Category: Mindful Self-Leadership

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Meditation as a Way of Life

Dear Integral Meditators,

Is meditation something that you sit down and do each day as a formal practice, or is it more fundamental, a whole way of approaching life? The article below explores that latter option.

Yours in the spirit of meditation,

Toby

Upcoming Courses at Integral Meditation Asia :

Special offer for 1:1 Coaching For January at Integral Meditation Asia  (Via skype or face to face)

Sunday 1st February – Mindful Self-Leadership: Take Control of Your Life Direction and Wellbeing Through Awareness, Curiosity, Courage and Care

Tuesday 10th February, 7.30-9.30pm – An Evening of Mindful Resilience – Sustaining effectiveness, happiness and clarity under pressure through meditation and mindfulness

Saturday 14th February, 2.30-5.30pm – Mindfulness and Meditation For Creating a Mind of Ease, Relaxed Concentration and Positive Intention 

 

Meditation as a Way of LifeThe commitment to contemplate life deeply
One way of defining meditation is simply a commitment to contemplating and investigating life deeply. This definition is useful as it takes us away from the idea of meditation as something that you do as a formal practice for 10minutes, 30 minutes, an hour a day, and indicates that it is really a fundamental stance toward life; to be a true meditator is to be committed to looking at your work, your relationships, your sex life (or lack of it), your philosophy and so on… deeply. It means to be dis-satisfied with superficial surface experiences and hungry for real experience, to make your life your own and not just a pastiche of what somebody else told you life should be.The temptation to stay on the surface
We are without a shadow of a doubt the most educated set of human generations that has ever lived. We have the potential to look deeply into our life and find patterns of meaning and consequence, but do we? Despite having the capacity to look deeply, many of us avoid it. We content ourselves with the superficial, with the easy. We pay attention to that which society guides our attention to, we define ourselves according to the prevailing trends and beliefs, we avoid the voice within us that calls us to look beyond the surface and the comfortable because it makes us uncomfortable, makes us feel vulnerable, and also makes us feel genuinely powerful (which is perhaps the most scary of all).

To be a meditator means to be committed to go beyond the surface patterns of our life each day, and contemplate the depths.

The courage to go deeper
Being a meditator is an act of courage, curiosity and care; commitment each day to connect and heal the hidden parts of ourselves that are damaged, the curiosity and interest to develop the powers of our body-mind-spirit to the next level, and to care about our lives and the lives of others enough to go beyond indifference, numbness and apathy, which each day tempt us to fall back into a state of passive unconsciousness.

It is a 24hour practice!
From this we can see that to be a meditator in the true and broader sense of the word is quite an heroic activity. It is demanding, it is inconvenient, it is sometimes tiring, it causes us to make difficult choices, it may mean we have to spend time alone.
What is the reward of this all? The reward of committing to contemplate life deeply? The reward of being a meditator? It is that we get to feel truly alive in way that cannot be taken away from us.

Related article: Life-fullness

© Toby Ouvry 2014, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com 

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Greenworld Meditation Inner vision Integral Awareness Life-fullness Meditating on the Self Meditation and Psychology Mindful Resilience Mindful Self-Leadership One Minute Mindfulness Presence and being present Stress Transformation

A Butterfly in the Wind

Dear Integral Meditators,

What does inner strength mean to you, and how do you go about trying to obtain it? In this weeks article I offer a personal reflection on this, and how sometimes we can create unnecessary limits on our inner strength by believing that it can only come in a certain way.

Yours in the spirit of delicate strength,

Toby

 

A Butterfly in the Wind

What does inner strength mean to you, and how do you go about trying to obtain it?

