Bruce Langford works full-time in the field of mindfulness as a consultant and life coach. He is the host and creator of the Mindfulness Mode Podcast where he interviews people from all walks of life who use mindfulness to stay centered and grounded.
At one time, Bruce lived with a high level of anxiety, but as he began to apply mindfulness strategies, his anxiety became minimal. Bruce’s extensive background for over a decade in bullying prevention equips him, through mindfulness, to inspire employees to replace self-bullying and judgmental behaviors, with a strong desire for cooperation and respect.
Bruce is now hired by companies to improve corporate culture by replacing stress and anxiety with team spirit and self-respect. As a result of his trainings, employee sick time declines, general wellness improves, and profits increase. Bruce has delivered more than 1,700 live presentations and his writings have appeared in numerous publications.
[Podcast Transcript Using Artificial Intelligence]
Umar Hameed 0:01
Are you ready to become awesomer? Hello everyone! My name is Umar Hameed, I'm your host on the No Limits Selling Podcast where industry leaders share their tips, strategies, and advice on how you can become better, stronger, faster. Just before we get started, I've got a question for you, do you have a negative voice inside your head? We all do, right? I'm gonna help you remove that voice and under 30 days guaranteed, not only remove it but transform it. So instead of the voice that sabotages you, there's one that propels you too much higher levels of performance and success. There's a link in the show notes, click on it to find out more. All right! Let's get started.
Umar Hameed 0:40
Hello everyone! Today I've got the pleasure of having Bruce Langford here today, he is the host of the Mindfulness Mode Podcast. Bruce, welcome to the program.
Bruce Langford 0:51
So good to be here, Umar, I'm very excited. I'm really glad that you reached out to me on LinkedIn, and we connected and we're gonna have a great conversation.
Umar Hameed 0:59
Absolutely. And what's kind of interesting is this is, you know, mindfulness is a word that we're actually using now in our culture, and people understand what it is. And certainly, 20 years ago, it was like, not around for the most part. But all these things are like ancient things that human beings did to get the most out of life. And somehow we forgot it along the way. And now we're getting reintroduced to it. So what do you think we forgot it? And what do you think is important now for us to reconnect with it?
Bruce Langford 1:27
Well, I think it's fascinating what you said and absolutely true. I think if you look to children, a lot of times you see that they still have it. And a lot of times when you look at individuals that maybe have certain forms of autism, they still have a lot of mindfulness. And a lot of the rest of the adults in the world think there's something wrong with them. And they're strange, but in fact, they're not. You know, like we're all different. But what has happened so that we've lost that mindfulness? Well, I think one is that we're just going crazy trying to go after our goals. We're just, we're just almost insane trying to make this happen, make that happen. We're trying to force things to happen. I think that's one of the problems. And I think that we become a society that's so focused on social media, and what others are doing and what others are achieving, and so on that, we forget to just be who we are and let life flow the way it's supposed to do. And people didn't even think about that, right.
Umar Hameed 2:30
I started doing this kind of work, which is all about human behavior, beliefs, and things are going quite badly. And I had this learning center called the mind food Learning Center. And we had this intuitive from California, flew up to Baltimore to do a presentation workshop. And I was just complaining to her, I'm not sure what the hell's going on. But it's like such a struggle in the past. You know, I just pick up a phone and I would get appointments, and I'd get sales, it was amazing. He said, Umar, you're not in the business world anymore. You're in the spiritual space. And so what I want you to do is I want you to just meet people, get to know them, tell them what you do, and ask them, will you help me on my journey, and I'm thinking internally, you're a hippie. And so I disregard her advice for another two months, and things aren't working out. And then I'm at a health club, you know, getting dressed after a game, and there's a guy happens to be there with chit-chatting, and he's half- naked, so vulnerable and say, Hey, we should grab a coffee. And so a couple of days later, we have a coffee, and I figure out what he does. I tell him what I do. And I say, will you help me, William, will you help me with my mission? And the guy thinks about it for a minute and says, Sure, and he doesn't introduction, and that kicked off the business. And it was really interesting when I stopped trying and just started being that the world opened up.
