Hello everyone. This is Coach Sammy with Hurricane Marketing Enterprises, and today I wanna talk to you about mindfulness, but in a way that is very specific to you and specific to your industry. First, let’s talk about the benefits of mindfulness. I know we hear that word a lot and we know it’s important, but why is it important? Well, in your mind, when something is autonomous like breathing, right, or your, your daily functions, they are on autopilot. When you choose to make something that is automatic in your mind and in your body, you choose to make it visible and you choose to take control of it. What that does is it teaches your brain that it doesn’t need to be on autopilot, that it can wait for instructions from you. And what that creates is more agency in your life.
So when we take something like the breath, which is supposed to be automatic and we take control of it, or we not necessarily even control it, but we start to watch it, we start to witness the breath. What that does it, it teaches your mind, wow, you are the CEO of your mind. Something that’s supposed to be automatic. You’re taking control of it. And what that does over time is there’s a part of your brain called the default mode network, the autopilot in your mind. So it learns that it cannot just silently run in the background, create things like overthinking or a defeatist mentality, but rather it waits for you to tell it how to act, how you want your life to look like, which gets you closer to your goals faster, and it helps you really manage your stress.
So now that we understand mindfulness and the benefit of it, let’s talk about the different kinds of mindfulness, and it’s gonna be very different from the one that I will teach you today, which is a blend of my hypnotherapy, NLP techniques and, and just plain, simple spirituality and mindset. So the first type is where you just watch and witness what’s happening. You watch and witness your thoughts. You watch and witness the present moment. You watch and witness the breath and things like body temperature and muscle tension and where you’re holding it. That is simply the witnessing technique.
Then there’s another form of mindfulness where you actually try to control the breath, right? So you take a long deep breath, you try not to engage the upper body, you take deep diaphragmic breaths, right? And, and also you don’t, you know, lift your shoulders up when you’re breathing. If you notice tense breathing looks like this, right? And that is when you’re sending this fight or flight signal to the mind and the body. So what we wanna do is we wanna breathe from as low in the body as possible. So if you’re navel is rising and falling and you’re actually contracting your abdominal muscles while, while breathing, that is telling you that you’re taking the type of breath that your body actually needs for restoration. So that’s another form of mindfulness where you’re watching and you’re actually controlling and directing the body.
But the exciting mindfulness that I wanna talk to you about, and the reason I wanna talk to you about this blend of, of mindfulness and therapy techniques and cognitive behavioral therapy, this form of mindfulness, is because you are in a very stressful industry. It’s not like Disneyland or a restaurant or Coca-Cola, right? That is they’re giving you something that’s for pleasure. You are actually taking somebody that is in that stage of their life when they have a lot of resistance to accepting help, right? And then you are solving their problems. So they’re coming from a place of distress. You are coming from a place of distress because this is the only industry where finding employees is just as hard as acquiring clients. So what I want you to understand is that you managing your stress will have a spiral effect and it will spiral down, or should I say it’s an upward spiral. So it will spiral up to, to your clients, it will spiral up to the facilities where you’re trying to acquire business and your your caregivers. So the blend that I want you to use is, I want you to notice a stressful thought when it comes in. Watch the thought. Okay? That’s where the witnessing technique is coming in.
You watch the thought and then you question the validity of the thought. So for example, if the thought is, oh my God, I am so unlucky because, you know, it took me so long to acquire, you know, referrals from this facility. And now that they’re giving us referrals, now I don’t have caregivers to staff it. Or I had thought I had caregivers and now they bailed last minute. Ugh, my life is such a mess, right? For instance, you have that thought coming up. What you wanna do is you wanna witness the thought and then you wanna question the validity. And you wanna ask what I call clarifying questions. And that helps you take control back of your automatic thoughts.
So one of the clarifying questions could be, well, it feels like it’s something very personal to me, but is it really, isn’t it true that everyone in the industry is facing the same types of challenges? And this is not something specific to me. And what that helps you do is it brings in the energy of the collective. It helps you see that you’re not suffering solo, which helps kind of alleviate that, that pain of like that pain that you have, right? So that’s the first thing you wanna do. Then you wanna notice how your body responds. So you’ll notice, does anywhere in your body does the tension melt when you bring in that thought? Okay, another clarifying thought could be, you know, I know this feels like I’m, I’m, I’m losing in this moment. But isn’t it true that I’m winning in other areas of my life? Isn’t it true that I have good health? Or isn’t it true that my children, you know, are not suffering right now? Isn’t it true that I have all my basic needs met? Isn’t it true that I have a working car? Isn’t it true that I have a beautiful home with locks on it where I feel so safe? Isn’t it true that my wife loves me? Isn’t it true that my husband has been loyal to me all these years?
So ask these type of clarifying questions that help replace the tension with gratitude. And then the last bit again, is noticing how that impacts the body. Do you feel the tension resolving in different parts of the body? Do you feel that you know, sort of gripping feeling in your heart just melting away? Do you feel a tingling feeling in your hands and feet, which is a sign that you’re letting go of fight or flight and your body’s releasing the fight or flight energy from your limbs? ’cause it does through, through extremities and you feel more relaxed. And if you don’t, where is the tension? And what is that tension trying to tell you? ’cause that’s your nervous system communicating with you. So I hope this has been helpful and I hope you will practice mindfulness in your daily lives. Thank you guys.