 The Social Dilemma: Is Social Media Helping or Harming Your Business? For many of my business clients and conscious entrepreneurs--social media is simply accepted as necessary for business. The question is, how do you measure whether social media actions are working? And even more importantly, how does being social media impact your energy and mental health? In other words, beyond basic ROI of financial return (which frankly, many clients have very poor results after pouring thousands a month hiring experts), what is your ROEI (return on energy invested) and ROTI (Return on Time Invested)? But after watching the 2020 Netflix docudrama The Social Dilemma, it shifted my entire paradigm of what we are actually dealing with. After many months of how to navigate the social world consciously as a conscious business, I’d like to share my best practices. But first, some context of how we came to be. Warning: this is a total spoiler alert of The Social Dilemma! The Social Dilemma  The Netflix documentary drama “The Social Dilemma” interviews many founding and former investors, execs, and software engineers of Big Tech companies like Facebook, Google, Twitter who share their experience of grappling with the unintended consequences of features they built like the “infinite scroll” that caused enormous growth in users--but at a cost. With the rise and power of (thus far mostly unchecked) Big Tech companies like Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube these companies are facing a responsibility and moral dilemma of how their algorithms impact human behavior, human futures, and our society at large. Age of Surveillance Capitalism One of the experts interviewed in the film is American author, Harvard professor, and social psychologist Shoshana Zuboff who coined the term Surveillance Capitalism. Surveillance Capitalism "unilaterally claims human experience as free raw material for translation into behavioural data [which are] . . . fed into advanced manufacturing processes known as ‘machine intelligence’, and fabricated into prediction products that anticipate what you will do now, soon, and later. . . . [these products] "are traded in a new kind of marketplace that I call behavioural futures markets."[3] In other words, there’s a whole new market that trades and traffics in selling your human behavioral future. Meaning, Big Tech social media platforms, like Facebook, YouTube, and Google, are not really in the business of selling your data to advertisers. They are selling your future behavior or predictive pattern of your future “click behavior” to groups, causes, and content that has now shown can have unintended consequences OFFLINE. Marketing has entered another realm, where software engineers are literally being trained in psychology classes by the company, with unanticipated impacts that essentially hack your subconscious to quietly gather data on your every behavior online--how many seconds you pause, how long you scroll, which emoticon you use, and most importantly--what you click on to then inform, influence, and feed what you’ll get served up. But not just to buy--the complex algorithmic AI (artificial intelligence) now can inform who you’ll become and actions you’ll take offline. This unchecked power is what is now informing legislation like Section 230 of The Communications Decency Act. What This Means for You  As a conscious entrepreneur, please know that your online social media habits affect you subconsciously now when you’re offline. This is simply what is so. There’s no finger to point or blame. The challenge is complex. In a world of big data, while unintended, it’s a bit like the story Frankenstein. A scientist creates artificial intelligence called Frankenstein that turns into a beast or monster that takes on a life of its own, where the scientist can no longer control it. Like Frankenstein, initially software engineers were simply doing their job innovating features like the “like button” or “infinite scroll” who had a good intention to help the world. But the AI now has a life of its own collecting so much data each nanosecond, that it’s hard to stop. The part to pay attention to as a business owner is the unintended consequence of shifting your offline behavior by what you consume online, based on what avatar (customer identity) the AI predicts you’ll fit based on many factors such as where you live, and all your other click behaviors. As Chamath Palihapitiya, one of the former VP of Growth at Facebook in the movie acknowledges in a later interview: In 2017, many of us have grappled with the unintended consequences of the products we've built. Social media platforms in particular have been used and abused in ways that we, their architects, never imagined. Much blame has been thrown and guilt felt, but the important thing is what we as an industry do now to ensure that our impact on society continues to be a positive one. How do we stay “conscious” online? 5 Best Practices to Stay Conscious on Social Media So now what? 1. Vote with your click. Stay conscious online. The less you mindlessly scroll and instead cautiously and carefully choose where you click next, you give yourself a shot of having more control of what gets fed to you online. 2. Get in and get out. Be clear what you want to accomplish then close the platform. Set a timer if you think you’ll be tempted to stick around longer. Do NOT get stuck in endless scrolling. For example, I have an objective when I go on social media for my business. I plan my post, publish and schedule the post, then only answer comments in my community that I am to nurture. I am picky with which notifications I choose to respond to. 3. Filter your friends and content. Who you friend or not, what posts you like or not, what ads you click on or not, all impact your social media feed and “recommended” ads or posts. I only friend people after checking out their profile. If they are life-giving, positive, inspirational--I friend them. If they frequently share and spread posts that are political, religious, or anything that enrages one way or the other, I ignore or delete the request. If you see a sponsored ad, you have the option to stop seeing ads by clicking the little X in the corner. When I experimented with clicking on them (out of curiosity of how other entrepreneurs did their ads) I noticed I got more of them through retargeting. This is where once you click and ad, Facebook “retargets” you by serving up that same ad or a variation. When I clicked out of all sponsored ads in my feed, I get no ads in my feed. 4. Don’t watch or share news from social media. Find your news from unbiased journalism. The Social Dilemma shares how misinformation, or fake news, spreads six times faster than real news. Watch out for seemingly credible looking posts with visual charts or nice graphics citing statistics that incite anger or rage. Pause and ask yourself: Does this post show both sides of an issue? Am I feeling angry and want to share this? Do I feel more empathic and loving and expansive now? If you’re left with a “them vs us”, realize your subconscious just got hacked. You’ll be easily manipulated to then spread and share that likely fake news designed to evoke anger and rage. Instead, find a credible journal newsworthy source that shares all sides of a topic like AllSides which gives readers a cross-partisan view of world events. Good journalism leaves you with empathy for all sides and not a black and white right or wrong, “them versus us.” Take back control of your brain and emotions. 5. Call or text a friend directly to connect. Use technology to love people, not divide them. If chatting publicly on social media isn't going to be interpreted in the best light possible--pick up the phone. Have a real conversation with the opposite side. Before the pandemic, I avoided talking politics or religion with friends and colleagues. Since the pandemic began, I've had over seven hard conversations with friends and colleagues who voted differently than me. I simply listened to understand. Learn more about How to Transform Fear Into Love here. How I’m shifting my Business Practice  In addition to following the practices above, I really had to rethink my online marketing strategy. Namely, with Facebook--where I’ve invested countless hours building a business Facebook group called the Community of Conscious Entrepreneurs. Personally, I've had a love-hate relationship with Facebook. I was someone who posted daily and frequently on FB “for business” so others could “know, like, and trust me” using it to document life’s milestones, wins, big news, and to feel good. I justified any concerns about privacy, censoring, or addiction by using the platform “for good” with live yoga classes, sharing music, food recipes and more. Not gonna lie--the dopamine rush of getting 150 likes in a few hours for a post felt great. In those moments, my concerns of "comparisitus" (comparing my life to others and feeling bad when I was struggling), getting addicted to getting more likes, or living my offline life thinking “How will I capture and post this event on FB?” didn't matter. But after watching the Social Dilemma, when you’re up against a team of brilliant engineers who day in and day are contributing to building and creating a super complex, ultrasmart AI logarithm that might even know you better than yourself, I had to get clear on WHY I’m using social media beyond “for business exposure.” My real why is to build a community of conscious entrepreneurs who use business as force for good and measure the quadruple bottom line of people, planet, profit, and presence. For the last 2 years, I searched for a platform where I don’t have to worry about privacy or worry about my every click behavior being tracked to sell me ads or feed me down a rabbit hole that enrages me offline. I’m migrating my Facebook group to Mighty Network, a platform that’s actually private regarding your click behavior, delivers your posts to everyone in the group (versus the algorithm dictating it), and isn’t designed to addict or hack your subconscious. This platform is an actual tool that’s non-addicting. You choose when you use the tool, versus feeling withdrawals if you go offline and having to check your phone. Tristan Harris, the filmmaker of the Social Dilemma and Founder of The Center for Humane technology--provides other ways to be more conscious online.
