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    Mindset in Daily Life: chasing away the mosquitoes
    Mindset in Daily Life: chasing away the mosquitoes
    Mindset in Daily Life: chasing away the mosquitoes
    Ebook170 pages2 hours

    Mindset in Daily Life: chasing away the mosquitoes

    By Jackie Reardon and Hans Dekkers

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    About this ebook

    Are you looking for a more balanced approach to life?

    This book teaches you how to deal with pressure and enjoy challenges. It guides you through the exact same exercises business leaders, world-class performers and professional athletes have done to perform at their very best when it matters most. You'll get all the practical tools to train how to stay relaxed and focused at the same time under all circumstances. If you're looking for a way to enhance your concentration level that will improve the quality of your everyday life, Mindset in daily life is your go-to guide.

    High performance coach and former professional tennis player Jackie Reardon has trained a wide array of peak performers. She uses unorthodox mindfulness exercises with sport as a metaphor to improve their focus and awareness. Combining her expertise in professional sports and mindfulness she developed a hands-on philosophy called Friendly Eyes to guide company leaders, stage performers and athletes of all levels to reach their best. Friendly Eyes means: being kind to ourselves, being kind to others and to observe without judgment. Because by being friendly to yourself, you can make the progress you want.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMindset Publishers
    Release dateMar 15, 2018
    ISBN9789082797404
    Mindset in Daily Life: chasing away the mosquitoes

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      Book preview

      Mindset in Daily Life - Jackie Reardon

      for Ellen Baarslag and Sandra Polderman

      This book is published by

      Mindset Publishers

      IJsbaanpad 43

      1076 cv Amsterdam

      The Netherlands

      Translator Beverley Jackson – jacksonacademic.nl

      Graphic design Aart Jan Bergshoeff – aartjan.nl

      Drawing mosquitoes and stars Merel Barends

      Cover design - Hans Bos - kochxbos.com

      ISBN 978-90-827974-0-4

      First edition 2013

      Second edition 2015

      Third edition 2016

      Fouth edition 2018

      © 2013/2015/2016 /2018 Mindset Publishers, Amsterdam Text © 2013/2015/2016/2018 Jackie Reardon and Hans Dekkers

      Photo credits

      Acceptance: © Tetra Images/Corbis

      Good mistakes: © Fotolia

      The bird: © Dreamstime

      Medusa: © Nikki Evans

      Surfguru: iStockphoto – Ant Creations

      No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by print, photocopy, microfilm or any other means without prior written permission from the publisher. The publishers have done their utmost to respect the rights of third parties. ­Anyone who believes that certain rights can nonetheless be asserted may apply to the publishers.

      Mindset tm is a protected brand in the Benelux – friendlyeyes.com

      INDEX

      CHASING THE MOSQUITOES AWAY

      The beginnings and the method

      ‘To be or not to be’

      Ikkyu

      The star and the cloud of mosquitoes

      A footstep on the moon

      Medusa’s spell

      The cook and the ten mosquitoes

      THE PILLARS

      FIRST PILLAR: Friendly eyes

      Friendliness, energy, or must it be a Nobel Prize?

      SECOND PILLAR: Good mistakes

      A red sock

      THIRD PILLAR: Curiosity

      The coconut

      FOURTH PILLAR: Self-knowledge

      To Uzbekistan

      FIFTH PILLAR: Self-discipline

      Ever heard a mill-horse whistling?

      SIXTH PILLAR: Acceptance

      A complete waste of time!

      THE CONCENTRATIONS

      THE FOUR TYPES OF CONCENTRATION

      Searching for a brooch

      FEELING INSTEAD OF THOUGHT

      The body as a vehicle

      BATS, OWLS AND MONSTERS

      So, does all this mean that thoughts are unimportant?

      YOU HAVE (NOT) REACHED YOUR DESTINATION

      A small digression

      THE INSTRUMENTS

      INTRODUCTION

      VISUALIZATION

      Daydream or destination?

      MEDITATION

      Training attention

      BEATHING

      Stressful or calm, chest or abdomen?

      YOGA

      Stretches your mind too!

      NATURE

      The green medicine

      MUSIC

      The melodic medicine

      TRIGGER WORDS & MANTRAS

      The secret of Hollywood and top athletes

      THE ART OF ACTION

      CREATING NEW HABITS

      A daily training program for action thinking

      POETRY

      ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      RECOMMENDED READING

      Action is about living fully.

      Inaction is the way that we deny life.

