Understanding the Power of Meditation - Entrepreneur Brain Facts

This is the Momentum podcast.

Do you meditate, you see, for people like us who can't turn it off and don't know why anyone would want to, the idea of clearing our minds seems impossible and unnecessary. The way meditation is presented by most people who have figured it out is so ambiguous and difficult to understand that it makes just about anyone feel like they can't get there themselves. See, meditation isn't about clearing your mind. Having a spiritual or religious experience is. There's a better way to look at this that'll create massive momentum for you and everyone around you in this episode of the Momentum podcast, Alex is going to tell you exactly what meditation is for entrepreneurs and how you can start to leverage it in your own life to get more clarity, confidence and the commitment you need to move forward and make your greatest contribution.

I hope you enjoy.

I'm Alex Charfen, and this is the momentum podcast made for empire builders, game changers, trailblazer, short takers, record breakers, world makers and creators of all kinds, those among us who can't turn it off and don't know why anyone would want to. We challenge complacency, destroy apathy, and we are obsessed with creating momentum so we can roll over bureaucracy and make our greatest contribution. Sure, we pay attention to their rules, but only so that we can bend them, break them, then rewrite them around our own will. We don't accept our destiny. We define it. We don't understand defeat because you only lose if you stop. And we don't know how. While the rest of the world strives for average and clings desperately to the status quo, we are the minority, the few who are willing to hallucinate. There could be a better future. And instead of just daydreaming of what could be, we endure the vulnerability and exposure it takes to make it real.

We are the evolutionary hunters, clearly the most important people in the world, because entrepreneurs are the only source of consistent, positive human evolution and we always will be.

I want to talk about a tool that has really been incredibly important to me and has made a massive impact on my life, but I fought for four years, for a long time. In fact, I fought so hard I didn't even know I was using it because I actually was practicing, but felt like such a huge challenge around meditation that I didn't even know that what I was doing was really meditating. And so I want to get into that a little more in just a second. But first, I want to explain to you why I think this is such an important type of topic for you to listen to before you bail, because you're like too much on meditation.

Here's here's why this is so crucially important for entrepreneurs.

You know, there's two types of strategies for us to grow. There is linear strategies and then there's exponential growth strategies. And when you look at a linear strategy, linear, linear strategy is like I'm going to launch a funnel or do lead generation or do the thing that's going to to the next step and take a exponential growth strategy is doing something that improves how you approach everything in your life. It's doing something that improves the entire ecosystem you exist in.

So our organization, Charfen, teaches exponential growth strategy and process structure and routines that make it easy to execute so that you are focused on doing these things in your life. And meditation is one of these strategies. We talked about meditation, hydration, a lot of the keystone habits that individuals need. But then we also in businesses show the exponential growth strategies, like when you have a strategic plan and a clear communication structure and you have a way to consistently build the infrastructure of your business, that makes growth exponential because most businesses don't have those things that lowers noise so quickly that it creates exponential growth, just like meditation see a strategic plan when it's inserted into a business, it makes everything easier, everything quieter.

And when you start meditating, that's what I have found. And like I said, there's a time in my life where I would have told you differently. I actually started to try meditating when I was about 16 years old. I went to an event and I saw some at a temple in Southern California and I saw several different varieties of meditation demonstrated and talked about. And then at one point a monk meditated and it was hooked up to a heart monitor and the heart monitor flat lined. So he meditated his heart rate to flatlining now. And I've told this story a lot. And I've had people come up to me and say, hey, that Monk probably didn't flatline. It was probably something with like, you know, how the how the probes were placed or how how it was on him that it got to flatline. Or maybe he slowed his heart beat down so far that the machine recognized it as a flat line, but. That was my first demonstration of meditation, and so in the back of my mind, I'm like, wow, meditation is something where you gain so much control over your physiology, you could flatline your heart. And so for years, I tried to meditate into a place where I gained so much control over my physiology that that I thought this profound change and that did not work. And what I found for a lot of my life, like before I figured out what meditation means to me, which I'm going to share with you in.

For so much of my life, the way meditation was explained made it feel completely inaccessible, and the more I practiced, the more I saw experts explain it, the more inaccessible it felt because they would talk about these transcendent moments and these this complete shift in perspective and light opening and being able to read auras and seeing people in a different way. And yes, there is a point.