Bruce Langford 3:46
Yeah, I've found that with a lot of people I've interviewed for my podcast, over 600 people, so many people, you know, they express that to me in one form or another that they've just learned to kind of let go. And a lot of times they haven't even done it intentionally. And then things have started to happen unfold for them.
Umar Hameed 4:04
Yeah, I just had a client the other day that fired me. And the reason Gabe fired me was said, Hey, Umar, I've just got this feeling came up, that I need to stop everything and just pay attention to what's going on before me. I've had this in the past like two-three times in my career and massive things have happened. And that's what my internal mechanism is telling me. And he was expecting me to go No, you can't go you need to remain. I said, No, no, that makes perfect sense. Listen to that feeling. And let's see what happens. And so that's what he's doing. And the very next day, to different clients that have used me in the past, or one of them twice before, and one once before, came out of the blue and started working with me. So it's like, the universe works in mysterious ways. We just need to stop doing we're not human doings. We're human beings and just be and there is there are miracles before us.
Bruce Langford 4:55
Yeah, it's absolutely true. I agree. And I think learning to let go was one of the most difficult things for a lot of people. And the fact is, it can be done in an instant in time. Just suddenly people kind of get it and learn to let go, and others don't get it for their entire lives.
Umar Hameed 5:13
And what's interesting is having a death grip on whatever belief we have, we've got evidence that is not working right now. But instead of letting go, we hold on tighter. And then you need someone like a Bruce to come along and say, take a deep breath, you're okay. And so there's a role for mentors to help us and I think sometimes those mentors are professional. Sometimes those mentors last a lifetime. And sometimes those mentors are sitting next to you on a flight from London to Calgary. And that two-hour journey is their gift to you. And it just opens up the world, you can have people sitting next to their mentor, and they don't engage. So you know, being open to what, what's around you is really important.
Bruce Langford 6:00
Yeah, that's absolutely true. I think that you know, sometimes we think we have to have the highest price coach that you can possibly find, or, you know, you have to get Tony Robbins to help you or whatever. And you know, maybe those high price coaches are going to do a great job. But a lot of times, it isn't a high-priced coach, that is the one that's going to actually make the difference for you.
Umar Hameed 6:20
Absolutely. So Bruce, tell me, you've worked with a lot of people.
Bruce Langford 6:24
Yes.
Umar Hameed 6:24
Tell me about a couple of examples of people that were stuck in their situation, and how you got them to realize that they were stuck. And what signs did they have before you intervened, that they were blind to that, you know, once you did your intervention, they went holy crap. For the last two years, I've been getting this flashing beacon saying move on. And I was just not seeing it or ignoring it. Do you have a couple of those stories? Kind of that you can call up?
Bruce Langford 6:54
Yes, yes, I do. I have a woman I can tell you about. And I'm just using the name Allison. That's not her actual name. But Alison was a corporate employee. And she had a team of 16 people, I believe it was and she just felt stuck. She felt like she wasn't connecting to her team. She was really frustrated at work. And then she talked to me a lot about how frustrated she was at home with her two children. And she would sit down to dinner with them, and then they'd be squabbling. And she would get angry. And she felt like her life was just not working the way she expected it to. And she was trying harder and harder and harder to make things happen. And she started a gratitude journal. And she was doing that methodically doing all this gratitude work. And then she was going to work and trying, trying trying to connect with her people. And I felt right away This lady is just trying too hard. And it's too much-left brain, you know, and I felt like she was missing the creative piece. And so when I started working with her, and I did some hypnosis with her because I am a trained hypnotist as well. And she was open to that. And she started to realize she said, You know, I always loved music and drawing. And when I was a kid, I thought I was going to be an artist. And so I encouraged her to start doing some of that. And through hypnosis, and creativity, and having her start to look at her life differently and look at what was important truly in her life. Then she started to notice she was connecting with the people at work, she was connecting with her children, and things just started to change. And after about five weeks time, she was astounded at how things were beginning to click in her life. So that's one example.