Today I facilitated a Greeenworld workshop. One of the meditations involves travelling within the space of one’s creative imagination to an inner landscape where one meets an animal guide who provides some form of learning, support and friendship that can be integrated into one’s life in an appropriate way.
As my life is in a state of relative instability at the moment I was kind of hoping for a monolithic and strong animal, maybe like a bear or something. Instead when I went to my inner landscape I found myself in a meadow with a delicate butterfly. There was quite a strong wind in the meadow, and the butterfly basically spent its time with me showing me how it was able to bend and flow with the wind in order to keep its foothold on the branch or on my shoulder, despite the fact that its body were so fragile and its wings caught so easily in the breeze. It was a demonstration of resilience and adaptability evolving out of skill and flexibility rather than brute strength or sheer power.
Sometimes we long for strength, but sometimes the very way in which we conceive that strength gets in the way of our finding it. How might it be if we tried to express the strength of butterflies sometimes in our life rather than the strength of a bear or a buffalo?

© Toby Ouvry 2014, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com 

Special Offer on I-Awakes Profound Meditation Program 3.025% off for 2 Weeks Only

————–
Start the New Year with a daily practice that sticks. Experience the smoothest, deepest, richest, and most profound meditation. 
Discount Coupon Code:
(apply during checkout – also valid for PMP 3.0 Starter Kit): NEWSJAN25OFF
 
Good until Jan 31, 2015 
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Life-fullness

Dear Integral Meditators,

This mid-week article explores the idea of Life-fullness, if you enjoy it, I’ve recently re-named and re-calibrated my life coaching practice “Life-fullness – The Integral Coaching Program“. If you are interested in finding out more, just click on the link!

In the spirit of life-fullness,

Toby

Life-fullness

One of the words that I have been thinking about over the last six months or so is life-fullness.  It has become so significant to me that I’ve even decided to name my life coaching program after it. What does it mean? Here are a few things that it means to me:

  1. To feel full of life – To feel life full means to allow myself to feel life fully, both the good and ‘bad’, to feel my strength and vulnerability, my virtues and your flaws. It means to care enough about the value of my experiences that I don’t reject or turn away from any of them.
  2. To mediate life flow – It means to allow life-force to flow through me, obstructing it as little as possible, and directing it as skilfully as possible toward the best possible inner and outer goals
  3. To be committed and interested in my life and the lives of others – This means to never as far as possible to ‘switch off’ or to become indifferent. If point one (to feel full of life) above is a commitment to caring, this third point is a commitment to being curious
  4. To participate – To practice life-fullness means to get stuck into life, not to be a mere spectator. It means to contribute, to commit, to take wise chances with (sometimes) unknown outcomes. It means to think about the life-values I hold on a deeper level and practice embodying them as best I can

To feel life, to mediate life, to be curious about life, to commit to participating meaningfully in my life; That is what life-fullness means to me. And these are the four aspects that I try and be mindful of in my own life-fullness practice.

When you think about the word life-fullness what sort of meanings and feelings emerge for you? If you could do one thing over the next few days to make your life more genuinely life-full what would it be?

Related Article: Curiosity, Courage and Care – Cornerstones of the Mindful Encounter

© Toby Ouvry 2014, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com 
Integral Meditation Asia
Online Courses * 1:1 Coaching * Live Workshops * Corporate Mindfulness Training
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The Resilience of Gentleness

One of my meditation words I have taken for 2015 is self-care. Normally I take 2-3 words and focus upon them over the course of a year and let the themes and mysteries within them gradually reveal themselves. Meditation means to dwell deeply, so staying with just one, two or three words for a year and spending time each day investigating them deeply can be a beautiful and rewarding  meditation practice!

One of the things that I have observed about focusing upon and trying to practice self-care each day is that each time I take the time to do a little self-care, I start to feel a little more inwardly resilient; it becomes a little easier to feel happy, a little easier to be benevolent to others, a little easier to acknowledge and face the challenges in my life I might want to wish away.
This is one of the interesting things about developing a quality; when we develop it we find that we start to simultaneously develop its opposite quality in a way in which we may not have expected. Gentleness gives rise to strength; stillness gives rise to dynamism; focus gives rise to relaxation.This week or over the next few days, if you like, try doing something each day that is a deliberate and appropriate expression of self-care. See how you can grow your inner resilience by using the method of gentleness.

