💌 WITH LOVE, DOMINIQUE

Bringing meditation, mindset and spirituality down-to-earth to empower your authenticity & greatest potential.

 📚️ VOL 03 / 🕖️ READ TIME: 4 m 30 s

🎉 7 DAYS LEFT TO APPLY TO: The Muses Program 🎉

In honor of that, I wanted to use this as an opportunity to share some REAL insights that get me jazzed about meditation and why you’ll always catch me saying it’s a life changing, transformative practice. 

These are topics we’ll be covering more in depth and applying in THE MUSES PROGRAM, which is taking application until July 17th. 

Lucky for you readers, I love ranting about meditation — so below you’ll find your own mini-coaching session on how to use your meditation practice to create a focused mind aligned with your life’s full potential & values !

IN TODAY’S ISSUE:

• 🧠 TODAY’S LESSON / Where Attention Goes, Energy Flows: How a Distracted Mind Might Be Creating Your (Too Much To Do, Not Enough Time, Slightly to Majorly Overwhelming) Reality.

• ✏️ WORK IT / Tips for Your Practice

• 👩‍💻 MORE DEETS / THE MUSES PROGRAM

 🧘🧠✨ TODAY’S LESSON: Where Attention Goes, Energy Flows: How a Distracted Mind Might Be Creating Your (Too Much To Do, Not Enough Time, Slightly to Majorly Overwhelming) Reality.

Look, I can totally list out all the research-backed benefits of a consistent meditation practice, like:

• Reduced rumination

• Stress-reduction

• Enhanced creativity

• Improved focus

• Less emotional reactivity

• More cognitive flexibility

• Better decision-making

• Relationship satisfaction

• Increased information processing

• Decreased task effort

• Improved emotional & mental wellbeing

• Improved memory & attention

• Increased kindness & empathy

• The list really does go on & on & on…………

But, as I’ve mentioned in a previous IG post, the power of meditation for me really comes down to this:

What do I value more than being stressed over _________________?

Whether you’ve already seen that post or not, feel free to try this exercise with whatever’s stressing you out right now. Based on the above, your answer may sound something like:

• I value spending time creating with joy > overthinking and stressing over each part of the process.

• I value enjoying and being present with those I love > worrying about what fire I’m going to need to put out next.

• I value having a career where I feel valued for my worth > worrying about what others think if I ask for or fully go after it.

• I value a good night’s sleep > spending 3 of those 8 hours being unable to turn my brain off.

• I value living a happy, healthy, and balanced life > believing the thoughts that say it’s not possible.

I know, it may feel hard to believe that making time to meditate in an undoubtedly already chaotic day can actually create MORE space for the things you value.

But if you read the last post where I dove deep into reprogramming your mind via meditation, you already know our brain forms subconscious habits over what we most often do as a way to assimilate, automate, and survive in our external environment.

(Meaning there’s almost definitely invisible mental or physical habits in our day that are being a total time suck.)

What you might not know is that a distracted mind actually wastes energy.

And let’s admit it, unless you’ve stuck to a landline or a flip phone, most of us are living life incredibly distracted.

So much so that a study done by Harvard in 2010 showed that:

People spend nearly 47% of their waking hours thinking about something other than what they’re doing, and furthermore, this mind-wandering typically makes them unhappy.

That was 2010—think about now. Tech has never been more innovative or prevalent. People have never had more access to our personal time, brain space, or lives through text, WhatsApp, email, FaceTime, TikTok, Instagram, BeReal—the list goes on. We’ve never had more access to various sources of information, media, apps, podcasts, perspectives, and dating options via the hundreds of dating apps.

Hell, you can scroll on TikTok for 30 minutes (even though we’re both aware we do it for longer) and watch 50+ videos, with 50+ opinions (some of them radically different) that make you feel 50+ different emotions in a short period of time. (Maybe even before you’ve had your morning coffee.)

We have never lived in a more distracting world. (And people wonder why our minds are so overwhelmed—makes ya kinda jealous of our parent’s generation that could only be contacted by landline telephone and mail, don’t it?)

Raise your hand if you’ve done one of the following in the past 24 hours:

• Woken up and immediately looked at social media or your emails as you got ready.

• Answered a work-related Slack, text, or email outside of working hours or while on a lunch break.

• Got hooked by a clickbait headline and suddenly lost an hour of your day. (Hehe you get a pass on this one ofc!)

• Got pulled away from whatever you promised yourself you’d focus on by an unrelated request or message.

• Tried to multitask in a meeting or mid-conversation and totally missed what was happening.

