This short of the podcast is a little different. This one is a conversation Chris and Craig had during a sound check that turned into a relevant conversation.
Chris made an observation that Craig seems calmer and as it turns out Chris isn’t the only one that noticed this.
Find out why Craig seems calmer and learn how you can experience the same in your life.
Listen to Is Craig Calmer?
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Transcript:
Craig Graves: [00:00:00] Hello Through a Therapist’s Eyes tribe, this is Craig Graves your cohost coming at you with you weekly short episode of the podcast. And I’m excited about this one. This is something a little bit different. So if you’ve been listening, you know that there’s in the shorts, we usually take a little bit of content out of an existing show and just, you know, make it shorter.
I make a couple points about it. And then hopefully it’s a bite sized chunk that you guys can listen to and get some benefit from in a short amount of time. This one’s a little bit different though. So before we record each show, we do a sound check. And normally we just talk about random stuff, you know, shoot the bull a little bit, have some fun, talk, some talk, some smack.
But when I clicked record on this particular, sound check. Chris asked me a question or he made an observation about me if you will, and I thought my answer was relevant to not only a lot of things we’ve talked about on our show, but also mental health in general. So take a listen and we’ll follow up on the other end.
Chris Gazdik: [00:01:15] You seem calm. You doing something different, meditating different or something? You seem, you taking something? You just seem…
Craig Graves: [00:01:22] No, I’ve increased my breathing practices. Like I’m doing one in the morning, I’m doing one in the morning and I’m doing one in the evenings. I’m doing a visualization. So when I get up in the morning, I’ve already got my coffee maker and my water ready to go. All I gotta do is drink my water. Turn my coffee maker on. And then I journal and then I do a devotional and then I box breathe. We talked about box breathing, right?
Chris Gazdik: [00:01:54] No.
Craig Graves: [00:01:55] Okay. So a box breathe is a is, let’s just say a four count. So a four count in, a four count hold, a four count out, and a four count hold. So I’ll do that for 10 minutes. Then I do some form of movement, like mostly yoga, but I have done, I did a Tai Chi the other day, which was pretty freaking cool. I’m going to have to look into that more. And then I do a visualization. And so the visualization I’ve been doing is a future me where you picture yourself in the future, being in all the things that you aspire to be.
Right. And then there’s several different versions of that future made that I go through. And so, and then in the evenings, it’s harder to do in the evenings. Cause there’s so much stuff going on. You know, kids, jujitsu, podcasts, whatever. But in the evening I try to do at least five minutes of the box breathing and another meditation, and also do a closing journal entry every day.
Chris Gazdik: [00:02:57] Every day?
Craig Graves: [00:02:58] I do the morning practice every day. I don’t always get the evening in. Depending on how tired I am when I, I finally get to a point where I can actually do it. Some days I’m so exhausted. I just say,
Chris Gazdik: [00:03:11] Well, you seem calmer.
You seem calmer.
Oh, he’s practicing what he preach. I see the word power.
Craig Graves: [00:03:26] That’s right, man. So those are the questions I’m asking myself. When I write in my journal in the mornings and in the evenings. I at least, 99% of the time, I at least write in the journal at night. I don’t always do the breathing and visualization in the evening.
Chris Gazdik: [00:03:43] Qi Gong.
Craig Graves: [00:03:45] Qi Gong , yeah
Chris Gazdik: [00:03:50] Was I on and in the zone today or off and unbalanced? What contributed to this feeling? What were the top three positive things I accomplished or that happened today? What did I learn from them? I think you need to test your voice, huh? Test your voice. Aren’t we testing a volume.
Craig Graves: [00:04:23] Yeah, we’re doing a sound check.
Chris Gazdik: [00:04:26] Well, how’d you sound?