© Toby Ouvry 2014, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com 

Upcoming Courses at Integral Meditation Asia :

January 9.30am-12.30pm – Regenerating Your Inner Self – Integral Meditation Half – Day Retreat

Sunday 18th January,9.30am-12.30pm – Meditations for Connecting to the Green World – An Introduction to the Path of Nature Mysticism

Sunday 1st February – Mindful Self-Leadership: Take Control of Your Life Direction and Wellbeing Through Awareness, Curiosity, Courage and Care

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Integrating Ego, Soul and Spirit Meditating on the Self Meditation and Psychology Mindful Resilience Mindful Self-Leadership Motivation and scope

Mindful of Our Conflicting Desires

Dear Integral Meditators,

These days I enjoy my desires a lot, but I didn’t always do so, because they have the power to make me so uncomfortable. The article below explores how you can mindfully explore the challenge of your desires; how to become more comfortable with them and start to tap their potential.

In the spirit of clarity around desire,

Toby

Upcoming Courses at Integral Meditation Asia :

JANUARY 2015

Sunday 11th January 9.30am-3.30pm – Regenerating Your Inner Self – Integral Meditation Day Retreat

Sunday 18th January,9.30am-12.30pm – Meditations for Connecting to the Green World – An Introduction to the Path of Nature Mysticism

Mindful of Our Conflicting Desires

Wanting both excitement and security,

Stability and creativity,
Riches and a simple life,
Success and the easy life,
Deep love without pain,
To do what you wish to do in life but not wanting to be judged by others,
Freedom without responsibility.
A lot of the conflict that we experience in life comes from the fact that we have conflicting or contradictory desires that create lot of inner confusion; we cant let go of either desire, so we end up not enjoying either of the options. For example we may want the pleasure of a deep loving connection, but feel anxious about the way in which it makes us feel vulnerable and open. If we open to the love we don’t enjoy it because the anxiety kills it, but if we don’t open to it, we feel miserable because we are unfulfilled. It can feel like a lose-lose situation.

When I was being trained as a monk, the received wisdom seem to suggest that the solution to this was to simply give up desire, which can give rise to a certain amount of inner peace, but it also feels like a bit of a cop-out. To give up desires for temporary periods can be very healthy, but to give them up altogether is surely an avoidance of both our responsibilities, and much of the meaning and pleasure of a human life.

Another way is to be mindful that each of our desires has a challenge associated with it, and to open to that challenge.

Because I wish to love I have to navigate and accept the anxiety that comes with that open heartedly.
Because I wish to be successful in a certain endeavour I will have to accept the hardship, effort, fatigue and short term failure that may come with it.
Because I wish for a more creative life, I have to open intelligently to the relative lack of certainty that this involves.

Choose and commit consciously to the desire that you truly want. Accept the challenge and burden that comes with it. Enjoy both.

© Toby Ouvry 2014, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com 

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Integral Awareness Meditation and Psychology Mindful Resilience Mindful Self-Leadership Mindfulness

What Real Power Does Mindfulness Give You?

Dear Integral Meditators,

When you think of mindfulness, do you think of power? If not the article below explains why you should!

 

What Real Power Does Mindfulness Give You?

We talk about mindfulness in terms of relief from stress, bringing more presence to our life and so on, but what about power?
One way mindfulness (when well practiced) gives us greater power is by giving us awareness of choice. The more consciousness we bring to any given situation, the larger the number of choices we will be aware of regarding how to act, how to feel and how to approach the situation.  Conversely, the less conscious awareness that we bring to a situation, the fewer the choices that we will have, and therefore the less power.
Without mindfulness we are essentially limited to our instinctive and habitual patterns of reacting and responding to our life’s challenges (and joys), with mindfulness we can even innovate choices, options and possibilities that we have never considered before as we actively bring our intelligence to bear upon the situation fully.

