681 Calm Your Mind with Andy Puddicombe

PUSHING AGAINST A SITUATION WILL CAUSE IT TO OWN YOU. In today’s world, it’s easy to get swept into other people’s emotions. Social media, news, and even just a hectic lifestyle can make it challenging to ever feel at peace. But it’s something you need to concentrate on. When your mind is always cluttered, it’s difficult to make the right decisions. Opportunities became unclear, unfocused. I’m sure you’ve heard taking time to meditate is important for you. And sure, for those 5 or 10 minutes you may feel like your mind is clear. Then what? Meditation should go well beyond a specific time frame. It’s a practice that should be implemented throughout your day, especially when you feel a flood of emotions or thoughts. Calming your mind is a skill you need to develop and use all throughout the day - everyday. Knowing that things are often more drastic in your mind than in reality. That some things happening to you are meant to be and our resistance only makes them worse. To go deeper into what I mean, and the importance of keeping your mind calm, I’ve brought back this clip from Andy Puddicombe. If you aren’t familiar with Andy, he’s a truly unique individual. Not only did he spend time living with monks, but he studied at the Moscow State Circus and got a degree in circus arts. He shared some of his inside tips on how he keeps his mind clear and peaceful, even when he’s got a lot going on at work, or things seems to be stressful in her personal relationships. Get ready to find peace and clarity in this hectic world, on Episode 681. In This Episode You Will Learn: How you can navigate your emotions in a busy life (00:48) What Andy does when his wife is agitated (1:49) Andy’s go to mantra (2:43) How to handle tense situations (3:48) Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  This is Five Minute Friday.

• 0:09Lewis Howes?

  I am very excited to introduce you to Andy Puddicombe, who is a meditation and mindfulness expert. In his early twenties, he made the unexpected decision to travel to the Himalayas to study meditation. It was the beginning of a 10-year journey which took him around the world, culminating with ordination as a Tibetan Buddhist monk in northern India. He later decided he wanted to transition back into the real world, and he trained briefly at the Moscow State Circus, where he then returned to complete a degree in circus arts.

• 0:48Lewis Howes?

  What happens when you feel like you're about to have an emotional breakdown, or you feel the motions turning or something? How do you navigate the process now in a busy life?

• 0:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think the beauty of training consistently is that it tends to kind of last.

• 1:06Lewis Howes?

  The training lasts?

• 1:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, the training lasts. So there's an element, it's not like you leave the monastery, and you leave your mind at the monastery, and all the training at the monastery. It kind of comes with you, and that's really the idea. Same with meditation in everyday life. The idea is not to kind of make it all about the meditation, those 10 minutes, because what about the other 23 hours and 50 minutes, right? So it's how do we take that and kind of carry it into our life in the same way? How do you take those years of training? And after a while, there isn't really any kind of effort required. It's kind of inbuilt. It becomes an effortless thing. It doesn't mean like, I'm definitely no kind of master here, like, so of course I have moments. And if the baby kind of hasn't slept for a number of kind of nights, then...

• 1:52Lewis Howes?

  How do you handle that, when you're just like agitated, or you're frustrated, or something?

• 1:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:57Lewis Howes?

  What's your process?

• 1:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't really have a kind of, okay, right, now I need to do this. Definitely stopping, pausing and doing some meditation will make a difference. It kind of helps to reset the mind a little bit.

• 2:08Lewis Howes?

  Couple of minutes, uh, 10 minutes, 10 seconds.

• 2:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think, look, in the night, kind of a few, genuinely, 10, 20, 30 seconds is enough to kind of let go

• 2:18Lewis Howes?

  And be aware.

• 2:18Speaker 01

  of the frustration of kind of being awake. Because if you think about it, anything in life, it's really just our resistance towards it. It's wanting it to be a different way. As soon as we realize, oh, yeah, it's just because of that, then we kind of let go of it. It doesn't mean that we kind of love the situation.

• 2:35Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:35Speaker 01

  But at least now we're not pushing against it, resisting, causing even more stress.

• 2:39Lewis Howes?

  And it's not owning us.

• 2:40Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly.

• 2:41Lewis Howes?

  Interesting. Do you have like a go to mantra or meditation practice like in these situations?

• 2:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:49Lewis Howes?

  I mean, your app, obviously, you have like all these different, I guess, kind of like chapters and categories. But what do you personally do in that moment when the baby's crazy or something? You know, someone says something to you or the car, you know, traffic? What is, what's the go to for you?

• 3:03Speaker 01

  There's a little bit at the end, I know you've used the app, there's a little bit at the end of whatever one you're doing. That I always say, okay, right, right now, just let your mind do whatever it wants to do. So it's a sense of, on the one hand, giving the mind total freedom to do whatever it wants. And at the same time, there's a sense of awareness. You can't really do that, let your mind go free unless you maintain a certain degree of awareness. So for me, that is the shortcut. It's in there because I think it's just an incredibly valuable tool. It's so short because if you leave it too long, then the mind will start to wander and you lose that sense of awareness. So it's kind of just getting the balance, right? But if you do that even for 10, 20 seconds.

• 3:46Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 3:46Speaker 01

  It's game changer. If you think if you're in the middle of a really intense situation and someone's like, oh, just learn meditation.

• 3:52Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 3:53Speaker 01

  You're struggling to even deal with, and never mind learn new stuff. So it doesn't mean we can't use it for those things. But I think if we can get into a cycle and a habit, in the same way, we don't wait for our teeth to go really, well, in Britain we do.

• 4:07Lewis Howes?

  Did you clean them so they don't get bad?

• 4:08Speaker 01

  Exactly, right? So we get into this kind of pattern of hygiene. And in the same way, I think it's hygiene of the health of the mind. You know, how do we just kind of keep it fresh and sharp and calm and focused? And if we do it consistently, that happens.