Episode 161: Experimenting with Meditation and Mindfulness - Part 2
In this episode, I chat with my friend Sean McMullin, the producer of this podcast, to share the results of my 30 days of Meditation Experiment
About a month ago, I challenged myself to a month of practicing meditation.
As I shared in Part One of this series, I didn’t have a consistent meditation practice prior to this experiment. In fact, I was pretty resistant to it in the first place. (Be sure to go back and listen to this episode if you haven’t yet!)
But I was inspired to give meditation another try because of all the stress and anxiety in the world right now.
As I share in the episode, I made it to 30 days of practicing meditation and mindfulness. Technically, it was two weeks of meditation and two weeks of mindfulness—and I get into why I broke it into chunks like this in the episode.
Of course, I had to invite my friend and podcast producer, Sean McMullin of Yellow House Media, back to the show to chat with me about my experience. As you heard in the first part of this series, Sean is someone who not only knows me well—but he also has a meditation practice of his own and I figured he’d be the perfect person to keep me accountable.
I learned so much from this experience and I learned even more through my conversation with Sean. meditation.
Listen to the full episode to find out:
What went well and what didn’t go well in my meditation and mindfulness experiment
The role my BFF and my Monger played in the experiment
Sean and I discuss the role of neuro-diversity, rules, and rigidities and how something as small as closing my eyes became a HUGE stumbling block for me in my practice
What my meditation and mindfulness plans look like moving forward
Resources mentioned:
+ Read the Transcript
Nancy: A little over a month ago. I challenged myself to do a month of meditation. Meditation has always been a stumbling block for me. And so I met with my podcast producer, Sean McMullin, someone who has his own meditation practice. And we talked about my plan for the challenge. If you miss that episode, make sure you go back and listen to episode 1 55 before you can.
This week, Sean and I are back to talk about all the things I learned. If you have struggled with making meditation, a regular part of your life, keep listening because the results might surprise you. You're listening to the happier approach. The show that pulls back the curtain on the need to succeed, hustle, and achieve at the price of our inner peace in relationships.
I'm your host, Nancy Jane Smith. I made it 30 days of practicing meditation. Really two weeks of meditation and two weeks of mindfulness, but we get into all that in the conversation. I learned a lot from the experiment and I learned even more through my conversation with Sean, listen, to hear what went well and what didn't in my experiment, the role, my BFF and my monger played in the experiment.
Sean and I discussed the role of neurodiversity and rules and rigidity. And now something as small as closing my eyes became a huge stumbling block for me. We also discuss my plans moving forward. Hi, Sean. Hey Nancy. We are back again to do the meditation. Download
Sean: The followup to your meditation experiment.
Talk to us about what, why did you even do this? What was your intention going into this experience?
Nancy: Because in my own life, I had not been practicing a lot of mindfulness and everything was just buzzing in my head. And I was not settled in my body at all. And just plowing forward with everything I was doing.
And so that was one like, that was why now is the time to do this experiment. But the other thing is I've meditation has. Been a thorn in my side, in the sense of, because I help people with anxiety and I experienced anxiety that therefore the top thing anyone says is, oh, then you do meditation.
And so it's always been a point of embarrassment or shame that I don't do meditation, that isn't a regular practice. And so I wanted to be able to put that shame or you. Test that and see, okay, let's really try this and see if you are a meditation person or if you aren't a meditation person, let's really get to the bottom of this.
And that was really the crux of why I wanted to do it. Does that make sense?
Sean: It does. Absolutely. It's interesting for me to hear you talk about meditation and mindfulness is not being the same thing either. Like you can certainly, and we're going to talk more about that, like that. And the connections between meditation and mindfulness approach, this would mean how did you, what was your daily practice?
Did you have a daily practice of the day? Give us a rundown on,
Nancy: so I set an alarm on my phone at two o'clock every day. And my goal was to practice just five minutes just to do a meditation for five minutes. And for me, because I am so rigid in my rules, meditation. Means eyes are closed. I'm listening to a guided meditation of someone telling me how to breathe and where to go.
And I quiet the mind as much as possible for five minutes. That was what I did every day at two o'clock. I didn't always do five minutes. Cause sometimes it was too much. I didn't always do it at two o'clock, but when the alarm went off, it was a reminder of, okay, I need to do this, but in my mind, Meditation it is that eyes closed.