Our mind is basically our primary tool for surviving, adapting and thriving in the outer world of our career and relationships, and the inner world of our relationship to ourself. Mindfulness is the practice of learning how to use and apply the potential of our mind in daily life. Looked at in this way there is nothing more powerful and valuable than mindfulness. Do you have time for a little now?

Related articles:
You Always Have a Choice
Six Mindful Questions for Effective Decision Making

Check out the Upcoming workshops and events at Integral Meditation Asia

© Toby Ouvry 2014, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com 

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Insight Meditation Integral Meditation Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques Mindful Resilience Mindful Self-Leadership Mindfulness Presence and being present

Six Mindful Questions for Effective Decision Making

Dear Integral Meditators,

Decisions, choices, options. The article below invites you to start making these parts of your life a mindfulness practice. Last call for this Sundays Mind of Ease Workshop, details on the whats on section.

Yours in the spirit of mindful decision making,

Toby

Upcoming Courses at Integral Meditation Asia in October:

Sunday October 19th – Mindfulness and Meditation For Creating a Mind of Ease, Relaxed Concentration and Positive Intention

 Launches 24th October – The Meditation for Creating a Mind of Ease Online Course

Sunday November 2nd, 9.30am-12.30pm – Meditation and Mindfulness for Self-Healing and Creating High Levels of Energy  – a three hour workshop

Six Mindful Questions for Effective Decision Making

We have never had so many choices as we have in today’s society.
We have never had the freedoms that we enjoy, or the opportunities.
Perhaps human have never been as busy as we are today, and so each day we have to make more decisions than ever before.
Our freedom to choose is a wonderful thing and a fantastic opportunity, but the fact is that for many of us it is a cause of anxiety.
What is the right choice here?
What if I decide on the wrong thing?
What if I get blamed for my decision (I don’t want responsibility)?

Here are the six questions I ask myself whenever I’m faced with a choice that is of any consequence (and sometimes even small ones are).

  1. What is my personal perspective and experience of this situation?
  2. What does this situation look like if I consider it objectively and impartially?
  3. What is the perspective and experience of others involved in this situation?
  4. What core values am I trying to express and embody in this decision?
  5. What will the short term consequences of this decision be?
  6. What with the long term consequences of this choice be?

If you pop these six questions to yourself and think about them mindfully, I have found they act very well as a revealer of what really needs to be done, of what short cuts should not be taken, of what means the most to you, and what (where possible) will create a win-win situation for all concerned.
It also gives you a confidence and (relative) certainty in the validity of your choice that counters the anxiety and fear that so many of us experience in the face of the many choices we make each day. You may not be ‘right’ all the time, but at least you are making your choices on the basis of meaningful and mindful criteria.
This last few days I have been bothered by whether or not I should continue taking my daughter to squash lessons on Saturday mornings. The location has changed, the commute has become 3 times as long, I have ‘many important demands’ upon my time, it would have been very easy just to ‘let it slip’, I could have found plenty of excuses. I asked myself these six questions and the answer came back very clearly to persist. There is effort involved, but by the mindful insight provided by the six questions, my direction and decision is clear. It is a small daily example, but all decisions are important in that they ask us core questions about how we wish to engage in our life, and engage the freedom, power and privilege that comes with having a choice.

© Toby Ouvry 2014, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com 

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Integral Awareness Integral Meditation Meditating on the Self meditation and creativity Meditation and Psychology Mindful Resilience Mindful Self-Leadership Mindfulness

A Blueprint for Mindful Productivity

Dear Integral Meditators,

You may think of ‘productivity’ as  word that you would associate more with your professional development that your individual personal development, but in the article below I look at how our individual happiness is also dependent to a degree upon our productivity, and how we can create a win-win relationship between our personal happiness and professional growth.

Beneath the article you can see that I have placed the full information for the Mind of Ease Meditation Online Course. You can view a ten minute video that I have created where I talk in some detail about the relevance and effectiveness of the Mind of Ease Meditations HERE.