Check out their full list here: https://www.humanetech.com/take-control In Summary By learning to stay conscious online, you’ll better navigate and discern the noise out there to tune in to what really matters for you in your life. The Center for Humane Technology summarizes it best:
As long as social media companies profit from addiction, depression, and division, our society will continue to be at risk. Imagine a world built on human technology that operates for the common good, strengthening our capacity to tackle our biggest global challenges. Vote with your click. Go offline once a week. Connect to people, to nature, and to yourself. Each moment you choose a healthy choice, the world is little brighter from your choice. Choose wisely. Our society depends on it. ***** Anna S. Choi, CEO and Founder of Conscious Business Coaching, TEDx Speaker, and Forbes Author, is committed to elevating humanity's consciousness by empowering high achieving, six-figure conscious entrepreneurs and business leaders to prevent burnout while scaling their company. As a broke art major with zero experience or connections, she started and sold her first financial planning business grossing six figures by age 25. Burned out from the hustle and grind, she pursued energy mastery since 2014 as a taekwondo martial artist, body and brain yoga instructor and educator, and flow consultant now helping her high achieving clients grow in flow through energy mastery. If you're interested in growing your business with balance not burnout visit www.annasunchoi.com.
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 Recently spoke at the Seattle Chamber's NW Elevate Series on "The 5 Secrets to Reclaim Your Energy!" I was so surprised with the response to this poll: What is your current energy level? The poll results? Not one attendee answered they have high levels of energy. Not a single person. Yet nearly half of the sixty attendees responded they had low energy and struggled to maintain energy through the day. It hit me hard how much folks are struggling. Check out the results below:  I figured others are feeling this way as well. Here's quick way to identify the source of your energy drains using the ENERGY POWER checklist below. The more energy leaks plugged, the more you can feel energized. The intention of this checklist exercise is to bring awareness to what is happening. Simply read the question. Tune in to your heart. Then answer authentically. Don't worry about scoring, or getting as my yes's as possible. Simply answer as honestly as possible. At the end, pick 1-3 areas you can start shifting today. ENERGY POWER CHECKLIST BODY POWER: 1. Are you getting quality sleep? 2. Does what you eat make your body sing? 3. Is your core and gut area warm throughout the day? 4. Do you regularly move your body (let's not even address exercise yet!) throughout the day? HEART POWER: 1. Do you smile throughout the day for no reason? 2. Do you feel light and expansive (versus heavy, tight, constricted) in your chest? 3. Do you know how to name the emotion of your feeling, focus on your heart within, and breathe deeply? 4. Do you allow unwanted emotions like irritable, anger, sadness, anxiety, rage, embarrassment, disgust, judgement to energetically flow through you and pass? MIND POWER: 1. Do you do one task at a time, fully present? Multi-tasking includes not just doing two things at once. It also includes doing successive actions in a row quickly with no break or switching rapidly back and forth between two tasks. 2. Are you able to relax and quiet your brain on demand in a moment? 3. Do you go offline completely at least one day a week to recharge? 4. Do you eat a meal sitting down, slowly and mindfully without doing anything else? (versus scarfing down leftovers in 5 minutes standing up before you run to the next meeting while listening to a podcast) SOUL POWER: 1. Do you wake up happy? 2. If today was your last day to live, would you be ready to pass away? 3. Do you have no regrets? 4. Do you feel you're fulfilling your highest potential in your day to day life? All too often, the boundless energy reserves available as children get sucked up through layers of stress over the years, leaving us depleted like an empty cup.  Once your natural energy depletes, it's like an empty bank account that you now have to borrow energy then from your body--accelerating your aging process. Instead, by noticing and bringing awareness to these energy drains, you can consciously replenish and recharge yourself, feeling higher levels of energy in your day. *********
Anna S. Choi, CEO and Founder of Conscious Business Coaching, TEDx Speaker, and Forbes Author, is committed to elevating humanity's consciousness by empowering high achieving, six-figure conscious entrepreneurs and business leaders to prevent burnout while scaling their company. As a broke art major with zero experience or connections, she started and sold her first financial planning business grossing six figures by age 25. Burned out from the hustle and grind, she pursued energy mastery since 2014 as a taekwondo martial artist, body and brain yoga instructor and educator, and flow consultant now helping her high achieving clients grow in flow through energy mastery. If you're interested in growing your business with balance not burnout visit www.annasunchoi.com.  With so many global and national events happening each day while dealing with the pandemic, no matter what you believe, it's become difficult to stay in a bubble without feeling the impact of what's been happening lately. In my work with business clients --they are already dealing with life stresses of caretaking elders, not seeing their family more regularly, or being triggered by the news and unable to focus at work. This is causing higher levels of emotional stress than they are used to managing and looking for ways to stay grounded while also taking care of their well-being, growing their business, and taking a stand for what they believe in society will create a better future for all. Let's take the following situation - a family member voted differently in politics or doesn't acknowledge or believe in the same reality as you. This divide can be healed by first going within to face and embrace your fears, then having tough conversations and creating your stand in the world. But first, it starts with you. This is the vast majority of work. Remember, no amount of "conflict resolution" or "communications" training will make a lasting difference unless you're at peace with yourself, able to face, and even love your fear. If you consider the world’s chaos on the outside is a reflection of the inner turmoil within--you’ll begin getting to the source of the chaos in our world today. Let’s begin and make friends with fear. Here's an executive summary video version of this blog as well: Step 1: Be Willing to Face Feeling the Fear  What is your relationship to fear? Rather than thinking intellectually about it, let's look to your body to tell you. Just like numbers don't lie in a business, your body's reactions don't lie about your subconscious thoughts, feelings, and emotions on a matter that causes your reactions. To understand your default narrative on fear, picture any current event, relationship, or daunting task in your business that brings up fear for you. Then simply observe what first words, feelings, or body sensations popped in your head and write it down. Do the following exercise:
