The Triple C Project

Unlocking Clarity through Meditation: Myths, Challenges, and a Guided Practice

• Ryan Spence • Season 2 • Episode 73

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What if the secret to clarity and peace in your life was something you could access anytime and anywhere?

In my book, The Triple C Method, I discussed gaining clarity through action. In this week's episode, I talk about gaining clarity through stillness.


So which is it?

Well, it's both! Listen in, and I'll explain both action and stillness work together to deliver heightened clarity.

I also invite you to kick start your meditation journey and meditate with me as I guide you through a simple meditation focused on breath awareness and gratitude.

 Whether you're new to meditation or a seasoned practitioner, this episode is filled with practical tips and insights to help you deepen your practice and enhance your journey towards self-discovery and clarity. So, why not step into the stillness and see what you can find?

Join me on Tuesday 18 July for a free meditation workshop. Register here

Success Through Stillness, by Russell Simmons

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R/yan Spence:

And that complements the action, because if you can cultivate a consistent meditation practice, you're going to see a clearer vision of the life it is you want to live, and so when you do take action, you're taking it from a place of greater intention, of greater position, knowing where you're going. You're listening to the Triple C Project. Welcome to the Triple C Project, the podcast that helps you gain clarity, use confidence, build courage so you can live life leads. I'm your host, ryan Spence, the Big Lord, dropout life coach, author, speaker, lover of hoodies, hip hop and big, hairy, audacious goals. If you're tired of living the life you think you should want and ready to start living the life you do want, this podcast will help you get from where you are to where you really want to be. So now, with friends, I invite you to grab a drink, take a seat, allow me to guide you towards living a life that's lived. Hey, hey, welcome to episode 73 of the Triple C Project. And just before recording this episode, I had a nice chilled Yin yoga class 30 minute class and I'm feeling pretty relaxed right now, so you can probably hear it in my voice, and that's a good thing, because, for this episode, being in a relaxed state is really where you want to be.

R/yan Spence:

Before I get to that, let me tell you a little bit about what's been going on. So, as you know, if you've been listening to the last couple of weeks, I started writing my new book, which I don't know it'll be out sometime next year, but I'm making good progress. I haven't quite hit my writing target every day yet. I haven't really gone into the swing of things yet. Sometimes it takes a little bit of time to get into a flow, but I am for chapters in which I'm very excited about. I mean, look, I know from experience of writing my first book that the first draft is going to be garbage. You know, hopefully, because this is my second, the first draft of this will be better than the first draft of the first book. It's already longer, but getting the words down on the page is just. It's just so important it doesn't really matter what the words are, almost because it's easy to go back and look at words on the page and edit than it is to have a blank page staring at you. So I'm very pleased with the progress being made there and I will keep you updated as to what goes on.

R/yan Spence:

So this episode I'm going to extend an invitation. It's going to be a little bit different, so there's two invitations, but they're kind of related. So I've talked a few times about meditation, about my meditation practice and about kind of how it's helped me, and I'm going to talk about that a little bit more this week. And I'm also going to invite you to meditate with me and I'm going to share a very short and simple meditation at the end of the episode and before you switch off and say, oh, I can't meditate, my mind's too busy, stay with me, keep an open mind, relax, listen in. Okay, I'm going to talk to you.

R/yan Spence:

So this may sound like a little bit of a contradiction. So if you've read the triple C method, you know that I talk about clarity and clarity coming from action, and I still stand by that. And in that book I didn't really talk much about my meditation and yoga practice, and that was deliberate. There's a very good reason for that and it's because often I remember when I was still in big law and I would talk about yoga or meditation, it would sometimes be met with blah or sometimes they'd be interest, but it would always be prefaced by oh, I could never do that and I didn't want that to put people off the message in the book of the tools and strategies that I shared in the book. So I deliberately left it out, knowing that it's something which I would write about at a later date and it may turn up in book two.

R/yan Spence:

But the contradiction that I'm going to share here is that, although I talk in the triple C method about clarity coming from action, there's another part to it, another side to it. You also need to have stillness, because clarity also comes in stillness, and you're probably thinking that makes no damn sense. Make up your mind, is it action or is it stillness? And I'm gonna tell you, it's true, it's both, and here's what I mean. Clarity does come through action and I wanted to talk about that and emphasize that in the triple C method because I wanted it to be a book where you feel inspired to get going, to take action, because too often we sit and we think and we mold things around in our head and we never actually get moving. So I wanted that book to get you moving.