In a consistent meditation practice where those things happen, but, man, the benefits to meditation come so much earlier than that, but I feel like so many people who have learned meditation hang out in the deep end of the pool. And that's what they communicate most of the time. And it makes it intimidating and frustrating. And kind of funny is I use meditation as a tool with with clients, and especially when I was doing one on one coaching. I use meditation as a tool like crazy because it helps so much.

I haven't done one on one coaching in a while.

But when when when I was one on one coaching with entrepreneurs, if I could get them to even start a lightweight meditation practice, which I will explain in a minute, it was game changing in our interactions with each other. And so this is something I've worked on for a long time and and I believe in and I think needs to be made way more accessible than it is right now. So I want to talk about three different areas of meditation. One, why it's so hard specifically for us as entrepreneurs. We're like I was just talking about and then what it is to me and how I practice and what the meaning of of not how, but how and why I practice. So not just how. So first, why is it so hard? So one is what I just explained in so many ways when meditation is explaining, to explain in a way that makes it feel esoteric and inaccessible and that creates a difficulty in itself and which is such is such a challenge, because I think as entrepreneurs, we already judge a lot of what we do, especially if we're not experts in it.

And so when we go to try and meditate, you know, people will say and a lot of the way that is explained is not great either. Know, I'll explain to you again how I got assessed. But for me, an early meditation. I used to hear things like what we think of a white sheet of paper and then just expand it out. So all you see is white. And I would close my eyes and then I would see, I'd think, like their grains on the papers or lines on the papers or pencil necks or is it on the table? Where is that paper? You know, what kind of paper is how thick is it has a feel what grade it. And that was what my mind would do. And I would think I just can't win at this. Like, this is it's the hardest thing that I've ever tried to do. And the more I tried, the more of a rebound effect there was. And I think the second reason that it's so difficult for us as entrepreneurs.

And I mean this with all the love in the world is that and again, this is how this is something I discovered in myself, is that.

It doesn't go in the direction we're used to comparing ourselves.

We are used to increasing adrenaline and and the energetics around us, we are used to pumping ourselves up, we're used to gearing up where you can hear it in our language. We're used to, you know, like psyching ourselves up.

And so meditation actually takes us in the other direction. You know, one of the quotes I share with entrepreneurs is in a crisis, the Kosmo's entrepreneur is the one that people turn to and in any room, the calmest entrepreneur in the room is the one that people feel they need to turn to. That's just how it works. Like that's often that's that's that's how it works in a crisis. That's how it works in business. And so as an entrepreneur for us, is is such an incredibly effective tool, because if we can calm ourselves, if we can get in our bodies, if we can be more present, more aware of it, it increases our capability to do everything we do in our lives, but it also increases our capability and everything that we do in our business. And so here's what here's, you know. Going in the direction of Karmin, going in the direction of becoming more present is not something we're used to. It is something that's actually really hard for us, but it's an entrepreneurial superpower if you're willing to explore it. And in my entire career, coaching one on one and consulting one on one, which I've done a ton of. I'm forty eight years old. I started as a consultant when I was twenty one. I've had like I've actually had thousands of clients, if you remember, if you look at all the products we've sold. But I think I've coached one, I've coached one on one with hundreds of people and nothing. I've coached one of the hundreds of people at one point at like 60 all the same time on Boxer.

And in my experience of working one on one is. If it meditation is explained correctly, which I'm about to do, and you start a consistent practice, almost everything, actually in my experience, every single one of my clients experience some benefit with a with a tactical, simple meditation practice, which I'm about to explain.

And that that whenever I find something like that, like every single person I've ever taught how to drink water like I did last week in this group with the 10 day natural thirst challenge has experienced massive benefit, massive benefit. Every person I've ever shown the how to unlock this capability of meditation and calming instead of psyching up, instead of pushing us in this direction, understanding there's momentum and going in the other direction deliberately. There's momentum in lowering our ability to be triggered. There's momentum and becoming less reactive. There's momentum to becoming more present, becoming more aware. And so that's when I look at what on what side we're on, what momentum is to what meditation is.

To me, it's a tool. Meditation is a tactical tool for me.

