Today we're going to talk about what we can do to move through the challenges of COVID19 and move into a state of bliss. And I have the person with us to take us there and that is the one and only Moneeka Sawyer. Moneeka how are you?

Moneeka (00:22):

I am so good. Thank you for having me on the show again, Bruce. It's always a lovely to see you.

Bruce (00:28):

Yeah, it's always great to see you too Monique and I can't wait to talk to about all of the things that we're going to talk about and you know you are all about bliss. That's your book. I have your book ‘Choose Bliss’ right beside me. And I know that you wrote a real estate investing book, which I read not very long ago called ‘Real Estate Investing For Women’. And it's about how to, how to increase wealth and happiness, the blissful way. You are all about bliss. And I know life doesn't always dish out bliss. You know, sometimes we have some real downtimes and some of us Mindful Tribe, some of us are experiencing this right now. I know that. But what does bliss mean to you? What's your definition of bliss, Moneeka?

Moneeka (01:21):

Yeah. Thank you for asking that. Because people get all sorts of different impressions when they hear that word. So bliss from my perspective is a deep sense of joy and contentment and the confidence that you can handle anything emotionally that comes your way. So it's really about emotional mastery and emotional resilience. And you know, the thing is, as you said, something so key right there. We can't control what's going on in the world around us, certainly in a time like this, right? So we can always control how we choose to respond. And so bliss is about making those choices that help to support ourselves emotionally so that we're filled up so that we can deal with challenging circumstances and we can support others as they're dealing with challenging circumstances, which is so important right now.

Bruce (02:12):

So Moneeka, if I'm sitting here right now and I'm thinking, man, I'm stressed, I'm stressed because of money, I'm worried about the virus. I'm worried about all these things. What can I do in the next 15 minutes to bring some bliss into my life?

Moneeka (02:29):

Well, first of all, I have what I call creating a bliss moment. And this is something you could do any, it's like takes literally a minute and it, you can do it anytime. So that's a very first thing that I would do. So what that looks like is it's a stop, drop and breathe. So what you do is if you're stressed out, usually it's because there's some story happening in your mind, right? There's some chatter that's happening in your mind that's creating that emotional stress. So the very first thing is to that chatter. So I'll do something like, I'll just say, what are you gonna stop? So then I'm, I do an interrupt, right? And then drop down into your heart. So you go from your mind to your body. Take a couple of really nice deep breaths. Feel that breath go all the way down to the back of your belly button. So really nice deep breath in through your nose, out through your mouth.

Moneeka (03:27):

Do a couple of those and you feel your body and your mind relax, right? And now move forward towards whatever it was that you were having to deal with. You move forward from this space of sort of feeling blissed out a little bit right now. I will say that when there's so much going on, not just in your own internal life, but out there, sometimes it's hard to connect with that right to try it two or three times. If that doesn't work still what I would recommend is the next step, which is as you take that deep breath in a couple of times, in and out, like after the third one, shoot that breath down into the ground. Imagine that you have roots and those roots wraparound, something really yummy in the earth. So maybe it's a tree, um, root. Maybe it's gold, maybe it's a Ruby, you know, something that you can visualize and imagine as something that will be fulfilling for you to have yourself connected to that. So this is just a basic grounding. Again, it takes 30 seconds, but it can really help you to get out of that head space of stress, release the emotions associated with that and ground yourself and bring you back to the present moment. Because really right now it's about living in the present moment, not all the stuff going around going on around us. Does that mean,

Bruce (04:54):

yeah, it really does make sense. Yeah, for sure. And you know, it's, it's just everywhere. Like on social media, it's in the news and everywhere you, you go, you're just hearing about this situation, what can we do to, uh, maybe not hear about it so much.

Moneeka (05:15):

Yeah. Thank you so much for asking that. Stop listening to the news. So I had, and, and you know what the news is providing us a lot of good stuff and social media is too, but I was getting all these texts from people you know, saying, why don't you go, did you hear this? Did you hear this? And the reality is no, I wasn't hearing those things because I have a few rules about how I'm managing my own emotional state right now. I use the news for the information to keep me and my loved ones safe not to get me riled up. So I check the news in the morning for like five minutes and I check the news at night for five minutes. So I go through the headlines, I look at the headlines that are relevant. And this is true on social media too.

Moneeka (06:01):

I look for what is relevant that I can use, right? Um, and the rest of it all just gets completely eliminated. I'm consciously doing that. And it's tempting sometimes, right? Because they're really cool headlines, right? Um, that can create a feeling of drama. And I said we want to read them, right? Don't do that. So really restrict your exposure to news and social media to things that are going to be uplifting or useful, not things that are going to cause you stress. Cause there's an opportunity for stress everywhere. And if you're constantly checking, you're going to have that coming in all day long, right? Because the headlines, even if you don't read the article, the headline can still cause you stress. So if you look at that 20 times, you're going to experience the stress whether you read the article or not. So I have strict rules about when I'm allowed to look at the news and I only focus on that, on the things that are going to be useful for me.

Bruce (07:00):

I think that's such great advice. Have boundaries and be very, very definite about them with yourself. I know I stopped watching television news about maybe six years ago, something like that. I have actually started watching it more recently since since the pandemic because I want to be aware of what's going on, but I take your advice, I watch it very briefly and then shut it off. And I do a one podcast that I listened to, which is a, it's created locally here and it's a podcast about what's going on in our area and it's not about drama, it's not about clickbait, it's just telling what's going on. And so I do check in with that sometimes, but I really appreciate your advice, Moneeka, because you know it can be absolutely overwhelming and then once you set those boundaries, then you can make a, a concerted effort to find bliss like you described. And I love that. Now, is meditation part of your method of finding bliss?

Moneeka (08:13):

Absolutely. Absolutely. But I'd like to backtrack really quickly if you don't mind to, to social media. Is that okay? So I am fortunate to be a part of a lot of social media groups. I'm sure you are too, that are really focused on creating joy or creating support during this time. And one of the things that I found is that even in these groups are a lot of people that are like, did you hear this in the news? Or I've heard this or whatever. And so what I would start to do is search for good stories and I would post them. But eventually people think that they're helping each other by by saying all the crazy things that this person did or that person did. Right? Eventually, I would say into each group. Here's the truth. I'm experiencing bliss. Even right now. This is how I'm doing it, but the constant reminders of the things going wrong, take away from it. For me, I would love to continue to engage in this group, but we really need to change the conversation because it's a global community. Our responsibility is to create a conversation worth listening to.
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• Podcast: Real Estate Investing For Women

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