Unexpected Key to Success : Using Meditation to Level Up Your Life with Tom Cronin

Tom Cronin: I'm doing fantastic, actually. It's a great day.

Tom Cronin: At the moment, my professional life is it's really exciting. It's really growing and taking on new twists and turns every day as I explore how to play bigger and impact more. So at the moment, my professional life revolves around speaking with corporates and doing training programs in organizations and helping staff reduce their stress. So some of the biggest companies I've been working with, like Amazon, Oracle, Coca Cola, Harvard Business School. And I work on another professional level, which is working with yoga teachers, meditation, teachers, breath workers, PTs, helping them scale and grow their businesses. I noticed when I went into this space that a lot of them, when I transitioned out of finance and into this, that, um, you know, they were really struggling. So I wanted to sort of really support them in setting up more [00:02:00] sound and sustainable businesses and doing a lot of sort of teaching meditation as well. A big part of what I love to do is help people learn how to deexcite their mind and their body to running a meditation program. So the business is really, it took a while to get there. I must admit it was not an easy transition out of my corporate life into this space. You know, I had a very high optimism. And we call it Zentropreneurship. So getting into that conscious entrepreneurship is like, Oh, this is give me a walk in the park. I'll make lots of money, but it was a quite a windy, challenging journey that needed, um, a lot of resilience, commitment, dedication, and persistence.

And it's starting to pay off now.

Mike Forrester: Awesome. And was the meditation something that helped to like create that resiliency, that determination, and, and, you know, just like that. That drive to keep going through those, those hurdles you faced.

Mike Forrester: And that was one thing I was going to ask you. I'm like, you know, like one of the frustrations that I've, I've heard about in meditation and I've experienced is like, my mind just wants to wander and go places. So, like you're saying, it's not necessarily a bad thing to have your mind going, it's just maybe understanding where it's going. Is that almost like a horse? You're kind of reigning it in and, and not letting it go willy [00:06:00] nilly, but controlling it, so to speak. Is that right?

Mike Forrester: So you're being intentional, just like when you talk about going to the, yeah, like when you're going to the gym, you're like going, Hey, I'm going to work out arms. And, and you're, you're going there on purpose, um, in a, in a purposeful state, um, I guess is the best way to put it there. Well, let me, let me jump back. We talked about the professional side. Let's talk about the personal side. Um, what does life look like for you today, uh, on the personal side of life?

Mike Forrester: Yeah, not living every day, almost like a time, energy and financially like a paycheck to paycheck, so to speak, but [00:12:00] having that, that map, knowing that it, you know, if I want to get to where you're, you know, you're talking about that end destination, let me set my compass in life to align with it, and then check it.

Mike Forrester: Yeah. It's, it's challenging enough where we're at looking at somebody else. It's like, okay, I'm just going to stick with my shoes and what I'm in, there's enough packed in. [00:14:00]

Tom Cronin: Yeah.

Mike Forrester: Let's, let's jump from there. And let's talk about, like we said, uh, you were over 25 years in the financial industry. 10 years in, um, was when you discovered like, um, meditation and that was like a transformative just situation and equipping for you. Can you share like what it was like for you at work, um, before you discovered meditation and then how did it change afterwards? Because you stayed in that for 16 years after that point.

Mike Forrester: So it's not only decreasing like the stress and the anxiety, everything that you know, you're feeling from a fast pace environment, but it sounds like it's also elevating like your resilience, your capability, how you perform, um, how you even show up. Is that accurate?

Mike Forrester: Wow. Um, and you were there in the financial, um, [00:21:00] district, like that, that financial role you said for 16 more years. And so it gave you courage and confidence and gave you that unruffledness like you've talked about. You then transition and stepped out and, and started doing the teaching and the coaching. How did how did that phase go? You know, like going from what you knew Monday through Friday to something that, you know, you may not know what's going to go on two hours from now. How did that transition work?

Mike Forrester: Gotcha. Did the meditation help you to like retain your identity? So when, especially we as guys, like when we, you know, get laid off or you know, we're moving from positions that job is our identity, right? Without it, it's like, who am I? What do I do? What's my purpose? [00:24:00] Did the meditation help you during that transition to still know, Hey, I'm Tom. This is my value, my worth and, and everything along those lines?

Mike Forrester: And when you're envisioning who you want to be, are you looking at all aspects of your life? Not just, um, not just professional. Are you looking at like, Hey, this is who I want to show up as a husband, and a father, and a friend, and just who I am at my [00:28:00] core. Are you kind of doing like a full, like 360 scope, um, envisioning of that?

Mike Forrester: Yeah, the way I've heard it before is imagine you're sitting at a bar stool and it's got 3 legs, right? 2 of the legs, maybe 3 feet and the other one's 2 and a half. It's not going to be a comfortable spot to sit in.

