2. 5 Simple Steps to Mindfulness

Hi, I’m Natalie Ottosen and you’re listening to The Mindset School podcast, episode number two.

Welcome to The Mindset School podcast, a show for spiritual entrepreneurs who are ready to stop feeling stuck, reconnect to their soul’s purpose, and create a deeply fulfilling life and business. I’m Natalie Ottosen, transformational life coach, and reconnection healing foundational practitioner, and I can help you scale and grow a six-figure business from a place of inner authority, wisdom, knowledge, and truth.

If you are a spiritual entrepreneur and you are looking to take that first step towards your dream of running your own business, this is the show for you. Ready to step into your power and move forward with clarity and purpose? Let’s go.

Hello, beautiful soul family, welcome back. I'm so excited you’re here so that we can continue the conversation about mindfulness. Mindfulness is a way of paying attention to what’s happening right now, in the present moment. It’s a way of being aware of your thoughts, feelings, and surroundings without judging them as good or bad. When you practice mindfulness, you learn to focus on one thing at a time, and let go of distractions. This helps you become calmer and happier and more in control of your emotions.

Mindfulness has kind of become a buzzword. So I wanted to share how you might recognize lack of mindfulness and how it might be showing up in your life. So tell me if any of this resonates with you. You might feel that your mind is always racing, you find yourself not being focused or present in the moment.

Actually as I was writing this, the example that came to my mind was this. So you’re driving down the road, you’re going through multiple lights and then you kind of panic because you realize that you were so stuck in your own head that you didn't even know if the lights were green. You would actually look back in the mirror and see if you ran red lights. Has this ever happened to you?

Another example is maybe you're struggling to fall asleep at night. You put your head down on the pillow and you could even be exhausted, and the wheels will not stop turning. You may feel like you have a lot of responsibilities but limited time. So you’re juggling work, family, other obligations. You're not able to carve out time for yourself, let alone a mindfulness practice. I just want you to ask yourself. If I could find the time, would this be important to me? It might not and that’s okay if it's not. But if it was, or if it is, how might you feel if you did create that time? Just something to consider.

Maybe you’re a little skeptical, skeptical about what mindfulness really is and if it even works. You might think it's trendy, it’s a fad or it could just be a big fat waste of time. You just might not be convinced that it can even help you. Maybe it's showing up as fear or difficulty letting go. I am sure you've spent years building your life around your career, your family, your social roles. It can be challenging to let these identities go and to find a deeper sense of your own purpose, particularly if you're a stay at home parent.

Your kids are getting older, some are even getting close to or have left the nest. You're thinking, what's next for me? That can make you feel vulnerable and maybe even a little out of control. I hear this one a lot, “I don’t deserve to take time. I should be doing other things. I should be doing more important things.” Listen, first of all, can we please stop shooting all over ourselves? Can we just make a pact that we’re not going to do that anymore. And second, as if there is anything more important than taking care of ourselves and learning how to manage our beautiful mind and brain.

I'm sure the majority of you have been on an airplane and I know every single time you’re on that airplane they do that safety video. And every single time they tell you to put your oxygen mask on first. Seriously, in my opinion this is the most important job we’re here to do. I always say an unmanaged brain equals an unmanaged life. It might be showing up as self-criticism which can make it difficult for you to be kind or compassionate to yourself.

Again, you might feel that you don't deserve to take time for yourself, or it can even be that you're not doing the mindfulness thing ‘right’. That actually comes up a lot when I talk with my clients about meditation, which I will actually talk more about in the next podcast. Maybe you have anxiety or fear, making it difficult to find peace and stillness. You might be feeling a sense of isolation because you’re feeling disconnected from others or because you're feeling disconnected from yourself, especially if you’re going through major life changes such as divorce or job loss or children leaving the home.