Step 2: Allowing and Accepting the Fear  After you face the feeling of fear, you've almost already accomplished the next step of allowing fear. Allowing or accepting fear doesn't mean you condone the fear or that you think the fear is ok or even good. Allowing or accepting the fear is simply being with the fear, allowing it to exist, and accepting that it's there at all. To do this, you must be neutral as you tap, observe, and watch yourself as if on the outside looking in. Fear can even be reduced down to a particular set of feelings, thoughts, and body reactions; then humans labeled fear to describe that experience. Perhaps your heart races, your mouth goes dry, and you're anxious, and your head says, "stop!" or get angry. That collective experience is now called fear. Whatever version of fear you experience, take a deep breath. Take another deep breath and keep taking deep inhales and exhales as you continue being with fear, noticing your thoughts, emotions, and body sensations. Step 3: Picture Fear Like a Little Monster  Picture fear like a little monster who just wants love. Imagine you're sitting at home when suddenly the little monster - Fear, shows up at your doorstep, knocking on the door. Seeing it's the little monster - Fear, your initial reaction is to ignore the door knocking. But fear keeps knocking louder. You say to the door, "Fear go away!" but the fear simply knocks more loudly and is getting angrier. The more you resist, the more fear starts banging loudly on your door, wildly shouting obscenities. This is like what's happening in our world. We cannot continue to ignore the fear that lives in the hearts of many in our country that may have different or opposing beliefs. We must first be willing to face feeling the fear then allowing the fear. If you continue to ignore, get angry at, or whatever other reaction in your unique response to fear is, the little monster will keep growing inside you until it rears its head and leaks out while you're with a client, and something happens when you're sitting at dinner with your family, or just walking outside. Having the courage to feel the fear and be with it anyway by simply practicing feeling it and breathing through it to relax your body is something you should be proud of. Because you are building a muscle of handling fear constructively in a healthy manner. If you've made it even this far, you are far ahead of the vast majority of humanity, which is SO worth celebrating. Take a break, and enjoy yourself, relax, and treat yourself. You can hang out practicing just these steps for a while until some basic mastery is attained. Then you can move on to the next stage. Step 4: Connecting to the Fear  Once you can see fear like a little monster who wants love, next you can connect to the fear. You can talk -much like a mom or dad would talk to a child throwing a tantrum and doesn't know any better. To connect to your fear, presence it again by imagining the situation, the person, or the challenge you face. Breathe deeply as you notice your thoughts, feelings, and body sensations arise. Once in a fairly neutral or calm state, now ask your fear "What's your message to me?" or "What do you want to say to me?" Now your job is to listen. It's likely you'll have lots of automatic responses from fear, saying some form of "Pay attention to me!". Simply listen. You might also journal some notes. Step 5: Thanking the Fear  Now that you've allowed fear to say it's peace, it's time for you to acknowledge the fear for the role it's playing. Whether that's teaching you a skill you otherwise wouldn't have to learn or building a muscle that needs building--you can ask questions like:
Automatically when you inquire and explore a question, your brain eagerly wants to find an answer. You might have automatic answers which could be valid, and I invite you to wait patiently and listen. Take notes of what replies you receive. Thank the fear for being in your life. Step 6: Embracing the Fear  Now that you've connected with the fear, got an understanding of where fear was coming from, and perhaps learned some new perspective or insight that wouldn't' have been possible had you not cared to ask questions and been courageous to face the fear in the first place, you're now ready for the next step. Embracing fear is very much like giving fear a hug. Now that the fear isn't a threat (in essence, you didn't treat fear with more fear to feed it), give the fear some love. You will often find love is MUCH more powerful than fear and has the power to transmute the fear into love. You might discover that fear was just the monster clothing on the outside, and on the inside, fear at the core is light and love. It's as if by loving fear, you are reintegrating, or unifying the yin and the yang, the polar opposites into one piece--true unity of dichotomies. You can make a motion of hugging yourself or any other gesture and/or sound of relief once you've integrated and come to terms with the fear in a very loving, positive way. Anytime that particular flavor of fear comes up, you can simply smile and say: "oh hey! I love you --there's nothing to be scared of." Then embrace the fear into your heart of shining love--not in order to get rid of, exterminate, and disappear the fear. That's just a disguised way of fighting the fear through fake love. You must authentically in your heart FEEL an expansive sense of openness to truly embrace fear. You'll know if it's fake love by simply checking your heart rate. If your breath is shallow, or you feel constricted or contracted energetically in anyway --fake love. But if you feel relaxed, expansive, triggerless, and open--then you've just had a moment of enlightenment. Now What? Apply these Steps in Real Life  The game from here on out is to continue more instances of embracing fears as they come up. As you get more fascicle and powerful in building up your muscles, you'll likely be able to handle larger fears. This simply means fears may never go away--they simply have less charge, less grip as you continue building your ability to embrace fear. Journal your progress. Make a note each time fear comes up. Run through this sequence of being willing to face feeling the fear, allowing, accepting, connecting, thinking, and embracing the fear. In the beginning, it will take effort, and once you practice this, it can get easier and faster. Know that your fears will just get bigger, so the game is to have big enough fears worth having. When fear is a word like "the," and you have the power to choose how you'll be with fear or not--that's the point of this conversation. Many times, you may choose to react to the fear with more fear. That's ok. Give yourself grace and space to continue making mistakes and practice. The act of giving yourself grace IS doing this entire sequence in a moment. It doesn't have to be hard. It's not a linear path. It's simply bringing an awareness instantly into the moment. What's Possible: The Future is In Your Hands Right now, we face unprecedented times. While you make a tune out that overused word, it's accurate and worth tuning back in.