It's a long period of time, two to five minutes, which doesn't seem like a long period of time, but when your eyes are closed and you're interrupting your work day to do it, it is it's hard. My hope was that I would love it so much that I would get into 10 minutes of meditation and 20 minutes of meditation because that's real meditation.
Sean: Did you feel that what you did wasn't real meditation, correct?
Nancy: It was just five minutes. So five minutes is not real meditation. Also. It's been a great lesson for me in the idea of recalibration. And where am I listening to my biggest fan telling me it's okay to recalibrate. And where am I listening to my BFF?
That's saying, screw this. We're not doing this. This is ridiculous. You don't have to do this, stop doing it, which was pretty much every day at two o'clock. My BFF was pretty loud in her. Oh, really? You're going to do this. This is so terrible. Don't do this. This is too painful, but I do think I came to a place that my biggest fan was in charge.
It took me a minute, but I got there.
Sean: Remind me how many. Did you do it for two weeks?
Nancy: I did the five minute meditation every day for two weeks. And then I loosened up my rules a little bit and I was like, what if we just practice mindfulness every day? We didn't have to shut our eyes. Mindfulness. These are open.
Mindfulness means eyes are open and eyes open. A big difference for me in just being able to like, just soften my gaze or my desk looks out on our backyard. So being able to look out the window and so I would put on nice music. I'd look out the window and I just shut my brain off, but eyes were open.
I wasn't doing the breathing exercises. I was just letting my mind wander for five minutes and that I could do for more than five minutes. It's the eyes closed. It's the eyes closed. And so maybe it is my BFF is running the show. Cause my BFF is so freaking loud in there that it was hard for me to settle down enough to get any benefits from it.
Sean: One
thing I do want to say is, are regardless of what your BFF is telling you about whether or not you meditated the, you did meditate because for starters and you know this, I'm telling you things, you already know. It can be 30 seconds and it's still meditation, but the act of just having done it, whether or not you got out of it, what you thought you would get out of or what you wanted out of it, you still did meditate.
Nancy: I guess it's the rules. And rigidities because what did happen, which I was happy about is that. In practicing the mindfulness at two o'clock every day. Once I gave my permission that I could just have my eyes open and listen to good music and just calm my brain, then that started happening more often throughout the day.
So I would keep doing the dishes and I'd be like, okay, we're like, let's just do the dishes here, and practice mindfulness here. Or I would be walking the dog and be like, let's just walk the dog. And it was there a minder of, I know how to do this. More than I think I know how to do this. Okay. So the beginning goal, which was, I need to settle my brain down more and I need to get in the present moment, definitely accomplish that in the 30 days, because I've been able to recalibrate to notice when I'm spinning.
And be able to recalibrate that a little bit, that hasn't been a hundred percent successful, but it definitely has helped. I got a couple of messages from people after our first podcast talking about that I was doing this and they were like, oh my gosh, I can't believe you're doing this. I cannot meditate.
It's so hard for me. And so with some of it is. The rules and rigidities we have around, what does meditation look like? And I have a lot of rules and rigidities around that. Yeah. So you would say what I did was meditation. I wasn't eyes closed. Yeah. Breathing.
Sean: It's the process. It's not the destination.
Now I would hope that if I were to struggle every single time, I sat down to meditate, I would propose to you and to myself, other types of meditation that within that rigidity, we think about meditation as being something very specific. And I don't think that it's as specific as a lot of us feel that it is.
You didn't try any visualization techniques. You mostly just did the breathing techniques.
Nancy: I downloaded Headspace.
Sean: Oh, you did?
Nancy: I did, but I didn't pay for it. It was two week free trial. So that's why two weeks on that. I like the heavy guided meditations. I like them walking me through talking the whole time is a lovely British accent guy that was so calming and that I really enjoyed.
And that took me awhile because the first week I was like, no, I want the not guy. Meditation once. And that was too hard. And so once I figured out that it was the guided ones I liked, then I was like, oh, then I would go on YouTube and find guided meditations. But no one had the nice voice as the guy on Headspace.
