Mindfulness Mode

Valorie Hubbard is an actor and an expert at empowering other actors. She owns the company, Actor’s Fast Track, where she consults with working actors about their career paths. In her newest book, 'Rule Breakers - Changing The Way Actors Do Business', she shows professional actors how to create and operate their acting career as a successful business – and how to move from being “stuck” into the limelight. Some of her credits include: Castle, Agent’s of S.H.I.E.L.D; How I Met Your Mother; Glee; American Horror Story; Workaholics; True Blood, Resident Evil: Extinction and every Disney show. Valorie lives in Los Angeles with her husband Chef Gill Boyd and dog Gracie. Contact Info Company: Actors Fast Track Website: www.ActorsFastTrack.com Contact: Sara@actorsfasttrack.com will arrange a conversation for you with the right person. Free Book: Text the word 'Rulebreakers' to 38470 to get a free digital download of the book, Rulebreakers by Valorie Hubbard. Most Influential Person Melissa McFarland, who was my original coach in Actor's Fast Track. She was my coach for 10 years. Effect on Emotions Mindfulness has calmed my rage down. If I take that five seconds before I make a decision; discernment. Thoughts on Breathing Breathing is everything. I mean, you learn that as an actor and so breathing is everything. Everything. It's life, so huge. It's a huge impact. Suggested Resources Book: Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod Book: Rule Breakers: Changing The Way Actors Do Business by Valorie Hubbard App: Stitcher (Podcast App) Bullying Story Well, that's hilarious because really my tagline as an actor, is the adorable bully. Marcy Lewis is the bully. You know, like I've always played the bully. So it's so funny. I've always played that person. When I was little I was teased a lot for being fat. And one of the things that I didn't know and I wasn't taught is, I think breath would have been a very big help. I mean, that's something they didn't know when I was a child, about breathing in and breathing out and breathing in and breathing out. And that time out and that five second rule, that discernment thing, you know, is really big. What happened is, the kid started teasing my friend one day and because it was my friend, all of a sudden I just lost it. Like I snapped and I've had a few of those where I beat him up. He never came back to school. The girl beat him up. The fat girl beat him up. I socked him hard in his face, you know. The lesson always is if you don't say something, if you don't have the conversation, if you don't face and say the truth of what you're feeling regardless of how they take it or whatever, it's like it'll build up to where you explode and possibly injure someone. I mean there were times in my adult life where I, you know, early adult life where I experienced that and I was like, I do not want to experience that again.

Devin Galaudet is editor-in-chief of 'In The Know Traveler' and he's visited 85 coutries around the world. He's in the process of marrying his wife 100 times in 100 countries. He's accomplished 20 times in 15 countries so far. He's appeared on Fox, NBC, ReInvention Radio among others. His writing has appeared in the Huffington Post, TravelAge West, Citron Review, Skylight Magazine. Devin has written a memoir called, Ten Thousand Miles With My Dead Father's Ashes, available in bookstore in September, 2018. It answers the question, what do you do when you lose your father's ashes? Contact Info Website: www.DevinGalaudet.com Book: 10,000 Miles With My Dead Father's Ashes by Devin Galaudet Blog: www.InTheKnowTraveler.com Podcast: Writing Daily With Devin Most Influential Person Anna Korea King (A woman I studied the Western Mysteries with) Effect on Emotions I can't begin to tell you how important mindfulness is towards my day to day life and I think it comes in a variety of forms in religion and spirituality and philosophy and all kinds of different doctrines and things like that. I think what it's given me is to kind of look beyond how I might be feeling in any given moment to understand that I am part of this great fantastic thing called life and I get to appreciate that thing. Again, some moments and some days are more difficult than others. But overall I'm, I'm the luckiest guy in the world. I think getting started, it is very challenging because we want to fall back on old ideas. I was raised in a certain way so I keep thinking, well I'm that guy and the truth of the matter is I'm not that guy anymore and I haven't been that guy for many years. So having that gratitude, you stay on the wheel, so to speak. You keep working on yourself and remaining conscious. The more that happens, all these other doors start opening up. I started developing more gratitude and more compassion for other people. Thoughts on Breathing Well, I think there's a physiological thing that goes on when we get bad news or we're agitated and that becomes more shallow breaths. That becomes less awareness. I think there are just things that go on. And the first thing that I do is try to almost automatically go into a slower breath. I want to fill my lungs up just to either breathe in this good news or just acknowledge it. Okay, here's this thing that's going on, but I don't need to be flipped out by it. So why don't I just take long, slow breaths? Suggested Resources Book: Some Answered Questions