So for me to calm down in the moment, the number one best tactical tool is breath work. I do a lot of breath work and back to meditation. So I'm going to share with you in a minute and give you a link for our tactical meditations that include very clear descriptors of breath and so their breath work meditations. And so for me, breath work is the fastest way to calm down something you can do in a meeting. It's hard to meditate in a meeting. So for me, second right there behind breath work for a tactical tool to become more present, more aware of meditation. And I can walk into the hallway and take five or six breaths on my own with my eyes closed and get centered to me. That's a meditation, you know, and.

I think it's an unfair advantage when you look at everything that meditation does.

[00:12:02] There is so many benefits and so many scientifically proven benefits of meditation. It's crazy. It lowers anxiety. It increases clarity, it increases IQ. It increases the ability to see relationship between things. And when we look at what we do as entrepreneurs, I know my ability, your ability to see the relationship between things that other people don't see gives you an unfair advantage as an entrepreneur. It gives you an unfair advantage in every aspect of business, regardless of what size your company is. And so being able to meditate in a way that's consistent in a way that moves you in the right direction. It really is an unfair advantage in both business and just overall health and well-being. It's insane how much meditation does for you.

And I think, again, one of the big reasons I'm going to share, one of the big reasons that so many people do not build a meditation practice is that.

The way people explain their meditation process is also insanely intimidating, so many times I've seen, like the expert meditation person get up in front of the room and they start explaining meditation in a way that makes it sound really hard to achieve.

And then somebody says, well, how do you practice? And they'll say something like, well, half hour to an hour in the morning and a half hour, an hour in the evening and on weekends, I go longer. And then here's what I know happens to the majority of entrepreneurs in the room.

Let me know if you've ever felt like this. Like you hear something like that and you go, OK, well, I'm up. I'm not going to meditate. Like if you ever felt that like let me know in the comments when when somebody demonstrated something like that and made him feel so unattainable that you're like, I'm out, or somebody has shared their practice and it feels so unattainable.

It feels so like from where I'm sitting, there's no way I'm going to get there that you just bail out.

And that's the biggest challenge. So so not against the biggest challenge. When I see people speak of meditation, I'm like, no, make it accessible, make it easy, make it simple. And so here's how I practice. So I do a daily meditation for at least five minutes.

That's at least five minutes. I don't go under five minutes a day. It's part of my morning routine. I make sure that I do it every single day and I'm consistent. I actually use a tool called The Muse for that daily meditation, because here's one of the biggest frustrations with meditation is you have this question like, am I doing it right? Am I making things better? Am I moving in the right direction? Well, here's what I want you to know about meditation, regardless of how anybody describes it.

Here's here's what's important. What's important is from the beginning of when you said you were meditating to when you stopped. Do you feel more calm? Do you feel more aware? Do you feel more in your body? Do you feel like there's more more you're more present? Those are the things that you want out of meditation. Have you shifted physiologically? Have your shoulders dropped? Have you become more relaxed? Have you loosened up a little bit? That's what we're looking for here. And if you can do that in two minutes, then that's a massive win. I'm going to share with you how you can do that in two minutes, in just a second. And so I use the music daily for five minutes. The reason I use it is because this this device, which makes you look super cool, gives you it's an EEG device. So this is the music one. There's also the music, too.

And there's the there's the there's a music that you can sleep with us on. A headmen. I have it. I haven't thought that yet, but it looks pretty cool. And so that here's why I do it daily every day before I really get into the day. I sit down and I get in touch with my my my mind and I make sure that I'm meditating. And one of the scientific reasons for meditation is it increases as increases attention span as entrepreneurs.

The further you go in business, the longer you need your attention span to be.

When you start out and it's just you, you're going to have no meanings that you ever have to sit through. If you're going to grow one hundred million dollar company, you will be in all day meetings and you will be in interactions. What do you have to have a huge attention span. Meditation increases. That's why I make sure every day I get it done. I check the box. I once told somebody, I check the box. They're like, Oh, that is not true meditation. I'm like, that's why so many people don't meditate.

Stop saying stuff like that. Like, of course it's meditation. It's what I'm doing. Oh, but you know, you're measuring and there's judgment and there's the I'm like, no, if I use this, here's here's how it works.

You put it on and if you and you put on headphones and the headphones play like an ambient noise soundtrack and if the ambient noise goes up, it sounds like, Wayne, if the rain gets louder, it means you've lost your your presence, your awareness, your lost your focus, and then you breathe and you you like count. I breathe in and out through my nose and I count my breath and I count the number of seconds I'm breathing and I breathe very slowly. And then that ambient noise will come down. And then if you hit a moment of calmness that lasts over, I think it's three seconds a bird chirps and so it gives you this clear feedback saying you are meditating.