That was the best. So a lot of times we'd just do the meditation of the day and pick the guided ones. And then I did explore, like you could do watching a waterfall or something and hearing that. And I did that a couple of times, and that was nice. And then I started Googling YouTube waterfalls and would do some of those when I was in the two weeks off of Headspace, because my big fear is I was going to come on here and you were going to be like, you failed.
You did not.
Sean: Oh, it's so funny. You should say that because I was like the next question I was going to ask you, because for those of you out there in the audience, listening. I am married to someone quite similar to Nancy Jane Smith. And so I almost always preemptively know what her experience in these things is going to be.
Nancy, do you feel like this was a failure?
Nancy: I'm trying hard not to feel like it's a failure in the sense of, let me say that differently. I'm trying to recognize that not following the rigidities does not mean it was a failure. So maybe the failure is in thinking that it has to be this rigid. Instead of recognizing that meditation could take on a lot of forms and that the end goal is to be more present and grounded in yourself in the present moment, whether that is because you're doing a 20 minute meditation to start the day, or whether you're doing little bits of mindfulness throughout the day, or you do five minutes at two o'clock, it doesn't matter if the end goal is what we're going for.
And there are a variety of ways to get it. And so when I can get my mind wrapped around that, I'm like, it was totally not a failure. It was a great success because it reminded me of the power of mindfulness. I used to talk about mindfulness hacks all the time and the various ways to do that. And I've stopped doing that.
I stopped practicing that in my own life and I stopped talking about it as much. And so that was a reminder to come back to that because. I think I had gone down the path of, if you're going to talk about it, you got to talk about meditation, so don't bother talking about it cause you're not practicing meditation.
Does that make sense?
Sean: It does I'm very curious to know if you see the connection between your feelings and perception of success or failure and the expectations that you had going into it
Nancy: a little bit, I would say I expected myself to turn into a completely different person who would just be amazed by meditation and the power of meditation and would be transformed by it.
And because that didn't happen, I felt like a failure because it was so hard. I felt like a failure because every day at two o'clock I dreaded it. And even when I got into doing it and I was eyes closed. The days I did the five minutes, I never made it five minutes without being like how much time is left, how much time is left, cause it was so hard. It was so hard. And I think I, that was a failure that it was so hard. Yeah.
Sean: Because what I'm proposing is that sometimes we go into situations with expectations. And then when the situation experience or our performance, doesn't meet those expectations and that if we can let go of the expectation or not even impose them upon ourselves, then there really is no point of reference for success or failure because.
We never had the expectation going into it. Now, of course, this is like, how is that even possible? We always go into things with some expectations, because one of the things that I've found with meditation is that I've had to let go of what I expected it to be and allow myself to learn what meditation is in general.
And is. Through the process because it has turned out that it is not at all what I expected it's to be. In what way? I knew you were gonna ask me that. I think that I expected far more results. Oh, that's more immediate way. I'll admit that I thought that I'd come out of meditation, a session all zenned out, and that just doesn't happen.
Like I'm not even joking. The other day. I had an anxiety attack in the middle of a meditation session and I had to get up after it was over and go take my auxiliary anxiety medication. But was that a failure? I don't consider it to be,
Nancy: and I wouldn't consider that to be a failure. Yeah, it's interesting.
I wouldn't consider that to be a fail because I totally don't consider that to be a failure for, as I said that, I was like, do you think that wouldn't be a failure for me? And I can logically say, absolutely. I could see how an anxiety attack would come because you are calming yourself. You're dealing with what's there.
So when you settle, the anxiety can come up sometimes. And so logically, that makes sense to me. But if that would've happened to me in this time, I would have been like, I'm done, I'm not doing this anymore.
Sean: So moving from what your expectations of meditation were to what you actually got out of the experience, being a renewed interest in mindfulness.
That in a certain sense, there was a lot of success in this experiment.
Nancy: Yes. I would agree with that. Yeah. And today when I was walking the dog and I was thinking though about this conversation, and of course I was like, Sean's going to be like, you're a failure
Sean: and the big, bad Sean's going to come in and chastise you.
Yeah. Like I chastise anyone.