Yours in the spirit of mindful productivity,

Toby

Your Blueprint for Mindful Productivity

Productivity is the act of supporting our existence by translating our thoughts into reality*, our ideas into objects and products, of bringing knowledge, goods and services of all kinds into existence though our creativity.

We should be interested in productivity as individuals because productivity gives rise to achievements, and this in turn gives rise to a particular type of happiness and confidence.
As employers and members of organizations we should be interested in teaching ourself and others in the organization productivity, because it will help to give rise to a successful, confident and happy organization that people will want to work in and stay in.

So what are the building blocks of productivity, and how can mindfulness help nurture it? Here are a few practical thoughts:

1. We need to be having creative thoughts, and to believe that we are capable of such thoughts – In all of the major domains of our life we need to realize that we are creative agents, and that what we do makes a difference. In our relationships, at work, in our leisure activities we need to challenge ourselves to think intelligently about what we want, and then act productively on those ideas to make them a reality.

2. We need to believe something that comes from ourself can be worthwhile – Ask yourself the question “Do I really believe that an idea that I have can be of real value and make a difference in the world?” If you really believe that then productivity and manifestation will be a natural extension of your belief. If deep down you don’t believe in yourself and the power of your ideas, then even if you have the most amazing ideas they are going to get lost behind a myriad of excuses and distractions. It’s actually ‘easier’ to just become a consumer rather than a producer, but by becoming so we deny ourself so many fundamental forms of happiness.

3. We need to measure how many of the creative thoughts we have make it into reality each day – So we’ve decided we are going to really believe in the power of our ideas (not easy to do on a deep level), and we’ve decided to become a producer. Then you need to ask yourself the question each day “How many thoughts and ideas have I translated into reality today?” You literally look at how many of your thoughts you have actually translated into the domain of our everyday reality.

  • If you are an aspiring poet, that means writing something
  • If you are a marketer it means communicating your message to your audience, today
  • If you are a teacher like me, it means producing materials that can be taught and then inviting people to participate

What productive activity have you done today?

4. We need to appreciate that which we produce – Don’t let your achievements go unnoticed. Don’t finish one thing and then immediately go onto the next. Savor it first; allow the pleasure of your own productivity to feed and nurture your being so that you can sustain enthusiasm for the process.

5. Rinse and repeat each day until it becomes a part of the fabric of how you operate
Being mindful of points 1-5 above is your basic blueprint for sustainable productivity each day. Remember, you’re not doing it to please someone else (although it might), you are doing it because you are choosing to take pleasure in your own productive power, the power you have to be a cause in life, not just an effect.

*Paraphrased definition from ‘Honoring the Self’ by Nat Branden, chapter 12 on Rational Selfishness.

© Toby Ouvry 2014, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com 

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Inner vision Integral Meditation Meditating on the Self Meditation and Psychology Mindful Resilience Mindful Self-Leadership Mindfulness One Minute Mindfulness

Mindfully Accessing Your Transferrable Skills

Dear Integral Meditators,

This weeks newsletter looks at how you can use mindfulness to link already existent skills that you have to activities where you may not have thought to apply them.

Sunday is that last day that you will be able to purchase the Mindful Resilience online course for the opening promotion price of Sing$69. On Monday it will go up to $85, so catch the offer whilst you can!

Yours in the spirit of skills hidden in plain sight,

Toby

Upcoming Courses at Integral Meditation Asia in October:

Full details soon!