Consider these times are an opportunity, a spiritual test of radical, unconditional love. By being willing to face feeling the fear, allowing and accepting fear, connecting to and thanking the fear, and embracing the fear is essentially practicing unconditional love. Embodying unconditional love requires a life of mastery, and it can be easy, instantaneous, in a moment. Making peace with yourself and others begins with you. From there, you can take the next step of interacting with others where fear may come up and practicing the same sequence. Imagine a world where instead of fighting fear, resisting fear, ignoring, or running away from fear--we look forward to uncomfortable conversations. We know it's the only way to truly unite as humanity on this planet, making war a notion of the past as we create a more peaceful society. It all starts with you. *** Anna S. Choi helps growing, six-figure earning, overachieving, conscious business leaders--who are exhausted meeting the demands of their day--prevent burnout as they scale their impact. They want to build habits for staying happy, energized, and focused to perform at their optimum given the demands, complexities, and uncontrollable environments that suck up their energy. Learn more at www.annasunchoi.com. *** If you are on a path of making a better version of yourself, you can also read other blog posts that I have published HERE. Or you can contact me, and I will be glad to talk to you and discuss how we can improve your situation.  Humanity is at a tipping point in the transition from the digital information age to the transformation impact age. Are you feeling trapped in the rat race at work or the hustle and grind of business? Do you feel like a machine trying to work harder and smarter yet still exhausted? Consider what worked two years ago, let alone last year, is now becoming obsolete. How do you navigate the noise, the chaos, of the day-to-day? Defining Chaos Chaos has many forms. On a personal level, chaos might look like dealing with separation from loved ones, an unexpected diagnosis, or a sudden job loss. On a day to day level, chaos might look like trying to get on zoom to present while your child suddenly throws a temper tantrum or is joyfully making loud bizarre noises. Or texting 2 people at once while cooking a meal, listening to a podcast. Or scrolling through your social media feeds, being triggered by the news, reactions, or comments. Chaos can also be internal. Chronic headaches or body pain, feeling underlying anxiety, or the mind that never shuts up right before bed. Sometimes the chaos can be good things in life. Like the growth in your business you can't keep up with, so many passion projects you're overcommitted to, or being addicted to achievement fulfilling vision board after vision board, yet still missing peace of mind. What if you could create moments of peace in your day to day chaos?  I became obsessed with this question, pouring over every and peace training, becoming a taekwondo student, yoga instructor, Energy Master, and business coach helping high achieving conscious entrepreneurs and business leaders in burnout focus their energy as they grow their business. I've gleaned and distilled down all these energy practices into a few I want to share with you to easily access peace in your chaos. You'll get to practice and experience these interactive exercises, directly together, right there in your chair. Before doing so, first, you have to accept the chaos.  What is your relationship to chaos? Are you someone who:
Accepting chaos means surrendering the illusion of control--that life has always been uncertain and always will be. Once you accept the chaos, you can allow the chaos. This looks like facing fears, pain, or other unwanted emotions like anger, loneliness, disappointment, or embarrassment. When you don't face your fears, there's an impact to your body. Suppressed or overly active emotions can impact your organs' ability to function. For example, if you get angry, it floods your body with stress hormones, increases your blood pressure, which makes your liver work harder to filter higher volumes of blood. Practice One: Allowing the chaos  Now, let's directly practice allowing chaos by facing unwanted emotions or physical pain using a method introduced to me by a Mind-Body Coach Uma Sangvhi, and former Stanford neuroscience researcher. Ready? I invite you to close your eyes, scan your body from your head to your toes. 1. Where do you notice tension, pain, or unwanted emotions? 2. Ask yourself, where is that pain located? What color? What shape? What texture? What movement? 3. Now go to another part of your body that feels good or neutral, or you can imagine one of your happiest memories. How does it feel? Warm, tingly? 4. Saturate every cell in your body with that energy of that feeling. 5. Now go back to the pain. Ask yourself, what color is the pain? What shape? What texture? What movement? 6. Repeat this exercise going between what feels good in your body and letting that feeling wash through your body and noticing your fear or pain observing it's shape, texture, and movement. Now you can open your eyes... When I do this exercise with clients, many people often experience shifting the shape or color, sometimes disappearing it all together. Some are even able to transmute the painful body sensation or unwanted emotion into a healing energy. The result of getting rid of that energy is less important than you being able to practice observing or watching your fears rather than react to them. Don't focus on the result. Focus on simply being with what is. Practice Two: Moving Meditations  Now that you've accepted the chaos allowed the chaos, now you can move through the chaos. The moving meditations are based on the work of Ilchi Lee. He met with the UN Ambassador of El Salvador, a small Central American nation plagued by civil war, poverty, and gang violence. Ilchi Lee took that training into schools, training teachers to share these moving meditations with their students. There was such success in kids creating peace in extremely chaotic situations--it spread to other schools that seven years later, one four four schools from El Salvador's entire education system uses these moving meditations. Inspired, I created a local scholarship fund through our local Kitsap Community Foundation, providing this training to teachers to lead these one-minute meditations in class with students. Imagine our next generation of leaders learning to access peace in any chaos--transforming communities one school at a time! Let's experience a couple of these one-minute moving meditations now. One Minute ExercisesTake out both hands as fists, knuckles facing out. Take out your thumb pointing outside on the one hand. And pinky, on the other hand. Now switch. Your brain's right and left lobes are integrating, relaxing your brain, helping you focus. This is a favorite for kids before taking tests and can be used anytime you face chaos. Now, we're going to exercise our intestines! Place both thumbs on your belly button, palms flat on your belly, just resting. Then suck your belly button towards your spine like a sit-up crunch. Breathe normally. This exercise is called intestine exercises because it's literally exercising your intestinal organ. We often exercise our muscles, how often do we exercise our organs? *Your gut is called your second brain because it operates independently from your brain and spinal cord, containing 3-5x more neurons than in your brain. Over 90% of the serotonin, often dubbed the "happiness hormone," is created in your gut while only 3% is produced in your brain. The water up fire down principle is about creating a balanced energy circulation. Often we have hot heads from thinking a lot (fire energy) while our guts are stiff and cold (water energy). By bringing "the fire" energy in your head down to your core and bringing cool "water-energy" up to have a calm, cool head-this allows for proper energy flow and circulation that can support your immune system as you raise your internal temperature by 1 degree. You can do this in a check out line, driving, or sitting at your desk anytime. Can you feel the heat? Great work--now you can rest. Moving Meditations throughout your day brings your awareness from outside yourself into your body to generate peace in the chaos. Now that you've accepted allowed, moved, your body is now primed to receive and listen within. Listen Within  Listening within your body's wisdom requires being aware of and feeling energy. Energy comes in the form of light, sound, and vibration. Energy comprises the building blocks of all matter, from the stars to the oceans and mountains, to your body, to microscopic atoms invisible to the naked eye. Energy includes your thoughts, feelings, and body sensations. Now let's experience how energy feels. Shake your hands like you're screwing a light bulb in. Great! Now clap 10x. Rub your hands together to create friction and heat. Now slap your hands up and down like this. Pause and feel the sensation of your hands. Do you feel a tingly sensation or heat or magnetic sense? That's energy. Imagine a big bright energy ball between your hands. Focus your awareness on the space between your hands. Where your mind goes, energy flows. Don't forget to breathe. As you inhale [breathe in] expand your energy ball bigger, as you exhale, contract the ball imagine the ball growing brighter. Inhale...and exhale….take a last big inhale...and on the exhale Bring the energy ball into your heart. Imagine and feel that energy permeating to the rest of your body. Now ask your heart: What is my message today? Listen within. Whatever message you get is perfect. You can now open your eyes. And you can let that message ground you for your day in any chaos. You can give that energy ball anywhere -your brain, core, or to someone else. You can ask yourself, "What's my message for today" to not just your heart; you can ask any organ, or pain, and listen within to generate peace anytime in any chaos. In conclusion So far you've accepted the chaos, allowed it, moved with it, which has set the foundation to be able to more easily listen within and generate peace -accessing an abundant, limitless source of peace no matter what chaos hits. If you forget all those principles, just smile--that's the shortcut to generate peace! [There's lots of science behind the benefits of smiling.]  A colleague of mine is a Neurologist Physician working in the ICU, who is often present at the time of passing for patients in his line of work. When asked…" What have you learned during this time?" he said, "Well, there are good deaths and bad deaths . . . Bad deaths are when a family refuses to speak to each other and burdens the staff with having to communicate separately with 3 family members for updates. At the time of passing, the family misses the final moments of their loved one's life. On the other hand, good deaths are when the final moment is approaching; I'm holding up the phone on speaker with the patient and their loved one on the phone. The family often says the same kinds of final words, "I love you. Don't worry; we've taken care of that thing for you. You know- that one thing you always wanted me to do? I did it. Thank you, I love you. At the time of passing, there's so much love, so the entire staff feels it. And it ripples out to the rest of the whole hospital. At that moment of death, there is so much peace." Death is likely one of the biggest types of chaos a human will face. If you were to create peace in the chaos of death, who would you be right now? As humans, before our precious time on planet earth passes, each moment, you have an opportunity to shine your light as bright as possible, unleashing your brilliance. Our chaotic world could use some more peace. You've now experienced choosing to generate peace in any chaos. When you choose to become a source of peace for our world, world peace is possible. What will you choose? Watch the full TEDxSIL talk HERE on Finding Peace in Times of Chaos and let me know in the YouTube comments what opens up for you. *** Anna S. Choi helps growing, six-figure earning, overachieving, conscious business leaders--who are exhausted meeting the demands of their day--prevent burnout as they scale their impact. They want to build habits for staying happy, energized, and focused to perform at their optimum given the demands, complexities, and uncontrollable environments that suck up their energy. Learn more at www.annasunchoi.com.*** If you are on a path of making a better version of yourself, you can also read other blog posts that I have published HERE. Or you can contact me, and I will be glad to talk to you and discuss how we can improve your situation. Resource: *Microbes Help Produce Serotonin in Gut, April 09, 2015, <https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/microbes-help-produce-serotonin-gut-46495#:~:text=Although%20serotonin%20is%20well%20known,made%20in%20the%20digestive%20tract.> Today is the US election day. Regardless of the outcome, will you be like this or this?
