When coaching athletes on self-talk, I encourage them to come up with a word or phrase that may help in keeping them present to their physical effort. Examining our self-talk properly can be a complex experience that takes time and practice while involving our sight, physical and emotional feelings, other sensations, and thoughts. Or, it can be a simple, playful intellectual slap on the face. Something like, “stay with me, relax for speed.”
After years of studying and practicing this type of mental focus in my own training and racing I’ve gotten pretty good at sharpening my mind at will, conjuring appropriate self-talk words or phrases in a flash, or kindly reprimanding myself for straying without placing value judgment on my disruptive thoughts. Racing can mentally be very logical and functional if you are willing to accept your fate on that day (or days), then hunker down and make the best of it, especially if one is comfortable being in discomfort.
But despite my ability to remain relevant in the face of desert heat, high winds, pouring rain, snow and pain—finding that elusive headspace in the office has never been as easy.
It could be because; when I am sitting at my computer I most often would rather be moving, or, that the emotional grind of surfing my favorite sites to catch up on the difficult world news can create internal angst, but I think for the most part its because I’ve trained my brain for many years to cope well with forward movement through nature and have not ‘trained’ for the mental rigors of day to day human living—until recently.
I figured if I can stay present to my purpose with swollen, blistered feet I should be able to learn to suffer the sometimes tedious effects of organized work. So to help my cause I’ve been working on lots of types of sitting mediation (among other things) and last night we learned how to insert tiny meditations into our day with intermittent 10-15 second breath focus. One of the goals is to simply ‘Add spice to our day’. I can always deal with loads of spice and these are so fun and easy that I thought I’d share the great info! Here’s how it works:
Sit in a chair, feet on the ground, posture tall but relaxed and comfortable, eyes lightly closed. Let your breathing be relaxed and natural but as you breathe keep your focus on your breath ONLY. Don’t force the breathing, but when you do inhale be aware than you are inhaling and when you exhale, be aware that you are exhaling. Allow your focus to remain only on your breath for 10-20 seconds. After a very brief time and before your thoughts start to play in your head again, take your last aware breath, open your eyes and get on with your day. Do it again in an hour. And then again.
This is in some ways is the same manner in which we train in sport to control our head chatter (except there is more dialog involved and we are moving and in discomfort) – “relax for speed”, or in this case, “breathe for focus”. The result for practicing in both moving and sitting is a calm, yet laser focused mind, open to all tasks at hand, accepting, decisive. So if we slow down for a moment a few times a day our brain can actually work longer at warp speed and at will. The idea in both sport and work is that if we stop trying so hard and the results will happen.
Sprinkle this spice of calm focus into your day today and onward and you might even notie that “relax for speed” will happen a bit more quickly on your next run as well. Let me know how that goes! Namaste.
