#12: Basix 6 – Peace of Mind

Peace of mind is critical!

Peace of mind is mental toughness, the ability to control your mental faculties and shut off the chatter in your mind on command.

Peace of mind has a symbiotic relationship with all the other Basix – they all help peace of mind, and peace of mind helps to follow through with the others.

Ensure you get enough regular sleep – usually 7-10 hrs a night.

Meditation and mindfulness are great ways to build peace of mind.

For mental toughness try 5 minute cold shower therapy.

Transcription:

Good morning guys is another magic morning.

Today I want to talk about Basix number six and that is peace of mind.

I’m Ian Schell and I’m glad to be alive!

So what is peace of mind? In my definition it’s the ability to turn off the chatter in the head, it’s the opposite of being stressed, it’s being calm, it’s being relaxed, it’s being in control of your mental faculties. Peace of mind is also mental toughness, it’s the mental grit to be able to forge on through the day regardless of what happens around you. It’s mental fortitude, its strength of character and strength of mind.

So you may think peace of mind, being last on the list (of Basix), is probably one of the least important ones, well it’s quite the opposite one of the more important ones. And the reason for this is it’s got a symbiotic relationship with the other five (Basix). All the other five (Basix) help peace of mind and vice versa piece of mind, when you have peace of mind, it helps to follow through on the other five.  So it’s a two-way street.

Get enough quality sleep

So one of the simplest methods to build peace of mind is to make sure we get enough hours of sleep every night. Now this is different for every person, some people require 5 hours, some people require 10, but you need to find out what works for you. Once you know how many outside you require, make sure you get into bed in time to wake up for whatever time you need to get going in the morning. For me it’s 7 hours, so I make sure I’m asleep by 10 and i wake up at 5. My wife is eight hours and she hates when I get up an hour earlier.

Meditation

Probably the next best thing for a peace of mind is meditation. Now a couple years back, if someone told me to meditate, I would have punched em in the face, well mentally anyway. I thought it was all airy fairy bullshit and I was not interested. But now that actually do it, I think it’s essential, it’s one of the more important things that I do in my day and if I don’t, I really feel the difference. The simplest way to meditate is to find a nice quiet place, where there’s no one around, and just sit comfortably and focus on a sensation of the body.

For me, I like to focus on the sensation of the breath through the nose, breathing in and out. Now the thing is with meditation, everyone thinks its blocking out all thoughts, well this isn’t the case. Even the pros have thoughts that pop up. So the thing is to keep bringing yourself back to that sensation. You’ll find in mind wanders, acknowledge that thought, take note of what it is, and then come back to the sensation, and recenter. Just like any other habit, it’s best to start with just five minutes,  something that is so simple, so easy, and you’ll find even that five minutes we’ll give you a major benefit. So do just a little bit every day, build the habit and then increase your outputs.

I typically do 20 to 30 minutes in the morning and I find it fantastic. It’s a good way to relax and really just chill out. When I meditate I try and relax every muscle in my body and just feel calm. And doing it first thing in the morning is a great way to start the day because if you get calm, you get relaxed, you get centered, then whatever life throws at you, during the day, through the workday, it doesn’t seem like such a big deal. Whereas if you’re a little bit ‘arrr’ in the morning and you have a bad day, it just keeps getting worse.

Mindfulness

Another one that helps peace of mind is just doing things mindfully and what this means is, it’s a little bit like meditation but it’s actually doing things and working your way through the day, but switching the brain off, switching off the chatter. And what you’re doing is you’re being present, you’re looking at the sensations, you’re observing things, and you’re just staying present in the moment. Not letting my mind wander off while you’re just mindlessly doing whatever you’re doing. It’s being mindful, it’s being purposeful and being controlled in doing what you’re doing.

Make time for yourself

One of the important things with peace of mind, is to just block out a few minutes every is to just block out a few minutes every to do the mindfulness or the meditations, just going for a walk on your own, for five minutes, you’re killing two birds with one stone. You’re getting out there, getting walking, getting blood pumping, but you’re also giving yourself the mental space to just be on your own. And in that time you can focus on whatever it is that you feel like, trying to turn down the monkey brain, and really just concentrate on the walk and get out there and go and do it.

Cold Shower Therapy

Now one thing I found fantastic for mental toughness is the cold shower therapy. Now the premise behind this is that if you can’t stand 5 minutes in a cold shower, how can you deal with the tough things in life if you can’t stand 5 minutes of cold water? Five-minute cold shower therapy is not an easy thing to do.

That first initial blast of cold water,  it’s hard not to squeal like a little girl, that’s if you can breathe at all. But after a couple minutes it becomes bearable, and after five minutes you’re just shivering. But what you find, is when you hop out, and you dry off and start to warm up, you do you do feel really good from it. And I love it now, I do it every day, but I don’t five minutes now, I do a couple, but it’s a great way to wake up, it’s a great way to switch the brain on. Like all of these things I’m suggesting give it a go, it may not be for you but it can’t hurt to give it a shot.

And again if you can build that mental toughness, it does help, I find now that if I step into a situation where I’ve got a little bit of fear, a little bit of anxiety about something, it makes it easy to push through it because if I can do the 5 minutes of cold shower, I can do this, I can do anything. Now the five-minute cold show it’s tough give it a crack.

Recap

So just to recap, peace of mind is the opposite of feeling stressed, it’s the ability to turn off the monkey brain – the chatter in the head, it’s being calm, it’s being relaxed, it’s being in control of your mental faculties. Peace of mind has a symbiotic relationship with the other five Basix, the other 5 Basix help peace of mind and likewise peace of mind helps to follow through with those other five Basix. So it’s one that you really need to work on everyday. Find the time to work on peace of mind and I think you’ll find it’ll make a big difference in your life. I know it has for me.

Anyway guys, that’s it for today. Thank you for joining me. Please like and share the shit out of this.

Leave any comments suggestions or questions in the boxes below and I’ll get back to you.

Have a great day and I’ll talk to you very soon.

Seeya