How Mindfulness Was My First Step To Success

I was sitting on an old blue couch I bought off Facebook Marketplace. There was a half eaten Domino's pizza box to the left of me while my phone played YouTube to the right, I held my greasy Xbox controller in my hand. It was 11pm. I was alone and had no intention of moving.

I had a game the next day against the New Zealand Breakers and I was dreading it.

"Probably another game where I don't get on," I mumbled in my own head as I died on Call of Duty.

This was one of those moments. The oh fuck, I need to make a change moments. My situation was identical as a pro as it was in college. The environment wasn't creating this result. I was.

But how do I change it? What's the first step to take to make my life what I want it to be?

I grew up in a small beach town where shoes felt illegal and what the surf was doing was the most stressful part of the day.

Each day there would be unique characters in long vibrant pants doing breathing exercises and sitting with crossed legs for an obscene amount of time. I would shake my head and laugh at them as I went past in the school bus, never giving them much thought.

When I studied psychology at the University of Nebraska, the same practice continued to appear in the lectures. Mindfulness. They talked about its ability to change the way you think, change the brain's infrastructure and solve issues that prescription drugs weren't able to.

I thought mindfulness was only for monks in mountains and hippies on the beach. Not an athlete trying to make the NBA.

But in my desperation in Adelaide, sitting on that blue couch with pizza grease on my fingers, I knew something had to change.

"Why not give this mindfulness thing a go."

I downloaded an app called Calm and started their 30 days of mindfulness for beginners course. Each day contained a 10 minute meditation with a lesson on what it means to meditate and practice mindfulness.

The first day was torture.

Sitting there for 10 minutes with my eyes closed and without moving was something I had never done besides when I was asleep. My mind raced. My body itched. I wanted to quit after three minutes.

Day 2: torture again.

Day 5: as I practiced, my mind raced to things I need to do, or past conversations I wished I could have changed. I wanted to give up.

Day 15: it was still so hard not moving.

I was learning to hold attention. To notice when my mind wandered to other places. To observe thoughts without chasing them. To feel my breath entering and leaving my body without trying to control it. These were the foundations. Nothing fancy. Just sitting, breathing, noticing.

After the 30 days I didn't feel any drastic changes in my life. But I was starting to enjoy the morning 10 minute sits, so I decided to keep it up.

As my meditation practice deepened, I noticed a slow shift in my mind.

There were emotions appearing in my body that I had never felt. I became aware of when my mind was running rampant. There were moments of peace appearing throughout the day that could only be described as magical.

I was building the skill of being present. Observing my mind. Holding attention.

These skills then unlocked a new level of awareness.

Patterns that had been repeating since high school started to appear to me in obvious and meaningful ways. The way I reacted to criticism. The stories I told myself after a bad game. The habits I fell into when I felt low. I could suddenly see them.

When coach would yell at the team, I would notice my body tense up and be able to calm it back down before the next play occurred. When I felt my mind racing in team film sessions I was able to catch the thought and put my attention back onto learning.

There became a sense of freedom over my life.

For the first time I felt like I could write my own story. There wasn't this thread pulling me from place to place. Meditation had cut the strings from the puppet master.

When my 17 year old brother moved in with me after 8 years apart, a mindfulness practice was the first habit I introduced him to.

The entire house met downstairs before breakfast and spent 10 minutes going through a daily guided meditation. Lloyd would sit there fidgeting, just like I did on day one. But he stuck with it.

The practice was life changing for him.

Only yesterday he said to me that it is the most important thing I have ever done for him.

I feel the same for myself.

I have been meditating daily now for 6 years and plan on doing it for the rest of my life.

It helps me find balance, break patterns and choose the type of life I want to live. It was the foundation that made everything else possible. The identity work, the confidence building, the ability to perform under pressure. All of it required awareness first. And awareness came from sitting still for 10 minutes a day.

It was the first step I took to change my situation.

Sitting for 10 minutes a day impacted my life in a way I once thought unimaginable.