260 Behind-the-Scenes of my NEW Meditation Journey
What do you think about the benefits of meditation, especially as it relates to focus and productivity?
with Kelsey Reidl, Visionary Life Founder
Have you been hearing about all of the health benefits of meditation, especially as it relates to focus and productivity?
This can be especially important for entrepreneurs who are looking to have their most successful year in business yet!
In this episode I’m going to take you behind the scenes of my meditation journey and share more about how I started, what apps and tools I used, and whether (or not!) I plan to continue meditating from this point onward.
In this episode, we chat about:
Starting her company from a personal pain point that she was experiencing
Giving up what the ‘immigrant version’ of success looked like to her parents and paving her own path
How to know when something is an idea vs. a calling
Quitting her corporate job in investment banking to go full time with Threads
Why it’s vital to have a supportive friend group
The surprising niche that Threads is now serving
How she launched the business with 200+ names and emails
How she balances her time as a founder and keeps with with ‘wearing many hats’
To connect with Kelsey:
Access the transcript for this episode:
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You're listening to the visionary life podcast. I'm your host, Kelsey Rydell. Each week, I'll bring you conversations with the most visionary humans on this earth, in hopes that you'll be able to absorb their wisdom, avoid their failures and feel less alone on the roller coaster ride that is entrepreneurship.
This season, I'll be chatting with creative thinkers, masterful marketers, brick and mortar shop owners, brand builders, and people just like you who have a story to share or a vision that inspires. If I can share one quick secret with you before we get into the episode is that we all have a little bit of visionary inside of us, you know, that spark that nudges us to pursue our full potential in this lifetime. But perhaps somewhere along the line, it got covered up, I'm here to tell you that it's never too late to explore that inner voice and access the brilliance deep down inside of you. It's in you, it's in all of us. Let's dive in.
Hey, visionaries, I have actually been alluding to this episode for quite some time. And now that I'm about a month and a half into this journey, I wanted to bring you behind the scenes of my meditation journey.
Meditation is not something that I've been super familiar with, up until now. And I want this episode to be my experience of starting to meditate how I started a meditation practice, even though I really had no idea what I was doing, and how it's actually become one of the life changing health habits that I use, and that perhaps you'll use in your entrepreneurial toolkit.
So let's get into it. I will never forget the first time I was invited to a friend's home for a private meditation circle. To give you some quick insight into what I did with this invite.
While essentially I made excuses every single week, because I really didn't want to go and I was terrified. I didn't know what meditation even was and what she did with her friends in her home when she invited me to a private meditation circle. I was scared.
So to give you some context, if you're like meditation, what is that? Why are we talking about it? Guided Meditation can actually help entrepreneurs navigate the roller coaster ride the lows, the highs, by strengthening the positive areas in your brain that are responsible for thinking decision making and creativity.
And it can really help us to build resilience to maintain our levels of optimism, even on the darkest of days. And there is just so much research.
And of course, if you're a podcast listener, you could go listen to the Huberman labs episode with Andrew Huberman where he talks all about it because he's the guy with the science. Not me. I'm the girl with the business tips.
But my meditation journey has actually supported the growth of my business. So I want to share all about it today.
Okay, so let's rewind the clock a little bit. Back in 2016, I started working as a freelancer, I quit my corporate job at Garden of Life as a marketing manager. And I was on my own and I decided to work out of a co working space, downtown Toronto where I was living at the time, I wasn't really interested in working from home and being by myself, I think I had a little bit, maybe I still do a bit of a complex with being alone with my thoughts, hence my rejection to the meditation invite.
And because I'm a pretty social person, and because working from home was not really a thing. Seven years ago, I decided to find this co working space that had other solo founders, entrepreneurs, creatives, and lots of good vibes.
So I signed myself up for a three month pass. And on the very first day that I worked out of this co working space, I met a lovely woman named Karen. And Karen asked me if I wanted to go grab some lunch. So I said, Yes, of course. And we picked up some food on Dundas, West, one of the main streets in Toronto. And then we headed to the park to have a picnic.
And it was a gorgeous, sunny day in September. And I remember how warm and kind she was, even though we had only met hours prior and she had been in business longer than I had to so she had some incredible business when wisdom. And for me, I was just shifting from the corporate world into entrepreneurship. So I probably still had more of this entrepreneurial or lack of entrepreneurial mindset and more of an employee mindset.
And I'm going to share lots more about the differences in future episodes. But an employee mindset is really, you know, you got to work 40 hours a week and we're all trained to be a cog in a wheel.
We need to ask permission for everything. And then when you start your own business, you kind of have to deprogram that and download this entrepreneurial mindset where anything is possible, I am responsible for my success, I can actually work less and accomplish more. And if I need to do things like meditate in the middle of the day or take five weeks off, or 10 weeks off a year, because that allows me to be the best version of myself.