by Abdu'l-Baha App: N/A Bullying Story Yes, I was bullied when I was six or seven years old. And you know, it's hard to describe. Again, this is something that comes from the book. My mother thought that I was a Barbie doll and so she would quite literally dress me in pantaloons and ruffled shirts and buckled shoes and I grew up in like nineteen seventies, Los Angeles. And that is a recipe for getting picked on. As I recall, every boy was wearing like sears, tough skin jeans and everybody was wearing work boots and you know, I mean that's the way my father dressed and that's what I wanted. And so I would get dressed up in these costumes that were, it was, I mean, again, you can look back and you smile at it, but at the time it was just demoralizing. I would go, who wears velvet knickers, like other than like somebody from a French Dandy from the seventeen hundreds. But I was. I don't even know where my mother found culottes for boys, but that's how I was sent to school. And so that without question separated me from most kids and I took some lumps over that and you know, again, I don't know if it's ironic, but once my father got wind of it and my father was a pretty prideful guy and I was kind of a slight built guy and my father was just a wide shoulder, big forearms, the whole thing. And he was very much like, you know, I want to transmit my father and use his language, but that would probably be inappropriate for a family audience. But he made it essentially very clear that you are going to stand up for yourself, you are getting into fistfights wherever necessary. And he took me in the backyard and taught me to do things that really were probably on the edge of right and wrong. But looking back at it, it was something that I think for me as a young man, certainly considering the time, that was just part of what needed to take place.

Dr. Rhoberta Shaler is the 'Relationship Help Doctor'. She provides urgent and on-going care for relationships in crisis. She particularly helps the partners, the exes, adult children, and co-workers of the crazy-making, relentlessly difficult people that she calls, 'Hijackals'. She helps them save their sanity and stop the crazy-making. Even the United States Marines have called on Doctor Shaler for help. She's a relationship expert and speaker and author of 16 books. She consults with clents world-wide through the internet and she's host of two podcasts. One is called 'Emotional Savvy: The Relationship Help Show' and the other podcast is called 'Save Your Sanity: Help For Handling Hijackals'. Contact Info Website: www.ForRelationshipHelp.com Free Book: www.Hijackals.com Podcast: Emotional Savvy: The Relationship Help Show' Podcast: Save Your Sanity: Help For Handling Hijackals Get Spiritual Quotes: Go to www.DailySpiritualQuotes.com Facebook Group: Simply Pour Rhoberta Shaler Most Influential Person Joel Goldsmith (Author) Effect on Emotions I think mindfulness levels your emotions. It doesn't take out the peaks and valleys, but you understand that you choose the state that you stay in. Thoughts on Breathing Well, I think it's key to everything. When you stop and you allow yourself to let your shoulders down from your ear lobes, you take a deep breath and you open your chest and you open your heart at the same time. Then when you allow yourself to take a deep breath, it takes 20 seconds for the oxygen and a deep breath to go all the way around your blood system. So you refresh yourself completely. So when you are using your breath, you are actually regenerating yourself and when you do that it calms you and helps you think more clearly. Suggested Resources Book: The Heart of Mysticism: The Infinite Way Letters 1955-1959 by Joel Goldsmith App: Cell Phone Alarm Bullying Story I was in the education world for a long time as a teacher and then I became a school administrator and it was at a time that really stands out for me. When I had the opportunity, I was given an entire extra classroom to do what I wanted. So every morning I would have all the children including all the special needs children sit in a big circle and I invited their parents to come and spend that first 20 minutes of the day with us. And why I did that was there was a lot of unrest. There was a lot of children who were difficult and a lot of special needs children. And there were of course bullies in the mix. And so if we're all participating in something, it became something that everybody then said, okay, to. There were not any people who were not doing it. And what we saw during that time where we would just sit quietly, maybe we'd play with energy a little bit, you know, we'd rub our hands together and make energy, go round the circle or we'd do a visualization or whatever. We saw a real change and then I had an opportunity to be the administrator of a school for at risk teenagers. And of course there was a lot of this going on, you know, make them do this and all that when I got there. And I know that's not the way it's going to work, we're going to feed them. And so, we made a huge change. These kids who were going out and stealing cars and doing home invasions on the weekends; through love and sitting quietly, they changed. From the time that I went there to work, Bruce, the average length of time a child was staying in the school was three months. By the time I left five years later, we had not had a vacancy for 18 months.

