The magic of mindfulness has gotten me through some of the worst times of my life.  We know there are always ups and downs – in life, in business, everywhere. We know that balance is key and that everything will correct itself in the end. In those low moments, I spent way too much time anxiously worrying about all the worst things that could happen. 

Worrying can feel like strategizing, but in reality, you’re making your mind feel as if you’re going through the traumatic event you’re thinking of. So you’re actually making the worst-case scenario come true because your brain doesn’t know the difference between an imagined experience and a real-life event. Your brain needs a break from the negativity, and the best way to do this is to take a moment to be mindful. 

In this week’s episode, we’re talking about the magic of mindfulness and how you can use it to see the light in the midst of all the chaos. Last year when I was stuck worrying about my problems, I couldn’t think of any solutions to my problems. But when I refocused my attention on mindfulness, I was able to see the solutions that were right in front of me. And you can too! Listen to this week’s episode to unlock the power of mindfulness. 

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Podcast production for this episode was provided by CCST.

Episode Transcript:

Erika: Hello friends. Welcome back to this week’s episode of Chingona Revolution podcast. I am recording from Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, our house in Mexico. And it has been a lovely trip so far. My friend’s wedding went amazing. It was so beautiful and just really, weddings are amazing, but they’re even more amazing whenever you’ve been a witness to somebody’s love story.

Right? So my trip has been amazing, amazing, but I have also been seeing all of the videos and the photos and the news articles about the devastating fires in Southern California. And I’m recording this a week prior to when this is going to be released. So hopefully by the time that this podcast is released, the fires are contained.

Hopefully everybody is safe, but I have close friends who many close friends who have had to evacuate. my goddaughter’s preschool has burned down in Pasadena. this fire is really causing a lot of devastation. I mean, I have other friends where Their childhood neighborhoods are completely in flames and based on, you know, what I know also about insurance, companies and insurance policies, a lot of companies, insurance companies have been canceling policies because of the increase in fires.

And it’s just a very, very difficult situation. So if you find yourself either affected by the smoke or having had to evacuate or even the fear of having to evacuate. I am sending you all prayers. I’m sending you a huge, huge hug. Please ask for help. Do not let your ego get in the way here of asking for support.

This is a traumatic event for the community. A lot of my clients are in Southern California. A lot of my friends are in Southern California. My family is there. Luckily where my family is, they are not affected at least not yet. Hopefully they will be. They won’t be, but this is definitely going to cause some, some devastation to the community.

and strangely enough, I was already planning to do a podcast episode to share with you all about a tool that I’ve been using since 2019 that has helped me navigate difficult times. It has helped me overcome anxiety at work. It’s helped me with breakups. It’s helped me with being an entrepreneur and it’s really what helped me start my business.

And the thing is that challenging things, it’s not about if they will happen. It’s about when will they happen? Right? Last week I talked about my grandmother passing away on my dad’s side. And that was actually pretty unexpected. We didn’t think that this was going to happen as quickly as it did. My grandmother’s always been the healthiest.

This grandmother has always been the healthiest of all my grandparents. And you know, we never know when things are going to happen. And these fires are a perfect example. Even just the fear of will we need to evacuate? Will we possibly lose all of the things that? We have in this home, right? Like our photos.

And I mean, there’s just so much there. And this is a very challenging time for a lot of people. And if you don’t find yourself in Southern California, but maybe you are going through a really hard time. Maybe you are going through a breakup. Maybe you’re trying to find a job. was coaching and courage driven Latina yesterday.

And a lot of my clients are on the job hunt and they are having such a difficult time. And it’s so easy to let our brains go to this worst case scenario and already living in the future of what could possibly go wrong. And I think especially as women, if you’re a woman of color, if you’re Latina, if you are, um, Asian American, or if you’re African American, I mean, it really, or just a woman in general.

I feel like we’ve definitely been conditioned to think of worst case scenarios and when our mind goes there, our body goes there too, right? Because our mind doesn’t,know the difference. between an imagined experience and an actual experience. So if you’re constantly anxious and worrying about the future, your body is reacting as if you’re already going through that traumatic event.

So for that reason, I wanted to share with you all. The power of mindfulness, or I should say the magic of mindfulness. This is something that has supported me through a lot of challenging, challenging times. I have my mastermind magnetic mastermind. We do something called the abundance activation. It’s pretty much we meditate for 30 days.

We do it in the context of like visualization and, and they all have manifestations that they’re working towards. So it’s a little structured, but at the core, we’re meditating for 30 days and the most amazing things happen in those 30 days or people who are going through difficult times are able to get through it so much easier.