Or maybe it's even starting that new endeavor, again starting that new business, you may not trust yourself yet or you’re looking for others to guide you or give you answers. One of my favorite things about being a coach is knowing with all of my being that you have all the answers you need inside of you. You also might be experiencing inner turmoil. So you’re dealing with past traumas or regrets or even unresolved issue. Consciously or subconsciously we can create a lot of resistance around that which can make it difficult to connect with our true self on a deeper or more spiritual level.

And speaking of spirituality you might even feel disconnected from yourself spiritually or you may not have a clear sense of your spiritual beliefs. I went through this about 20 years ago when I left an organized religion. All of my identity, worth, belief, it was all wrapped up in this church. And it has taken me years to untangle and unpack this. And this can really leave you questioning everything you've ever known. This is also a heavy topic and I absolutely want to share more about this in an upcoming episode, and my experience of leaving this religion and finding my spirituality again so I will talk more about that soon.

But I was able and so have so many of my clients, able to recognize and define what this means to them and how to implement it into their life and business which has allowed them to find their purpose, deepen into their connection to themselves and their mindfulness practice. Recently I was asked to speak to a group of real estate agents about this very topic. As a real estate agent, having a successful business consists of prospecting, making calls, reaching out to current and past clients, setting up appointments and so on.

All of these are important daily tasks to gain clients and get appointments and to be able to make a sell. But that is only part of what's important. The other equally important part, the other half of the coin if you will, is making sure you are starting your day with the right mindset by creating your own mindfulness practice. Because none of these things make any difference if we don't have the correct mindset. This applies to any business, the subject is not exclusive to real estate agents. It’s universal to every person, man, woman, adult, child, employed, unemployed. It applies to everyone.

So what are the benefits of a mindfulness practice? Well, it helps reduce stress and anxiety. Mindfulness can really help get in there promoting more relaxation, and increasing self-awareness. The next one is depression. Mindfulness can really help alleviate some of those symptoms of depression by promoting positive emotions and helping reduce a lot of that negative self-talk. It also helps with insomnia. This has actually been huge for my husband, who has been on a healing journey himself. Mindfulness can really help improve sleep quality. It helps reduce insomnia, by promoting relaxation and reducing the racing thoughts.

Chronic pain, again by helping promote that relaxation and reducing stress which can exacerbate pain. It can also bring down the nervous system, which when the nervous system is activated it produces cortisol so bringing those cortisol levels down can help the body get into a more relaxed state. If you are struggling with addiction, any sort of addictive quality, again it helps bring self-awareness and reducing some of those triggers and cravings you might be having.

It also helps with negative thinking patterns. Breaking some of those negative thinking and promoting a more positive outlook on life, and if you are having a hard time managing those emotions, mindfulness can really help increase emotional regulation by again promoting self-awareness and really reducing those reactive responses. Again if you listen to the last episode, I talked about one of those emotional responses that I had with my dogs as I was getting ready to go out of town. So if you didn’t hear that, go back, and check it out in the last episode.

15 years ago one of the best things I ever did was create my own mindfulness practice and it is how I took my business from zero to six figures in a year. I started a morning routine and over the years with education and experience and practice I have refined and fine-tuned this process to create the perfect daily foundation for alignment. It includes meditation, which is my number one. You all, meditation saved my life. I know that sounds dramatic but it's true. If you want to find out how, you’ll have to listen to the next episode. But it all started with meditation and learning how to focus my thoughts and manage my brain,. To be able to sit with myself, to be able to sit with my brain. So I’m going to talk about this in the next episode, so I’m not going to go into too much detail here.

The next is gratitude. I introduced this into my life when I was in a really negative space. It was a time in my life where I couldn’t find something to be grateful for if it saved my life. Around the same time I started the meditation practice, I was taking down Halloween decorations, bent over, and threw my back. Literally, fell to the floor, couldn’t move, had to have my neighbor come over and help me, I had a little baby at the time, so it was not good. I had gone to a massage therapist to help me relax and release my back, and in her waiting room, she had a, it was either a yoga or mindfulness magazine in her office, and in that article, it was talking about gratitude and its benefits.

