October 17, 2025 • 18 mins
As we go through our lives, all the stressors, anxieties, bumps in the road, past traumas all add up and begin to sort of paint us into a corner and sometimes it feels like avoiding them will make them easier to deal with. Out of sight, out of mind...but over time we begin to see that there is no avoiding truth because what tends to happen is instead of avoiding that thing we are pretending doesn't exist, we end of fixating on it. Instead of avoiding the thing, it begins to run our lives in so many unproductive ways. This meditation aims to help gain perspective on this and reminds us that recognizing and acknowledging, much like acknowledging thoughts while in meditation, makes moving on with our lives so much easier.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Welcome to mindful meditations with calm, the belief down. I'm
your guide Michael Beckmeier, and today we are going to
befriend ourselves. Let's get started. As always, we have a
(00:48):
mindfulness quote to help send us into our meditation with
some intent, and today's quote comes from John Cavatsen and
it reads, mindfulness is a way of befriending ourselves and
our experience. When I first started meditating, and people told me,
(01:12):
the things that I read and the people I talked
to told me that over time I would just rewire
my brain and I would think differently, I would see
things differently, I would feel differently, literally from doing nothing
other than just, you know, concentrating on my breathing. It
seemed far too simple. It seemed too good to believe,
(01:39):
too good to be true. But I have found over
the years that just by taking some time every day,
whether it's five minutes or ten minutes, I do two
sessions of twenty minutes each as often as possible. After
years of doing that, I can look back and say
(02:02):
that I am a completely different person now than I
was when I started meditating. And because when I started meditating,
I was in a low place I wasn't destitute or anything.
I was just my mindset was all off. I was
(02:23):
in a bad mood. I was fussy, and I was
getting worse as time went on. I didn't believe that
good things were ever going to happen. I didn't believe
that it was worth trying to do anything anymore because
nothing would work out. And I started meditating, and over
(02:52):
time I got back into that place where I could
see possibility. And ultimately what that did for me was
this quote that we just read, mindfulness is a way
of befriending ourselves and our experience. I had to instead
(03:22):
of rejecting the way things were, I had to accept
them and then push past them. But when you are
denying yourself of something, almost always it's true, even in
like when you're trying to do a diet, when you
deny yourself something, very often all you do is obsess
(03:44):
over it. If you've ever tried to quit smoking, you
understand what I'm saying. If you've ever gone on a
diet where you restrict your calories by four or five
hundred calories a day, you understand what I'm saying. Very
often all we do is we sit there and we
obsess over that thing. We are denying ourselves. So I
(04:07):
found that when I was trying to reject or deny
the way things were, all I did was sit there
and obsess over how bad things were, instead of just
accepting things as they were, or, as this Quo quote
would say, befriending it and moving on from it. Just
(04:37):
that simple shift in your mind will help your day
and life feel so much better, even though nothing has
changed except the way you think about the way things are.
We do it while meditating. We do it while following
(04:59):
our breath. When we are breathing and we notice that
our mind has wondered, we don't get mad at it
or reject it, or get frustrated or quit. We just go, oh,
my mind was wondering. I'll look at that thought. Okay,
nice thought, back to my breath. We do that in
(05:23):
a way. It's so deceptively simple. We're just going to
breathe follow our breath in and out, and then in
the background, somehow our mind is going to rewire itself.
It's like compound interest. It compounds over time. You might
(05:46):
meditate once and you'll feel great, relaxed, calm, all of
those things that come with meditation, but it's not quite
the same as if you meditate every day. It is
like going to the gym. If you go to the
gym once, you might wake up sore the next day,
but if you don't go back, still not much changes
(06:08):
in your body. But if you go to the gym three,
four or five times a week for a month, even
significant changes happen. And then if you do that for
two months, then three months, then six months, then a year,
you have a completely different person at the end of that.
(06:34):
That's what meditation can do for our minds. So as
we head into our meditation, let's think about that each
breath is really a new beginning, and each breath is,
in a way an acceptance of the last breath. That
(06:57):
last breath has come and gone. Acknowledge it, we keep
moving forward into the next breath. So let's get ourselves comfortable.
You can either sit down or lie down for this meditation.
Start to relax into this moment. Take some long, slow,
(07:21):
deep cleansing breaths. Start to slow your pace down, taking
just a few moments for yourself today. Take a long, slow,
deep breath in and out, another breath in and out.
