235 See Into Your Mind With Timothy Carroll

Jul 20, 2017

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Timothy Carroll is a leadership expert who, through his study of cognitive behaviour sciences and psychology has equipped himself to coach high level achievers. Also a successful athlete, at only 16 years old he represented New Zealand at Four World Championships as a barefoot waterskier. Later, in 2008, he participated as a performance coach at the Beijing Olympics for a Swedish equestrian riding event. Through his elite coaching, Timothy has helped top companies in Europe greatly boost their bottom line including Schneider Electric Group, Kuwaiti National Petroleum Co, Yellow Pages and Mannheimer Swartling. In spite of all these successes, Timothy is down-to-earth, gentle and generous in his desire to share his incredible wisdom.

Contact Info

Company: Carroll Consultancy
Website: CarrollConsultancy.com
Blog: LinkedIn.com/in/TimothyCarroll
Podcast: Facebook: @TimothyCarroll and @TimothyJCarroll
Timothy Carroll's Book: The Evolutionary Leader: Five Steps to Dramatically Develop People and Performance by Timothy Carroll

Most Influential Person

Dr. Deepak Chopra

Effect on Emotions

Well I think mindfulness has helped me to be a much happier and more fulfilled person.
I've learned to get on top of my mind and and see in my mind.
I'm aware of my thinking process. I'm able to step back from that and not get caught up in all of those thoughts that come up inside.
My focus is on the gap between those thoughts. I have a good friend of mine who's a world record holder in free-diving. So he's diving down 120 metres on just one breath of air. And I said to him, What are you thinking about. What's your experience when you're diving down that deep?
And he said, well you know, I have this little devil on my shoulder that comes up when thoughts come and go. Sometimes it says, you know this could be the last breath you ever take.
When I'm diving my mind will tell me, hey turn around you're going to die. And I don't pay attention to that anymore because it doesn't suit me to dive deep into the ocean.
But out of curiosity what are you paying attention to? And he said I'm paying attention to the silence between those thoughts. And the deeper that I dive into that silence, the deeper I dive into the ocean.
And that's my experience as well as an athlete. And when I'm interviewing other athletes, [I ask], what were you thinking about when you broke that world record, when you broke that personal best?
They all say I was thinking nothing. And so this is the peak performance and if that's what is found when the mind is still, then you've got to make that the number one thing in your life. Learn how to still your mind and get out of the way of yourself.

Thoughts on Breathing

We build this internal turbulence.
Very often when I talk to my clients about taking the time to just be and challenging them to just sit and be and do nothing but be present with their breath, they find that extremely difficult to sit for even five minutes.
The first thing I do is talk to people about literally training in neurology, training your nervous system to be still. It's something that we typically only do when sleeping.
To be able to do it regularly on a consistent basis and practice just being, and stopping minding, or doing mind is a great skill. That's what I first teach executives and athletes when we first begin.
Your responsibility is to just focus on your breath and if you get lost in your thoughts, come back to it. That's all you are responsible to do.

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Bullying Story

Mindfulness and meditation is something that you practice sitting down and its typically in that way.
If you look at mindfulness, mindfulness is really around taking that into every moment. so that you practice being super present in every moment, not just when you're sitting for twenty minutes in the morning or in the evening, but you're actually being right here, right now in every possible moment.
Bullying for me is a big issue; it's an ego-based problem. Our ego is the part of us which develops. We're pretty ego-less when we're born. Then we develop this mind and self-image and judgements. Deepak Chopra says ego stands for Edging God Out.
When we're stuck in our ego, it's very easy for us to point the finger at someone else and project. In psychology we talk about projection, and projecting our unresolved issues upon others or for a young kid who is being bullied at home, then we imitate that and we take it out on other kids at school.
I think mindfulness is a huge support for people to step out of their ego and to be able to become aware of their feelings and to breathe through those feelings when they come out. Instead of projecting those feelings unto someone, and hurting that other person, really being able to take full responsibility for what is coming up within that person and then breathe through those feelings.
An emotion always has a beginning, a middle and an end and when those emotions come up, and you breathe through them and allow the energy of the emotion, energy in motion; e-motion to move through you.
If I had learned that when I was younger, there's plenty of times growing up in an all boys Catholic school in Wellington in New Zealand where kids are mean. And we can see how mean kids can be.
There are many times when I was bullied in the past where I would have benefited from [knowing] how to deal with the emotions that come up with that. Definitely people who have chosen to bully would benefit from that too.