Jeff Jones is a therapist, addiction counsellor, interventionist, and now, family recovery coach working online with families with addiction. He’s expanded the context of addiction and created a three-phase program that empowers families to safeguard their loved one in an addictive cycle or recovery, while they engage in a process to stop the addiction cycle in this generation. After putting it online and wrapping a user-friendly online community around it, Jeff is moving towards his goal of empowering families to connect with like-minded others, family-specific resources and expertise when they are ready. Contact Info Website: www.TheFamilyRecoverySolution.com Most Influential Person Thich Nhat Hanh Effect on Emotions So what I'm aware of is that my emotions can like go to extremes, whether it's spiraled downwards or climb upwards kind of thing. And mindfulness for me has been a very helpful antidote to ground me in reality as opposed to right away believe any extreme, whether it's down or up. So I want to reality check it with mindfulness. Thoughts on Breathing When I take slow, deep breaths into my belly and actually push my belly out, it engages my parasympathetic nervous system which slows the body down, which slows the nervous system down, calms the nervous system. I have been using that in meditation. A natural thing that I do is, right away, take a big breath even sometimes before thinking. It has taken a long time to get there. The slow deep breath is always there. It's a resource that will never leave me. Suggested Resources Book: Diamond Heart: Book One: Elements of the Real in Man by A. H. Almaas App: N/A Bullying Story The story that I'm thinking of happened really not that long ago, just a couple months ago. It is interesting how it started out because I have a number of different, addiction mentors. There was one in particular that I had just sent her an email kind of with a compliment of what I learned from her and I was just at a place where I was looking at what I was doing and having appreciation for the different people who I have learned from whose shoulders I'm standing on kind of thing. So I wrote her an email and what I got back from her was a letter from her attorney. So it was confusing to me and I felt bullied by that. It was a great opportunity for me to be aware of what was going on in my own thinking process. I just couldn't really make sense of my giving her a compliment about something I had learned from her and then getting this letter from her attorney. It was kind of like letting me know how to cite her reference properly, like I was stealing some of her information or something. I called her and I sent an email and I said, hey, I got this email from your attorney and like, can we just have a conversation? Which you know, I got another letter from her attorney and just a couple of weeks ago I was at a conference and I saw her and she was sweet as pie to me. Nothing was said about it. So in that situation I felt like I was being bullied. I was aware of what was going on in my mind and painting all these pictures like I'm being bullied here, and then to see her and get no message of that, it was confusing to me, but what I really learned from that from a mindfulness perspective is how I really need to check out my own thinking. Like I can't always believe my own thinking. And if I don't check it out with the other person, it's not really going to be helpful for me to believe everything that my mind says. Now the other side of it is I do feel that I was being bullied.

