Hi girl, welcome to Soul CEO; a podcast for women who know they’re destined for more. I’m Lindsey Mango and I’m going to show you that you can have it all and teach you how to get it by becoming the CEO of your soul, life, and business. Let’s get started.
Hello, how are you guys? I am so excited to be here. Welcome back to another week and another episode. I am so honored and grateful, and I just have to tell you guys how much I appreciate when you share my episodes on your Instagram stories. I know I say that like, every freaking week, but I seriously am so honored.
And it just gives me the opportunity to help even more people and you just never know who needs to hear this message. So if you love these episodes, please continue to do that. My Instagram is @lindseymango_ and I also have to tell you guys – this is a pretty good bridge into this week’s episode because I don’t always ask for ideas on what I want to do podcasts on because I just have constant ideas and creativity for my own journey and growth and for my clients’ journey and growth.
But sometimes I do ask on Instagram what you guys want to hear about on these episodes and so if you follow me and you see one of those questions, don’t be afraid to pop in and tell me what you want to learn about. So I actually did this a few weeks ago and one of the first questions I got or one of the first comments was someone asking for me to share my meditation journey.
And I thought that was such a cool thing to talk about because for those of you who do follow me, you probably have noticed that I’ve gotten into meditation and I share when I do it. And I share the app that I use, which is Insight Timer, side note. And so I thought this was such a great opportunity to talk a little bit more about it with you guys.
So today is going to be a little bit less of like, you’re going to learn all the things but I’m not going to be teaching you a concept. I’m just going to be sharing about why I got into meditation and how it’s helped me and what type of meditation I do and my challenges with it as well.
So I actually hired an amazing coach. Her name is Danielle Savory. She is all about pleasure and presence and all the things, and when I hired her it was probably about six months ago. The challenge that I was having in my own life was that I was having trouble really enjoying my life and being super present.
So just to give you guys a little bit of backstory, I was a college athlete, I played sports my whole life, I’ve been on the go all the time, accomplishing, doing all the things, just like a lot of you guys, and this is why I’m inspired to help you guys.
And I’ve realized that as my business continued to grow and as I really designed my dream life, I was still feeling like I wasn’t present in it, or I wasn’t really able to enjoy it because my mind would just keep coming up with things that I needed to do, or just create things that I needed to do, and that I would find myself getting really distracted and not being in the moment.
And so among other things, if you check out Danielle, she also works on pleasure and sex and all the things, and that will probably be another episode and another time. But when I first hired her, I just was thinking about how I’m getting married in October, and when I hired her it was a long way away, and now it’s only like, 50 days away, which is crazy.
But I remember thinking that I really want to be the most present version of myself that day, and I remember thinking that I didn’t want to be distracted and I really wanted to be able to enjoy the life that I’ve designed, and be in it and have fun and be very present.
And so that was one of the motivating factors of why I hired her and one of the first things we worked on doing was adding meditation into my schedule and being consistent with it because what I have learned about meditation – and again, this is scratch the surface kind of knowledge – is that it applies so much to life.
So what I mean by that is that it’s not actually as much about the time that you spend while sitting in meditation. It’s how you apply what’s happening during meditation to your life. And so we implemented doing 10 minutes a day of silent meditation because I used to really love doing guided meditation but that was also because it kind of distracted me and helped me stay focused.
And so I started practicing silent meditation, which was a really big challenge for me to just even sit in silence for 10 minutes, and I’m sure a lot of you can relate to that. But it’s something that I’ve practiced over time and I’ll share a little bit more like I said about how I’ve gone off track and all the things.
But basically, what I have learned with meditation is one, creating a habit out of it. We all want to create habits out of different things, working out, doing all the things, and creating a habit sometimes looks like just putting it on your calendar and committing to do it and having accountability. So just hiring her and being invested in that helped hold me accountable until I could hold myself accountable to meditation because it was a new habit for me.
And what I learned through doing meditation and through doing silent meditation was this idea that it’s not that our minds aren’t going to wander. They are. They are trained to wander. They are humans. It’s the practice of bringing yourself back.
So something that I do when I meditate is, I breathe and I really work on focusing on my breath coming in and out of my nose and again, just like you, my mind will wander off and I’ll start thinking about something random. And what I’ve realized, it’s not about beating yourself up when you wander. It’s about recognizing that you’ve wandered off the path and bringing awareness to it, celebrating that moment, I’ve realized that I’ve wandered, and bringing yourself back.
So I always like to think that I’m like, on a path and I’m just walking down this path and I got a little lost and I wandered off, and there’s no reason to be like what the heck are you doing? Come back here. Can’t believe you’re thinking about this or I can’t believe you wandered over here. It’s just like oh, interesting, you wandered. Let’s bring you back.