Craig Graves: [00:04:27] I don’t know. We’ll see in a minute, we’re still doing it. So Qigong is a centuries old system of coordinated body posture and movement breathing and meditation used for the purposes of health, spirituality, and martial arts training with roots in Chinese medicine philosophy in martial arts, qi gong is traditionally viewed by the Chinese and throughout Asia as a practice to cultivate and balance chi, translated as life energy.
Chris Gazdik: [00:04:57] Check this out. Well, in the evening, ritual, I’ve be really been thinking about the tacit knowledge stuff. Are there unsolved challenges? I would like my subconscious mind to help me solve tonight?
Craig Graves: [00:05:08] Yeah. That’s what I was talking, that’s what I told him. Oh, I write that in my journal.
Chris Gazdik: [00:05:11] I didn’t pick up on that. Holy cow, that’s right here.
Craig Graves: [00:05:15] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Pretty cool. Huh?
Chris Gazdik: [00:05:23] That’s crazy, man.
Craig Graves: [00:05:24] So that’s it, man. I’ve been doing that pretty regularly since I’ve started the Unbeatable Mind program again.
Chris Gazdik: [00:05:31] For what it’s worth I noticed before I said it, you seem calmer.
Craig Graves: [00:05:34] Cool, man.
So there you go, guys, that one’s, like I said, just a little sound check. And normally Chris and I are just spewing out random stuff, but he actually made that observation and it turned into a relevant piece of content that we decided to publish as a short. Because it’s relevant to our show. Some of the things we talked about in there, breathing, meditation; we did a book review of Commander Mark Devine, retired Navy SEAL’s book, Unbeatable Mind.
We’ve talked about the WIRM process, the redirect negative thoughts to positive thoughts. That’s out of unbeatable mind and the practices I talked about. In that little segment there practices that I’ve adopted that come pretty much straight out of Unbeatable Mind teachings, and not only did Chris notice that something was different, but my son actually said something to me about a week earlier about seeming a little calmer.
And so implementing practices, meditation, yoga, some of the things we talk about here on the show. It actually works and it doesn’t happen overnight. It’s a, I’ve been pretty consistent about doing these things morning and evening. And even before, I guess, I guess I really ramped it back up in June. And so I was writing in my journal and doing some breathing exercises, but I’ve kind of structured it differently now.
And I’m definitely more diligent about doing it in the morning, or I should say discipline. I don’t know what the right word is. And then adding it in the evening, you know, and I’ve also tried to be more consciously aware of my breath and those kinds of things during the day. And it’s helped me out tremendously.
So I’d encourage you to go back and listen to those shows on mindfulness and Unbeatable Mind. If you want to find out more about Unbeatable Mind, there’s a couple of ways you can do that. Unbeatable mind.com, Mark Devine has written several books. The Unbeatable Mind, The Way of the SEAL, and he’s got another one coming out soon.
He’s written a book called 8 Weeks to SEALFIT, Kokoro Yoga, and he’s actually teaching mental toughness and he does it through these practices. We’re talking about. And the reason I ramped my training back up, or my pra ctices is back up is because in June I signed up to get certified as an Unbeatable Mind coach.
And I’m hoping to complete that program sometime early spring, next year. So I’ll be talking about that more on the show. So keep listening if you’re interested in something like that, and I’ll tell you how to find out more information as we go along. Anyway, hope you enjoyed the little short segment.
Chris and I have been talking about a new way to support the show. We’ve got a link on our website. If you go to Through a Therapist’s Eyes dot com, there is a link to a supplement company, whole family products. If you click on that link, there’s 126, I think 126 products on the whole family products, website. They’re high quality products. They have CBD oils, natural hormone creams, sleep aids, anti-aging nutritional supplements, great stuff.
And if you make a purchase after clicking through from our website, then our podcast, Oh, that’ll help our podcast financially. And Chris, and I can continue to advertise and hopefully get some video equipment. So you can see our smiling faces in the future. And it would mean a lot to us. Okay. Thanks for listening guys.
And Chris and I will be out with some new episodes very, very soon.