Tom Singer is a professional master of ceremonies and keynote speaker for corporate, law firms, and convention audiences. He's also authored 12 books on the power of business relationships, sales, networking, presentation skills, and entrepreneurship. Tom is also the host of the Cool Things Entrepreneurs Do podcast where he interviews business leaders who possess an extra dose of the entrepreneurial spirit. Stories from Tom's interviews are shared with his clients and he challenges people to be more engaged and enthusiastic in all of their actions. Contact Info Website: www.ThomSinger.com Podcast: Cool Things Entrepreneurs Do LinkedIn / Twitter / IG / YouTube @ThomSinger Facebook: @ThomSingerSpeaker Most Influential Person My father. My dad was 52 years old when I was born. So in a lot of ways it was like being raised by a grandfather. He had three sons who, when I was born were 10, 12 and 14. And by the way, I had the same set of parents. I was sort of a surprise. My Dad always told everybody that a surprise was an accident that worked out really well because he liked me. Effect on Emotions I think that As I've gone into this whole 50 to 75 plan that I'm shepherding, I think that being mindful of experiences and of saying yes to things, of not getting stressed, of not getting pissed, of just doing all that, I think the emotion that it has triggered more than anything else is joy. I think because I am mindful, that I'm going to have a good time. I think it has unleashed that emotion of joy and I think my wife sees it. I think my kids see it. I think my friends see it. I think my clients see it, so I think that's how mindfulness has affected my emotions. Thoughts on Breathing I don't think that [mindfulness has affected my breathing] other than the fact that it brings oxygen into my lungs that then goes into my blood and goes to my brain. So when I first started running and I couldn't run a mile and I hired my friend who was a runner to kind of coach me through it. He actually pushed me too hard and I triggered asthma that I hadn't had in years. I almost had to go to the hospital. I certainly hadn't used an inhaler in forever. I had to go to the doctor and everything else. So I was mindful of breathing when I couldn't. But the rest of the time, for some reason, once I got up to where I was running three to five miles and then five to 10 miles throughout the training, I rarely am that winded. Suggested Resources Book: The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Dr. Stephen Covey App: My camera app because I pay more attention to things that are photo worthy and maybe that's mindful. Bullying Story You know, I'm just going to be real honest. I have one situation that comes to mind when you asked that question that involve bullying and I'm just going to put it out there. I was kind of the bully and I was probably 12 years old and a bunch of people were sort of mocking, you know, a kid who kind of didn't fit in and I was part of it. And what's interesting is it's not part of my personality, it's not part of who I am. It's not part of who I was at the time and if I had been mindful of not having to be part of that group or whatever, I wouldn't have been part of it. I don't keep in touch with this person. I don't know if it was scarring or if it was just a minor thing, but I've always felt really bad about that. And because of that I've always been really conscious of not falling into that mob mentality and not being surprised by bystander mentality. Again, I wasn't leading the whole thing. I wasn't the bully, but I was part of the group and I mean at the time I knew it was wrong and I don't know why it came to mind when you asked about it, but now I feel kind of like crap for even having been a part of it, just thinking about it again. But I do know that it stayed with me to the point that I never did anything like that again, at least not to that level that I'm aware of. Quote "When you are mindful of your purpose in any conversation, you leave a legacy." Thom Singer

Robert Plotkin is an engineer, mindfulness practitioner, and the founder of Technology for Mindfulness. His background in computer science and engineering dates back over thirty years to his days programming an Atari 800 personal computer, through a degree in Computer Science and Engineering at MIT, and nearly two decades as a patent attorney specializing in patent protection for computer technology. His relationship to Zen Buddhism stems primarily from his study of Japanese martial arts for more than three decades. He is a graduate of the Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program at the Center for Mindfulness and practices mindfulness meditation. His fascination with the relationship and interactions between computer technology and the mind is reflected in his book on the automation of creativity in the field of inventing, The Genie in the Machine: How Computer-Automated Inventing is Revolutionizing Law and Business (Stanford, 2009). Contact Info Company: Technology For Mindfulness Website: www.TechnologyForMindfulness.com Podcast: http://technologyformindfulness.com/podcast Look for Robert's new program: Tap Into Mindfulness (Available Soon) Most Influential Person Jack Kornfield Joseph Goldstein, one of the first American vipassana teachers, co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society