Then the entrepreneurial mindset says, go for it, do it right. And so we had a lovely lunch and at the end, Kieran asked me if I had ever meditated, and my answer was not really I had used headspace a bit. I had dabbled in more spiritual practices, but nothing ever really stuck.
And she told me that she loved going to the seven day Vipassana retreats where she would sit in silence for the entire week of holidays, and do nothing but meditate and my mind was blown. I just thought, why would anybody do that?
Especially for your one week of holidays, I was the person who, with my husband, we were going on extreme snowboarding trips to Revelstoke. We were going on cycling trips, I was jumping through canyons in Switzerland. So hearing about a Vipassana meditation was the opposite of what I imagined people doing with seven days off. And Vipassana is one of India's most ancient techniques of meditation.
And at a lot of these retreats, it's about no talking no phones or technology, no working out or extreme movement, no music, no reading, no writing, etc. No drugs, no alcohol. And there's a whole blog post if you go to human part stop medium.com. And you can read all about someone's experience of what went down at a 10 day silent, but pasta meditation, but I thought the whole idea was intriguing. But I wasn't ready for that.
However, Karen did invite me over to her house, like I mentioned earlier this episode. And she told me she does a two time weekly meditation circle and that I should join. And I was totally intrigued but also scared to death. I kept thinking, Will I fit in with your friends who meditate? What do I do when I arrive? will it just be silent? And I'll walk in and make a fool of myself? Am I supposed to wear something specific? Do I need to bring music do you have that I had so many questions. And instead of exploring my curiosity, I just kind of continued to live my busy life. I wasn't ready for meditation at the time. And I just kind of went on Karen and I would socialize at the co working space. But I never accepted that invite to go over to her house in the evening and join in meditation. In fact, I did the opposite.
And I went to heart thumping spin classes and pedaled my brains out. So that closes that chapter of my intro to meditation. And throughout the years meditation has come up in so many conversations I've explored meditation as it kind of came to me maybe once every few months, but nothing ever consistent. Now, fast forward to July 2021, when my mom passed away unexpectedly, this was a horribly challenging time, in life in running the business.
And of course, like anyone would be I was faced with a lot of grief and sadness, and unanswered questions. And I considered the art of meditation, I was exploring, can I sign up for a course or learn from somebody, but I didn't quite know what to do. And because it was summertime, what I know how to do best to process my emotions is actually to get outside into nature.
And to ride my bike. It is my passion. It is where I process. It is where I feel most alive. So I got on my bike, and that felt like my therapy for the next year or two. And this would be called active meditation. And although it's not sitting on a cushion, it can still help you to tap into some of those benefits.
And even though I felt a bit called to sit still and observe my emotions and observe my current state, it still didn't quite feel like the time. So fast forward another year and a half to December of 2022. This is when a light bulb moment moment went off. And things clicked. And I'm really having a hard time putting my finger on it.
But now looking back I can see do that meditation actually found me at the perfect time because I experienced a major bout of grief shortly after my meditation journey began, which is unexplainable, but it's just the truth. And so much as I had been exploring health and spirituality in connecting with my mom and just taking care of myself to the highest degree that I could, I still hadn't quite found meditation.
So December rolls around, it was the winter solstice, so December 21, the shortest day of the year. And we had just returned home from an incredible trip to Sedona, Arizona. And I have a whole blog post about that trip, if you ever want to read about it. And as you would know, if you have been to Sedona before, it's a very magical place. And the energy in the red rock mountains is very real.
There's a lot of spiritual healers and seekers that go to Sedona, and there was, yeah, definitely a palpable energy. And each morning, I woke up early, I woke up before my husband, Dave, and I would do a 20 minute yoga practice. And it really just felt so good and so nourishing to me in that moment. And when we returned home from Sedona, like the second last week of December, I found myself continuing to get up early and crave that yoga practice. And it was like I had established this ritual. And I started to feel pulled to actually switch yoga into meditation.
And because I was using the peloton app at the time, I could literally just open the app and pick what I wanted to do. And instead of moving my body, I thought, I think I'm just going to sit here for 10 minutes, and the house was dark, it was quiet, I'd be in my pajamas, I took off my glasses, and I just sat and I listened to a guided meditation.
And this was right leading up to Christmas. And it's not like I was stressed about Christmas at all, because we didn't really have too many plans. But thinking about it, Christmas was my mom's favorite holiday. And I think I was craving a deeper sense of connection and stillness in order to be with her.
And I was also looking for clarity around what I want to do with my work in 2023. As many of you know, when you're an entrepreneur, you do your own business planning, you call the shots, you're responsible for casting the vision for you, for your team for what projects you're going to work on in q1.
