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Profs. Holly Richardson & Matt Jarman, Virginia Military Institute

Mar 15, 2017 43m 2s 15 insights
Virginia Military Institute, a military college in Lexington, Virginia, was another stop on the cross-country meditation tour, where our host Dan Harris and meditation teacher Jeff Warren spoke to Profs. Holly Richardson and Matt Jarman, as well as a few cadets who have taken their classes. Jarman, a psychology professor who leads a "Modern Warriorship" course with meditation, and Richardson, a physical education professor who teaches a mindfulness class, both talk about how they teach cadets in a military environment that meditation can help them be more mentally efficient.
Actionable Insights

1. Boost Productivity with Daily Meditation

Meditate daily to significantly boost mental efficiency and productivity, ensuring you perform at your best. If feeling depleted at the end of the day, use a short meditation session to replenish mental resources and return to work effectively.

2. Build Resilience for Stress & Trauma

Practice meditation pre-deployment or before entering stressful situations to build cognitive resilience, acting as a buffer against stress and helping to replenish mental resources to prevent negative impacts like PTSD.

3. Form Habits with Contextual Cues

To establish new habits like meditation, identify a regular contextual cue (e.g., a specific time of day, environment, or existing action) and consistently pair the new habit with it, making it automatic and reducing reliance on willpower.

4. Embrace Modern Warriorship Mindset

Adopt a ‘modern warriorship’ mindset by training mentally and physically through meditation to be ready to create positive change and effectively help others, facing internal and external challenges with discipline.

5. Reframe Meditation as Time-Gaining

View meditation not as a time-consuming activity, but as a time-gaining one, as it makes you much more mentally productive and efficient, allowing you to accomplish tasks more effectively.

6. Don’t Judge Practice by Sessions

Evaluate your meditation practice based on overall, long-term improvements in your behavior and well-being (e.g., being ’less of an idiot overall’), rather than the immediate experience or perceived ‘quality’ of any single session.

7. Overcome Peer Pressure with Toughness

Treat peer pressure or the fear of being seen as ‘weird’ for meditating as an opportunity to practice mental toughness and ‘go against the stream,’ which is a key aspect of resilience and warriorship.

8. Use Intermittent Rewards for Habits

Understand that the varied and sometimes intermittent benefits of meditation (e.g., not every session feels ‘amazing’) can actually help sustain the practice, preventing discouragement when immediate results aren’t consistently felt.

9. Apply Mindfulness to Stressful Situations

Use mindfulness, such as focusing on your breath for three to five times, in specific high-stress moments like competitions or difficult conversations to enhance focus, manage reactions, and promote more productive outcomes.

10. Journal Your Meditation Practice

Keep a journal to reflect on the ups and downs of your meditation practice, which can help maintain consistency, track progress, and deepen your understanding of its benefits.

11. Seek Role Models & Community Support

Look for role models (e.g., athletes, respected professionals, faculty) who practice meditation to normalize the activity, and consider joining a meditation community to provide environmental support and normalize your practice.

12. Introduce Meditation Carefully, Clarify Purpose

When introducing meditation, especially in skeptical environments, consider framing it as ‘mind fit training’ or ‘attention training’ initially. Always explain its rationale and objectives to counter misconceptions and address fears like ’losing your edge’ by emphasizing how it hones attention and mind.

13. Target Specific Personal Needs

Identify specific areas in your life where you desire a more authentic presence or less stress, and then intentionally apply your meditation practice to address those targeted needs, allowing the practice to grow for broader mind-body benefits.

14. Adapt Loving-Kindness Carefully

When introducing potentially ‘syrupy’ or unfamiliar meditation practices like loving-kindness, proceed cautiously or adapt them (e.g., using simpler, more direct mantras like ‘I am at peace, I am still, I am here’).

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Continue listening to the podcast, writing reviews, and giving good ratings to show gratitude to the creators and support its continuation.