with Jack Kornfield and Sharon Salzberg Also Nicholas G. Carr, author of The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains Effect on Emotions Mindfulness has changed the way I deal with my emotions. This is where I think the stillness aspect of mindfulness is really helpful. I talked a lot earlier about action and martial arts, in doing that you engage a lot of action, movement of the body. I think for me, sitting meditation has been very helpful in dealing with emotions. Not just being able to notice what they are, but accept that they're there. Before I did sitting meditation, I engaged in a lot of trying to change difficult or negative emotions. For me, sitting meditation has really, really been helpful. When you say dealing with emotion, just being able to be more aware of what they actually are at any given moment, being able to accept them and notice them without being able to change them. I'm sure you know from your own mindfulness practice, sometimes that results in them lingering for awhile and sometimes I found that paying attention to them or even diving into them can result in them dissipating or changing in some way. I'm always working on accepting in advance that whatever the outcome is, it is. Thoughts on Breathing Breathing is a very, very big part of my mindfulness practice. Always has been. Even from the martial arts training; breathing really fairly fundamental and it's been interesting for me to do sitting meditation. Certainly there are some similarities and differences between how I think breath is approached in the two. In my experience in martial arts training, we do pay attention to the breath. If I can paint it in broad strokes, there is more of a goal or pragmatic aspect to working on and somewhat improving the breath. We work on deepening it, we work on being able to maintain it as more of an even keel. We work on being able to breathe more deeply. Part of it is to develop physical power. There is a pragmatic goal, so to speak, at least as part of the martial arts training and the breath. And so it's definitely been interesting to me to come at the breath and sitting meditation from a different perspective. Although sometimes when I'm doing sitting meditation I will form the intention of both noticing the breath and if I notice that it's shallow, I will relax. But I also some of the time, will merely notice what it is without trying to change it. That's been a different experience for me. Certainly in martial arts training, we often say that it begins and ends with the breath. I think for all the same reasons, I mean breath is the foundation of life. Everything else stops when you're not breathing. And so, that's always been a really significant part, and I do return to the breath. In fact, I did just go back to a meditation teacher who I really rely on for a lot of guidance and was asking her about focusing on the breath and how I hear a lot of instruction these days that seem to imply to me that we should always return to the breath. I've found that in my own practice, I'm at a point where sometimes if I'm experiencing and aware of a difficult emotion that returning to the breath can feel like a distraction. Suggested Resources Book: The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains byNicholas G. Carr App: N/A

Marie White is an entrepreneur, a world traveler, a missionary, and a YouTube host with over half a million viewers. She is the owner of Zamiz Press, which is an inspirational publishing company that offers hope and encouragement to people the world over who are experiencing struggles. Marie is also the author of five books, including the award-winning #1 bestseller, Strength for Parents of Missing Children: Surviving Divorce, Abduction, Runaways and Foster Care. Marie has also lived trauma first-hand, being the mother of an abducted child who remains missing. Contact Info Company: Zamiz Press Website: www.MarieWhiteAuthor.com Get a Free Copy of 'Changing Your Life In Just 10 Days' at the above website. Book: Strength For Parents of Missing Children: Surviving Divorce, Abduction, Runaways and Foster Care by Marie White Most Influential Person Rick Warren (Author of The Purpose Driven Life) Effect on Emotions Mindfulness has helped to keep me from going from one extreme to the other. Thoughts on Breathing Breathing is really helpful if you want to live. It’s necessary to bring down your emotions when you are in a heightened state of stress. I like to breathe in through the nose, out through the mouth, very slow, taking a moment to concentrate. Suggested Resources Book: Calming the Brain Through Mindfulness and Christian Meditation by Dr. Mark Beischel  Book: Right Here Right Now: The Practice of Christian Mindfulness by Marjorie J. Thompson Book: Strength For Parents of Missing Children: Surviving Divorce, Abduction, Runaways and Foster Care by Marie White App: N/A

