It's not just strategy advice our members get at SpinLegends, every week KTU gives them mindset advice like this article about meditation.

Mindfulness is the skill of staying aware in the present moment and having control over your focus. Meditation on the other hand is training for your mind. It trains you to see your thoughts, emotions and feelings in real time, to play around with your focus and to let go of distractions by re-shifting your focus to the task at hand.

Meditation and mindfulness come with no philosophy. It is about the raw experience of awareness and the human mind. However, when practicing it, you will develop a sense of quality for different situations and this leads to knowledge. You learn to pay more attention to what you are doing and to use your mind in a more intentional way.

A lot of scientific papers have proven the positive effects of mediation:

Mindfulness leads to happier and healthier life

Mindfulness reduces stress and perceived stress

Mindfulness improves attention and the skill to ignore distractions

Mindfulness improves compassion and relationships with other human beings

Clear your head, with Headspace

Headspace provides guided meditation

I’ve been meditating with Headspace since September and can honestly say it was the biggest positive game changer for my mind and thinking after studying mathematics. The big advantage of Headspace is you get guidance on your journey, which can make the difference if it works for you or not.

This was at least the case for me. I started meditating in 2012 and read some books, but I got confused about it and gave up. Later, I even made public statements on PokerStrategy that mindfulness is not a valid method to train your mindset and instead one should always invest their time in 'problem solving skills'. Oh boy, was I wrong.

Think about two kids who want to learn swimming. One watches a YouTube video and continues with trial and error on his own. The other kid has daily training sessions with a world class coach. Both kids need to learn to connect with the water and to learn the movements on their own. However, the kid with competent guidance will grow much faster and enjoy the process, while the other one might even give up out of frustration. Now, I see myself as a kid with a good trainer that also had that experience of learning with no trainer.

Meditation myths

Take the BS out of meditation

Here are some things that I completely got wrong in 2012:

I thought there are good thoughts and bad thoughts. What is good and what is bad, was explained in books. Hence, I must learn the right way of thinking. There was a lot of bullshit in the books that my intellectual mind just couldn't make any sense of. So, I got deeply frustrated about it. The books said bullshit like: "Just live in the moment, don't plan, don't worry about the future. Just find the beauty in every moment and your inner peace."

It was very harmful that someone tried to sell me these ideas as 'mindfulness'. Because this knowledge was contradicting itself. Headspace on the other hand helped me to learn from my own experience by shifting my focus. This way you will become aware of things, that you haven't ever really paid attention to and this can lead to a real learning experience.

I also thought it was the goal to stop thinking during meditation.

That's also plain wrong and it defeats the purpose. Meditation is not about stopping thinking, but about changing your relationship with your thoughts. You want to see your thoughts and experiences to see them coming and going.

So, when you start learning a skill, you want to have a good trainer. There are plenty of authors and meditation trainers that did 2-3 meditation retreats in Thailand, read some books and visited a Buddhist temple. Then they come up with their own philosophy/ideology and sell it to people in the West. Headspace is different.

The founder of headspace Andy Puddicombe was a Buddhist monk for 10 years. At one point, he realised that religion/ideology often brings bullshit to meditation. So, he removed religion and ideology from mediation and instead focused on the science. Therefore, you don't have to swallow bullshit like Karma or reincarnation theories when meditating. It is really about learning from your own experience.

Take small steps every day

Headspace founder Andy Puddicombe

Eventually you will find meditation gets easier over time. However, the real challenge is to stay aware in real life and less calm environments. In order to give it an honest try: Do it every day for 30 days and make the decision to continue or stop afterwards. It only works if you do it every day and not when you feel like it. There is something to learn by observing your mind when you are stressed, sad, sick or super focused on your work. The skill of staying aware can also only develop if you train it every day.

In the words of Headspace founder Andy Puddicombe:

There are these days and you really feel like meditation. You feel good, you have time. You do it. Great. And then there are these days where nothing goes your way, you have important things going on in your life and you really don't feel like meditating. And you know what you should do on these days: You meditate

Please note PokerStrategy.com and SpinLegends are not affiliated with Headspace.

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