So today I want to talk to you about the magic of mindfulness and. I want to tell you that you can go from living in this chaotic world where you feel like your mind’s constantly spinning to finding calm and clarity even in the middle of chaos. Does this mean that as soon as you start practicing mindfulness that Homes will no longer burn and fires won’t happen and bad things won’t happen.

No, that’s not what it means at all. Right? Let’s be very real here. Tough things happen and they will continue to happen and you don’t have control over those, but you do have control over how you react. And the power of mindfulness is that it allows you to be intentional with your reaction Instead of just reacting, it allows you to be proactive with the way that you are responding to things.

And I think it’s important to first talk about what in the world is mindfulness. So mindfulness is nothing more than paying attention. And it means to pay attention to what’s currently going on now to be mindful is to not be in the past, not be in the future because our brains can go there, right? We’re either living in the past or imagining what the future might be and sometimes in worst case scenarios, but the only thing that exists is right now.

Because when tomorrow comes, it will also be right now. And so many of us spend our time and energy worrying about the future or remembering the past. And no amount of rethinking the past is going to change the past. And no amount of worrying about the future is going to change the future. If anything, the more you’re worrying about the future, the more you’re bringing that experience into you, into your life, because.

That’s where your focus is. So your actions and your thoughts are going towards that intention of worry instead of a calm intention. And whenever we are in these elevated states of stress, it’s really hard for us to think creatively. It’s hard to make decisions. It’s hard to get ahead. It’s hard to create the life that we want because we’re just in survival mode.

So, Let’s talk about what the difference is between mindfulness and meditation. So if mindfulness is to simply pay attention, you can be mindful in a conversation, right? It’s like that you’re just being very present in that conversation. You can be mindful about washing the dishes. Let’s say you’re at somebody’s, you know, home and you’re helping them wash wine glasses that are very thin and thin glass.

And they’re sensitive and you’re like, I don’t want to break these. Let me pay attention to what I’m doing. Okay. That’s a very different experience than when you’re home and washing dishes and listening to music all out and not, you know, kind of tossing things around and that experience, you’re not being very mindful.

So mindfulness just means to pay attention to what’s going on now, not in the past. Not in the future, but right now. Meditation means to practice mindfulness through either sitting down, closing your eyes, or through walking. There’s also walking meditations. So meditation is just a form of mindfulness.

But the goal is to always be mindful. We’re not always mindful. I’m not always mindful. I literally did a meditation earlier and I found myself remembering the past, thinking about the future. And one of the big obstacles I hear whenever people say, I am not a good meditator. I don’t know how to meditate.

I have too many thoughts. Those are all the objections I hear, but meditation is not about never having a thought. Meditation is about being aware that you are having a thought. So let’s say that you find yourself in a devastating situation, or if you are constantly worried about What if we need to evacuate?

Does this mean? No, don’t ever think that. No, no, no, no. That doesn’t mean that. Yes. Prepare in the event that you may need to evacuate, but how can you, rather than being fixated on that and constantly worrying, if that’s something that you need to do, how can you be in the present moment now? Because life is happening right now.

It’s not happening in the past. It’s not happening in the future. It’s only happening now. Uh, the moment. And if we don’t pay attention to what’s currently happening, life’s going to flash right before our eyes and we won’t even be here for it. We won’t even be present for it. And it’s just so hard now to be mindful because it’s so easy to pick up your phone during a zoom meeting and just, you know, Scroll through social media.

It’s so easy to check your email while you’re doing other things, right? We’re, we’re the Kings and Queens of multitasking and of doing many things at once and, and of trying to be productive. And then we. Spend time alone or have time without our thoughts or our phone dies. And then we’re kind of losing it.

We feel a little anxious and it’s because we’re not used to being with ourselves and we’re not used to being in the present moment. But if we can build the skill of mindfulness and being the skill, building the skill of being with ourselves, it’s going to help us overcome these very difficult situations.

that we go through. And anybody who’s practiced a meditation can tell you they always feel calmer after a meditation. Maybe you’ve tried an app before, maybe you have tried to just do it on your own, or maybe you’ve been to a meditation class, but anybody who’s tried it, even if you felt restless in the moment, you typically feel calmer and collected after.

So let’s say that you do find yourself going through a breakup, or if you find yourself going through one of these Southern California fires and there’s a fear that you may need to evacuate when you’re not practicing mindfulness, when you’re not carving out time to be present, whether it’s through meditation or breath work is another way of being mindful, right?

Cause the breath is in the present moment. Your body’s in the present moment. Your body isn’t anywhere else. It’s typically your head that goes to the, to the past or to the future. And when you’re not practicing mindfulness, if you’re going through a breakup,These thoughts of what if they found somebody better than me or what if I end up alone or what if this or maybe you remember back to all, man, I shouldn’t have said that in this argument.