Tom Cronin: I love that. Yeah.

Tom Cronin: Yeah, I'd love to take everyone through this exercise and I'll give you a little prelude as to why we want to do it, and what we need for it. Ideally, um, it would be best done not while you're driving a car because we're going to close our eyes. So, if you're walking or driving a car or at the gym, you can come back to this afterwards, because what we're going to need is just to sit in a chair, ideally with very little distractions. We'll only go for 2 or 3 minutes. It'll just be, ideally, what I recommend is [00:31:00] doing it for minimum five to 10 minutes, if not up to 20 minutes to really notice a powerful effect. We'll probably run it for about three minutes just so we don't take up too much time, but if you, all we're going to do is just lengthen that out if you wanted to using a timer or something. But why we want to do it is this, what's deep in our DNA, deep in our structure, deep in our code as a man, is a default system that when things are confronting or challenging or difficult, we will default to one of two options. One is, and just say we're, we're on a, uh, an open field and we're traveling through some landscape in America and a marauding tribe back in many, many thousands of years ago suddenly emerges over a hill, or a massive bear or saber tooth tiger suddenly emerges, and we have a split second decision making process that happens inside of us, and we default to one of [00:32:00] two things, and this is very primal reptilian brain functionality, where we go in a nanosecond we weigh up whether we can win this battle and take it on and move forward in attack, or whether we're not going to win this battle. So the best thing I do here is retreat. Okay? And I'm going to run like crazy. And so what happens is that unfortunately plays out in so much of men's lives today, where if we're confronted, it could be your partner saying, why didn't you put the bin out today? And you're like, I think I can win this battle. So we will get on attack and we will start screaming at them because the more we get aggressive, the louder we scream, the more we shake our fists, or the harder we punch, then the more we can win that conflict. Or, if we don't think we can win that conflict, Well screw you, I'm out of here. And then we retreat in defense mode into the pub and we go and drink ourselves stupid, or we just go into silence and, you know, go into our man [00:33:00] shed, literally or figuratively, in withdrawal mode. And we can do that at work, we can do that in our relationships. We can do that as countries. And we're seeing this happen right now in the world, in a number of different places where, Okay, I think I can beat this opposition. So I'm going to go into attack mode. Um, and so it doesn't work well when we're in this current world environment. It's fine if we're in a saber tooth tiger sort of scenario or marauding tribe, but we're in a much more sophisticated world, and that binary option making decision making process is not relevant anymore. And we have to learn a third model, which was how do I sit here in a calm state and think of a better solution than attack or run? And how do I find a better way to navigate through this situation because it's not going to work out well in your company if you start screaming and shouting, we see that all the time, and we even see to the point where people pull out guns, and we see mass shootings. And this sort of solution to problems is not a very healthy, [00:34:00] it's too primal, it's too basic, it's to, we need to move beyond that. And so what these meditation tools and techniques do for us is that allow us to not default immediately into that binary decision making situation, but to sit there and weigh out the situation and go, well, how do I find a more proactive solution that not only takes us into the next level, but actually takes it even beyond that into a better situation. So, this is why meditation tools are really important to have before we get to that situation preemptively.

Mike Forrester: Gotcha.

Tom Cronin: So let's go into it. So what we're going to do is,

Mike Forrester: I think I've sat, I've, I think I've sat in some of those meetings where they've escalated inside of corporate. So that's why I was like going, yeah, you're talking too much of what I've gone through before, Tom.

Tom Cronin: Two alpha males believing that they can win this argument by getting louder and more aggressive. I mean, look, our whole sporting environment is built on that idea though.

Mike Forrester: Yeah.

Tom Cronin: Yeah.

Mike Forrester: Definitely.

Mike Forrester: Yeah. Understood.

Mike Forrester: So as you've gone through like practicing your meditation, you said you're now doing it twice a day. How have you seen it impact like your, your marriage, your relationship with your, your two children, um, your relationship with your, your friends? How has it, um, you know, fed into those areas of your life?

Mike Forrester: Yeah. As we change, it's, it's impactful in everything we do. And it sounds like that's what you've experienced as, as well is, you know, you're, you're becoming the calm, the peace, the love, um, understanding who you are, and so that changes the dynamics of the relationships.

Tom Cronin: Yeah.