(07:58):
As you continue breathing. Think you yourself as getting heavier
with each ex hail, your arms and legs and limbs
and shoulders, just relaxing deeper and deeper, And the more
relaxed you get, the heavier you start to feel. With
each exail, skin your body, perhaps from head to toe,
(08:37):
relaxing each segment of your body. You can start with
the top of your head, work your way down into
your forehead and cheeks and ear muscles, the muscles in
your neck and shoulders, chest, back, torso, your arms, biceps, triceps, forearms,
(09:05):
hands hips, your thighs, your knees, quads, calves, all the
way down to your feet, your toes. Just sit in
(09:26):
that total relaxed state for a moment as you continue breathing,
(09:49):
maybe lengthening your breath, seeing if you can breathe even deeper,
allowing yourself to exhale even longer. It is the exhale
that triggers the relaxation in your body, relaxation system in
your body. So the longer you exhale, the more you
(10:11):
press up against your diaphragm with your exhale, the more
relaxed you get. I once heard a Buddhist monk who
(10:41):
was a lifelong meditator refer to his anxiety as his friend.
He was an anxious person and his struggle was intrusive
thoughts anxiety, and he spent a lot of time trying
(11:09):
to avoid feeling that way. When he would feel that way,
he tried not to feel that way, and that only
made it worse. His advice was to when he started
befriending his anxiety. He literally said, he would say, oh, hello, anxiety,
(11:31):
how are you. Once he did that, he was able
to see it as an inevitable part of him, and
he was never going to be able to get it
to go away, but he was able to see around
it by treating it as a thing that was just inevitable.
(11:59):
What we're talking about is the voice in our head
that is not always productive. Another piece of advice I
heard recently was maybe give that voice in your head
a name. Maybe give it a funny name, a silly name,
(12:21):
so you can chuckle about it and keep moving instead
of letting that consume you, or spending a lot of
time avoiding feeling and thinking that way. Very much like
our quote said today, befriend it. It is part of you,
(12:47):
and push past, continuing your breathing in an out, in
(13:24):
an out. Feel your breath come into every corner of
your body. Perhaps imagine the breath coming in from the
(13:49):
bottom of your feet as you inhale, all the way
up to the top of your head. And then as
you exhale, maybe imagine the breath leaving from the top
of your head all the way down to the bottoms
of your feet. Follow that breath in an out, in
(14:14):
an out. Take a few moments practicing.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
That us.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
And in our last few moments together, just sit quietly
for the last few breaths and let the silence and
stillness settle in. Maybe congratulate yourself for taking a few
(16:36):
moments to help get some balance, some stillness into your day.
Let's take one last long, slow, deep breath in together,
(17:02):
hold it up at the top and out, and when
(17:22):
you're ready, you can open your eyes and go about
your day now, mistake. That's it for this time, on
(17:47):
calm to bleep down. If you like this meditation, please
feel free to send us an email, post a comment,
hit us up on Instagram or TikTok, where we're posting
a lot these days. We'd love to hear from you.
Once again. I'm Michael back of my reminding you to
please calm the bleep down. We'll see you again soon.
Thank you for meditating with us. Be well, have fun,
(18:10):
and no mistake
Welcome to mindful meditations with calm, the belief down. I'm
your guide Michael Beckmeier, and today we are going to
befriend ourselves. Let's get started. As always, we have a
(00:48):
mindfulness quote to help send us into our meditation with
some intent, and today's quote comes from John Cavatsen and
it reads, mindfulness is a way of befriending ourselves and
our experience. When I first started meditating, and people told me,
(01:12):
the things that I read and the people I talked
to told me that over time I would just rewire
my brain and I would think differently, I would see
things differently, I would feel differently, literally from doing nothing
other than just, you know, concentrating on my breathing. It
seemed far too simple. It seemed too good to believe,
(01:39):
too good to be true. But I have found over
the years that just by taking some time every day,
whether it's five minutes or ten minutes, I do two
sessions of twenty minutes each as often as possible. After
years of doing that, I can look back and say
(02:02):
that I am a completely different person now than I
was when I started meditating. And because when I started meditating,
I was in a low place I wasn't destitute or anything.
I was just my mindset was all off. I was
(02:23):
in a bad mood. I was fussy, and I was
getting worse as time went on. I didn't believe that
good things were ever going to happen. I didn't believe
that it was worth trying to do anything anymore because
nothing would work out. And I started meditating, and over
(02:52):
time I got back into that place where I could
see possibility. And ultimately what that did for me was
this quote that we just read, mindfulness is a way
of befriending ourselves and our experience. I had to instead
(03:22):
of rejecting the way things were, I had to accept
them and then push past them. But when you are
denying yourself of something, almost always it's true, even in
like when you're trying to do a diet, when you
deny yourself something, very often all you do is obsess
(03:44):
over it. If you've ever tried to quit smoking, you
understand what I'm saying. If you've ever gone on a
diet where you restrict your calories by four or five
hundred calories a day, you understand what I'm saying. Very
often all we do is we sit there and we
obsess over that thing. We are denying ourselves. So I
(04:07):
found that when I was trying to reject or deny
the way things were, all I did was sit there
and obsess over how bad things were, instead of just
accepting things as they were, or, as this Quo quote
would say, befriending it and moving on from it. Just
(04:37):
that simple shift in your mind will help your day
and life feel so much better, even though nothing has
changed except the way you think about the way things are.