And so that's the first way that I use it. The second way that I use it is tactically, I found that meditation is an incredible tactical tool to make it so that I'm at my best. So right before I turned on this this right before I hit live, I stopped and I did what we call the triple seven protocol. It's one of the meditations I might share with you. It's seven breaths in seven breaths out for seven seconds. So you go in for seven, out for seven. And for some people, when they first start trying to do this, it's difficult. It's hard to do the seven and seven out. That means if you do this, you gain extra lung capacity. Maybe not for passing, but you actually will start using more of your lungs. You will. And as you go in seven ounce and you stretch the lungs to their capacity, you do there's there's actually sensors in your lungs that might calm the body when we breathe deeply, when we breathe fully. So I did that right before I got on this live. It's interesting every time I do it.

Every time I do, I do experience like a moment of resistance where it's like, oh, do you really need to meditate?

Just hit live, we can get out of here faster. I hear that. And I always think, you know, I've been doing this long enough that I know that that two minutes of triple seven is going to be worth it. And as I sat there and meditate, meditated, I thought of like five things I would not have said in this video or podcast. If you listen to this on iTunes or one of the podcast channels on.

And so doing that meditation actually made this much better, and that's what I find the way that I use it as needed throughout the days before a meeting, before a podcast, before I go on someone else's podcast, definitely before I go do a speech I'm using, I'm meditating. And then occasionally. I do a long format meditation. Sometimes I use like an audio meditation, I'm working with the coach right now. Name's Kylie Ryan. In fact, she's the one that pointed out the difference has helped me like start not start to understand, but gave me some really incredible insights on exponential versus linear strategies like meditation's exponential. And she sent me some meditations that are a little bit longer. And so something sometimes I do breath work that's extended, sometimes I do meditations that are extended as I feel like I need them, sometimes on a weekend. But I don't hold myself to any standard there. What I hold myself to is the daily meditation with the muse and the feedback that I get. Actually, when it's hard to meditate in the morning, I think that my triggered is something going on. Is there something is bothering me? Is there something I'm anxious with because I do it every day. I know what I'm capable of, so I know I get a read on how I'm doing that day and then I do the meditation as needed and then a longer meditation every once in a while. And that has had a massively profound effect on how I make decisions, how I work with people, how long I can sit through a meeting, how easily I'm triggered, how easily I get out of control, to the point where I think any level of out of presence makes it so it's harder to make decisions.

So I try and stay there for as often as I can. That's why I've meditated directly before this. And so this has had a massive, massive impact on me.

And the reason that I do like I've named so many of the reasons already, but presence, awareness, less able to trigger the the attention span think this is meditation is one of the most life changing practices you can pick up. Don't be scared away from it. And so here's what I want to share with you. We actually have a chat board set up that when you if you go to Charfen dot com, for example, meditation Charfen, dot com forward slash meditation, you will get three things. You'll get some information on the headband. And if you're interested, you'll also get three meditations that I've created. There are two minutes. And let me just explain what these meditations are. If I go back a few years before I had the clarity around our frameworks to make it really scalable and start teaching in larger numbers, I was doing a lot of one on one coaching and I had a very hard time getting a majority of my clients to do any type of meditation of any kind.

And so I started challenging them. So will you do ten minutes of meditation?

They would say no. Would you do five minutes? And they would say, I just don't think I can. I say, OK, would you do to like you can do anything for two minutes, will you do two? And they would say yes. And so I recorded these three, two minute meditations. I call them tactical meditations. Like literally if you're doing something important, you take two minutes right before it and listen to one of these and go through the exercise and you'll find that you get more present and aware. And these two minute meditation for me as a coach were a Trojan horse. If I could get any one of my clients to start doing two minute meditations on a daily basis, they started doing ten minute meditations before meetings. They would do longer meditations in the morning. A lot of Bob use headbands.

You know, the the the ten minutes was like the gateway drug to say, hey, wait a second, if I if I look at how I'm feeling before I do this for two minutes and how I'm feeling after a few minutes, there's a huge difference there that's valuable. And so they would start doing it more. And so I would encourage you to check these out. And so go to Charfen dot com for slash meditate. Thanks for being here. I appreciate you. And we'll see you soon.