Build an Unbreakable Mind: 7 Daily Habits to Transform Your Life

Explore the power of an unbreakable mind with Coach Myrna as she delves into the teachings of Lao Tzu and Bruce Lee's philosophy of being like water. Learn seven transformative daily habits to strengthen mental resilience and navigate life's challenges. From practicing presence and gratitude to mastering intentional action and acceptance, each habit builds mental fortitude. Coach Myrna shares personal insights and practical tips, urging listeners to embrace their experiences and grow. Tune in to discover how to cultivate a mind that bends instead of breaking.

In this 5 min Fridays with coach Myrna, Myrna explores the theme "7 Daily Habits to Build an Unbreakable Mind," inspired by the teachings of Lao Tzu alongside personal experiences. She emphasizes the importance of mental adaptability, similar to Bruce Lee's philosophy of being "like water," thus fostering mental resilience through presence, acceptance, and gratitude.

Listeners will gain insights into how daily habits shape mental strength, as Myrna highlights practices such as presence, which she symbolizes as a powerful grounding force. Through practical exercises like walking meditations influenced by Thich Nhat Hanh, alongside setting intentions and fostering gratitude, Myrna simplifies complex ideas into comprehensible steps. Her goal is to equip individuals with the tools to transform their mindset, engage deeply with their emotions, and respond to life's challenges with grace and strength.

Key Takeaways:

• Be Present: Practicing presence is crucial for building a strong mind, allowing you to harness the power of the current moment.
• Non-Judgment: Developing a non-judgmental approach helps you see others clearly without assigning narratives or biases.
• Gratitude's Impact: Embracing gratitude can influence not only your mindset but also your biological processes.
• Intentional Living: Reacting intentionally instead of automatically can lead to mastery over yourself and your decisions.
• Mindful Habits: Integrating small, daily mindful practices can significantly strengthen your mental resilience over time.

Timestamp Summary

0:02 Building an Unbreakable Mind Through Daily Habits
2:50 Harnessing the Power of Presence Through Walking Meditation
5:58 Mindfulness Habits: Observing Thoughts, Acceptance, and Non-Judgment
10:03 Practicing Non-Judgment and Finding Positivity in Conversations
12:25 Embracing Solitude and Gratitude for Personal Growth
14:57 Building Mental Strength Through Gratitude and Intentional Action