We do it while meditating. We do it while following
(04:59):
our breath. When we are breathing and we notice that
our mind has wondered, we don't get mad at it
or reject it, or get frustrated or quit. We just go, oh,
my mind was wondering. I'll look at that thought. Okay,
nice thought, back to my breath. We do that in
(05:23):
a way. It's so deceptively simple. We're just going to
breathe follow our breath in and out, and then in
the background, somehow our mind is going to rewire itself.
It's like compound interest. It compounds over time. You might
(05:46):
meditate once and you'll feel great, relaxed, calm, all of
those things that come with meditation, but it's not quite
the same as if you meditate every day. It is
like going to the gym. If you go to the
gym once, you might wake up sore the next day,
but if you don't go back, still not much changes
(06:08):
in your body. But if you go to the gym three,
four or five times a week for a month, even
significant changes happen. And then if you do that for
two months, then three months, then six months, then a year,
you have a completely different person at the end of that.
(06:34):
That's what meditation can do for our minds. So as
we head into our meditation, let's think about that each
breath is really a new beginning, and each breath is,
in a way an acceptance of the last breath. That
(06:57):
last breath has come and gone. Acknowledge it, we keep
moving forward into the next breath. So let's get ourselves comfortable.
You can either sit down or lie down for this meditation.
Start to relax into this moment. Take some long, slow,
(07:21):
deep cleansing breaths. Start to slow your pace down, taking
just a few moments for yourself today. Take a long, slow,
deep breath in and out, another breath in and out.
(07:58):
As you continue breathing. Think you yourself as getting heavier
with each ex hail, your arms and legs and limbs
and shoulders, just relaxing deeper and deeper, And the more
relaxed you get, the heavier you start to feel. With
each exail, skin your body, perhaps from head to toe,
(08:37):
relaxing each segment of your body. You can start with
the top of your head, work your way down into
your forehead and cheeks and ear muscles, the muscles in
your neck and shoulders, chest, back, torso, your arms, biceps, triceps, forearms,
(09:05):
hands hips, your thighs, your knees, quads, calves, all the
way down to your feet, your toes. Just sit in
(09:26):
that total relaxed state for a moment as you continue breathing,
(09:49):
maybe lengthening your breath, seeing if you can breathe even deeper,
allowing yourself to exhale even longer. It is the exhale
that triggers the relaxation in your body, relaxation system in
your body. So the longer you exhale, the more you
(10:11):
press up against your diaphragm with your exhale, the more
relaxed you get. I once heard a Buddhist monk who
(10:41):
was a lifelong meditator refer to his anxiety as his friend.
He was an anxious person and his struggle was intrusive
thoughts anxiety, and he spent a lot of time trying
(11:09):
to avoid feeling that way. When he would feel that way,
he tried not to feel that way, and that only
made it worse. His advice was to when he started
befriending his anxiety. He literally said, he would say, oh, hello, anxiety,
(11:31):
how are you. Once he did that, he was able
to see it as an inevitable part of him, and
he was never going to be able to get it
to go away, but he was able to see around
it by treating it as a thing that was just inevitable.
(11:59):
What we're talking about is the voice in our head
that is not always productive. Another piece of advice I
heard recently was maybe give that voice in your head
a name. Maybe give it a funny name, a silly name,
(12:21):
so you can chuckle about it and keep moving instead
of letting that consume you, or spending a lot of
time avoiding feeling and thinking that way. Very much like
our quote said today, befriend it. It is part of you,
(12:47):
and push past, continuing your breathing in an out, in
(13:24):
an out. Feel your breath come into every corner of
your body. Perhaps imagine the breath coming in from the
(13:49):
bottom of your feet as you inhale, all the way
up to the top of your head. And then as
you exhale, maybe imagine the breath leaving from the top
of your head all the way down to the bottoms
of your feet. Follow that breath in an out, in
(14:14):
an out. Take a few moments practicing.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
That us.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
And in our last few moments together, just sit quietly
for the last few breaths and let the silence and
stillness settle in. Maybe congratulate yourself for taking a few
(16:36):
moments to help get some balance, some stillness into your day.
Let's take one last long, slow, deep breath in together,
(17:02):
hold it up at the top and out, and when
(17:22):
you're ready, you can open your eyes and go about
your day now, mistake. That's it for this time, on
(17:47):
calm to bleep down. If you like this meditation, please
feel free to send us an email, post a comment,
hit us up on Instagram or TikTok, where we're posting
a lot these days. We'd love to hear from you.
Once again. I'm Michael back of my reminding you to
please calm the bleep down. We'll see you again soon.
Thank you for meditating with us. Be well, have fun,
(18:10):
and no mistake
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