R/yan Spence:

And now, if you read that book and you're hopefully starting to move, if you haven't moved already I also want you to think about taking time to start, time to step back, time to breathe, and this is where meditation can help you. It's where meditation has really helped me, because sometimes you just need to sit and just let the noise and the chaos and the disruption just take place around you and really just tune it out and be at one with yourself, with your thoughts, so you can tap into your own inner wisdom and find the answers to the questions that you are asking yourself and in that you get a clearer vision of who you are, of where you wanna be and why you want to be there. And that complements the action, because if you can cultivate a consistent meditation practice, you're going to see a clearer vision of the life it is you want to live. And so when you do take action, you're taking it from a place of greater intention, of greater position, knowing where you're going. So, yes, clarity comes through action, but clarity also comes through stillness, and this is why meditation is so powerful and why I wanted to talk a little bit about it in this week's episode.

R/yan Spence:

So I was kind of introduced to meditation when I first started doing yoga many, many years ago, but it wasn't really something that I took to straight away. I mean, yoga was hard enough for me. I was so stiff. I was often back in those days, the only guy in the class, the only black guy, black person in the class and probably the stiffest person in class too. So yoga itself was enough to get my head around. But I just knew that it made me feel good. And it wasn't until much later that I kind of tapped back into meditation, as I kind of got a bit deeper into my yoga practice and discovered that yoga was more than Osano, is more than the actual postures.

R/yan Spence:

And I think when meditation really clicked for me is when I read the book Success Through Stillness by Russell Simmons. Russell Simmons used to well, he was the guy, one of the guys that started Def Jam Records. So if you're into hip hop you know about Def Jam and you'll have heard of Russell Simmons, because I think a lot of the yoga texts and meditation texts. If you've not been exposed to them before and you're still very much a beginner, very much a novice, you're still very much just trying to find your way they can seem a little bit intimidating and a little bit dense, very philosophical, but I mean Russell Russell was kind of one of us. I mean, he's a black guy, he was a hip hop guy, and so, getting his book and knowing that he was really into yoga and how great he looked for his age and how he'd completely turned his life around, I was like, yeah, I'll pick up that book, I'll give it a go. And I think it was at that point of reading that book that I really was like whoa okay, meditation is deep, there's a lot going on here, there's a lot that it can help you with, and it isn't about just sitting and wasting your time. It's actually really important thing to do.

R/yan Spence:

I'm gonna read you a short passage from the book, because one of the things that I often hear is I can't meditate. My mind is too busy, it won't switch off, I just keep thinking of random things, of what I'm gonna have for dinner or what I need to do later or what I did last night. Because there's this belief that, in order to be a quote unquote good meditator, there is no such thing, by the way, that you have to sit there with a completely empty mind and just think of nothing, or you have to go into this trans-like state of hypnosis and completely forget who or where you are. I mean, none of that's true. You know people meditate, people you see on the street, people you work with people you would never think about meditate. It isn't something that's just for people who go off from retreats or go and sit in the mountains or go and sort of backpack around India. It's for everybody and it's been around for hundreds and thousands of years and it works. So I wanna dispel some of those myths. I'm not gonna dispel all the myths on this show because it'd be far too long, but I'm just gonna read this passage from this book to illustrate that to you.

R/yan Spence:

And Russell says this meditation does not mean the absence of thoughts. Meditation does not mean going into a trance. Meditation does not mean forgetting who or where you are. If you're worrying that you're not doing it right because none of those things happen when you meditate, then please stop worrying, because you will have thoughts when you meditate. It's just that meditation allows you to have a different relationship with your thoughts than you usually have. Instead of being overwhelmed or controlled by your thoughts, you get to detach yourself from them so that you can stop making frantic emotional decisions about who you are and what you want to do with your life and start choosing how you want to live in a controlled, peaceful and contented manner. That's powerful. I mean, that's a lot of things that I talk about, about knowing who you are, discovering who you are, about getting clear on the life you want to live and how you want to live it Clarity right. And meditation can help you with that. You just need to start.

R/yan Spence:

And when people say I can't meditate, I think often what we're thinking about. I mean, you're listening to this show, you're a highly ambitious, successful lawyer, corporate executive, whatever it is that you do. You've got this picture of success. You've got this idea that you've just got to keep doing and doing, and doing and doing, because that's the way that we're conditioned. You keep doing, you keep doing more, you keep producing more so you can earn more, and meditation isn't like that. And one of the things I shared in the community it's not you community that I host when I was talking about meditation as a reframe was this Don't think about doing when you meditate, don't think about doing meditation, just think about being when you breathe.

R/yan Spence:

Every day, you get up and you breathe, and you don't think about breathing. You don't do breathing, it just happens. It's just a thing, because if you didn't breathe, you would just die. With meditation, all you're doing is just sitting and breathing in its simplest form. That's it there. You don't have to sit cross-legged, sit in a lotus, you don't have to have all of these fancy props. You just have to find a quiet place where you won't be disturbed and just sit and be Simple as that, and in that being you'll start to gain so much more clarity. And that clarity, as I said before, will help you when you're taking action, help you take more intentional action.

