Meditation and gratitude can change lives. I know that’s a bold claim, but you will find through today’s conversation that the way our guest approaches these skills really is transformational and it will change your life and in turn, help your daughter. This is an opportunity for Sports Moms to do their own personal work as well to influence their daughter’s environment.

Today, we’re talking about meditation and gratitude with our special guest, Lori Saitz. Lori is the CEO of Zen Rabbit, and she is a transformational meditation coach. She helps high performers transform their minds from stressful and chaotic, to calm and focused through her collaborative approach. She guides them to increase focus, energy, and happiness.

Tune in as we talk about meditation and gratitude. You’ll learn some tangible ways that you can incorporate both and also help your female athlete in her sport.

What meditation and gratitude is and the importance of it in our daily lives

Meditation can be defined as engaging in contemplation, reflection, and/or mental exercises to reach a higher level of awareness. Many of us are aware that there are a lot of benefits to meditation, yet most of us don’t practice it regularly. 

Meditation decreases anxiety and increases resilience. It helps people spend less time thinking about their past mistakes which is important for athletes and their parents.

It helps calm our minds and in the process ignites creativity. Meditation helps regulate emotions and boost emotional intelligence. It helps you get less drawn into conflict.

Meditation also allows moms to show up as the sports parent they want to be; a Mom with good emotional stability is able to help provide a calm environment for her daughter. Meditation practices are also something that a mom and daughter can create as a shared experience with one another.

Gratitude, then, is defined by the quality of being thankful and expressing appreciation.

Both meditation and gratitude have the ability to rewire your brain. Our brains are wired and influenced by any outside forces and everything in our environment. It gets rewired without our conscious attention. 

So, conscious meditation and gratitude help you get that control back. It’s important to know that gratitude is the highest emotion that you can feel and it is in the same vibration as love. When you’re grateful you attract more positivity. 

You can practice the habit of always looking for something good. Find something to be grateful for in the midst of the negativity. It is different from neglecting or sugarcoating how you feel. You are allowed to feel what you want to feel, but don’t stay in that negative feeling over the long run. 

Feel it, but after that, find something to be grateful for.

How you can improve your daughter’s performance through your meditation and gratitude practice

All we have control of is ourselves. When you change yourself, you change your attitude and then energy. You can affect other people by how you handle yourself. 

So, the key is to focus on changing yourself first and allowing that to ripple outward to your daughter and others. 

A lot of people don’t do meditation because they think it’s a waste of time, but investing a little time now to meditate saves time later.

You can meditate for at least 5 minutes. Just 2-5 minutes allows your nervous system to calm down; it syncs your heart and your brain. 

If you disregard spending that 2-5 minutes now to meditate, you would be wasting your time later spiraling into negative thoughts and feelings without knowing what to do and how to calm yourself.

You can recognize when you are in a situation you don’t want to be in, then figure out something you’re grateful for there.

Practice saying, “I’m in a bad situation now, but I’m grateful for…”

All of these practices will shape your daughter’s environment by how you show up, the example you set for her, and maybe even starting these practices together!

Tangible and easy ways to incorporate meditation and gratitude into your daily life

Set your day up in the right way. 

• You can start the day with meditation if it works for you. 
• You can end your day by writing a journal and thinking about the things that went well during the day. That’s a great way to relax your mind to sleep, and it puts you in gratitude mode.

You can go throughout your day with positivity and kindness. Acknowledge people who don’t get a lot of acknowledgment. It’s a matter of kindness and putting yourself in a positive ambiance.

As a sports mom, what are you modeling for your daughter?

If you want your daughter to learn how to meditate and be in a place of gratitude you have to start meditation and being grateful yourself. It is more effective when you set yourself as an example vs. telling them what to do without practicing your advice. 

To sum it up;

• Meditation and gratitude help people/athletes perform better in any circumstance. It allows us to control and create a calm environment which is better practice to influence your daughter or the people around you.
• You can practice meditation and gratitude by recognizing what you feel and then look for something to be grateful about.
• Set up your day in the right direction by giving time to meditate, reflect and be present.

Meditation is an investment in yourself and helps your female athletes be more confident with how they handle themselves in any type of circumstances. 

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Helpful Links:

• Hang out with Lori Saitz on social @zen_rabbit and learn more about working with her!
• Join our FREE Training – How To Strengthen Your Athlete Daughter’s Mental Game Without Being Pushy Or Saying The Wrong Thing
• Join us inside our FREE Facebook Group – The Elite Competitor Society – for weekly Q&A, periodic trainings and challenges, and the support of an amazing community of moms, coaches, and the men who partner with us!

The BEST way to help us spread the word and get this information into the hands of millions of parents, coaches, and female athletes is by leaving a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. Thank you in advance for joining us on our mission!