Umar Hameed 8:44
Brilliant. I was chatting with a friend and I had said, Jim, have you ever had a life-changing breakthrough? He said, Uh, yeah, I was on stage in Singapore about to go on. I had a heart attack and my heart stopped. And they took them two minutes to revive me and kind of bring me back to life. And I said, Really, and he changed his entire career and went down a different path. And then the second question I asked him was, were there any signs before you died that told you that you should be doing something different? He says I couldn't see them back then. But when I look back, they were like freaking beacons with flashing lights that I was totally blind to. And I think in this day and age that we live in, that we're so busy doing and so busy focused on our phone and whatever else is going on, that we've failed to pay attention to the most important thing which is our body because our mind will lie to us. But our body gives us signals that something's not right, or something's amazing. And so how do you help people reconnect with their body so they kind of don't miss that stream of valuable information?
Bruce Langford 9:49
Well, Umar actually have an acronym that helps people really remember some of the most important things to do to connect with your body and who you really are your authentic self and the acronym is beam, b, e, a, m, and the first one, the first letter stands for Breath. And I never realized how important breathing and breath was, until about six or eight years ago when I started really listening to podcasts and getting connected to a lot of people who found this was important. And so getting connected to your breath, just doing some deep breathing, and really being aware that a lot of times we're operating without doing deep breathing without enough oxygen, it just doesn't work very well. And the E stands for Exercise. And for some reason, our bodies and our brains seem to go to this default place where we're like, you know, when we're tired, we're just going to sit on the couch and watch TV. And then later, we're going to sit on the couch and watch TV whenever we think we deserve a break. And then the whole idea of moving and exercise gets thrown out the window. And it has to be a habit in your life, it has to be something that you just do without, without hesitation, you just do okay, that's Yeah, right. You just do it, because that's what you do. Right. And I found that's really important in the A is Affirmations. A lot of times, affirmations can help us because if you're truly listening to what's going on in your mind, you may be sending yourself some very negative messages, you may be saying some things to yourself that are absolutely devastating to you. Right.
Umar Hameed 11:40
So, Bruce, this is the best way to find out what those messages are because a lot of people are blind to them or deaf to them is to say affirmations. So when I say women find me attractive, and they can't resist me after the third time, I say that an inner voice comes up and says, Who the hell are you kidding? And that negative voice tethers down to a belief that's driving all that negativity. So I like affirmations for bringing up the negative because I think affirmations are useful, but they're incredibly powerful for figuring out what you're truly saying to yourself at a much deeper level that is negative.
Bruce Langford 12:14
Yeah, exactly. And affirmations can actually backfire. Sometimes, too, I think, if you are trying, you know, you're saying an affirmation, like, I am a millionaire, and I live a millionaire lifestyle. And if you're not, your brain is just going to be going like no, you're not like sometimes affirmations just don't work. Do you agree?
Umar Hameed 12:38
I think so. And I think sometimes it's, there's that disconnect. And then other times, it's almost like hope is a double-edged sword. And you know, when you're an oppressor and you're a dictator, the thing you want to remove from the people is hope, because that keeps them going. But I think when we have softer lives, and I joined the health club, in January 1, even though I'm not going to go to the health club, just having that membership is enough hope to make me not beat myself up. So I think affirmations are the same like if you if you don't take action on whatever action that is that it doesn't go as far as it should. And I think so breath is incredibly important. Exercise is critical. And affirmations. And what does the M stand for?
