Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Hey, good morning.
[00:00:02] It's early Meditation Monday here at Bradley Charbonneau. It's Monday and I just had a big old fad meditation.
[00:00:11] Just a little caveat, a little explainer here for those who have tried meditation and who think they're not succeeding.
[00:00:20] For example, I won't name any names, but she's my wife, she says I can't get rid of the monkey mind. She doesn't use those words, but she can't get rid of the ideas and, you know, have a clear mind and have an empty mind. And there's a meditation joke. I know the monks just go nuts over it, but they. They say if you absolutely have an empty mind, you are either in a coma or dead or a monk.
[00:00:49] So if you're not one of those three, then don't worry about it. And frankly, what I do about it is I use it as a.
[00:00:58] As a guide to focus on something, ideally one thing, ideally a very narrow focus on something.
[00:01:07] So that's what happened this morning.
[00:01:10] It is Monday morning here. It is super early.
[00:01:14] I flew in Yesterday, less than 24 hours ago from Bali. I spent a month in Bali in Indonesia, and I say that with some pride because I have been talking about going to Bali for years and I finally went and it wasn't.
[00:01:30] It wasn't as I expected.
[00:01:33] And yet, ooh, how do I put this?
[00:01:38] I don't want to use words like better or worse. It was different and I'm glad I went. And the topic of this morning Meditation Monday is a bit of a summary and getting back to your regular life. Getting back to Kronos time, regular time, work time, lifetime normal time, tick tock, regular clock, ticking time.
[00:02:03] And how do we then envelop or hold on to some of that kairos time from a holiday or from something, an event, usually, ideally with other people, where you thought beyond your normal Kronos sort of stable existence.
[00:02:26] So here we go. That's one of my main messages, is sort of the.
[00:02:32] In the United States, I would say Monday morning quarterback, Monday morning quarterback, meaning there's a game on Sunday and on Monday you're going to tell it how it should have been. Oh, they should have done this and they should have done that. So meditation Monday, you might use it as a sort of Monday morning quarterback to say, oh, I might have done this or I might have done that, and focus on your recent events and how can you potentially improve them, or if they were great, how can you work with them and implement them?
[00:03:04] Here we go. Here's what I Am focusing on. This is after.
[00:03:08] I'm sorry, it's funny, I shouldn't apologize. But a month in Bali, and I say that partly to remind myself that we achieve dreams all the time.
[00:03:18] And frankly I think we set too lofty goals of goals that we might never achieve. Right. I want to spend, you know, three months in India and live in a monk, you know, Tibetan mountaintop or whatever. And okay, that's a great goal. But is there any chance that you will really ever do that? So, yeah. So that's Kronos time, right? Kronos time is sort of the regular time and Kairos time is the dreamy, lofty, bigger goals. So here's my dreamy, bigger, lofty goal that I had this morning very clearly during this meditation. And again, just one note on meditation. It is meditation Monday after, after, after all. And I follow on. I use Insight Timer every day. I think I'm on 437 days in a row or something.
[00:04:12] And that was after missing one day, by the way. And then I was like 300 plus. So I'm probably getting towards a thousand. This is definitely, you know, a few years. Right.
[00:04:20] And I follow, I think her name is like Ale Sandrina. It's like Ale Sandrina and Dexter. So it's like this and you can see a picture of him and she says, young Spanish woman. And he's. I guess he's Spanish too. But I never hear from him, like, dude, where's Dexter? But I don't really need Dexter. I like Alessandrina. Her voice is very soothing and, and I, I frankly didn't hear a word she said today because I'm, I'm off in my own world. And that's another meditation technique is just use the guide, follow the guide down the path. But you don't necessarily have to listen to their tour guiding. Right? So they're down the path and they're talking about, oh, this mountain this and this volcano that, that's fine. But you're on the path, you're walking with them, you're focused in that sense. And yet you might be focused on your own thing. And that's exactly what happened this morning. This morning.
[00:05:13] Finally getting to the meat of the matter here. Although frankly, I think what we've just been talking about is potentially even more important for you on how to use a Meditation Monday to get that clarity from your maybe big ideas from the weekend. Here's my big ideas from the weekend and from the past month. Did I mention I was in Bali? I'm sorry. Now I'm just being annoying. But what I saw, and this is interesting because I think it covers many facets of life, is that. So I hung out with teenage boys, hung out with 20 something boys, my sons, right, and my son's friend.
[00:05:49] I also, I was with entrepreneurs, I was with 50 something plus entrepreneurs and digital nomads and either meeting with them in person, friends of mine, or online or in Facebook groups or whatever, and then you get your sort of regular people on holiday and if I were to summarize like what the common thread was, what they want is they want something more.
[00:06:19] That's a little vague, of course, but they want like that next phase, they want that next thing and they want to feel it. But if we get into mind, heart and gut, they want to feel it in their gut, they want to love it with their heart and they want to feel it with their gut. But their mind says like, whoa, Kronos time. Kronos time. Dude, you have a job. What are you talking about?