Mindfully Accessing Your Transferrable Skills

Today I gave a talk at the Singapore Stock Exchange on mindful trading. One of the other speakers was a great guy called Dave from Salt Lake City. Earlier in his life he had been a professional drummer with a band. Now, as a trader he said he found that his intuitive skills as a musician helped him to see patterns in his trading charts that had become a major way in which he had developed his ‘trading style’. Dave had found a transferrable skill from his life as a musician which he was now applying to his life as a trader.
A few years ago I was complaining to my Dad that I was at a disadvantage as a business owner because I had no background in ‘selling’ or sales. My dad pointed out to me that I had a lot of experience in listening as a counsellor teacher and coach. He then pointed out that a lot of what being a good salesperson is about is firstly listening to other people to understand their deep needs and wants; if you can do that you are then in a very good position to provide a service or product that they will want. I suddenly discovered that I had a hugely useful transferrable skill that I could use as a businessman that I hadn’t even thought about before and that I could draw a lot of confidence from (thanks Dad!).
When I first started meditation practice in the early 90’s I was able to build my meditation practice better and faster by applying the understanding of under-training and over-training that I had picked up from playing sports, another transferrable skill of great value.

The fact is that many of the skills that you currently have are transferrable to other areas of your life. Not only that but they are transferrable to any new activity that you take up. The more quickly you can make the link between a skill that you already have and its potential value in a new situation, or in a different domain of your life, the more quickly you can start using it.
A great mindful question to ask yourself when faced with a new challenge, stage or activity in your life is “What transferrable skills do I have?” Almost certainly you will be pleasantly surprised how capable you are.

Related article: Mindfully deepening your inner resources.

© Toby Ouvry 2014, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com 

 

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A Mind of Ease Awareness and insight Essential Spirituality Integral Awareness Integral Meditation Meditating on the Self Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques Mindful Self-Leadership Mindfulness

Trusting Your Mind

Dear Integral Meditators,

Our mind is our fundamental tool of survival in the world; the better it functions and the more we are able to trust it, the happier and more successful we will tend to be.
The article below outlines a few points around how you can start to build genuine self confidence by learning to trust your mind, and gives a mindfulness exercise that you can use to begin a practical exploration of this area.
Yours in the spirit of mindful self-confidence,
Toby

Trusting Your Mind

Mindfulness and meditation can give us temporary calm and relief from the continuous activity of our thinking mind, but if we are tempted to use it as a way of escaping from our mind then we should be wary.
Ideally mindfulness should be a way of gaining confidence and trust in our mind and ourself so that gradually our relationship to our thinking mind becomes more and more harmonious and mutually supportive; our thoughts support a healthy experience of self, and our sense of self encourages a reliable approach to thinking about our life experience.
Nathaniel Branden has in interesting definition of self-confidence, he says “Self confidence is confidence in the reliability of our mind as a tool of cognition…it is the conviction that we are genuinely committed to perceiving and honouring reality to the fullest extent of our volitional power.”
So, the long and the short of this is that in order to be genuinely and deeply self-confident, you need to learn to trust your mind, and use it as well as you are able within the limits of your ability.

Pseudo-self confidence
Quite a few people exert a lot of effort building pseudo self-confidence in order to disguise their fundamental lack of trust in their own mind and judgment. We might become very physically fit, or very wealthy, or have read all the right books about being a parent, have gained many educational certificates and degrees, or even become an expert meditator (and other examples ad infinitum) all as a way of building a buffer between ourself and our actual moment to moment experience of reality and life. Fundamentally we don’t trust our mind to be able to deal with it effectively; deep down we lack self-confidence, so we build buffers and things to hide behind.

Three mindful questions for building self-confidence and trust in your mind.
Take a situation in your life, perhaps something that you have experienced today. Ask yourself three questions in turn:
“What am I seeing and experiencing here”
“What is my mind telling me about what I am seeing and experiencing?”
“Am I honoring my own experience and mind here or am I turning away from it?”The answer to the third question will tell you whether you are using this activity and experience to build your self-confidence and trust in your own mind, or whether you are subverting it. As the old saying goes “Many drops of water slowly dripping into a pot will eventually make it full”; in our day by day journey to self-confidence, or to a lack of it, this saying rubs both ways.Generally the challenge here is not that we don’t know enough, but that we know more than we would like, and would rather avoid the responsibility of that knowledge.

© Toby Ouvry 2014, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com