process. Instead of that mind wandering. When we're in a virtual act. I want you right now to select any habitual like that you might do during the course of your day. And I want you to think of these repetitive acts that you do that might only last perhaps five or 10 minutes by yourself when you're doing them.

And it's things like, you know, getting up in the morning and pulling your clothes or brushing your teeth or going for a lunchtime walk. Having that cup of coffee in the morning or commuting to work or school. So it's about selecting a habitual Act. The way it works is really simple. You set the intention to practice mindfulness from the beginning of that act till the very end. The way we do that is similar to meditation, we always commence with attention on the breath.

And what I mean by that is that as you inhale practically, and you can do this right now, as you're listening to me, as you inhale, through your nasal passage, become aware, become acutely aware and conscious of that oxygen that is in the room entering your body, okay. So right now as you're breathing in, feel the effect like it's having on your body. So there is on the inhale, there's an expansion of your diaphragm, your top of your tummy, and as you exhale, everything slightly contracts. Okay, since becoming aware of your breath to start with, and then you expand that away To the energy residing within your body, you acknowledge that if we have all these moving parts, all these organs, separate but working in unison to give us this vessel to give us life, they give us consciousness to give us purpose. And you acknowledge that, you know, we have a gift which which is our body, which is our mind.

And then slowly, you will begin to have the example of say, brushing your teeth, so, you're not in a bathroom, you've commenced with your breath, you're aware of the energy residing within you, and then you expand that awareness slowly to the outside world. So you become aware of your sensory contact to the outside world, for instance, you pick up the toothpaste and the texture of the lips. And you expand this to your senses, you know, the taste of the toothpaste, the sounds in the room. You know, it's it's, it's limitless. As I said, there's a sensory bank going on in every moment. And you do that, from the beginning of the Act to the end of the day, just thinking about what is happening in the present moment.

At first, it might seem a little bit ridiculous or your mind might be screaming at you saying, Look, I've got this bus too casual. This is This is crazy. When that happens, you bring your attention back to the breath, and you reset the process. That's the discipline. Okay. And by doing so, remember, you're strengthening your prefrontal cortex.

And you might want to start with one act like brushing your teeth and then expanding it to include other things I've done for a lunchtime wall. Again, just delve into the present moment. Become aware of your thoughts as they begin to swing from the present to the past. And bring that back, reset that attention back to your breath and start over. This is in essence, what mindfulness is controlling your thoughts to pose to you control as opposed to your thoughts controlling you and the last way I guess another tool, a mindfulness based tool that we can use, which I'm now going to share with you. It'll be a bit like a guided meditation, but it's a very powerful breathing technique called the box method breathing technique.

And you may or may not have heard of it, but it's so powerful that most elite soldiers in the world the Navy SEALs actually taught this technique. It's it's a great tool for you to use when you're feeling particularly stressed, or challenged. Or if you have something stressful coming up. If you're about to walk into a meeting or about to give a presentation or a school presentation, you can use this to calm you right down because the effects is going to have scientists showing us that it reduces blood flow to the brain. It puts you in a similar state to REM rapid eye movement when you're sleeping. And it just relaxes you.

Words can be so simple. So we're going to do two or three repetitions. Doing so just listen to my voice. Now stop breathing in and out through your nose. Very shortly on the exhale, we're going to start and you envisage in your brain. You focus on your mind's eye while you're breathing.

And you once you exhale, you start. Okay. And you are picturing drawing the square for four seconds on either side. So you're breathing in, breathing out on the exhale, you will start your whole four seconds drawing the base of the square. So if we do it now, so inhale, exhale. And when you get to the bottom of the lungs, I want you to hold your breath for four seconds.

So holding is drawing the base of the box. So you were counting 1234 inhale for four seconds on the side of the box. 1234 holding our breath at top there for four seconds during the top of the bar. 1234 then exhale again for 41234. So let's go through it again to hold your breath down at the base of the box of four seconds. 124 inhale for four seconds, go inside of the box.

1234 Hold your breath at the top, top of the box. 123 exhale 4123 do the next few rotations by yourself. Okay, this is so You can use, as I say, to really calm me down. If you've done that, properly, you'll notice now that you feel a little bit more relaxed, more calm in terms of breathing pattern. Again, I'm going to put up a resource system, just by way of reminder as to how to practice the proximity breathing technique. So there you have mindfulness, practicing in three ways.

And if you make this a part of your daily habitual routine is one of the greatest assets greatest tools you can use to sustain mindfulness. Don't forget, when you're practicing mindfulness, you're strengthening your prefrontal cortex. You're actually enabling yourself to act competently, that crucial gap between stimulus and response. So you can react logically and calmly and stupidly. It's a very empowering tool. very empowering tool.

So I will leave it there. I'll see you in the next video. Thank you