Link to Transcript 

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome back to the Transform Your Mind to Transform Your Life, the podcast. You're listening to Five Minute Fridays with Coach Myrna. Today I want to talk on the topic Seven Daily Habits to Build an Unbreakable Mind. So this episode was inspired by the teachings of Lao Tzu. But as always, I want to share what these principles have meant in my own life. You see, Bruce Lee famously said, be like water. Water is one of the strongest forces in nature, not because it's hard, but because it's adaptable. Pour water into a cup and it becomes the cup. Pour it into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. It changes its shape without ever losing its essence. And that is exactly how an unbreakable mind works. Most people think mental strength means never feeling fear, sadness, disappointment, or even anger, but it doesn't. An unbreakable mind feels everything. It simply refuses to be broken by anything. Your circumstances do not determine the strength of your mind. What does your daily habits do? I've also noticed something very interesting. People who have lived through incredibly difficult circumstances often develop extraordinary resilience. Meanwhile, people who've always had it easy can sometimes fall apart when they encounter the smallest inconvenience. You know, it takes strength to build a muscle. And how do we get strength? We get strength when we gotta fight. We when we've got to climb uphill when we just don't smooth sailing into life. You can't learn by anything just going smoothly. Yes, you have to have challenges. All right. So it takes some practice to build an unbreakable mind. So let's talk about the seven practices that can help build your mind. Habit number one, practice presence. The present is a your presence is a present. Have you ever heard Lord deck? Yes, because um when you are present, then everything is right with you. You are holding space between the past and the future. So presence is the foundation of a strong mind. Most of us spend our lives somewhere other than where we are right now. Your body is eating dinner while your mind is replaying yesterday's argument. Your body is walking through your the park while your mind is worrying about tomorrow or conversation you just have or what your kids are doing. You're never in the present moment. But every time your mind wanders into the past or the future, you lose power. Presence brings you back to your power. Every morning when I walk in the park, I practice walking meditation. Not for the whole time because I'm not that strong mentally, but for a specific time, maybe 10 minutes or so, I do a walking meditation that I learned from the monk Tiknan Han. So, what is a walking meditation? I notice each step, I notice the trees, I notice the birds singing, I feel the warmth of the sun on my skin, I notice the wind as it hits my face, right? I notice my arm moving. And what do I do? I also breathe. When I'm breathing in, I'm walking, I'm taking three steps, and I'm saying yes, yes, yes. That is yes to whatever the universe is sending to me. And then I say thank you, thank you, thank you. So that's my walking meditation. It is affirmations, it is consciousness, and I do that for about 10 minutes or so on my hour walk. So, and then we can do it for longer, but that is how difficult being in the present moment is. So, presence is like with lifting weights for your attention. The more you practice bringing your mind back to the present moment, the stronger your mind becomes. Just this morning, I was doing a meditation while I was still in bed because I do meditations before I wake up and when I'm going to sleep. And when I was doing a meditation, it was about for 10 minutes, pay attention to the space that's in front of your body, the space that's aside of your body, and the space up behind your body. And why was I doing that? Because it is said that your soul is in the the beginning, the atmosphere that's around or right in front of your body. So for 10 minutes, I was paying attention to my soul. You know how powerful that is, and how hard to so yes, pay attention to the presence moments. Habit number two is learn to release your thoughts. One of the greatest discoveries you can ever make is this you are not your thoughts. Thoughts are not facts, thoughts are not truth, they are simply mental events passing through your mind. Most suffering comes because we believe every thought we think. Instead, become the observer of your thoughts. Notice your thoughts without chasing them. Don't argue with them, don't try to suppress them, just watch them. I'm gonna talk a lot about meditation in this segment. I do a meditation too, where I think of my thoughts as colored balloons and watch them float away, right? You observe them and then you let them go, right? I simply watch them float across the sky until it disappears. Eventually, I realize something amazing. The thought disappears, but I remain. This is the witness within you, right? So, yes, become the observer, become the witness. That is how you are being. That's when you're present, that's when you're being, you're being who you are, you're not chasing thoughts. Habit number three is practice acceptance. Another difficult one. Such important information. This one changed my life. Stop resisting reality. Acceptance doesn't mean you approve of everything, it simply means you stop wasting energy wishing reality was different. Water doesn't complain about the container it's poured into. It simply adapts. And many of us spend years fighting reality. This shouldn't have happened. Life isn't fair, they shouldn't have treated me this way. Resistance drains away your energy. Acceptance gives you your energy back. This reminds me of the serenity prayer. I hope you know it. I hope you say it often, but this is how it goes. God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things that I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. The wisdom is where peace begins. Now, there's another monk that I follow that says something like don't fight any of your thoughts, don't fight anything because guess what? It's already here. There's nothing you can do about it. When the thought comes, don't try to push it away, it's already here. Life is already here, life has already happened, so there's no point in saying you don't accept it because guess what? It's already here. Right. So, habit number four is practice non-judgment. This is one of my biggest challenges, I'll be honest. I'm naturally judgmental as a life coach. My brain is trained to notice what isn't working, it sees patterns, I see blind spots, I see problems, but I also create stories. So it's nothing wrong with seeing things as it is and saying, you know what, I see this. But a lot of times we create stories. I see this, and because I see this, this is the story behind it. So every morning I stop and talk to people in the park. There's one woman who, without fail, tells me something negative. I mean every conversation. So I have labeled her a negative person, and that is why she has always something negative to talk about, because that is the space that she lives in. So I've labeled her and I'm judgmental by her. But do I go ahead and create a story about