Nancy: Yeah. I put my Monger on you all the time that you're going to be chastising me. And then I said to myself, it isn't. A failure, even if Sean thinks it is, I don't think it is. And that's new for me to be able to recognize it's okay for Sean to think this is a failure, but I don't think it's a failure, but I think most of it is the idea that there's a part of me that is beating myself up because I made up my own rules on how instead of holding to the experiment This is what meditation looks like and that, and the goal of getting to be able to do 15, 20 minutes of meditation by the end of the month, that did not hold.
And so therefore, I, my monger is telling me you wiggled your way out of it. And that's where I say. The idea of being like it's okay to personalize this process. It's okay to recognize doing that is hard for me closing my eyes even like when we would go to church and praying, like that is just a hard thing for me to do.
In general and that's okay. To give myself that permission, but that's new for me to give myself that permission because the idea is always, you're wiggling your way out of this instead. You're not doing it right. Not doing the hard thing. Yes. That is it. Some of it is, I'm not doing the hard thing.
Yeah.
Sean: This is really hard for you and you're avoiding the work aren't you?
Nancy: Yeah. Yeah. But then it finally dawned on me of why is closing my eyes. The be all end, all of this, like what's the real goal here. And so that's when I realized it was the mindfulness and being able to practice that in a variety of places, I will say the second two weeks, when, so much better than the first two weeks, but I got so much more out of the second two weeks and actually was like, oh, this is nice to take this break in the middle of the day.
One of the things that's so hard with high functioning anxiety is that the push, push. And even when you might recognize you need to take a break, you're so compelled to keep going that you don't take a break and having this forced break in the middle of the day, that was a win that's super uncomfortable for me.
Sean: Have you continued?
Nancy: I have continued. I'm not as rigid about the two o'clock thing. Cause then I gave myself permission to do mindfulness elsewhere other than just the two o'clock time. So I will say, I ha I've done it every day, every afternoon, but sometimes it's at the end of my Workday.
Sometimes it's when I come back to the bathroom, I'll take a break and I'll do it. Like it would be two o'clock. The alarm goes off, drop everything and meditate. That's how I held it initially, but that has changed, which I think, I don't quite know how I feel about that, to be honest with you, because I think some of it was the rigidity, which was hard to hold, but it's also that idea.
If I give myself a pass, I just take a pass. That's why the rigidity is there. Cause I don't trust that I will really do it, but I will say this. The other thing I learned is that when I made it my own. And did you know, the mindfulness piece more so in the eyes open and then looking at my window, I got so much more out of it and it was so much more enjoyable for me.
And that was a lesson to me. It isn't all bad to make it your own, but all my life I have believed I. Broken and somebody else has the better answer. And meditation is one of those things for me, that's like the holy grail, right? If I could only practice meditation, I wouldn't have to deal with any of the stuff I deal with.
That would be the secret pill. If I could just get myself to do it, I wouldn't have anxiety and I could really be helping people. And part of me still believes it's because I did not. Do it correctly, but it still is the holy grail. I just didn't do it. Yeah. If I had done it for 20 minutes, because in my mind it is the holy grail and that has loosened some it's still there, but it's loosened up.
Sean: So do you, would you be willing to revisit meditation in the future or are you in a place where you can allow yourself to let go of it.
Nancy: I don't think I would revisit it. But I do need to really focus on that idea that meditation is the holy grail. Like I think that has loosened. And I think I need to keep loosening that belief because I do think that holds me back personally and professionally, because this is what.
I believed in the holy grail of meditation and that I was a loser because I wasn't doing it. And then I went to screw meditation that isn't the way to do it. And all these people say in meditation is the way they don't know what it's like to have high functioning anxiety. And they're totally wrong.
They're totally wrong because I can't do it. And so screw meditation. When in my book, I talk about how you don't have to do meditation. You could do these mindful. Which I believe, but I was demonizing meditation instead of saying there's a lot of ways to do meditation. It doesn't have to look like this can do it in these ways.
And so I think now that we're talking, I think I was really bouncing back and forth between the monger telling me this is the holy grill and you're a loser. Who's not doing it. And my BFF saying, screw meditation, this isn't it at all. And I, like I said, And the beginning of this conversation, I'm coming back to the biggest fan being like there's a lot of ways to do this.
Let's find the way that works for you right now. And that may change. You may find it. A year or five years that you can close your eyes and do what you think to be as traditional meditation. But right now that isn't the case and that's okay.