What future will you create?What a perfect opportunity to practice being bright and choosing light over being anxious. It's easy to be bright when all is well in the world. But how do you be bright when you feel stressed or weighed down by what's happening in the world? One way is simply to not watch the news. Turn all devices off. Go be with your family, spend time in nature, or meditate alone. However, shutting things out entirely may not address an essential skill to learn given humans, well, must interact with other humans one way or another. It misses the opportunity to build up your ability or muscle to be with the hard things in life powerfully--to surf in the tsunami of life. What if you could be your greatest hero and face the fear head-on?  And yes, even love the fear? Often, our fear comes in the form of a friend or loved one with opposing views or beliefs. While one method is simply to avoid triggering or taboo conversations to maintain the peace, what if you could use it as an opportunity? What a superpower that could be! Consider that 1) every human share the experience of being human 2) we all live on our precious planet earth, and 3) we live in a world with many diverse beliefs and behaviors--allowing, facing, and embracing fear is an essential skill in today's world. How else will we learn? Here's a simple exercise to help you stay grounded when anxious, stressed, or fearful of another with seemingly opposing values. Staying Grounded when Stressed or Fearful  1. Move your body. Do a soul-nourishing movement of your body, yoga, or workout to clear out and purify any stagnant or toxic energy that might be stuck inside. 2. Close your eyes and get into a sitting posture. Take a few deep breaths in and out. 3. Now imagine a bright sun above you pouring down energy and light on you, filling up your whole body. 4. When you charged up energetically, notice who comes up in your imagination. If they are someone that triggers you, picture that person or thing you "hate" you "can't stand" in front of you neutrally. 5. Now smile and breathe allowing them there. This is the first step of allowing and accepting the fear the way it is and the way it's not. **IF YOU MAKE IT THIS FAR THAT'S GREAT!!** If you feel you have more energy to give continue on; otherwise, rest and begin again the next day to continue building that muscle. 6. Imagine or feel energy pouring into them and send them love and light. Notice how your body, heart, and/or mind feels. Often they will open up and you will feel lighter. Bonus: Once you've mastered this exercise by doing it at least 5x without getting more upset by the end, you can actually attempt to have a loving dialogue with someone of the opposing view. Or not--it's most important to work with your own fears first.  If you do choose to have an actual dialogue, I'm not going to lie--it can be highly triggering having done it many times myself for the character development of unconditional love.
However, for me, once I energetically recovered from the initial conversations...I was proud and had more courage to start another conversation. I'm always surprised in the end, how we actually share a lot more in common than I realized. When they don't become "the other" and dehumanized, I become the fear itself. When I'm able to dismantle the fear, I'm left in a deeper inquiry of what really matters in life and where will I focus? What will you choose today? And every moment? To be in fear and contracted or in love and expanded? Your body won't lie. Just put your hands on your belly or chest, and despite what your mind may be rattling off, if you have deep breaths--you are grounded. Now is the time to practice this skill of allowing and accepting fear--to embrace the fear. Regardless of what happens in the world, you'll be equipped with an essential 21st Century skill, unconditional love. THAT is a superpower worth cultivating for years to come! *** Anna S. Choi helps growing, six-figure earning, overachieving, conscious business leaders--who are exhausted meeting the demands of their day--prevent burnout as they scale their impact. They want to build habits for staying happy, energized, and focused to perform at their optimum given the demands, complexities, and uncontrollable environments that suck up their energy. Learn more at www.annasunchoi.com. If you are on a path of making a better version of yourself, you can also read other blog posts that I have published HERE. Or you can contact me, and I will be glad to talk to you and discuss how we can improve your situation.  Business leaders have many challenges right now, including dealing with uncertainty, keeping and growing their businesses, keeping up with sales, and retaining jobs. The global pandemic pushed many companies to their limits and inevitably changed business dynamics--creating much disruption in our personal and business lives. The continued safety measures made remote working and remote learning the new normal. But now more than ever, we have so much uncertainty and stress to deal with. Parents are trying to raise and homeschool their children while working a full-time job and taking care of their households. I am not an exception---I have a nine years old, and we started school in the last couple of weeks. That’s how I found so many parallels between being a homeschool parent and teacher while running a full-time business. Here are the three critical assets that I think any business leaders should adapt:
1) Being Agile Agility means being flexible and adaptable. In the beginning of any new role in your business or personal life, you might not know what to do. The same applies to the pandemic. Once it started, no one knew what to do! This leveled the playing field whether you were a multi-million dollar business, a startup, or anything in between. On top of that, with constantly changing variables, you cannot make assumptions when planning ahead. As frustrating as that may be, that’s where you have an opportunity to transform by approaching your business with a beginner’s mind. You are free to innovate rather than cling to past based approaches that no longer work in today’s business environment. Consider the economic impact of the pandemic has already been made. It’s not that it’s coming, the impact is simply unfolding from what’s already happened. In other words, the next billion dollar companies have already taken off in this climate. We can accept the current reality and catch up or hope the past ways of doing business can return. You can focus your thinking with the attitude of "what can I create from here?" “What is the opportunity I can take advantage of in this current reality and where we are now headed?” Let's take homeschool as an example. Our son was in public school, then he went to private, and now he’s homeschooling. When the pandemic hit, we were forced to homeschool, requiring us to be constantly agile with the changing circumstances. With both of us remote working at home, there were times we all three needed to be on zoom. To accommodate sound barriers, at one point my husband in the bathroom for a conference call or on the balcony outside. We became agile with creating innovative working environments, by being flexible with our new schedules, creating new responsibilities in managing the house. Every few days, we’d reflect on what was working or not. We’d be flexible on changing the daily rhythm of our schedule, then adapt from there. We couldn’t plan too far in advance without having tested what worked and iterating from there. How do you stay agile while also planning ahead? The Importance of Planning In business, most of the clients I work with don't have quarterly plans or business plans. Actually, they don't have ANY plans. They are like, "let's see what will happen" attitude. But a plan is your guide, your direction, your map. It's a must-have for ANY business. If you don't know where you are going, then even the smallest obstacle can result in a major disaster for you and your business. Think of time as a spectrum. In the beginning, it is "let's see what sticks." The experimentation phase (that we all faced at the beginning of pandemics, within our businesses, our lives, and in homeschooling) has to happen. Then you start to see patterns settle. The variables begin to get smaller. With fewer variables, you can now start to plan further out. Still, your planning should be adapted to the new reality and should be different from what was done pre-pandemic. You have to choose to plan and commit to that plan in a very rough time-frame and then adapt from there. There is a constant battle of how much planning is too much, and you have to find that balance for yourself. The fastest way to find balance is by experimenting. Instead of sitting and thinking, “Is this too much?” “Is this too little?” --just do it! Just start planning, and as you go, you can correct your actions accordingly. Companies with an agile culture can more easily embrace and adapt to change, can turn uncertainty into opportunity, and grow while other businesses fail. At its core, being agile is all about expecting and managing change. Change is inevitable, and being agile is a method for flowing with change, rather than resisting it. 2. Unlearning The number two key asset that a business leader needs today is unlearning. In home schooling, there are many unspoken rules like no school on weekends, a 5-7 hour school day, sitting down and working on memorizing knowledge you may or may not use later on, and so on. The same thing applies to business. Unspoken norms are to work 40 hours a week, to sit down all day (if you have that type of business), work 8 hours in a row with just a lunch break, etc. You must unlearn these norms to create what actually works. Notice when you act from what you should do versus what is doing right for you. So, as far as unlearning, simply notice your patterns of thinking that restrict you. Now, is the perfect time in your business to see those patterns that limit you and release them. As an art student, I remember drawing a wall, and the art teacher asked us what colors the bricks were, and we all agreed the bricks were red. But the teacher disagreed. And he made us look through a whole, and we were shocked- the bricks were not red but purple. Astonishing! The color was in front of us, but we couldn't see the reality because of our pre-existing patterns and beliefs that we saw through. The same applies to our lives and business. By unlearning pre-conceived rules of the business, you’ll begin to see innovative ways to serve clients and create new services right in front of you. Simply notice the pattern of your preconceptions that limit you. Once you’re aware of the unwanted behavior, you can release it and operate in a different world. 