Michael Levitt is all about boundaries. He is the founder of Breakfast Leadership.com where he shares his expertise on boundaries with other leaders. Michael also works in the health-care field and has experienced first-hand how important it is to have a grip on boundaries in life and death situations as well as daily living. Michael is trained in crisis intervention from the Canadian Training Institute. Michael is recognized as a healthcare leader, holding the Advanced Healthcare System Leadership certificate from Rotman School of Management, one of the World’s highly ranked business schools, as part of the University of Toronto. Michael also shares his knowledge on his podcast – Breakfast Leadership. Contact Info Website: https://www.breakfastleadership.com/ Blog: www.breakfastleadership.com/blog/ Podcast: Breakfast Leadership: www.breakfastleadership.com/podcasts/ Get Michael Levitt's Book Free Here: www.BreakfastLeadership.com/bruce Most Influential Person Leo Babauta, ZenHabits.net Effect on Emotions Mindfulness has helped me keep my emotions in check. I'm passionate. I'm in healthcare. I'm passionate about people taking better care of themselves. I'm passionate about the healthcare sector and what it needs to do to better serve the entire community and not just pockets of it. I'm very passionate about wrongs that we see in society, but I keep them in check now because I know that I can only do so much. I can do what I can do and I have to let others do what they can do. Thoughts on Breathing Breathing is extremely important to me. I am an asthmatic so my breaths are a little bit more challenging than others. It's mild, [my asthma], but it's something that I know could progress into copd (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) down the road. And for me, I take care of my breathing very carefully. I focus on it when things are tense, I pause and I go, OK, what are my breathing patterns like? And I can take a deep breath and sometimes I'll do the nostril thing where you do a closed nostril breathing. I just really focus on the breathing and it lowers my blood pressure and it just puts me into a moment of awareness and in the moment of now. Instead of worrying about what's going to happen or freaking out about what happened before, it's a good way to really get me connected to where I am right at this moment. Suggested Resources Book: 369 Days: How To Survive A Year of Worst Case Scenarios by Michael Levitt Book: The Tortoise And The Hare by  Jerry Pinkney - This is a leadership book. Some people will question me saying that, but it also helps with mindfulness too, as far as focusing on what's important. From a leadership book standpoint, it's a great book because oftentimes we are the rabbit and we're running around trying to get things done and moving things around where the tortoise is just steady as we go. Let's get through this. It's the same thing from a mindfulness standpoint. Our brains and minds and activities are all over the place where the turtle's step, step, step, step, step, step and turtle wins the race. I want all of us to win the race. So it's one of those books that I will read from time to time to really reconnect with myself. App: Calm

Teresa Przetocki works with companies to help them implement corporate wellness as a business strategy. Teresa is on a mission to create thriving communities within the workplace and she shares real-time examples of how to include mindfulness into employee wellness programs. Teresa is founder and CEO of C&P Wellness Consultants. She's a board certified public health professional, a certified Well Coaches Health and Wellness Coach and she holds her Masters in public health. Contact Info Company: CP Wellness Consultants Website: www.CPWellnessConsultants.com Social Media: @TeresaPrzetocki Most Influential Person My Grandmother and also my Husband Effect on Emotions Oh, that's a really good question. So I would say that mindfulness allows me to put a separation between my emotions. So we're very emotional beings and sometimes we let emotions kind of override us and we think, oh, I'm feeling this way so this is all of my reality right now. I think what mindfulness really has this amazing capacity to do is to bring awareness to it, but then put a separation into it. So then you can look at it non-judgmentally and really say, hey, I'm feeling this way, you know, what does that mean or, hey, I'm feeling this way. And just let it, let it be. Thoughts on Breathing So I've been trying to meditate, I would say a good three years now and I'm excited to get to your book recommendations because I have a great book for you that I want you to actually read. And then I'd actually like to hear what you have to say about it after you read it. But I'm. So whenever you hear of mindfulness or meditation, the first thing that any kind of teacher has said is go to your breath. So I, in my personal experience, have found this to be incredibly easy. It refocuses you, it's always accessible and it just automatically calms me. One of the things that I do with breathing is I like to count to 10 or 20. When you breathe in, it's one breathe out. It's two. And so I normally go to either 10 or 20 and then restart it and I try to do that for a good five to 10 minutes. Suggested Resources Book: Conversations With God by Neale Donald Walsch Book: Bliss More: How To Succeed in Meditation Without Really Trying by Light Watkins App: Gratitude 365