Sean: Yeah. Maybe even more than okay.
Nancy: (laughter)
Sean: The best thing. Yeah.
Nancy: But obviously this topic is super loaded for me.
Sean: It's interesting. You mentioned this, like it's either your broken and meditation. Because meditation doesn't work for you or screw meditation. Meg meditation is a big crock of shit, right? Yeah. But there's nothing in between that, like it's interesting hearing you like process that,
Nancy: I think. After this challenge. I came to the I'm coming to the middle more, but I think most of my life I've bounced back and forth between those two extremes. And I think if anything, that is the win of this practice. I it's a win. I didn't really see coming. It's a win that I have been more grounded and mindful and grateful to be practicing.
Like we picked a good month to be truly bringing this back in. So that's a positive, but also the idea of decreasing the trigger that is meditation and bringing it more into the middle ground.
Sean: I love that. So have you thought about what you intended on doing, going forward with this? Do you have specific plans or do you still have to process that a little?
Nancy: I don't have any specific plans, like specific, two o'clock the alarm is going to go off kind of plans, but I would like to get back into that part of what the mindfulness hacks that I did. Part of the reason I got away from them was because of COVID cause I'm home all the time, but a lot of the mindfulness hacks were built on.
And when it got into the car, when I hit a stoplight, when I got out of the car, when I got into my office, when I was at the grocery store. So I would be practicing these ways to get into my body and be more mindful out in the world. And so now that I'm home all the time, I lost those. And so that was a goal to figure out what are the cues I'm going to use to bring those back in.
So anytime I come into my office or, and when I go downstairs to get a glass of water, as I'm waiting for the water to come. Do some mindfulness figuring out what those are. The other thing that was interesting is I have had a rule around yeah. Rules, big fan rule around when I'm walking the dog. I cannot listen to anything.
I have to just be walking the dog. And then this past week I started listening to the daily podcasts and it has been so nice. But to get out of my head and to be hearing something that's going out in the world and it's not about my work. It's just something that I'm interested in because the news and politics really interests me.
So that's been strangely relaxing. And so then it was the recognition of this is strangely relaxing. Right now, because then I would make a new rule. I'm always going to listen to the daily every morning while I'm walking the dog new rule. And so to recognize that let's see every morning, let's check in and see maybe it would be helpful to listen to the daily.
Maybe it'd be helpful to have nothing on. Maybe it would be helpful to listen to a business podcast. And that is a new thing for me too, is to recognize, oh, I don't have to be so rigid. Cause I was like, this is my mindful time walking. The dog is my mindful time. This is when I'm really focused, but it got to the point where I was just like, so in my head it wasn't mindful time.
It was just like me. Hashing everything out while I'm walking the dog. And the daily kind of reminds me, there's a whole other world out there that isn't in my head. And that has been helpful.
Sean: Do you consider this to be this idea, to be someone who would have a cop-out that you can find rigidity and you can create a rule in that your morning walk, you will never impose one thing.
The rules. I will never know what I'm going to do on that walk until I set out the morning of the walk. Is that like a, do you consider that to be like a cop-out or is that like a re, could that be like a real rule that you could impose?
Nancy: That could be it, because when you said that, I was like, Ooh, that's a good rule. (laughter)
I got a little excited Ooh, there's a new rule.
Sean: If you were to bring in some openness and expansiveness in the rules and it still creates some of the elements that really entertain you and bring you comfort. Cause rules bring you comfort, but yet allow for some breathing room in there.
Nancy:
Yeah. I think that would be awesome. My husband has been so instrumental in changing that. And changing the rules. I have come a long way in my rules. And rigidities, if you can believe it, because he will frequently point out to me, there's no right way here. There's no right way. And every time he does it, I'm like media.
It's like a mind blowing experience to recognize, oh yeah, there is no right way. Cause I get so stuck in the rule and the more anxious I get. The more rigid my rules get the more anxious I get. Like it becomes a loop. Like I have anxiety, I build a lot of rules. And then with the rules comes a lot of Monger and a lot of BFF activity because that's constantly of, you should follow the rules.
You should break the rules. We should follow the rules should break the rule. So the, my anxiety. And then it just keeps circling around and around. And so when he can come in and say, there is no right way, I can breaks that cycle.