And there can be a lot of pressure around business planning, but I also felt pulled to figure it out and to think about what I wanted my life to look like and how a business could support me through that. So I turned on meditation. And of course, it felt weird to do a body scan meditation for 10 minutes. If you've ever started a meditation practice, you probably know that sitting there can feel uncomfortable, you want to move you want to open your eyes, you want to you know, think about what you're going to have for breakfast, do you want to get up and pull the laundry.
Do you want to do anything but sit there, but I knew it would get easier. And of course, fast forward to today, I am able to literally pop in my earphones while Dave is watching a hockey game. And I just literally pull a blanket up over my body over my face, put my noise cancelling earbuds in and I can meditate at the drop of a pin, like 10 minutes later, I come out of my meditation or 20 minutes later, and now it feels less sticky. There's less resistance around it. So the winter solstice, December 21 was kind of when things picked up. I didn't know what I was doing. But I knew it was feeling good. And for the first time in my life, I felt motivated to do it every day.
And so sometimes there has to be that inner drive that inner yes to a habit or else it's not going to stick right. It's like I can hear about all of the benefits of meditation from every renowned health practitioner and every renowned scientist but until I decide that this feels good, and I try it and it fits, then it's not going to stick right. So finally, it stuck. And I felt called to make it a habit. And I think it's because I started to feel so clear and focused and energized. And through that I decided I want this feeling tomorrow. And I want it the next day and I want it the next day and I want it the next day and the next day. So for the final 10 days of 2022. I meditated every single day between five and 20 minutes and I loved every second of it. And it was a good time to start because I did have a bit more time off and I just use the peloton app really easy. I was already paying for the app for my fitness.
And so it was a simple one. A to start. But when January rolled around, I actually decided that I wanted to explore other types of meditation because I knew there was so many more options than peloton and I wanted to just have a bit more of a genuine approach and I thought maybe peloton was not the best experience that I could get. So I started to consider different types. I had heard of transcendental meditation or TM, I had heard of chakra meditation visualizations, kindness, medication, medications, meditations, Montra meditations.
So I had heard about quite a few. And so every day I started to kind of follow my curiosity and say, Well, what meditation do I need today. So at first I started with body scan. And this technique is kind of decide designed to do like a mental scan of your body, you start from the top of the head, you go down through each body part, and you go to the toes, and it's really good because the whole way through, you have something to think about. So it's like, okay, tune into your left elbow, and then they talk you through that. And 20 minutes goes by and you've scanned your whole body, you know, where you're holding tension or pain and that was awesome. peloton has a lot of body scan meditations, but they're also very popular elsewhere.
I also really loved Transcendental Meditation. So at this point, the only TM meditations I've done have been on Spotify, I've been listening to meditation with Raphael, and he has free content that you can grab on his Spotify page. And I really loved the transcendental meditation, it kind of involves sitting comfortably for 20 minutes, you're supposed to do it twice per day, but I just did it once per day, I'm just exploring it. And he kind of guides you through this really mellow practice, there's beautiful sounds, and a lot of it is quiet.
So he starts with a bit of a guide, and then it's kind of this like Transy music and then he gongs you back. Gosh, can you tell that I'm not the person who should be explaining meditation, so that one was really good. Then I've started to explore money, mindset and abundance, and really exploring limiting beliefs around just finances in general, which I'm loving lately. So I've actually decided to do abundance meditations as well.
Highly recommend the Deepak Chopra. 21 day abundance meditation, it's free on Spotify. It is incredible. You guys, I'm only partway through it. But every day I sit down with my notebook, Deepak talks for about five or 10 minutes. And then he gives you a mantra. So this is kind of a word or a phrase to come back to. And then you repeat that mantra all the way through, you can just repeat it silently. And then he kind of rings the gong to bring you back in and gives you a reflection to leave with for the day. It's so awesome. I'm really enjoying it.
So highly recommend the Deepak Chopra 21 Day abundance meditation. There's also visualization meditations. So that's been great. I've done some good business ones. I've done some specific topics of curiosity. So you can do things like kindness meditation, or courage meditation, or a body love meditation. And so that's been really neat, because whatever topic you're trying to work on, or a skill you're trying to upgrade in your life, there's probably actually a meditation for it.
