Throughout my career, I have used several self development tools that made a huge impact on my career and my life. In my upcoming articles, I will share with you four tools that have helped me become a better leader and human being and strengthen my life muscles.
I experienced three out of those four tools for the first time while going through the toughest times of my life and I made them since then part of my daily life. Thanks to those methods, I chose to rise anyways without trying to be someone else or to listen to outer critics, I unlocked my authentic self and kept moving forward when times were tough.
These tools have truly transformed my mindset, way of thinking and acting. To start with, I have decided to share today one of the four self development tools that have made me unstoppable, the one that helped me the most develop my resistance to stress, build my resilience and also carve my path towards high performance, success and happiness.
Meditation
One of the most powerful self development tools I discovered about two years ago is meditation. Meditation is not only a tool to detox the nervous system and help you manage stress so that it does not impact your life, it is also a tool to upgrade your life as you center yourself and visualize yourself as you wish to be in particular situations.
I also believe meditation to be a productivity tool as it truly makes space for higher consciousness and better performance in your personal and professional life. Many high achievers, top athletes and CEO, such as Bill Gates, Ray Dalio, Michael Jordan or Oprah Winfrey, actually report meditating regularly to be at the top of their games.
Before I discovered and started practicing meditation, I used to say “I just can’t meditate”, “it is not for me”, “I can’t stop thinking”, “I can’t do anything”. That is because I tried to become good at meditation by controlling my thoughts and giving my brain a command to be silent, rather than focusing on surrendering and accepting my thoughts and emotions.
I finally developed my meditation practice in 2020 during Covid-19 confinement thanks to The M-Word quest by Emily Fletscher which I detail below. I can’t recommend it enough to everyone out there who wants to get more resilient to stress, get more focus, heighten their sense of intuition, and enhance their problem solving skills and sense of well being.
The M-Word
Emily Fletscher used to be a Broadway artist and turned to meditation to become one of the world’s leading experts in meditation. Since then, she has transformed the life of millions of people, including many of the world’s top performers, actors and CEO.
The M-Word is a 4-week quest that is built into two parts – the first part teaches you how to get good at meditation and the second part how to get good at life, which Emily claims to be the ultimate purpose. From work, career, sex, love and health, The M-Word takes meditation to a whole new level by upgrading an ancient practice into a remarkable tool to upgrade your life
Emily reassures you in the first part of the course by explaining that “the mind beats involuntarily just like the heart beats involuntarily”, hence the enemy of meditation is effort and not thoughts, which I mistakenly thought it was. While during the first part of the course, you learn how to meditate in five different phases, the second part of the course is focused on mindfulness and integrates guided meditations and visualizations into your daily meditation practice. This helps you get into a positive mind frame and perform better in different situations of your life, for instance in case of stress, pain, anxiety, in case of addictions, whether it is at work, in your personal life or even in sexual relationships.
Taking The M-Word quest was for me an amazing discovery. In 30-day I started sensing the effect of it on my daily life, as I slept better and was much more in control of my emotions, and especially reactions towards sensitive topics in my life and at work. The M-Word really made meditation something non-negotiable in my life and I made it a daily habit every morning, like taking a shower or brushing my teeth.
What’s in it for you
What people often think is that meditation is fluffy but what many don’t know is that it has been scientifically proven to impact some brain and body chemicals that promote an improvement in our sense of emotional and physical well-being.
After practicing meditation for almost two years, I can confidently say the positive effects on me are:
* the ability to reduce stress and sleep better by detoxing the nervous system and getting all the “open windows” of your computer out of your body.
* boost of productivity and focus. Meditators report doing more in less time and do less and accomplish more.
* heightened sense of intuition and problem solving skills. Nature renders me choiceless as I usually get the answer to my problem or a question as soon as I center myself and meditate.
* sense of well being, fulfillment and bliss. Meditation actually helps me handle situations better further to emotions felt, get stronger and more resilient.
* my brain and body are primed to perform at the top of my personal and professional game.
Conclusion
I believe we have the responsibility to create the life of our dreams and we can do that by taking actions, actions that are aligned with our vision. Meditation is one of the four essential tools I use in my daily life and along with other methods I will write about in my next articles it has truly helped me become unstoppable in my career and create the life of my dreams.
The purpose of the M-Word quest by Emily Fletscher is to get good at life, not good at meditation so don’t worry if you start the program thinking meditation is not for you, because you are not good at it or you are not able to focus. I had the same feeling initially when I started meditating and I was ready to give up. Please don’t…! You will see, you will not regret it as it will change your life, step by step…
Finally, you need to know that for most of us meditation is a subtle and gentle journey, it is a gradual process. Day by day, meditation will allow you to get rid of old stresses in the body and focus better which overtime is going to help you sleep better, perform better, be less stressed, get more radiant, patient, resilient and last but not least happy and successful.
The M-Word is a quest that you can take on its own or as part of the Mindvalley Membership, which I believe to be great value for money. It gives you access to more than 50 self development quests and you get your return on investment after two to three quests only. I have been a member now for almost two years and I have to say Mindvalley has truly helped me develop myself and transform my life. Get more details by clicking here.