And that is the opposite of being mindful, right? That’s being in the past or being worrying about the future. remembering the past. And again, no amount of remembering the past is going to change what has happened. So in that situation, if you’re going through a breakup, being able to be present, being able to say, okay, I am where I am.

And just allowing yourself to feel in the present moment. is going to allow you to get ahead. It’s going to allow you to see that you are okay, that you actually learned a lot from this relationship, that if this person is going to be the person that’s in your life, they’re going to end up back in your life.

But through meditation and through mindfulness, again, whether you choose to do walking meditation, seated meditation, or just trying to be aware of your thoughts, even just journaling, right? Journaling allows you to be mindful of your thoughts as well. So what you want to do is essentially become the observer.

of what’s going on in your mind. I hope you’re all still with me here because I knew I wanted to record a podcast episode on mindfulness, but I decided to go back to where my dad’s family is tomorrow morning. So I booked a flight just a couple hours ago and I didn’t want to have to do it again. take my podcasting mic.

I didn’t know what the situation was going to be like there. So I decided to just record. And I did this last week too, where I ended up recording on a different day than I normally do because my friend’s wedding was happening. So I’m coming at you all very unstructured. I’m coming at you taking messy action.

I am coming at you being very imperfect. And you know what, that’s okay with me. And I hope it’s okay with you as well, because I’d rather get a podcast episode out than skip this week, especially this topic mindfulness. I truly believe that if people in the world practice more mindfulness, we would have a calmer.

more aware, higher consciousness world. The world would be a much better place. We live in chaos between social media, between traffic, between rushing to get to things, between trying to be productive. We were really are living in this chaotic world. So let’s go back to the other example. I was saying, if you just went through a breakup, now let’s say that maybe you were laid off.

Some of the things that can happen there is you’re worrying about the past. Like, Oh, what if I could have done better at work? Or what if I never find another job, right? These are the things that again, going to the past or going to the future where 

We’re worrying so much about what has happened or what can happen in the future, instead of being in the present moment right now, instead of realizing that right now, you no longer are working at a job that you maybe didn’t even like before, and you now have the opportunity to maybe switch to a different industry.

That you have the opportunity to network with people, and a lot of times there’s a lot of solutions in front of us, but if we’re so focused on living in the past or the future, we’re not going to see those solutions. So being mindful, practicing either meditation or mindfulness. is what is going to allow you to see the solutions that could have been right in front of you, but because you weren’t being mindful and present in that moment, you didn’t see them. Let’s say that you do find yourself in a situation where you have had to evacuate, or there’s the fear of evacuating. If you are worrying about, oh man, I shouldn’t have bought this house, or I have problems with my insurance. Or what are we going to do in the future? I want to be really clear too. These are all super valid thoughts.

It’s valid to worry about your family’s safety and future and having a place to live. This is also valid, but is it productive? Is it productive to you for you to spend all of your time and energy on, Oh my gosh, what if we end up unhoused? Oh my gosh, what if we never recover from this? Oh my gosh, what if this, that’s actually not helping you in this moment, but being able to practice mindfulness.

It’s what’s going to allow you to, instead of acting from survival, acting from this place of being proactive, packing a bag, getting, you know, your contacts in order, reaching out to family, reaching out to friends, having a few different plans. That is what being in the present moment is helping you do.

People think, Being in the present moment and practicing mindfulness is just sitting there and closing your eyes and like humming. And while that, yes, that can be part of it. And some people can look at this and be like, I don’t have time for that. I’m too busy. But the thing is when you do practice.

Mindfulness and meditation, you are more productive with the time that you do have, what is 10 minutes, 15 minutes in the grand scheme of things, if it is going to help you get to where you want to go much faster because you have a clear mind because you’re able to see the solutions that are in front of you.

So with all of that rant and me speaking really fast because I didn’t have an outline or a script or anything like that, but I wanted to make sure that I got this podcast episode out to you. That’s what I, that’s my argument for mindfulness. And I’ll share really quickly that when I started my business, I was practicing mindfulness every single day.

I was journaling, meditating, visualizing every single morning and my business flowed out of me. Like I, it creatively came out of me through the content ideas I had. I mean, I was manifesting things left and right. And in 2024, I lost that connection. And 2024 was probably one of the lower performing years, not ever in my business, but I was, my business no longer began to grow.

I feel like I was creatively in a rut. And it is only the 8th of January of the time of recording this podcast episode. And I’ve meditated just a few times over the last few days because my mastermind is going through our abundance activation, which as I mentioned earlier in the episode is 30 days of meditating.