[00:06:40] So especially like the digital nomads, many of them are just getting started and they want to live somewhere else. Maybe they've had a career and now they want to go live abroad and just have a more fulfilling, more meaningful, passionate, purposeful life. And yet they don't quite know what to do. They don't really necessarily have a plan.
[00:07:04] This aligns beautifully with the entire idea of one O N E my project, which I'm continuously evolving and I see it more and more as a roadmap for your coming year. Right. So it's not just going to be the one word that's the main, you know, the North Star, the guiding light is that one word. But I want to have more practical elements of, of your one word. Right. So I want to have like a roadmap or a checklist and a checklist or whatever, it works for you. A plan, a business plan maybe. So what is this one word for you?
[00:07:48] So that's about the one project. But the clarity I had this morning is again related to the past month and the past month. Remember, we're talking digital nomads, we're talking 20 somethings, but they're traveling, they're traveling in person.
[00:08:04] And in my humble opinion, we achieve much greater goals and dreams when we do it together and then ideally together in person.
[00:08:19] So I've been talking about in person events for a long time and I love them. I've hosted them, I've been a part of them. They're one of my favorite things to do. If you say hey Bradley, you have a thousand dollars and a 10 days to spend on whatever you want. What would you do? I would do a retreat or a, a workshop or a conference or something where there's an. Ideally, I want an outcome. I don't just want, Yay, that was nice. I want an outcome. I want something tangible I can hold on to that I accomplished and I want a clear, measurable marker of what I achieved.
[00:08:56] And then ideally I would like a plan forward so that when I leave the thing on the Sunday or whatever, it's not just gee, that was great, but gee, that was great. And now I've got a plan on what to do and it's better than the plan I had on Friday, which might have been no plan.
[00:09:14] So there we go. There's some focus on my one project.
[00:09:19] And yet the real, real, real kicker for me, the big difference for me this morning comes partly from confidence. And I think it's the confidence of having been away for a month and the more kairos thinking of having been away and thinking bigger. And especially I visited my friend Rich, who's just serial entrepreneur and he just, he thinks bigger than I do and I really admire him for that and I need him for that. I need to think bigger sometimes and go, go for the bigger goals. And remember, just like I opened up with, not goals that I, I'm never going to achieve, but you know, maybe bigger than I'm.
[00:09:57] Here's what came out of my meditation this morning. First of all, it's staying with the program. Bradley, stay in your lane. One project, right? One word, one weekend, one year and a plan. Create that. So that's great. So then with the in person element, I have to go to the United States at the end of the year. So I'm going to be there like November and December, right?
[00:10:26] And then I'm possibly going to be going to Mexico City in January 2026. So here's my plan and let me know what you think.
[00:10:35] I would like to host in person weekend workshops or weekend retreats based on the one program where you get your one word in one weekend for one year, right? To guide your life for the next, for the coming year to have it not be necessarily your best year, but have it be your next year. And it's ideally going to be better than the previous and not as good as the next one.
[00:11:02] So if I were to. Here's what excites me the most about my meditation. I had, I had a calendar in my mind and I joke a lot about calendars and When I say joke, I should say like they're not funny, right? Like a joke of. You have a post it on your, on your calendar that says someday.
[00:11:22] And I just think that's sort of a brutal, brutal post it note, right? Someday. That's when I'm going to change my life. That's when I'm going to lose weight. That's when I'm going to take singing lessons. That's when I'm going to move to Italy, right? So someday. Well, but that day doesn't exist except on this fake calendar.
[00:11:43] So listen to this. What if I'm gonna be in first? I'm gonna be in Las Vegas in early November. I'm working together with a team to help the presenters have better presentations.
[00:11:56] And that's in Vegas in early November. And then I'm going to Austin, Texas.
[00:12:02] The current plan is my son is going to move, be moving to Austin, Texas. So I'm going to go there and help him move.
[00:12:08] So I'm thinking, what if we did a weekend retreat in Austin, Texas in November of 2025?
[00:12:19] Next up. So I lived in San Francisco, California for 17 years. What if we did one, a weekend in December 2025. Did I just say 2026? December 2025 in the San Francisco Bay area.
[00:12:35] What about that? Or we switch those two up. Maybe it's November in San Francisco and December in Austin. Unclear. Whatever. We'll work that out then. Kind of the really fun element was there's a possibility I stick around in the middle, Middle America. That's a Dutch translation right there. Mida Amidica. It's. What do they call that? Central. Central America. Central America. Is Mexico part of Central America? My God, my European geography is so much better than my America's geography. But whatever. There is a possibility that I go to Mexico City in January of 2026. And what if we hosted a one workshop, one weekend workshop in like, I don't know, like the second weekend of January 2026.
[00:13:26] What about that? Then just to keep things rolling here, then back in Europe and then. So we've got some hints at a potential.