      – DON MIGUEL RUIZ: The Four Agreements

      THE BEGINNINGS

      AND THE METHOD

      In 2007 we wrote the book Mindset. Although it was originally intended as a mental guide for sport, we soon discovered that many people were using the Mindset method in different areas of life. People from all sorts of professions, from teachers to health care workers, from business people and lawyers to musicians, told us the book had enriched their lives. This inspired us to write a sequel: a book that is less about sport and more about mindset in everyday life.

      The mindset method works in four stages:

      Making a conscious choice to adopt action thinking instead of story thinking

      Six pillars for more self-knowledge and better self-management

      Four types of concentration for attention control

      Seven instruments for achieving mental tranquillity

      Mindset is based on the belief that we have a choice as to how to approach the world and ourselves. We describe a course of life that you may decide to adopt.

      – Do you choose to live on the basis of ‘story thinking’: constantly judging both yourself and the other, distracted, fearful, rushed and impatient? Another characteristic of story thinking is the constant noise in your head - like being attacked by mosquitoes - random thoughts about the past and the future, which do nothing to advance the things you really want to focus on.

      – Or do you choose to live on the basis of ‘action thinking’: observing without judging, focusing your attention on the here and now. Continuously investing by giving all your actions quality. Being relaxed and focused at the same time, calm and present at the same moment? Action thinking is having a clear understanding of the quality of your thoughts and being capable of choosing where to focus your attention. You learn how to chase the mosquitoes away.

      To choose to live on the basis of action thinking, and to change your mode of thinking and behaviour, you first need insight.

      We combine two approaches that you can use to make action thinking tangible and easy to train. One of these approaches has to do with insight and raising your consciousness of your behaviour by making use of Mindset’s six pillars, derived from mindfulness. The other one has to do with controlling your attention and using the four concentrations, derived from the world of sport.

      The pillars structure your self-management, and the concentrations help you to know precisely what you’re focusing on. They are the two wings of the bird (see below). If one of them is not working, the bird can’t fly.

      We shall explain each of these six pillars, one step at a time, as well as the four concentrations, and apply them to everyday life. The first section of the book, on the pillars, provides a philosophical framework for the method and teaches insight into better self-management. The second part, on the different types of concentration, focuses on practical situations in everyday life and offers a program in which you can train your mindset.

      Mindset in daily life grew out of our experiences with Mindset and consists of further reflections on the subject. No one can achieve his or her best performance in sport without reaching ‘feeling’, one of the four concentrations. The same applies to people’s actions in everyday life. Action starts with feeling. One of the most important goals of this book is to clarify the concept of ‘feeling’ with practical, concrete examples. ‘Feeling’ is the essential bridge between thought and action, and practical instruments are needed to gain access to it.

      We are convinced that after reading Mindset in daily life, ‘feeling’ will no longer seem like an abstract, vague and rather woolly concept. Both Mindset and Mindset in daily life were written to provide tools that can help turn impatience, tension and frustration into self-confidence and pleasure. We based many of our insights on the practice of meditation and the philosophy of life that are associated with mindfulness. We gratefully acknowledge the lessons we have learnt from the work of a number of inspiring individuals. In particular, we should like to thank S.N. Goenka, Jon Kabat-Zinn, Joseph Goldstein, Eckhart Tolle, Marshall B. Rosenberg, Stephen Covey and Anthony Robbins.

      This book, and the method discussed in it, also derived inspiration from the many books, studies, meditation courses and academic literature on the workings of the conscious mind. For more information about these sources, see the list of recommended literature at the back of the book.

      With our method, we try to make all these studies and experiences tangible and to supply ways of putting them into practice, with a view to encouraging a more balanced and effective way of life.

      The knowledge itself is by now widely accepted, but it is not widely applied. In other words, everyone knows about it, but few put it into daily practice. Given that action thinking generates so much energy and gives so much pleasure, this is rather peculiar.

      Our goal is to present a number of complex theories in a down-to-earth and light-hearted way, thus being able to avoid any surprise attacks by mosquitoes.

      We are delighted to be able to offer you a free online mental video program to show you exactly how to deal with the mosquitoes

      www.friendlyeyes.com

      ‘TO BE OR NOT TO BE’

      To be or not to be, that is the question. This line from Shakespeare’s Hamlet is perhaps the most famous quotation from world literature. The arch-doubter Hamlet ponders to himself whether it is better to live or die: to accept life with all its responsibilities or to be released from them. Hamlet loses himself in thought and has difficulty taking action. He remains a worrier, a brooder, and suffers because of it.

      We all have a bit of Hamlet in us. We often find ourselves paralyzed by the noise of constant thinking. Sometimes we turn things over our minds endlessly without taking action, or the action we do take is

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