3. Storytelling The third key asset business leaders need today is storytelling. Let me give you an example. For homeschooling, if I tell my son: "Do your homework!” or “Come here, and finish this lesson now!” is he inspired to take the action? Unlikely! But if I start reading a story about the lesson, he naturally stops what he’s doing and listens attentively. Research shows that messages delivered as stories can be up to 22 times more memorable than just facts. Why is that? Consider storytelling engages all of our five senses. Stories help the brain relax as you are whisked away into another world. Stories are easy to digest and remember when sharing other people. This increases customer referrals. Stories create more memorable marketing messages. It evokes not just the prefrontal cortex of the brain, but the limbic system or “feeling brain.” In ConclusionSo, to sum up, the three key assets that every business needs today are:
1) Being agile. Plan with flexibility and adaptability. 2) Unlearning. Pay attention to your patterns that impede your growth 3) Storytelling. Evoke all 5 senses to create a memorable experience people can share. By utilizing these three critical assets for today’s business leader, you’ll better manage the tsunami of chaos by learning to surf the wave. You’ll unleash your brilliance to help others unleash theirs. *** Anna S. Choi helps growing, six figure earning, over achieving, conscious business leaders--who are exhausted meeting the demands of their day--prevent burnout as they scale their impact. They want to build habits for staying happy, energized, and focused to perform at their optimum given the demands, complexities, and uncontrollable environments that suck up their energy. Learn more at www.annasunchoi.com. If you are on a path of making a better version of yourself, you can also read other blog posts that I have published HERE. Or you can contact me, and I will be glad to talk to you and discuss how we can improve your situation. Resources: https://www.quantifiedcommunications.com/blog/storytelling-22-times-more-memorable While the world may pull you in many directions and introduce distractions, how can you cut through the noise to stay focused on taking action on what truly matters for you?
Forget time management. It's about managing your energy — not your time. How do you master your energy? Here's a simple exercise to get started: 1. First, get clear on the current reality of your energy patterns. Download a free app like Toggl where you can track activities offline from one activity to the next. At the end of each activity, your job is simply to record whatever activity you were doing. Be neutral and notice if you are judging yourself. Another free app is RescueTime. Once set up, RescueTime will track all the places you visit online in the course of your day. In my experience, the combo of Toggle and Rescuetime gives you the most accurate snapshot of the activities you’re investing your energy into. It can take one or two days to get used to tracking each activity. Initially, you may find it too hard to enter each activity as you do it. Just try experimenting and see if you can get into a rhythm where, at the end of each activity, you click stop activity and start again — this forces you to then determine what you’ll now be focusing on. If you can persevere through the learning curve that comes with activity tracking, it’s worth the insight gained. If you have any resistance to tracking using the apps, you can always journal your main activities throughout the day or use a Microsoft Excel sheet to track every thirty minutes with a timer. While manual tracking tends to not be as accurate to reality, any method will do as long as it fulfills the purpose of the exercise to track your activities for a set number of days. Many of my clients expressed how, in just a few days of tracking their activities, they are more present and able to stay focused in their business and in life. See if you can do it for seven days in a row. I think you'll be surprised even after two to three days of tracking what you’ll discover. 2. Next, reflect on your energy patterns. What activities drained you? Which activities energized you? Put a minus sign by activities that were draining and a plus sign by activities that gave you more energy. Notice if there are any other patterns for your sleep, eating or exercise habits. Sleep is often an area clients struggle with. They can’t sleep deeply, get enough sleep or be consistent with bedtime. Here are some bedtime exercises I recommend by author and mind-body training expert Ilchi Lee that help quiet an overworked brain: Rollbacks: Sitting down, pull your knees into your chest and roll backward and back up. Focus on massaging your spinal cord. Make sure you have a carpet or mat to cushion your back and be gentle on your neck. Do 10-20 repetitions to warm up your body. Toe-Tapping: Next, lie down on your back with your legs down and arms by your sides, palms up. Bring your heels together and tap your toes, rotating your entire thigh and leg as you touch your big toes. You’ll generate lots of heat in your legs, bringing all the distracting thoughts in your brain down to your core and legs. Sleeping Tiger: On your back, raise your legs in the air, making a 90-degree angle with your knees and flex your feet toward you. Lift your arms in front of you, flexing your wrists, so your palms face the sky. Picture the soles of your feet and palms of your hands like an energy antenna, feeling around for energy until you can find a relaxing place. With each breath, imagine breathing through the soles of your feet and palms of your hand, accumulating hot energy into your core. Hold still in this position for one to two minutes at first, focusing on slowly inhaling and exhaling like a balloon. Eventually, you can gradually build up to holding this position for 10 or even 20 minutes. All of these exercises are like taking an energy shower at the end of the day, clearing your brain of all its thoughts and to-do’s, relaxing the mind and integrating your brain with your body before bed. 3. Write down any learnings, awakenings and observations in your journal. You’ll naturally discover insights into how easily distractible you are, how much of your day is dictated by your environment or how you have very little rest built into your day. You take it to another level when you capture what you’ve learned on paper. This helps your brain solidify what is being learned by having to articulate your thoughts, then integrate that thought with writing on a page. Now you’re meaningfully connecting your mind and body. From your learnings, choose at least one new energy habit to experiment with, such as going to bed earlier, creating a grounding morning ritual or moving your body for one minute each time you get up to go to the bathroom. Then, track your new energy habit. Utilize a bullet journal method of drawing shapes and coloring them in when habits are completed. Or simply write the habit out on a piece of paper, put the days of the week across the top, and mark an "x" for each day you complete the habit. Business leaders manage what they measure and measure what matters. When you take the time to build new energy habits, you can more effectively manage your energy day to day. Focusing solely on productivity and efficiency at all costs is not as relevant in today’s times, as it fails to integrate the whole human. When you manage your energy — instead of time — you start treating yourself as a whole human being. You become more conscious, more present and focused on a more fulfilling journey. This article was originally published in Forbes.com *** Anna S. Choi helps growing, six figure earning, over achieving, conscious business leaders--who are exhausted meeting the demands of their day--prevent burnout as they scale their impact. They want to build habits for staying happy, energized, and focused to perform at their optimum given the demands, complexities, and uncontrollable environments that suck up their energy. Learn more at www.annasunchoi.com. What if you could find peace in any chaos?