[00:13:38] Okay, I'm not even gonna get to it. But what if we, you know, we did one in the Netherlands, right? Like Netherlands in February. That sounds brutal. I really don't want to be here in February. But frankly, if I'm. If I have to be here in February, I would like to be doing a weekend like this. So maybe it's sort of. Let's dig out of the gray. Dark where? Wet doldrums of the Netherlands in February 2026, and do one here in, In.
[00:14:04] In Amsterdam or Netherlands somewhere. Right. And then in the spring, maybe it's Italy or depending on my wife's job, I really want to go back to Bali. And so I'm just trying to figure out when it's not if, it's when. So when's that? When's that Bali retreat? When's that Bali weekend retreat? Don't know. That one's not. I couldn't place that one on the calendar yet. It's kind of.
[00:14:24] I have to play in with a few more factors. Not to mention, the more friends we talk about Bali, the more they're like, can we come with you next time? So definitely going to Bali in 2026. Just don't know when it's going to be. Is it like spring or summer or fall?
[00:14:37] So that would be one. And that would then remember my goal, opening up here with big goals. Well, that was one of my goals. I think it was during Corona, and I wanted to have a retreat in Bali. And it's. It's time. So speaking of goals and dreams, you know, what if you didn't put. Well, okay, there's two schools have thought on this. If you don't put a date on it, well, then it might be that date of someday. But if you do, then it helps you achieve it. On the other hand, what if Bali turned out to not be 2021, but 2026?
[00:15:10] So I'm okay with that. I mean, that's, that's five years later. And that's where we can get into stuff like patience and perseverance.
[00:15:17] So, okay, I cannot see my clocks. I'm pretty sure I'm way over 10 minutes. But I think this has been an important Meditation Monday.
[00:15:25] To recap here, the idea of meditation Monday, the idea of meditation in general, really, is not to clear your mind unless you're in a coma. A monk or dad don't recommend really, really any of those, frankly.
[00:15:40] And it's no offense to monks there. I don't know how many monks listen on my podcast anyway.
[00:15:49] But the idea of using the meditation, I see it like a going on a walk with a guide down a path, and you don't have to listen to what they're saying necessarily, but you're focusing on your own thing. But your walking is taken care of, right? You're. You're walking on the path. You don't have to watch your feet for the rocks and roots or whatever, and you just follow the guide and don't listen or listen if you want to, but you know, go do your own thing and ideally focus on a very specific thing and just work through it. And that's how I work through and that's how I got.
[00:16:26] I mean, frankly, this is, excuse me, frankly, this is a huge breakthrough for me to have such a plan in the calendar and what's on it and what I'm doing and sort of why, right? I mean, this is why and how and what, excuse me, all put together. And that is especially in my chaotic, you know, 14 ideas per day mind. That is really exciting for me.
[00:16:56] So there you go, there you have it. Meditation Monday.
[00:16:59] I am Bradley Charbonneau. I will put this on my Repossible podcast, which comes out at least every Thursday, as Well as the YouTube video channel repossible as well. And there's a video that comes out every Thursday, Thursday Thunder.
[00:17:14] And yeah, feel free to subscribe to to my YouTube channel. Like you can like this video if you like, if you want to subscribe to or the notifications to get notified when I have new videos because I bring it home and I talk a lot about this kind of stuff, about personal development, self help, growth habits and how to get there and how to get it done. And my three main themes are often clarity, courage and confidence. The clarity to know where to go, the confidence to get started.
[00:17:42] I'm sorry, the. The courage to get started and the confidence to finish. So there you have it. That's it. That's my Meditation Monday.
[00:17:50] And just if you're wondering about creating and how I create so much, I don't worry about the how, I just get it done. So for example, it is like 6:30 in the morning. I'm in Scheveningen in the Netherlands. I'm literally sitting in a absolutely pitch black bathroom because I don't want to wake up my wife as I record this and even my dog. What are you doing? And I close the door and I've got some towels hanging to help with the audio. And I, I needed to get this done while the, the iron is hot and strike while the iron is hot. Because this idea came to me so clearly with this whole calendar thing. And I want to add one more thing to calendar. I'm thinking of October. I'm still in the Netherlands and maybe I could do one in October in the Netherlands. So by the way, one note on this. I've had some feedback that this would be great New Year's resolution type thing. And I totally.
[00:18:42] I'm also of the opinion that it's feasible anytime in the year because, like, right now it's June, and I'm feeling much more clearer on my year than I was in January.
[00:18:52] So I, you know, I might alter my word or I might emphasize or empower my word or as I'm doing now, my word. If my focus is the one project. Well, now I just added an element to it of the in person kind of around the world element to it. Okay, enough of that. I will see you next week or maybe on a meditation Monday or a Thursday thunder or another one that I really need to get into is fast Friday. I talk a lot about intermittent fasting and the clarity you get from intermittent fasting. Okay. All right. Signing off. Thanks for listening. Thanks for watching. Bye for now.