It suggested writing down all sorts of things. There was a list of different things, but the one that really stuck out to me was writing down one thing you’re grateful for daily. So this was back in the day when blogging was huge and I challenged myself just like I challenged you in the last episode, to write out 10 things I was grateful for daily, and I would then go in and post it on my blog. Initially, this was a huge challenge for me, I found myself naming the standards right? My car, my house, my family, not that those things don’t matter, but at that time, it was all that I could come up with.

After some time and focus, I ended up finding dozens of things that I would see all day long that would make my list for the next day. It completely shifted how I view and saw myself, my day, my life, I started to appreciate the good things that would happen to me, big or small, and started to become thankful for them. It helped me through one of the toughest times in my life. It helped me focus on positive things, instead of dwelling on all the negative. It completely shifted my life, and it has been doing that ever since, now I write out three things I’m grateful for every single day, it’s part of my morning routine and I encourage you to do the same.

Affirmations. I love the quote by Tony Robbins, that says where focus goes, energy flows, I say this all the time, in fact I think it’s even on my website. Positive affirmations are so much more than just telling someone to think positive. They are literally a step by step process to help reprogram the automatic negative thoughts, we call those ANTs, by rewiring the neural pathways in the brain. That’s a whole lot of fancy words for it rewires the brain.

Affirmations are a powerful tool in improving emotional wellbeing and self-empowerment. They are short encouraging sentences or phrases that we repeat to ourselves daily, when you repeat this affirmation is so important, I add it either after my meditation and gratitude or my meditation, gratitude, and positive reading. It’s so important to be in a positive state while you’re writing down this affirmation.

Movement. This one is pretty self-explanatory. Moving your body daily, going to the gym, walking outside, walking on a treadmill, yoga, I used to do yoga regularly until I fell and broke my hand, but yoga is an excellent tool for mindfulness, and it was actually one of the tools that really started me on my spiritual journey, my spiritual awakening, which I will talk a little bit more about that also in an upcoming episode. But getting your body moving, moving that energy throughout your body, such an important thing to starting your day.

The next is positive reading. Read something positive every single day. Something that uplifts you, something that inspires you, something that has benefit for your mental and emotional wellbeing. So it can be positive material, it can be a motivational book, it can be an inspirational quote, or stories of triumph and success, expose yourself to all sorts of different positive outlets every day.

I definitely stay away from the news, if I get on social media in the morning it’s to post my content for the day, again, that’s the reason why I created Soul Sister Coaching, so that you have a place every single day with positivity. So if you’re looking for something positive, go to Soul Sister Coaching on Instagram.

This is not about toxic positivity, this is not about never having negative thoughts or feeling negative emotions ever again, it’s about feeding your brain with positive information every single day so that you can help boost your mood, you can start increasing your self-awareness, again so you can reduce your stress, so that you can improve your overall mental focus, and so that you can start to cultivate a positive mindset. Because what we put in our brains matters.

I do these five steps every single day. And if you do these daily steps it can help you like it helped me, build the foundation for mental, emotional, and spiritual health and alignment. It's a way of setting up your day to create mental fortitude for the life that you desire.

It will set yourself up for success by getting your energy, thoughts and attitudes all moving in the right direction. Mindfulness is important because it helps you be aware of what's happening inside you and around you. It's like having a super power that helps you stay calm and focused even when things get tough. Just like how you need to practice sports or a musical instrument to get better, you need to practice mindfulness to get better at it too. By practicing mindfulness you can feel better, think better and do better.

Alright, I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you'd like to know how meditation saved my life, join me in the next episode. I’ll see you next time, all my love.

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Thank you for joining me for this week's episode of The Mindset School. Ready to dive deeper into finding your purpose and create a deeply fulfilling life? Visit soulsistercoaching.com for more guidance and resources. See you next week.