Tommy Breedlove is the founder of Choose Goodness, a company dedicated to helping executives and entrepreneurs focus beyond the financial bottom line. By empowering leaders, Tommy bridges the gap between humanity and profitably. He transforms organizations to

attract and retain the best and brightest people, create a loyal customer base and promote goodwill within their communities. Choose Goodness provides both the rational and emotional perspectives to the strategic and financial decision making process.

Contact Info

• Website: ChooseGoodnessNow.com
• Click here for a special message to Mindful Tribe: ChooseGoodnessNow.com/Mindfulness
• Email: tommy@choosegoodnessnow.com
• Twitter: @choosegoodness
• Facebook: @choosegoodnessnow

Most Influential Person

• Nancie Vito (My Life Coach)

Effect on Emotions

• It made me from a fear-based to a loving-based person. I start with love now 90 percent of the time as opposed to a fear based mentality.

Thoughts on Breathing

• Oh. Breathing is my mindfulness so it starts there and goes back there no matter what. If I find myself in a planning mode or remembering mode or a future mode, I always go back to the breath and start with the breath.
• Also have gratitude for your breath because at the end of the day it's actually what keeps us alive.
• And so breathing to me is everything. And so it's everything about how I live my life and in the choices that make it. It starts with the breath.

Suggested Resources

• Book: Search Inside Yourself by Chade-Meng Tan
• App: Oprah & Deepak’s 21-Day Meditation Experience

Bullying Story

• I went from being bullied so bad, from the 15 years of my life to becoming what you don't like. You become the bully. And you don't realize you become the bully.
• That was a key moment for me. It's a huge thing in my business and I'm huge into equality.
• One of the biggest things I remember as a young man … there was another boy in the neighborhood named Dwayne and his goal in life was to seek me down on a regular basis and beat me up publicly so other people could see it and show how strong he was.
• God knows what he was dealing with in his life to feel like he needed to do that to someone else. It was a constant state of fear and when I would see him coming down on his skateboard or his bike or coming through my back yard, this overwhelming fear and embarrassment [happened].
• I knew what was coming. There was really nothing at the time that I could do about it because he was significantly bigger and stronger than me. That was a really tough thing.
• For me bullying wasn't about what happens to you physically, it's what happens to you emotionally and mentally. And the fear that it causes and the insecurity it causes making you think, are you good enough. Embarrassment is big for us as adults but it is a very tough thing to deal with as a young child.
• This sort of thing toughens you up and what you don't realize is that you become that bully as well.
• When something like this happens in my life, I'm sure to get clear, present and mindful and I choose the goodness path as opposed to a bullying path.
• Sometimes it's hard. Even to this day, how I react to bullying, whether it be road rage or whatever. Bullying happens in politics and business just as much as it happens to kids on a playground.
• My initial reaction is, even to this day, and I struggle with this, I want to show the bully that he can't do that, by becoming the bigger bully. I don't do that, but it's my first instinctual thing to do.
• I have a lot of mentors and coaches and I have this oak of a wife. I surround myself with great people.
• Sometimes I ask, was I being a little bit of a bully there? And they say, it could possibly be taken that way.
• For someone who has created the Choose Goodness Movement, I can say it's about the choices we make sometimes. As long as I am making seven out of eight great choices.