Michael Neeley is a podcaster and an entrepreneur. He's a business coach and he empowers other entrepreneurs to live the lives they've always dreamed of. He's the host of the podcast, 'Consciously Speaking', and also his new podcast, 'Buy This, Not That'. Michael used to be a knight in shining armor; he was an actor who spent a good portion of his career on horseback before starring in a couple of soap operas and some independent films. Michael's son, Tristan, was born back in 2002, and at that time Michael decided he wanted to leave the smog of Los Angeles and settle in an area with clean air and clear skies. So Michael made a transition and has moved to a role where he enlightens others as a mindfulness business coach. Contact Info Website: www.MichaelNeeley.com Podcast: Consciously Speaking Podcast: Buy This, Not That Event: Transformational Business Event - Your Authority Blueprint Live (Listen to the interview for a $100 Off Coupon Code) Conversation With Michael Bruce: How do you get grounded in your life, Michael? Michael: For me, meditation plays a big part in it and it's not about like sitting down on a cushion for 45 minutes at a time. It's more like, uh, you know, while I'm going for a walk, if I'm walking the dogs, I can use that as a meditation. It's a matter of fact. It was so cool. I walked them yesterday, I took them over to this little park area that we have here near my home and I unleashed them and let them run and I laid down on the grass and stared up at the sky and meditated for about five minutes. It was total bliss and just little things like that where you can relax the mind and let go of all of these crazy monkey mind thoughts that are running through our heads about our business constantly. If you're a solopreneur or even about life in general, you can get caught up in all this stuff instead of just, OK, here I am. I'm just a human being. Bruce: Your son Tristan was born in 2002. Has He inspired you to be mindful? Has He taught you anything about being grounded and being centered? Michael: Well, Tristan is my constant teacher every day and you know, he's my why. He's the why of what I'm up to in the world and that's the part that I've got to bring mindfulness back to. If I get too caught up in doing the work and I don't spend the time with him; he's the reason that I'm doing the work. And so if I don't take the breaks to spend the time with him, then it kind of defeats the purpose. And so yeah, he's a constant teacher to me. Bruce: How will mindfulness play a role in your upcoming event that you're doing? Michael: A lot of people look at business and they don't see the correlation of how mindfulness plays into that and I know maybe in larger corporations it's less relevant in the bigger picture. Certainly on the smaller scale and when we're talking about the people that I'm attracting for my event, which are visionary Solopreneurs, as I call them, people who are in business for themselves, the mindfulness piece is often the difference between success and failure. What I mean by that is that we get in our own way. We get caught up in either the minutia of the work or we get caught up doing the wrong things because we're looking for a sense of, you know, checking off the list, tick boxes instead of really being mindful about, OK, wait a minute, let me tune in here. What do I really want? What is going to be the best for my business and how can I move forward in a way that's conscious and fully present? Bruce: Tell us about some of the speakers that are going to be at your event. I know it's called, Your Authority Blueprint Live. Michael: It's going to be a rockin' event and we're going to have Jay Fiset there, another fellow Canadian. Jay does work with a Mastermind To Millions. I didn't realize how conscious Jay was and how mindful he was until recently when I had him on my show. He's just really a cool guy. So Jay's going to be there. We've got Brady Patterson from Success Road Academy, also a Canadian company. Brady is going to be there. Uh, we're going to have Tiamo De Vettori, who is a singer, songwriter. He's going to be sharing some inspirational music with us. [Tiamo was recently named L.A. Music Award's "Singer/Songwriter of the Year" & San Diego's "Best Songwriter] Tiffany Largie is going to be there. I mean we're going to have a wonderful lineup of some great talented motivational speakers to help people break through. Melanie Benson, another person who's really great with mindset is going to be there sharing some of her wisdom and expertise to really help us move beyond these blocks that stop us. And then of course, where the authority blueprint comes in is we're going to share the business side of it is how can you create a name for yourself in the industry that's really gonna catapult you onto the scene in a big way. And that's the business promise of it. We're going to show you how to build that blueprint. Bruce: On your podcast, Consciously Speaking, you help people wake up and you consciously create awareness, but I'm curious about your other podcast called, Buy This, Not That. How did that come about? What's the story? Michael: Well, you know, that's an interesting piece as well. We talk about our clients, you know, running into certain situations or questions and for me the questions kept coming up over and over again, like, well, what's the best mail service provider, email provider or what's the best webinar hosting platform? And I found myself answering questions over and over again, like the same questions and I thought, you know there are a lot of solopreneurs out there struggling with these same things. What if I were to .... [Tune in to the Podcast to hear more from Michael Neeley]