• Were distracted during what was supposed to be an enjoyable experience by a thought that had nothing to do with the present moment.

Meeeeeeeee! (Four Seasons Baby voice because no hate to TikTok, I love TikTok!!) And if not, pop off you with those powerful mental boundaries.

I want to re-highlight another part of the equation here. How do any of the above typically impact your emotions?

• Do you feel more or less fresh and ready for the day after spending your morning answering late-night emails or scrolling on social media as you get ready?

• Do you feel more or less overwhelmed by your to-do list after multitasking in a meeting?

• Do you feel more or less connected to your family and friends when you’ve spent your time with them thinking about something else?

• Do you feel more or less in control of your time and life when you’re physically living it, but mentally somewhere else?

It’s because without a focused mind, you’re essentially multitasking your life away. Physically here, mentally somewhere else.

And if you want just a bit of insight into how that impacts your “reality,” studies show multitasking actually decreases productivity, increases symptoms of anxiety & depression, adversely affects memory, increases stress, decreases cognitive ability, emotional control and empathy.

Not to mention: all the thoughts you’re thinking and emotions you’re processing as you’re distracted use up the brain’s fuel source (glucose and oxygen), which has the power to totally zap your mental energy.

Why does this happen? Our minds get hooked on the feel-good chemicals our most repetitive patterns and “feeling productive” provide. (Even if it’s not the most beneficial or productive action we can actually take towards our visions and goals.)

So think about it like this—meditation doesn’t help you de-stress because you “think about nothing,” it helps you de-stress by strengthening your capacity to focus on what you WANT vs. what your mind gets hooked on.

How do we improve this? Tips on that below, my lovies.

 🧘✏️ WORK IT: TIPS FOR YOUR PRACTICE

This (obviously) runs deep and is what I’ll be covering in more depth in THE MUSES PROGRAM for my female visionaries. But if you’d like to implement this into your meditation practice, here’s what you can do:

(NOT SURPRISINGLY) COMMIT TO YOUR SINGLE-POINTED MEDITATION PRACTICE: Practices like Mindfulness Meditation or Vipassana. (If you’re a TM-er this is a bit different than your regular practice because it’s about awareness and strengthening of focus > falling into a transcendental state).

The first step to creating a meditation practice via the Tibetan Buddhist lineage is consistency — meaning committing to 7 days a week. (Yes, this means even on hectic or “bad” meditation days.) Like I mentioned in my previous post, you can grow your practice from 5, to 10, to 15 minutes week-over-week. On busy (mind or life) days, try to alternate with smaller increments of time and if you do miss a day, come back to your practice as quickly as you can.

GET CLEAR ON WHAT YOU VALUE: Brene Brown has an awesome values exercise to help you understand what you truly value in life. You can also simply ask yourself “What do I want to value at this point in my life and what are the actions I’m doing to show up for those values?”.

Journal on it and see how much time in your daily life your prioritizing those values. Think of ways you can double down and commit to those values further.

NOTICE WHAT’S TAKING UP THAT SPACE NOW: If you say you value creativity, but spend most of your free time not being creative — notice that. Like mentioned, our mind functions off of habit. Meaning we’ll have to create containers of commitment (over time + repetition) to start creating a habit out of living a life aligned with our values.

Clear out or set boundaries around what’s no longer of value to you but may have become a habit along the way and create designated time to pursue your values. (Even if it means adding calendar blocks that you actually show up to.)

 👩‍💻💌✨ MORE DEETS: THE MUSES PROGRAM

Using guided apps for Vipassana & Single-Pointed practice is great to start, but in THE MUSES PROGRAM you’ll leave with the confidence to guide yourself through your own meditation practice (which makes it SO much more powerful!).

In addition, the program also includes:

• A Personal Power Plan & Lessons — to get crystal clear on your vision and break down even your biggest visions to approachable, focused steps.

• 5x Frameworks of Meditation — that you’ll be able to guide yourself through by the end of the program to unlock intuition, embrace personal power & release anything that stands in your way.

• And instead of going at it alone (potentially getting caught up in the distractions) you’ll have accountability & guidance in bringing your visions to life alongside 8 other inspirational, visionary women doing the same!

For more information or to apply, check it out: HERE.

APPLICATIONS CLOSE: on July 17th, PROGRAM BEGINS: July 30th / Aug 1st.

MORE WAYS TO WORK TOGETHER:

1:1 Alignment Coaching: For Founders, CEOs, or Executives who are looking for more personalized sessions, I currently have one spot available for July.

Reach out to [email protected] with more details on why you’re interested in coaching to start the conversation!