And I’ve already seen a difference. In my business performance, in my level of creativity, I even ended up manifesting a potential brand opportunity in just a few days. So my big intention for this year is to practice mindfulness, to meditate, to visualize. And I do anticipate to share that journey with you all on the podcast.

Erika: So that is it for my rant. I figured the best way that we can end this podcast episode is by walking you through a short meditation. It does not have to take very long. I’m going to just do like a quick five minute meditation to help you be in the present moment.

And if you’re driving, obviously, please don’t do this. Um, you can do this as a walking meditation if you would like. I would recommend that you save this podcast episode. If you can’t meditate at this moment, maybe you’re in a public place. Maybe you are listening to this as you drive. Maybe you are with other people right now as you’re listening to this.

So I would recommend that you come back to this so that you can, um, follow this meditation. Or actually before the meditation. So let’s go ahead and get started. If you chose to do walking meditation, then you can go ahead and start walking. Definitely take your time as you walk. Try to not walk where there’s any traffic.

If you could be at a park or somewhere where you could really be present with yourself rather than having to worry about your surroundings. I highly suggest that. And if you are able to take a seat, I’m going to go ahead and close my eyes as I sit in this squeaky chair. Hopefully you can’t hear it. All right.

So go ahead and take a seat, close your eyes, bring awareness to your glutes, to your booty on whatever it is that you are sitting on. And I want you to be aware of how You don’t have to do anything to be held up by either the chair or the couch or the floor. You are fully supported right now through gravity and from planet Earth, and you don’t have to do anything.

We’ll go ahead and take a few deep breaths, take a big inhale through your nose, exhale through your mouth,

inhale through your nose, exhale through your mouth. Last one, big inhale through your nose, and slowly exhale through your mouth.

Be mindful of how your shoulders move. Maybe, might be up toward your ear and let them come down. Maybe as you were exhaling, they were coming down and now I’d like you to bring awareness to that space in between your eyebrows and go ahead and relax that space.

Bring attention to your arms and your hands. Are your fists clenched and what can you let go of there?

We’re only here for about three and a half more minutes. So, wherever you have to go after can wait, and wherever you were before, that’s in the past.

A helpful tool as you are meditating or practicing mindfulness is to focus on the breath. Notice that you inhale, notice that you exhale.

Go ahead and just follow your breath. Inhale, exhale.

And if a thought has popped up, that’s not a problem. That’s your brain’s job.

How can you view that thought like a cloud passing the sky?

You see, there’s no problem with thinking or being distracted, but the moment you realize you are thinking or distracted, that is mindfulness.

That is practicing mindfulness. That is being aware.

Many teachers call that the magic moment. That moment when you were like, Oh, I was just distracted.

Let’s bring our attention back to the breath.

And this practice is really about cultivating self awareness and getting to know who you are.

So I want you to be mindful of what happens

when you realize you’re distracted. Are you beating yourself up about it or are you not making it a problem? Thank you. Because remember, it’s not a problem.

Anytime you find yourself distracted, just come back to your breath. That is your anchor. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. And exhale.

Where do you feel your inhales and exhales? It could be your nose. It could be your chest. It could be your belly. And it might be helpful to just pay attention to that. to your belly inflating and then coming down or maybe your chest coming up and then coming down.

Now, in order to come out of this, let’s go ahead and take one big inhale and exhale through your mouth. Feel free to wiggle your fingers and your toes. And when you are ready, you can open your eyes

and congratulations. You just successfully meditated. I can tell you that even leading that was calming to me. So I don’t know how you felt going into this meditation and how you feel now, but I would love to hear it from you. Meditation and mindfulness were such big influences in my journey that one of my goals was to create a meditation app for women, specifically for women of color.

Somehow I got into like podcasting and content creation and I didn’t have the realization until recently that I can still do guided meditations and I could do them with different themes and I could do them on the podcast or I could do them in reels or there’s so many ways in which I can still deliver this.

So if you found this guided meditation helpful, I would love to hear from you. If you found this podcast episode helpful, please let me know. It is getting fairly late here. So I am going to, and this podcast episode, we have a good, a good amount of stuff recorded. Again, if you find yourself in a difficult situation, whether it’s the Southern California fires or just a difficult situation in your life, I highly recommend trying out meditation, trying out mindfulness.

I know it can feel like this is something that only rich white people do, but trust me, it’s not. It is available to you. All you need is your breath and that’s it. And that goes anywhere. The plane is a great place to meditate. The train is a great place to meditate in your room is a great place to meditate.

You can do it anywhere. All right, y’all let me know if you took anything away from this podcast episode and I will see you next week.