R/yan Spence:

It's scientifically proven that meditation will help you gain greater clarity, greater focus, help you be more creative, unlock that creativity that's deep inside of you. Because when we're always on the go, we're always moving at 100 miles an hour it's very hard to really get an angle on your thoughts. It's very hard for those thoughts to come through because you're always in that heightened state of alertness of running on to the next thing. But allowing yourself that space on a daily basis to just be, you're going to start to then incorporate that in your day. So it means that when something bad happens, when your boss is micromanaging you to the state of just annoyance and you just want to tell them to just get the hell out of here. You're going to be able to tap in to the skill that you've built.

R/yan Spence:

Take a step back, take a breath and look at the situation differently. Let it go when someone cuts you up in traffic and you feel that road rage boiling up inside of you. Meditation is gonna allow you to detach from the situation and not get involved Doesn't mean you're gonna be perfect. I still get mad, I still get angry, but the difference is that the anger is now, more often than not, not always proportional to whatever it is that happened, so it can be fleeting and then I can breathe, I can let it go and I can look at the situation differently. Look at what I need to do to move forward, like when I talk about knowledge, except adapt. That's all come from my meditation practice being able to do that, being able to take that step back, to sit in the discomfort, to breathe through it, to see things differently, to see things more clearly.

R/yan Spence:

So I'm inviting you to start, if you haven't already, and if you started before and thought that you can't do it, to restart your practice with the aim of gaining more clarity, creating more space and if you're listening to this in real time, as in the day the episode comes out, I'd like to invite you to meditate with me. I'll be hosting a one hour meditation workshop on Tuesday, the 18th of July, 5 pm, uk time. I was invited by my friend and fellow coach, emily Hercicorn, to host this workshop for her group of lawyers, and I'd like to invite you to join us. It's free. I'm going to talk you through the whole list of things a bit more about how I got into meditation, how it helped me, how it can help you. So more about the myths and the benefits of meditation. I will also guide you through a short meditation and there'll be some post meditation journaling, q&a. You can share insights here are the people's and you'll also get a PDF journal that I've created, which will give you some steps as to how to set up for meditation, how to start your practice and how to continue your practice, amongst other things. So I invite you to join us. The link will be in the show notes, or you can send me ADM on Instagram at IAM, underscore Ryan Spence. Over on LinkedIn, just search for me, ryan Spence. If we're not connected already, drop me an email, hey, at IAMrionSpencecom and I'll shoot you the link to register. It's going to be great. I'm really excited about hosting that. So there may be some more meditation in the new book. So look out for that because, again, I really feel that it's putting integral part of my journey my quest from big law lawyer to the big law dropout to living life lit, and that's what this show is about. It's about sharing tools, strategies, stories from my own experiences that I feel can also help you in your own quest towards living life lit.

R/yan Spence:

Okay, so now I'm just going to share with you a very short and simple meditation. It's not going to be long, probably a couple of minutes or so. So if you're driving or operating heavy machinery, maybe just pause here and come back to this when you're in a safer space. And if you're not doing any of that, here's what I'd like to do. So I like to start by just finding a space, a quiet space, where you won't be disturbed. So if you're working from home, great, everyone else is probably out at work, so you could have the pick of the house. And if you're not, if you're in your office, then maybe you can just nip into a meeting room or you have your own office and you can just shut the door, whatever works for you. But just find that quiet space, put your phone on silent, shut down your computer screen and just sit wherever you are.

R/yan Spence:

If you like to sit cross-legged on the floor, then go ahead, do that, knock yourself out. But you don't need to. If you're sat in a chair, that's cool. I'd like to make sure your feet are planted firmly on the floor so you're feeling nice and grounded. And then I'd like you to roll your shoulders back a few times, maybe three times back and then maybe three times forward, and then just give yourself a few neck rolls. Just loosen up a bit. Maybe just shake your arms a little bit, just trying to loosen up, let go of whatever was happening before, release a little bit of tension. And then I'd like you to just sit upright in your chair. So if your chair has a back, don't lean against the back of the chair, sit upright. And I like to imagine maybe that someone's got a piece of string that's attached to your head and they're pulling that string up. So you want to have this real straight spine, this flat back. Shoulders are back, so not up by the ears, but just rolled back. Hands can just be laid on your thighs, palms down, palms up, whatever feels good for you.

R/yan Spence:

Most important thing here is that you feel comfortable, you feel relaxed, but not like you can fall asleep, okay, okay. So now you're sat, you're feeling relaxed, and what we're going to do now is just going to do a very simple anchor meditation. So, with an anchor meditation, all you do is you're going to focus on one thing. So this could be your little finger, it can be your big toe, it can be a spot on the ward in front of you. What I like to do, and what I find is easiest for me and is generally easiest for most people, particularly beginners, is just focus on the breathing.