Sean: So as you're talking a thought occurs to me this way that there are, there's a right way in a wrong way to do it.
And there's the way that everyone else seems to do this, but it doesn't work for some reason for you. And then. It seems like it's a challenge to go into the way that it seems to work for everybody else and to try and find your place within it. And that struggle of that feeling of being broken because you don't fit into the way things.
What comes to my mind is I've been talking to some other people about neurodiversity and there is some extreme number, more obvious pronounced examples of neurodiversity. When you're talking about somebody on a spectrum or, and, I believe really strongly that, and don't get me wrong.
I'm not saying you have a disability.
Nancy: I hear you.
Sean: But that I remember reading somewhere once where physical disability is largely based upon the physical environment that we're in. So like with legislation that makes it so that all public spaces have to be handicapped accessible while the disability actually starts going away.
When you create spaces that are accessible, it's really the design of our space that creates. Disability or not actually what the person is going through physically. And a lot of people say the same thing about neurodiversity, where if you have a kid in school who has like really like sensory overload, certain sounds or lights or things if you create spaces where those things don't exist, the disability actually starts going away.
One of the things I know about our society is that we have a tendency to try to make everyone be like everybody else. And so going into this conversation about meditation is just I'm broken because it didn't work for me on on does this resonate with you at all? This is like, When we talk about neuro-diversity, there's a lot of less pronounced versions of this diversity.
I have it, I can't stand this people eating food, and I have to get up and leave the room, whatever. And there are for whom closing their eyes is just anguish. Now, like with more pronounced versions of this of this diversity, I wonder if it's a matter of finding. Not the way you need to conform yourself to fit, but the way that you can find what you need and make your own place in this.
Nancy: Yeah. I think I totally agree with you. I think that is fascinating. The fascinating idea, stop trying to fit your round peg into a square hole, which is one of my favorite visualization, things to think of. I still am like a better person can close the eyes. Yeah. And if I worked hard enough and figured out enough hacks and tried, I could be a normal person too.
Sean: I think what, yeah. And I understand definitely what you're saying, and I know that it's cliche, but it's like, what is normal?
Nancy: Totally. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's easier. It's easier said than done. Easier said than done. And it's definitely, I think every day I say to one of my clients, stop trying to fit your square peg into a round hole.
Like it's one of my favorite phrases because, cause I think I need to hear it, but it's so different when it's, when you have been programmed and we all have been to some degree, you have to be. A square peg, you have to fit into the square hole. Even though there are oval holes and round holes and star holes, like there's a lot of different holes out there, but the, I would call it brainwashing, the brainwashing you receive.
And it was given to me as a good thing. Here's a way to, to fit in. Here's a way to, to survive without conflict in the world. But even with that, even though the messaging was from an, a positive intent, the messaging I got was because you're broken and you won't fit in just being you. And so you have to figure out ways to do it differently.
And the interesting thing, as we're talking, I just was realizing because meditation is one of those things. Like it is morphed in my brain. How much of an issue it is for me? Like how, I've amplified it to be, I don't to meditate is the same as saying, I don't like to eat chocolate.
It's just who are you then if you don't like to eat chocolate. But even though I know there are a lot of people out there that don't like deep chocolate. Relate to that at all, but it doesn't mean it's wrong, but it's that same, everybody likes chocolate. What is wrong with you? That you can't do it.
And so recognizing I've amplified it to be this big thing. And it's really just when you said that about Sable to start to close their eyes, I'm like, yeah, that's all it is. I like to close my eyes. It's not some, I'm a failure at meditating. It's I just don't really. Because of my eyes and it makes me feel too out of control.
Sean: And I love also this, like going back to the beginnings and looking towards what were the actual goals all along well success. And that, if it seems to me like the experiment has been a success, because you've been able to identify, there was this thing that you wanted, it's been weighing upon you, you gave it the college try or whatever, and. You found that one tool meditation with your eyes closed, isn't the right tool for you. Maybe someday. It might be again, who knows? Maybe not that's okay. But there are all, but now it's just wait a second. There's these mindfulness techniques that I love and they work and you felt those results.
And so now you actually get to move forward with a little less baggage, actually.