Day to day, you might deal with many triggers to your survival brain, unleashing a host of emotions, thoughts and body sensations each minute that can feel chaotic or out of control. What does chaos look like to you? Is it getting stressed scrolling through social media streams on conflict-ridden current events? Getting constantly interrupted by your kids on a video call while sharing space with your partner who is also working from home? Or trying to make many decisions in the face of the unknown? Chaos often shows up internally. Maybe it’s a dull, throbbing headache, stiff neck or tight back. Or maybe it’s your constantly running mind that never shuts up, analyzing what happened or what needs to get done the next day right before bedtime. It may be impractical to take time off for a 10-day silent retreat or meditate for an hour, let alone 15 minutes. Here are three quick, simple ways to find peace in chaos in any moment: Moving Meditations We often focus on exercising our muscles, but what about our organs? With your legs shoulder-width apart, gently use your fists to tap two inches below your belly button, and imagine the vibration going into your core or “gut.” This is a major energy center in your body where life is birthed, and it is also known by some as the second chakra. Close your eyes, and relax your mind. Focus your awareness where the vibration is on your energy center. Where your mind goes, energy flows. Energy travels as light, sound or vibration. This exercise utilizes vibration to help bring your awareness back into your body’s core and center. After 100 or so taps with your fist, now suck your belly button in to your spine, similar to a crunch standing or sitting up. Keep pumping. This is called intestinal exercise. Now that you’ve used vibration through tapping, you’ve brought your brain’s scattered energy from outside yourself back into your body, drawing downward to your gut. Intestinal exercise helps you keep your focus centered on the gut and heat up your core. Typically, we have hot heads and cold guts. By reversing this improper circulation using the “water up, fire down” principle, you can bring the “fire” in your head down to heat up your core, and bring the cold gut energy back up to your head for a calm, cool mind. By exercising your intestines, you're pumping fresh oxygen, increasing blood flow, better absorbing nutrients and processing undigested waste to achieve the proper “water up, fire down” circulation. You’ll know you have proper energy circulation if you heat up, sweat or form saliva in your mouth. Master Your Emotions Other exercises can really allow you to master your emotions by embracing the “bad” or unwanted emotions like anger, sadness or jealousy. This practice takes five minutes or less and keeps your focus on observing the emotion rather than becoming or identifying as the emotion itself. There are many exercises, but here’s a sample of one exercise that has proven very powerful with my business leader clients. Close your eyes. Scan your body from your head to your toes. Where do you notice tension, pain or unwanted emotions? Ask yourself, “What color is the pain or unwanted emotion? What shape? What texture? What movement?” Now imagine one of your happiest memories. Who’s around you? Where are you? What songs and smells surround you? How does it feel? Saturate every cell in your body with the energy of that happy memory. Now go back to the pain. Ask yourself, “What color is the pain now? What shape? What texture? What movement?” My clients who practice this are able to shift their unwanted feeling’s shape, color, movement — sometimes disappearing the unwanted emotion altogether. The more you master your emotions, the quicker you’ll be able to develop your emotional resilience as a leader. Listen Within The final exercise to access peace in chaos is listening within. Simply close your eyes, take a few deep breaths and ask your heart, “What’s my message for today?” Continue asking and listening. Often, the response is simple in just a few words. You can not only talk to your heart, but any organ, or area of pain, as well. By tapping into your own inner wisdom to listen within, you’ll get very aligned answers to decisions you need to make without having to question or regret the decision. The more you practice, the easier your body and heart can communicate clearer messages, and the more power you’ll have to simply notice your thoughts, feelings and body sensations passing through, rather than getting lost in them. Mastery Requires Practice Before you can experience peace, it’s critical to bring your awareness from outside yourself into your body. Then bring that energy down from your head into your core. You've now aligned your body, heart, mind and soul in just a few minutes. By focusing inward, you’ll build your inner guidance system more strongly to guide you through uncertainty. You'll be the calm in the eye of the storm, no matter how chaotic it gets inside or out. You can choose the most aligned response each moment. When you have the courage to practice these moments of peace of moving meditations, mastering your emotions and listening within, you will not only find peace amid chaos; you will become a source of peace in the chaos of our world. By embodying peace in any chaos, you can access an abundant, infinite supply of energy to serve your team, your customers, your stakeholders and, most importantly, yourself. This article was originally published on Forbes.com here. *** Anna S. Choi helps growing, six figure earning, over achieving, conscious business leaders--who are exhausted meeting the demands of their day--prevent burnout as they scale their impact. They want to build habits for staying happy, energized, and focused to perform at their optimum given the demands, complexities, and uncontrollable environments that suck up their energy. Learn more at www.annasunchoi.com. Does vacation ever feel like more work — where you need a vacation from the vacation?
