Andy Puddicombe

Lewis Howes:                 This is 5-Minute Friday!!

I am very excited to introduce you to Andy Puddicombe who is a mediation and mindfulness expert. In his early 20’s he made the unexpected decision to travel to the Himalayas, to study meditation. It was the beginning of a ten year journey which took him around the world, culminating [in his] ordination as a Tibetan Buddhist monk in Northern India.

He later decided he wanted to transition to 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.

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

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

Lewis Howes:                 The training lasts.

Andy Puddicombe:        Yeah, the training lasts. So, there is 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.

The same with meditation in everyday life. The idea is not to make it all about the meditation, those ten minutes, because, what about the other 23 hours and 50 minutes? Right?

So it’s how do we take that and translate it into our life. In the same way, how do you take those years of training? And after a while there isn’t 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, so, of course I have moments, and if the baby hasn’t slept for a number of nights, then…

Lewis Howes:                 How do you handle that, when you’re just agitated or you’re frustrated or something? What’s your process?

Andy Puddicombe:        Yeah, I don’t really have a kind of, “Okay, right, now I have 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.

Lewis Howes:                 A couple of minutes, ten minutes? A couple of seconds?

Andy Puddicombe:        Yeah, look, even in the night, a few, ten, twenty, thirty seconds is enough to kind of let go of the frustration 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 realise, “Oh, yeah, it’s just because of that,” then we kind of let go of it. It doesn’t mean that we love the situation, but at least now we’re not pushing against it, resisting, and causing even more stress and tension.

Lewis Howes:                 And it’s not owning us.

Andy Puddicombe:        Exactly, exactly.

Lewis Howes:                 Interesting. Do you have, like, a go-to mantra or meditation practice, in these situations? I mean, your app, obviously, you have all these different chapters and categories, but what do you personally do in that moment when the baby’s crazy or someone says something to you, or the traffic, you know? What’s the go-to for you?

Andy Puddicombe:        There’s a little bit at the end, I know you’ve used the app, so, there’s a little bit at the end, whatever one you’re doing, where 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 short-cut. 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 ten, twenty seconds, it’s a game changer. If you think, you’re in the middle of a really intense situation, and someone’s like, “Oh, just learn meditation.” You’re still struggling to even deal with [this], never mind learn new stuff.

So, it doesn’t mean we can’t use it for those things, but, I mean, if we can get into a cycle, form a habit, in the same way, we don’t wait for our teeth to go really bad… Well, in Britain we do.

Lewis Howes:                 But you clean them so they don’t get bad.

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

 

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