R/yan Spence:

So, if it feels good to you, I like you to just take a deep breath in through the nose, exhale through the mouth, take one more deep inhale through the nose, feeling up the belly, let it expand, and exhale through the mouth. And now make this one your biggest breath in. So deep breath in through the nose, feeling up those lungs, expanding the belly, let it all come in, and as you slowly exhale through the mouth, just slowly start to blink those eyes closed and allow your breath to return to its natural state. So we're not forcing inhales or exhales at this moment. Just, however, you would breathe normally, just let your breath do that and all I'd like you to do is just observe that breath. So just notice as the breath comes in through the nose, how does it feel in the nose? What's the temperature like as it comes up through the nostrils, how is it feeling in your body? And then, as we exhale again through the nose, same thing. Notice as there are different sensations, there are different temperature, something different happening in the body on the exhale, and then just keep breathing in, keep noticing.

R/yan Spence:

All I want you to do is be aware of your breath, of the sensation of the breath coming in and going out, breath coming in and breathing out. And now, on your next exhale, I'd like you to just let the exhale go as far as it goes and you notice there's that little gap in time before the inhale starts and on the inhale breath comes in. There's a little gap, and then the exhale. So just notice that little gap, that little sliver of time between the breath inhaling and exhaling, and inhaling and exhaling, and let's see if we can just lengthen that gap just a little bit. We're not looking to hold our breath for many, many seconds, just breathing in slight hold, exhale. At the end of the exhale, slight hold and again breathe in hold, exhale, hold and now let's just allow the breath to come back to normal. So we're not elongating that gap, but we're just noticing again.

R/yan Spence:

What is the breath doing? How often have you thought about your breath? We just breathe without thinking, without really noticing what it is that our breath is doing. But there's so much power in that breath. It literally is keeping us alive. And in this meditation, bringing that awareness to the breath, really feeling what happens as we inhale and as we exhale, and maybe in that awareness, as the magnitude and the power of the breath becomes more apparent to you, maybe you feel like silently giving gratitude to the breath for what it does continuously circulating without any effort, without any thought, just doing what it needs to do.

R/yan Spence:

If, at any time, as you're focusing on the breath, you feel your mind is getting distracted, just gently notice the thought. Let go of it as you bring your focus back to the breath. That's it. All that's happening is watching, hearing, feeling the breath. I'm going to go silent for a moment. I just want you to keep noticing that breath still here, and I'll be back shortly to bring you out of this meditation. Thank you, okay, still focusing on that breath.

R/yan Spence:

So anything changed in how the breath is flowing? Does it feel different? Does it sound different? Is the inhale longer than the exhale or the other way around? Is it nice, smooth, long breaths or short, choppy breaths? Again, no judgment, there is no right, there is no wrong, just cultivating that awareness. Okay, now, as we start to come towards the end of this meditation, I'd like you to start to just feel some sensation in your body. Maybe start to wiggle those fingers a little bit, that is sat top of your thighs, maybe start to just wiggle those toes and, whenever you're ready, slowly start to blink, open your eyes. Thank you for sticking around, staying and sitting and meditating with me. I hope that you have some good insights from this. I hope that you feel even better than you did when you first sat.

R/yan Spence:

And if you can just take a minute or two to just jot down how you feel, a post meditation reflection is always helpful and the more that we meditate and the more that we know our reflections, it starts to tell a story of where we were and where we are and what's happening for us at any given time. It can be additionally powerful to the process. I'd love to hear from you, if you hear, what you took away from this meditation. I'd love to hear how it felt for you. It's very simple and it's just how meditation can be. It doesn't have to be complicated. There are many, many styles and techniques that you can follow, but this is the simplest one, at least I find, particularly if you're just starting out. So send me an email, hey, at Iamrinespencecom, hit me up on LinkedIn or Instagram and tell me what insights you got from this meditation, tell me how it felt for you and if you can join me on Tuesday, the 18th of July, for one hour meditation workshop. I'd love to see you there, really excited. It's going to be powerful. It's really going to help you to start building a regular practice so that you can find clarity through stillness, so that, ultimately, you can start living a life of lethargy and start living life lit.

R/yan Spence:

Thanks for tuning in to the Triple C project. In the spirit of the Triple C, there's three things that you can do to support the show Head to wwwratethispodcastcom, slash triple C or over to your favorite podcast app and leave a review. Reviews really help people checking out shows to see what they can expect and how the show can help them. Second thing you can do share this episode. Share a previous episode with a friend, someone who you feel could benefit from what I'm throwing down on this show. And number three, head to Iamrinespencecom. Get on the mailing list. I'll be sharing news about the show, news about what I'm up to. My new book start writing soon, so to be the first to be in the know, you need to get yourself on the list. Really appreciate you being here and until next week, stop living a life of lethargy. Start living life lit.