Many of my clients share how what vacation provides is more about the experience vacation represents: being relaxed, peaceful and free of pending deadlines, mounting pressures, expectations or responsibilities. In other words, time freedom: the ability to do whatever you feel like doing, whenever you want, with no consequences. Here are three time-tested ways you can create time freedom every day. 1. Create a morning ritual. What’s the one thing that nourishes your soul each day? Consider that the first half hour when you wake up is the most critical time to train your brain toward nourishing habits in that half-conscious state where your brain is transitioning from theta to alpha waves. Pick a moving meditation or mindful exercise that will purify all the stress, toxins and tension from the inside out. Start with just a seven-day challenge to do that one thing each day, track your progress and write down what you notice and observe in your body as a result. Avoid picking something you want to fix about yourself or that you "should" do. If you find value at the end of seven days, I recommend continuing your journey to 14 or 21 days, whichever is more motivating. If you found no difference after seven days, pick another one thing that nourishes your soul each morning. After 21 days, you can take a break and pick one new thing that nourishes your soul — or continue to 49 days, then up to 100 days. Know that if you skip a day, you start over. No judgment, no attachment. Just start over. You must do it consecutively to truly experience the change and be able to effectively evaluate whether or not to continue at the end of your challenge period. Doing so will allow you to stop reacting to your head chatter, judgments, doubts and other emotions. Instead, you'll cultivate experiencing calm during the chaos of the unknown and unpredictable. 2. Create a midday ritual. Lunchtime is a very easy, natural time for us to take a break to nourish ourselves. If possible, try to go outside in nature to experience being part of the greater whole. Being outside lets us connect with ourselves on a deeper level, allowing us to remember experientially that our problems are small compared to what the entire cosmos is up to. Here’s what I recommend as a guideline to create your most effective lunchtime ritual, one that will make a world of difference, even if your ritual is just 10 minutes long: • If possible, leave your phone at your desk so you won’t get interrupted by incoming calls or notifications. • Experience gratitude looking at your food. Reflect how the sun helped grow the plants, which then grew from the earth, which then got harvested from humans and packaged, shipped and delivered to your local grocery store so you could conveniently eat this meal right now in a short period of time. • Chew slowly (ideally 30 times), and mindfully pay attention to your five senses. • Enjoy breathing and being alive. • In short, do nothing. Just be. I’m continuously surprised by how 10 minutes of rejuvenation allows me to have relaxed concentration and experience time freedom for the rest of my day. 3. Create a bedtime ritual. Pick at least one thing you can do every night that has you going to bed with a smile or connected to your heart, or that can create a really good dream. Like the first 30 minutes of your day, the last 30 minutes are equally as crucial to programming your subconscious mind. This is your time to design your life intentionally rather than by default, watching the news, answering emails or getting work done. It’s no surprise business owners can’t shut their brains off right before bed or first thing in the morning. You are the one training your brain that way. Give yourself time to transition again from the beta wave state of your brain to lower levels to ensure your body can rest deeply and reset for the next day. Here are some ideas for bedtime rituals: • As a family, share “acknowledgments” for each other and yourselves. Have each family member take a turn. This practice does wonders for feeling connected and managing emotions. Be sure to also include in your acknowledgment ways of being. For example: “Son, I acknowledge you for being joyful and light, especially in the way you helped your friend stay positive at camp today.” • Read a soul-nourishing book. • Toe tap. This acts like an energy shower to cleanse your emotions and thoughts from the day. Simply lay on your back in bed and tap your toes together, with your pinky toes tapping the bed 100 to 500 times while taking deep breaths in and out like a balloon. Doing so allows you to shift all the hot energy accumulated in your brain down to your feet and legs from the oxygen flow and blood circulation — allowing your brain to drift into a more relaxed state. In Summary Creating a simple, rejuvenating ritual each morning, midday and night creates microcosms of time freedom, relaxation and peace. Ten mindful minutes three times a day will go far and have lasting effects on the quality of your day-to-day life. The key to growing your business starts with investing in your mind, body and spirit first. Intentionally creating the vacation experience of time freedom allows you to be in flow for your day, balancing your ego-based “I am my accomplishments” self with the self that simply is perfect the way it is. This article was originally published on Forbes.com As our global economy shifts from the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the age of digital information, to the Fifth Industrial Revolution, the age of transformational impact, you and your business must evolve your consciousness within to stay competitive and relevant in the marketplace.
I’ve noticed in my work with growth-minded, conscious entrepreneurs, however, that two major pitfalls become barriers to looking deeper within. You cannot find peace amid chaos until you avoid the pitfalls of “being busy.” Pitfall 1: The 'hustle and grind' way of life has become the norm. The hustle-and-grind culture can often be thought of as inevitable (or very hard to overcome) to be able to meet the demands of the customer, stay competitive and grow. But does it have to be? As a conscious business leader, you might know you need to work smarter instead of harder and longer. Yet are you in reality? If you’re like most, you might still find yourself running the endless “rat race” or the treadmill of long work hours, as a cog in our global economy, unable to escape. You might believe that growth must come at a cost to your health, family time, social life or something else. So you give up trying to “have it all” and accept sacrificing parts of your life, while continuing to struggle in some mythical work-life balance concept. Even vacations become stressful from having to catch up when you return. However, you always have a choice to opt out of the hustle-and-grind culture. Once you do, you must face yourself. You may be tempted to fall into old habits watching others around you “succeed,” and you must trust in yourself that it’s possible to have sustainable spiritual and financial growth by slowing down. Only after you embrace the chaos and messiness, have the courage to slow down and trust in the unknown can you start to practice finding peace amid chaos by simply being with your thoughts, emotions and body sensations. Pitfall 2: You’re unclear what being present means. When I ask clients “What does personal time look like?” they list off basic everyday activities like showering, exercise or maybe traveling to visit family. I often have to ask again, “Besides daily activities, imagine you’re not worried about anyone or anything else, and there are no deadlines or nothing to make happen. Then what would you love to do?” I get a blank stare. I continue pressing. “What nourishes your soul?” At this point, clients share some long-lost hobbies they never have time for. Then I get a mountain of reasons why they can’t justify doing those things they love. No staff, no time, having to serve clients or be out of business, etc. Are you creating time to be present in your life as opposed to being in many places at once, reacting to life’s many curveballs, always thinking about the next thing or worrying about what happened? What does being present feel like for you? What would you be doing or not doing? What body sensations or feelings come to mind? What if you put your own nourishment first on your to-do list? Then had a trusted advisor or colleague who can hold you accountable to making sure nourishing your soul is number one? Crisis As Opportunity There’s an opportunity when a crisis hits, whether it’s a global pandemic, losing your staff, the loss of a loved one or getting diagnosed with a disease. It wakes you up to what matters in life. It forces you to reach within and face your inner turmoil. Crisis is the perfect opportunity for transformative growth — to test yourself, face your fears and experience being calm in the storms around you. Crisis is the time to practice peace whether through morning rituals, moving meditations or mastering your mood. Until you go beyond knowing crisis is an opportunity as an intellectual concept to experiencing or feeling crisis as the one and only opportunity for transformative growth, no amount of meditation or doing more actions will make the difference. In Summary Don’t be like the boiling frog during uncertainty, where, slowly over time, you find yourself still constantly working, having no time to think about nourishing your soul. Working on top of a busy, distracted, exhausted soul now only deepens that habit post-crisis. The number one skill you need to master is managing your energy from the inside out to find peace amid chaos. It’s during a crisis that you can develop the courage to face the layers of emotions, previously ignored, now bubbling up. By learning to navigate your inner world effectively, you’ll strengthen your innate power of resilience, embodying being a peaceful leader amid the chaos. You’ll learn how to harness the power of being present in the now, trust yourself to navigate through uncertainty and experience being peaceful amid chaos. This article was originally published on Forbes.com here. |
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