Tom Cronin: There's many complexities and challenges that come with entering into a calm, peaceful, happy place. Um, you know, my biggest challenge initially was that when I was stressed and depressed and those two go well together, stressed and depressed. We, we tend to default to certain activities that will help us get out of that stress and depressed state, which would be for me, lots of drugs and drinking and that came with lots of camaraderie, which is let's go out for massive benders. And you've got all these mateship that are built on that particular lifestyle. So now we're all in a particular state that is quite unpleasant and quite unhealthy, but we're all in it together and there's mateship and comradeship. And what's important is for me, when I broke out of that, it was a real struggle because those relationships were no longer there anymore because I was doing something completely different. Um, so finding ways to, um, [00:45:00] adapt through that transition is, is really important. Um, definitely a lot of men do get very addicted to stress, but they actually get addicted also to, um, the charge that comes with anger. Um, it's a testosterone and cortisol fuel, that it doesn't work very well for us, but it's been proven that a lot of men actually get addicted to that. And particularly that shows up in domestic violence. I can never understand how people could have domestic violence, but I learned later on that they get very addicted to the charge that happens in their bloodstream, which is very unhealthy, of course, because it has very, very negative ramifications on so many different levels that we have to find, we must find better alternatives to them finding that charge and that addiction to that charge. Um, and so, yeah, it's, it's, it's definitely something we need to work through, um, in finding better alternatives to that addiction to those types of energies.

Tom Cronin: Yeah, there's a lot of different ways people can go. And I think that there's so many different techniques out there. Unfortunately, many of them are either difficult to sustain or just not enjoyable. I just don't get a benefit out of it. And if we don't get immediate or quick benefits and a tangible effect. Very few of us keep doing that practice. So we do want something that's going to work and have efficiency and effectiveness. That's particularly for guys, we like things to, you know, fix things very quickly. Um, and I did a lot of research into that. And I found that there's, I've been researching this for 27 years now. And that's why I teach this particular style of meditation and why I use it, is because I find it's very tangible and very quick at giving results. And what I would suggest if people want to learn how to do this particular style using a mantra or a sound, you get this sound and you repeat it inside your head. The [00:48:00] technique I just gave you, they could do that, and it will definitely give them some benefits. It's a little bit hard to maintain it because the mind doesn't want to focus on the breath. When we get a primordial vibrational sound or mantra in the meditation, it does all the work for us. So, the way they can find out how to do that, they can Google in their local area, mostly it's taught by people in person. So, Googling Vedic, V E D I C, Vedic Meditation or Transcendental Meditation to find a qualified teacher that will teach them through the actual program. It's a really powerful and life changing program that they will learn the mechanics and the technique, um, in person, it's really the most effective way to learn. Um, and if they can't find anyone in the area, then they can reach out to me, we can find other alternatives where we can support them by giving them tools and techniques to, um, help them facilitate the learning of that technique in their own home. Um, there's definitely ways around that so that we can get people meditating, but even if the [00:49:00] worst case scenario is they just use that breath meditation that I gave them in this podcast, and do that on a daily basis. Now, for most of us, we value our time based upon acquisition or activity. That is what we're doing or what we're acquiring is how we value time. And if we're not doing something that we can acquire or it's an achievable, actionable goal, um, then we tend to put it sort of to the side. And so it's closing our eyes in meditation isn't really valued for a lot of people. And that's because we have a distorted sense of what value is. We think action and activity and acquisition is what's valuable, but what we don't realize is that what we're valuing is the experience we get as a result of those things, which is happiness. So we tend to value the acquisition of something, or the activity of something that we're doing, as the valuable thing rather than the happiness that we get as a result of it. Now, if you ask most people, are you happy in life? Then most people would say no, but they've acquired a lot of [00:50:00] things and they've done a lot of things, and they're doing a lot of things, but they're not happy, and that's because they've distorted their sense of what happiness is. So I say, let's just take out the middle guy, which is acquisition and activity, and go direct to happiness, which is what we do in meditation. And then we make happiness our starting point, and then from there, we go into activity from happiness, not for happiness. And when we go into activity from happiness, it's very different decision making and it's very different goal orientation when we're already established happiness as a result of being in happiness, being in love, not being in love with someone, but being in happiness and being in love and then going into action, and that will give you a sense of greater value and commitment to your daily practice. So for me, how am I going to fit two meditations in a day? 20 minutes each meditation. I had to reassess my values. And then I went, Well, that's easy. I can make this the priority of my day. This became the foundational, the number [00:51:00] one thing that I prioritized in my day was my meditation. And then everything else around that just became, um, added bonuses.

Mike Forrester: Gotcha. That makes sense and helps a lot. Well, Tom, thank you so much for joining me today, sharing your story, sharing this insight on meditation, how it brings about the change and you experienced it, um, at a pivotal point in your career, and now it's become a foundational thing for you. Um, how can men connect with you outside of this podcast?

Mike Forrester: Fantastic. Tom, thank you very much, my friend. I appreciate it.

Tom Cronin: It's great being here. I love chatting about this stuff and hopefully some people found some value and, you know, we can make some changes in the world.

Mike Forrester: Absolutely.