There are many similarities between muscle and mindfulness and the roles they both play in our lives:

Living and leading from a grounded place
When you train with weights, you learn to ground yourself in your body (your posture) in order to prevent injury, to support your lift and practice good form. You learn to sit back through your hips and heels, keep your knees slightly soft to stay in your leg muscles, roll your pelvis forward slightly to protect your lower back and continually keep your chest up and shoulder blades back and down. You learn to connect with your core and be in your body.  You practice this stance over, and over and over again – your ‘power stance’. As your body begins to live daily in this stance, you naturally start to breathe more deeply and purposefully as you do when you lift, you engage into your muscles and connect with the strength that is within you as well as in your muscles. Living, learning and leading from this place allows you to perform with positive focus as you connect your mind with your body and your internal strength with your external.

Increasing performance effectiveness
We are all hungry to learn to how to best achieve and sustain optimal performance. In order to survive let alone thrive in this fast-paced, high-on-demand world, we need to be playing at the very top of our game, fully charging on all cylinders, maximizing our ultimate potential. Increasing your muscle and your mindfulness can do just that. Athletes understand that in order to increase their speed and performance they must increase their power. In order to increase their power, they must increase their strength. Leaders in our society are also realizing that in order to optimize our performance and sustainability, in order to live, learn and lead from a vibrant and magnetic place, we must also optimize our power physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. Those we are leading are looking to us for one thing and one thing only… that our actions support our words.

Greater protection from unexpected demands and overuse

Those who continually perform at a high level know how to effectively manage stress. In fact, they actually think about stress quite differently from most. Again, if you consider Olympic or pro athletes, consider how they perform under huge demands, huge pressure, expectations and stress. With practice, they learn to manage these situations and shift their perspective to ultimately perform within the ‘positive chaos’.

A good deal of their success can be attributed to the confidence they have built in themselves over time. They feel courageous in their bodies. They feel strong. As a result, they stay grounded, calm and mindful. They manage their emotions to a place where they can perform at their best amongst the distraction, unexpected demands and overuse.

Consistency and practice

Whether you are increasing your muscle or your mindfulness, both require consistency and practice. Both are a discipline that will greatly improve your life’s quality.

Physically speaking, the more muscle you have on your frame, not only the stronger, more confident and powerful you will feel in your body and your life, but you will also level out your weight and end your ‘battle of the bulge’. Muscle increases your metabolism.

Mentally, emotionally and spiritually speaking, the more mindfulness you incorporate into your life, not only will you live and lead from a calmer more focused place, you will also experience a greater sense of contentment and fulfillment in your daily life. Mindfulness increases ease.

Just the right amount of stimulation and rest
Many people believe that if they train harder and harder they will attain the best possible results. The truth of the matter is with your physical practice, you must find the perfect balance between stimulation and rest – for you. It’s an individual thing. Every single body is different. If someone tries to tell you exactly what you should be doing, ignore them. They can only offer you this advice after getting to know you and your body for quite some time, and even then, you are the only person who should be making the final decision. It is your body.

The same holds true for your spiritual practice. The online world is filled with ‘experts’ who will tell you exactly what you should be doing to experience the greatest joy, satisfaction, abundance and fulfillment in your life. The only person who can decide this is you.  It is your life, your experience.

The most important thing is that once you decide on the components – perhaps they include mindful walking, journaling, reflecting, deep-breathing, yoga, good conversation with like-minded peeps – your Practice must be committed to consistently.  We call this the Practice of PowHERful Living.

At PowHERhouse, we have built a simple and effective framework which may help you with the consistency of your Practice – on all levels – physically as well as mentally, emotionally and spiritually. We’re not saying that we have all of the answers, but we have definitely asked the right questions and continue to ask. PowHERful Living Explored was built after working with and listening to the needs of hundreds of women over the past decade and interviewing 50+ high-impact performance women over the past year.

Our 90-day online program includes effective performance principles, successful strategies, excellence habits, tangible tools and winning best practices all pulled together within a simple, doable and common sense framework to help ensure your consistency stays constant.

Our mission is to help you experience on a consistent basis the intentional integration of lifestyle and leadership, to redefine the role that you allow fitness to play in your life, and to fully appreciate the concept of ‘The stronger we are, the stronger we are!’.

Welcome to your journey of living, learning and leading from a PowHERful space.