So that I think has been one of the first biggest transformations I had through meditation was that process of just not making it mean anything that my mind wandered off and having that compassion, and then just lovingly bringing myself back. And I’ve been able to really apply that to my life too because I’ve shared this in other episodes, but sometimes when I’m not doing something the way that I want to, I’m not like mean to myself, but I football coach myself.
I’m like, come on, what are you doing over here? Get it together. And I’ve realized having compassion and celebrating the awareness is something that I’ve been able to apply in my daily life all the time. And it’s given me so much more compassion and helped me grow in so many more powerful ways because I am a human, of course my mind is going to wander, of course I’m going to do things not always in alignment, and I can just be aware of it and bring myself back without having to beat myself up about it.
So that’s one of the first things. And then I think the other thing is learning how to quiet your mind. It’s like a muscle. Over time you get better. You don’t wander off quite as much. And you can apply that to your daily life. And so what I feel like I’ve been to do is really access my breath in more moments.
So the breath like, the in and out that I experience when I’m in meditation, when I feel myself wandering around or there’s a moment I really want to soak up, sometimes I’ll like, access that exact same kind of rhythm of breathing in my daily life. And I’ll be able to soak up the view of the ocean or soak up a moment with Chris in a more powerful way than I would have if I hadn’t implemented that practice.
Now, those are really the two biggest things that I’ve gotten from meditation. Strengthening that muscle of quieting my mind and learning how to have compassion when I wander off and recognizing I’m a human and that it’s okay that my mind wanders sometimes, but again, getting better at being in a place where I’m not thinking about anything.
The other thing I want to share with you guys is that I was really consistent for like, 60 days or something crazy. I did it for 60 days straight and then life started happening, and actually my coach assigned me to – this is funny, but she assigned me to add on 10 more minutes.
So going from 10 minutes to 20 minutes really threw me in a loop, which is really hilarious to say out loud. It’s just 10 more minutes, like, what’s the big deal? But I had this whole new story about 20 whole minutes sitting silently, and that definitely threw me off for a while. I definitely avoided it some days, and it was just really powerful to see why.
And one of the things in that part of the journey was connecting back to why it was important to me. And I think it’s really powerful for you guys in life in general is when you are trying to create a habit or when you’re trying to do something or move towards taking an action, connecting it back to why it’s important.
I kind of forgot why it was important. I was just like ugh, 20 minutes, I don’t want to do that, I don’t have enough time for that, whatever BS I was telling myself. And I was able to connect it back and my coach helped me do that, connect it back to the importance of being present in my life. That my life is on the line and learning how to do this is going to give me the ability to enjoy more of my life.
Since then, we’ve actually brought it back down to 10 just to recreate that habit again and I still get thrown off sometimes. When my life is perfectly orderly and I’m doing all the same things that I typically do, I don’t really have a problem but I still am challenged when I travel, when I have plans, when I have family in town, all of the things.
And so I think the biggest thing I’ve learned is that it’s a journey. Not a destination. And it’s something that I’m committed to continuing to grow in and that the work I do sitting on my meditation pillow is really applying to my everyday life.
And so that’s kind of my journey and that is what you guys were curious about. So just to give you a couple tools that I have been utilizing, like I said, I use Insight Timer and something I would recommend is starting slowly. Don’t try to start doing an hour of meditation if you’ve never meditated. Start with five minutes, start with 10 minutes.
If you find yourself having trouble quieting your mind, try silent meditation. See what comes up for you. And also understand that it is going to be something that strengthens over time and making it something that is really important and connected to something important in your life is going to give you more motivation to make it a priority.
So that’s a little bit about my journey with meditation and it will be a continued journey. And if you guys love this type of episode, I would love to hear your feedback. I would also love to hear if there’s anything else you guys would love to learn about.
So I love you, thanks for being here. I know this was a little bit different of an episode. Make sure to check out Insight Timer if you try meditation as a result of this episode. I would love to also hear about it. My Instagram is @lindseymango_ and I cannot wait to talk to you next week. I love you guys. Bye.
Thank you for tuning into today’s episode of Soul CEO. If you are ready to take this work deeper and you want to bring your dream business or a reality, I wanted to make sure that you knew that Mango Magic Business Academy was available to you. Head to lindseymangocoaching.com/mangomagic.
Or if you don’t have a business and you are ready to bring your dream life to a reality and know you are meant for more, my Mango Magic Life School is also available. Go to lindseymangocoaching.com/mangomagiclifeschool for all the details. These programs are both life and business changing and you get access and coaching with me to walk through the modules and ask questions and get support to make your dream life or your dream business, or both a reality. I love you. I can’t wait to see you in there.