Nancy: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And not even knowing that all that baggage was there, like that was the interesting thing too, is also to recognize like how many people who are listening have something like this. This is oh, if I was a better person, I could blah.
And instead of having the kindness to be like, What's the end goal here. The end goal is to feel for meditation is to feel more grounded and more in the present and less spinning out in my brain and the mindfulness hacks get me there. And I do them, like both are true, whereas the meditation also could get me there, but it's something I, I dread doing.
It stirs up a lot of crap for me. So instead of being like, I got to power through that and get to the other side, which is always been. Default power through, get to the other side, instead of doing that, to recognize what if there's another way of doing this, that gets you to the same goal and it doesn't cause any problems.
In the meantime, like I almost act as if by doing the mindfulness hacks where little babies are dying, because the same meditation, the right way. That's how. Big, it gets in my brain as if I'm affecting other people's lives, because I'm not able to do meditation by closing my eyes. And even that was really helpful just to recognize when you said that about the diversity to recognize, oh, it's the closing the eyes.
You're like, that's the main problem is it's really the closing. The eyes is the main problem.
Sean: Interesting,
Nancy: fascinating on the neuro-diversity thing. Cause that never entered my brain.
Sean: Nancy that you wanted to say to the listeners? Like any sort of advice about how you would suggest would you suggest people do an experiment like this?
Nancy: The beauty of the experiment was that it forced me. To come to a reckoning with a lot of this stuff that I did not realize was there. And so for that reason, I would encourage people to do an experiment because something might come up that they don't know that it's there. And if they don't want to do an experiment, what I would encourage them to do is to have some curiosity around when they do practice mindfulness or meditation, how that feels and what comes up for them and to be able to have that practice.
Without all the judgment and rigidities if possible, which I know is a lot to ask, but bottom line, I would encourage people, whether you're doing meditation or mindfulness, opening your eyes, closing your eyes, dancing in the street. I don't care. You have to have some type of practice. That brings you into the moment that gets you in your body.
That cuts out the nonstop chatter in our brains. And I think people need to have some curiosity around what that practice is for them. And I'll happily in the podcast notes include some yeah. Mindfulness hack examples that I have used in the past to give to people. And I think I even have podcast episodes where I talk about it to give people some other ways of doing that.
Because as I've said, a thousand times, acknowledging your feelings and slowing down and getting to your body are the two things that are the most important in dealing with anxiety and are the two things that. Want to do the least. I was really bummed when I realized those were the keys, but since I have embraced those two things, my anxiety has become so much more manageable.
Sean: Incredible. And then what I love about that answer is there's so much hope in that answer too. There's so much optimism
Nancy: cause to me now it feels more free and spacious than it did when we first had the first conversation. And I was like, this is what it has to look like. I was super. Closed in what meditation had to look like.
And so to your point on the neuro-diversity, just to recognize that we have a lot of different ways of processing stuff and a lot of things, whether it's a personal preference or a hard wired part of your brain, when you're doing practices like this, you want to be doing them where they are enjoyable.
So let's pay attention to those practices or those personal preferences. Neural pathways rather than beating ourselves up for them. If it's not explainable, it's still okay. To cut out the judgment on this is mindfulness. This isn't mindfulness. Yeah. Instead of just being like this makes me feel bad.
This makes me feel more grounded. This makes me feel more connected to myself. This makes me cut out the noise.
Sean: And I'm going to do this regularly and on purpose.
Nancy: Yes, exactly. Yeah. Yes. I'm glad you said that. Cause I do think when you can train it to be, this is something I'm doing for myself. This is a gift I'm giving myself that flips.
From external locus of control, internal locus of control. I'm not doing this because Nancy Jane Smith and Sean McMullan said that meditation and mindfulness are the key. I'm doing this because I have done it. And I know it helps me feel better. That's why I'm doing it. And that's the key. That's awesome.
Thanks for challenging me to do this, Sean. Cause I would probably would not have done this. Had you not held my feet to the fire a little bit about it. That's been my pleasure. Okay, Shawn, thanks so much for joining me on this conversation. This was really fun. I hope you get as much out of this experiment as I did at the bare minimum, I hope it encourages you to give it a try, whether it be meditation or mindfulness.
I know quieting our minds and getting into our bodies is a powerful practice.