Meditation and Marketing
“How does working inside help us to work outside?”
Our sense of identity links to what we are doing. How we make an activity our own is so important. So that we feel grounded, connected and so that it is sustainable. So that we don’t feel like we are about to fall into a precipice of hopelessness and despair. Or simply give up, move on and feel a little bit pissed off with ourselves for quite a while… knowing that something that could have been a real gift and a gateway became something we resented quickly and assumed we just couldn’t do or enjoy.
Am I talking about Marketing here, or Meditation?
We had an illuminating Marketing Masterclass with Alex Irving looking at the relationship between developing a marketing and developing a meditation practice. The darker side of either is that it can make one feel inadequate and useless, a failure and overwhelmed. Other people’s ideas about what should be happening can feel draining. But integrating something that functionally works for us can be incredibly nourishing.
Alex Irving is a mindfulness coach, trainer and supervisor. He is also a member of the Better Bolder Braver marketing community for coaches.
Every week, Alex attends my Reflection & Confidence session in the community. It has become a weekly ritual – a regular practice – for several of our members, all of whom are hyper-emotionally intelligent, self-reflective and curious (of course… they are coaches). I always bring in the session with a short meditation of sorts — I might read a short poem or excerpt from a book and then I ask people to sit for a moment with whatever came up. We then have a very emergent, unrecorded and always nourishing conversation about how the whole marketing thing is making us feel. Alex is always a central and magical part of the conversation.
I have also spent the last couple of months being the in the privileged position of doing 121 work with Alex around his own marketing and how it’s all making him feel. I have got as much out of these sessions as he has — his calm and grounded energy, humour, insight and creativity and wonderful to encounter.
Alex is all about calling out bullshit in Meditation. And making people feel more comfortable about giving it a try and sticking with it and allowing it to be a great gift. Exactly the same can be said with regards to
Simon Batchelar and my approach to Marketing for coaches.
We agree wholeheartedly with Alex when he says, “There are no rules. There are certainly shared experiences and agreed upon ways of doing things… what is important is making something meaningful and then making it consistent… if we can really understand what we are doing and get confident in navigating all of the challenges… then it WORKS! But to do this is a lot… so it’s not surprising that it doesn’t always happen. There is lots of vagueness, lots that is mysterious and people get understandably stuck.”
Watch the whole conversation here (we were also joined on stage by our friend, Better Bolder Braver member and fellow meditation expert, Charles Davies and what he has to say on all this is not to be missed).
To dive even deeper into this, and to enjoy a personal experience exploring what meditation AND marketing can do for you, please join us for an hour long special follow-up workshop with Alex in the Better Bolder Braver community, where he will be guiding us through a Meditation on Marketing…
We will begin with a brief check in, where Alex will invite us to reflect on how we are arriving to the session.
We will then discuss how meditation plays a role (or doesn’t!) in our lives.
Alex will then guide us on a Meditation on Marketing. We will be
exploring marketing through the body, how marketing flows for and through us and what gets stuck / feels joyful.
We will round off with a reflective discussion and some intention-setting for how we can be more mindful in our marketing practice.
You can find out more about Alex at www.mindfulskills.co.uk.
You can find out more about Better Bolder Braver here and join us in the community via a two-week trial membership.
