Leading a Healthy Life

As a baseball fan, Bob was delighted to find that San Francisco Giants pitcher, Barry Zito, credits Transcendental Meditation with saving his career. It’s proof that leading a mentally and physically healthy life is vital for success, and today Bob provides tips on how to achieve that.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Stay Calm as a production of I Heart Radio. Hi.
I'm Bob Roth, and I've been teaching people to meditate
for fifty years, helping them to stay calm under pressure,
reboot and re energize their lives, and basically be a happier,
healthier version of themselves. And now I want to help

(00:22):
you do the same. Welcome to Stay Calm, your daily
dose of calmness. Every weekday morning, I'll share a meditation story,
offer a simple practical tip about how you or loved
one can stay a bit calmer in your life, and
then we'll end each episode together with a moment of gratitude.
My hope is that I can share what I know

(00:42):
to anyone who needs it. Ready, sit comfortably, take a
few deep breaths, and let's begin today's journey. I love baseball,
always have even as a kid played little league, would
have loved to have played professional baseball. I also love
this San Francisco Giants loved Willie Mays for you old

(01:03):
timers who patrolled center field at Candlestick Park. I tell
you all of this because I had a very fortunate
experience many years ago. I received a phone call from
a man named Barry Zito. Barry was a pitcher with
the San Francisco Giants, and he invited me to teach
him and his wife Amber to meditate. Barry was an

(01:26):
all star his whole life. Signed with the Oakland A's
two thousand two, was twenty three and five, got a
Cy Young Award, and he was the best pitcher in
the American League. Signed in two thousand six by the
San Francisco Giants with a huge salary and great fanfare,
and in a way he would say, the bottom dropped
out from under him. Things just didn't go well. As

(01:49):
an outsider following the San Francisco Giants, it was obvious
that he was getting beat up by the press. But
what was also obvious Barry Zito was a special i,
a gentleman. Never spoke ill of others, never got reactive,
never got angry, just continued to do the best job
he could. The reason he called me is because he

(02:12):
needed to get his career back on track and he
was hoping that transcendental meditation would give him the calm,
the equanimity, the focus, and the resilience to get back
on track. It would be a storybook ending to say
that he learned t m and his career returned to
being completely stellar again. It didn't, but his career did

(02:32):
right itself, and he had many good seasons with the Giants,
and he was a starting pitcher on the team during
their first two World Series championships in and he credited
transcendental meditation for helping him restore his confidence and his mechanics.

(02:53):
I tell you this story because one of the more
interesting conversations that Barry and I had along the way
is we talked about sort of philosophy of life and
how did he handle the ups and downs of success
and failure. You do well headlines in the newspaper, everybody
loves you. You have a bad outing, creamed and I
shared with him a quote from the ancient meditation texts.

(03:19):
You have control over action alone. Never over the fruits,
never over the results. You can only do the best
job you can possibly do. As a picture, you can
put that fastball on the outside corner. If the batter
gets lucky and hits a double down the right field

(03:40):
line runs or scored, you don't have control over that.
Don't lose yourself the picture who loses himself next pitch
has pitched out of anger or irritation or frustration. You
have to stay in the self, in your inner equanimity.

(04:00):
Meditation does that, but there's a lot of other things
to do that, being rested, having a good support group, exercise,
eating right. And I'm going to transition here because we're
not very zedo, but we have ups and downs in
our life, and sometimes there's a lot of downs and

(04:21):
we're in a sad mood or a bad mood when
it comes to diet, when it comes to healthy eating,
here's one tip that every expert always says. You cannot
eat yourself through a bad mood, through a depression. You can't.
What we do is we get impulsive and we reach

(04:43):
for the low nutrition foods. We reach for the sugar,
the candy that cakes. You know what that does makes
us feel worse. It's a downward spiral. Be aware of
that tendency. It's just going to make you feel worse.
Eat something, be healthy. It will save your psychology and
it will save you days and trying to recover from

(05:06):
that bad mood. All right, let's end this time together
doing something that I think should be a feature of
our everyday life, and that's appreciation and gratitude. So let's
take thirty seconds of quiet, thirty seconds to take a break,
Just take a moment. It turns out when we do that,

(05:26):
it's good for our health as well. I'll be right
back all right. Thank you for joining. This is Bob Roth.

(06:02):
Keep calm, Thanks for listening today. I hope you heard
something that inspires, that uplifts you and that you can
incorporate into your own life. Until next time, remember, meditate,
be kind, and be true to yourself. Hey, all of
you out there, I'd love to hear from you. You
can send me your stories, your questions, or anything else

(06:24):
on your mind. Just connect with me on Twitter, Facebook
or Instagram at meditation Bob. You can also send me
an email at meditation Bob Roth at gmail dot com.
I look forward to hearing from you.