So those are just some suggestions on how I've actually used meditation, and which ones I've tried, in terms of how I've kept it a regular habit and how I have essentially stayed doing my meditations for 45 days straight. Now. I would say number one, I'm keeping it simple. So I'm not trying to meditate for an hour or two every day. I know Joe Dispenza has, you know, our long reprogramming meditations. But at this point in my journey, I'm not feeling called to do those long ones, but the short ones are working 510 20 minutes is what I'm looking for. 15 minutes is my sweet spot right now. So keeping it short, has made it accessible, even on a busy day, even if I have to like lay in bed at the end of the night and squeeze it in for a while too. I was habit stacking. So my husband leaves the house at 7:15am. So I would make my coffee, make his lunch and he would get out the door and then as soon as he left I would sit down in our family room. And I've got my journal and I do my 15 minute meditation and then immediately out
After I would do a brain dump for the day, so it would bring so much to the surface of what I needed to accomplish that day, which I really appreciated. And I also joined a challenge hosted by my friend Jordan called starts on Sunday. And I made it a public accountable goal that I was going to do a 10 minute meditation every day. So for three weeks straight, I had to report into this challenge. And knowing that people were kind of keeping me accountable, I just stuck to it, I knew that I couldn't go to bed at night unless I had finished it. So that's how I've made it stick. It's not super rigid. But I think when you start to notice the health benefits, you want to do it. And so speaking of the benefits, the health benefits that I've personally experienced, of course, if you run a business, you know that it takes a lot out of you, if you're feeling rundown, if you're feeling maxtow, you need to take a step back, you can't just keep pushing, pushing, pushing, because that's when you burn out. And I feel that sometimes I'm really good at giving myself like I give myself a workout every day, I take my dog on walks, I you know, take breaks throughout the day, anytime I feel friction, I can't concentrate, I back off, and I give myself some time. But meditation can actually help you to just improve your attention span and reduce your stress and help you to not feel so rundown in times of busyness and when you have a lot going on. And meditation to can actually help you just open up more opportunity to tap into portions of your brain that maybe you haven't been using in a while. And that's one of the best benefits that I can note is just giving myself that 15 minute window to see what bubbles up. And it's usually a very clear picture of oh yeah, this is something that I really want to get done. Or this is the way I'm going to grow this business or solve this problem. And that's kind of the unspoken benefits of meditation is how it allows you to think of what's most important, and then prioritize it for that day. So in that regard is well worth the 15 minutes because I think it actually saves me time in the long term.
I've also noticed general improved attention span, I definitely have a short attention span. Sometimes when I'm working I got a lot of tabs open, I can be kind of fidgety. Sometimes I don't feel productive. But over the month of January, in addition to not drinking alcohol, not having white sugar, really taking care of myself sleeping super well exercising well. I have also included the meditation I think all of those things combined have helped me to feel clearer, feel productive when I work for the hours that I choose to work. And for example, last Friday, I took the entire day off because I had gotten so much done Monday to Thursday that I didn't actually need to work Friday, which was cool. Another benefit is that I felt really creative. I sat down the other day in recorded three podcasts like the energy was just there. I had jotted down ideas after my meditation that morning. And it really just helped me to like, tap into the thoughts in my head and to turn them into podcast episodes, so you can rewind to the previous few episodes and listen to the ones that I've been recording since my meditation journey. I also think I've been more decisive. Like I can concentrate, I can make a decision when it comes to a launch or a client or I can respond really quickly. And I generally just feel clearer on what I need to do each day. So of course, I'm still new to this journey. 45 days is not a lot. But I don't want to slow down I want to keep this as part of my entrepreneurial toolkit, my focus and productivity toolkit.
And, again, I'll refer you to the blog post or the podcast episode that I recorded called 10. Life changing health habits for entrepreneurs. In addition to meditation, there are a lot of other things I do to perform at my best every day.
And I want you guys to know about those too. So I'll link that episode in the show notes. Now I'm going to be adding meditation into that. And I'm excited to keep learning and to find the best ways to keep this practice in my life. So before I go, I would love to hear what are your favorite meditations, who do you turn to What apps do you subscribe to? Where should I go to learn more get better, and to advance my journey because I'm
Loving it. I'm excited. And I want to hear from those of you who have been doing this longer than me what's been working in your corner. So thank you for tuning in to this little behind the scenes episode a little different today. But I hope you enjoyed it. Definitely shout me out on Instagram or take a screenshot of this episode, or send me a DM and let me know that you listened to the meditation episode, just so I know who's out there. It's always so fun to be able to engage with those of you who are listening because otherwise we don't really know we just see numbers. So thank you for tuning in week after week. I love hosting the show for you. It's always the best and I will catch you guys in the next episode. Visionary, I know you you're a health nut and you want to save money on the brands you love. Well, healthy planet is your one stop shop for all things healthy. They have everything from gluten free snacks to non toxic beauty products, to supplements that are gonna help you focus during the work day and they deliver straight to your doorstep. Being healthy has never been easier, more affordable or more convenient than this. So shop with healthy planet today and get 10% off your first order of $50 or more by using the code visionary 2022 at checkout that's visionary 2022 at checkout, so start saving today by heading to Healthy Planet canada.com and use the code visionary 2022 at checkout. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of visionary life. I love bringing you these conversations on a weekly basis. So it would mean so much to me. If you could help me out by rating and reviewing the show on either iTunes or Spotify. It just takes a second. And if you don't want to rate the show, you could also just take a screenshot of the episode and share it on your social media platform of choice. tagging me at Kelsey Rydell. I'll catch you in the next episode.
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