what her life is? No, I leave it at that. But one day she told me that someone's purse got stolen from their car. And this is one of my fears because I take everything in my purse, right? So I'm always dreaming of losing my purse on Instagram. That's how much it takes up space in my mind. So when she told me someone got purse, you know, the car got broken into and the person stole their purse, I took heed of that. And from then on, I started locking my purse in my trunk. So sometimes someone can come to you with negative information and you use it to inform your life. You know, if someone can be talking about haters or rapists going around, then you lock your doors and lock your windows. But yes, you shouldn't be the bearer of bad news, you shouldn't be the person that someone doesn't like to see coming because they know that all you've got to talk about is something negative. That is not me. I do not see negativity, I see the positive, and rarely that I go into the negative. So that's a story. So practicing non-judgment means observing people without immediately assigning stories. You can label them because I do, but you don't have to assign, you know, you don't have to assign stories to them. When we stop judging, we become more compassionate and our minds become vider. You know, you're carrying around all this judgment, right? You're letting go of some of these judgments, right? Number five, practice solitude. Yeah, one of the very, very first books that I read on personal growth and development was the book The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari. And in there, he talked about how the monks in the Himalayas have days of silence where they don't speak unless spoken to. And I have done that over the course of my life, not for very long. And then I hear I interviewed some woman on the sh on the show that is gone for a week without speaking. Solitude and not speaking is very, very important. Learn to love being alone, even if it's just for a few minutes. Very few people can be alone with themselves. We constantly have to fill the empty space with music, television, podcasts, social media, books, noise. Silence can feel uncomfortable, but that's when we finally hear ourselves. Lately, I've been practicing simply lying down, closing my eyes and breathing. Nothing else. No phone, no music, no distractions, not even guided meditations. I just learn to breathe in. Breathing in, I know that I'm breathing in. Breathing out, I know that I'm breathing out. And that's it. And if you can just even get rid of the mental commentary and just breathe in and out, that'll be even better, right? Solitude is allowing you to become an empty cup. And what is an empty cup? Things fill it, and it's amazing what wisdom begins to emerge when we finally stop the noise. Habit six, one of my favorites, practice gratitude. Your brain naturally searches for problems. We're hardwired that way. That's how humans have surprised survived. Psychologists call this the negativity bias. Gratitude retrains your brain to notice what's good, right? So every morning, think of three things you're genuinely grateful for. Don't just make a list, feel it. Let gratitude move through your body. I've always started my prayers by thanking God for my life. But one of my guests shared something that stayed with me. He explained that gratitude just doesn't change your mindset, it changes your biology. He says that when you experience gratitude, your body responds. This gives me a completely new appreciation for this practice. He actually went further to say that gratitude infuses yourselves at the molecular level, right? And it puts energy around it. Beautiful energy cushing, like he quitted it to the water that surrounds a goldfish, right? Think about it. That's what gratitude does for your cells. So practice it. You know, there's so many things that you can be grateful for, right? Doesn't have to be big things, it can be just the fact that you've got life, right? That you've got breath, that you can see, that you can hear, that you can swallow. This was one for me because I've had so many family members that got strokes and couldn't feed themselves. They had to have a feeding tube. So so many times I practice gratitude that I can swallow, right? That I can walk, so important small things. Of course, you can practice the fact gratitude for the fact you have a money in the bank, food in your fridge, electricity, so many different things, right? So when you experience genuine gratitude, your body responds. So I've always also learned to catch myself when I'm complaining, which isn't very often. So instead of asking, why has this happened to me? I try to ask, what is this teaching me? The Bible reminds us that all things work together for the good of those who love God. So my guest was saying that you need to be grateful for even negative things that happen to you in life because it's for a purpose, it's taking you to the highest expression of your soul, right? So every painful season can become part of your purpose, right? So remember to be grateful for the good and the bad and the ugly. All right, we're getting to the end of it. Habit seven: practice intentional action. The final habit is learning to choose your response. Most people react, strong minds respond. There's a pause between what happens and what you choose to do. Meditation has helped me discover this pause. I've noticed that I'm no longer as reactive as I used to be, and I'm proud of that growth. But here's the next level that I'm working working on. Before responding, I ask myself, what is my highest value here? What kind of person do I want to be in this moment? And then I respond intentionally. That's real mastery, not controlling other people, but controlling yourself. That is what builds an unbreakable mind. So none of these habits require money, none require any special talent, they simply require daily practice. Don't try to master all seven at once. Choose one, practice one every day for a week. That's what I've been doing. I started with the non-judgmental thing and you practice it. Gratitude was already there for me, but still, I've added some little legs to it. You then move on to the next one, you know, and then you can recycle them. A few in the months from now, you'll notice something remarkable. Life hasn't necessarily become easier, but you become mentally stronger. You still experience pain, you still experience disappointment, but like water, you bend instead of breaking. Like water, you go around the obstacles and you don't just get stuck because something is in front of you. That is what an unbreakable mind looks like. So I enjoyed this episode. I hope that you enjoyed it too, and I hope that you were encouraged to be like water. Share this with someone who could use a little bit more resilience and mental strength today. And remember, your mind is your greatest asset, it controls this body. Train it every day, and it will carry you through the seasons of life. All right, guys. Well, listen, thank you for tuning in to this week's episode of Transform Your Mind Five Minute Fridays with Coach Myrna. Like and share and comment. This is how this episode gets shared with more people. I appreciate you. Thanks for tuning in. Until next time, Namaste.