Bruce Langford 13:24
And the M stands for Meditation. And I think there's many forms of meditation that you can take on in your life. And I've found that meditation has made a huge difference for me. And I mean, I've done a lot of different types of meditation. And sometimes, you know, just short meditating, and sometimes meditating for a long period of time, sometimes walking meditations running meditation, and I found that it can really make a huge difference to helping me be healthy individual overall. And I found that with my clients as well.
Umar Hameed 13:56
Yeah, it's, all of those things are great. And I especially like the breath, because when somebody is in some kind of panic mode, and it doesn't have to be like a full-blown panic attack. But the first thing you can do is just not breathe, which sounds counterintuitive, but it just proves to the person there is something I can control right here right now. And reading slowly and deeply sometimes may be hard when you're in panic mode. But stopping your breath you can do instantly as soon as you stop your breath is like, okay, I can control something and it's just that little bit of wiggle room that gives you the possibility that I'm in control. And then from that stop breathing to kind of breathe a little bit slower and just start that wheel moving again. So you know you're in control. So I love that is easy to remember and is easy to execute. Bruce, as people go on and they start learning some of these techniques. Oftentimes what happens is they move to a higher level of existence, and they forget the fundamentals that they learned and they kind of get caught up in the next level. drama of life, what's a good way to get people to, you know, stay grounded and not lose sight? And I'll give you a quick sports analogy and then come back to this question is anytime any professional team is failing, the new coach comes in the old one is fired. And the new coach says We're going back to the fundamentals because those fundamentals are where excellence is. So how do you help people kind of maintain those fundamentals so they don't lose sight of them ago, I need something fancier or something more amazing? So how do you keep people grounded in the foundational learnings?
Bruce Langford 15:36
Well, one of the things I do is I take people back to what truly matters in their lives because a lot of people have gone to a place where they think they know what matters in their life. But it isn't really true, it isn't, they aren't living their truth. And so I do this in several different ways. One of them is by journaling, getting people to just take 20 minutes, set it aside, sit down, and they can either use a keyboard and type it into a computer, or they can write you know, with a pencil paper, and just jot down what's important. And at first, people were like, I don't know what to write, I don't know what to write. But if you just make sure you force yourself to sit there for at least 20 minutes, something will come out, something will happen. And sometimes people that I work with, who don't like to write, don't feel comfortable with that, I just say hit record, on your phone. And yeah, and just say what comes to your mind, but you have to force yourself, then not to be distracted by something else not to be distracted by a phone call, not to be distracted by somebody coming into the room or whatever. Or it's probably not going to work, you have to force yourself to take that time, and to just calmly allow yourself to go ahead and write down what really matters in your life. So that's what I do with my clients.
Umar Hameed 16:58
Brilliant. Did you ever read the artist's way?
Bruce Langford 17:01
No, I haven't. But a lot of my clients, a lot of my clients have talked about it, and some of my interviewees on my show, as well. So yeah, tell me about it.
Umar Hameed 17:11
So this is one technique that she shared in there that I used for a couple of years. And it's automatic writing, where you just get pen and paper and you start writing whatever comes in your head like this is a stupid exercise, and my butt itches, and I need to pick up laundry. And then for 10-15 minutes, just stream of consciousness goes on paper. And the reason she does it is saying look, you need to free up space in your mind. And just by dumping everything out on paper, it allows you to just empty your mind out. So you can actually focus on what you need to focus on. And I thought that might be a good exercise, when you're getting people to start journaling, to just do automatic writing for like a week just to get the cobwebs out and know that they can actually write for 15 minutes without any hassle, even if it's like I hate Bruce, whatever it is. And so I found that to be a really.
Bruce Langford 18:01
I totally agree with that.
Umar Hameed 18:03
Brilliant. As we, you know, what's interesting is there's so much knowledge out there. And the knowledge that I love the best is when it's just something simple and elegant that anybody can do like what you suggest is just journal and write that down, or just notice your breath for the next three minutes. I don't want you to meditate, but just pay attention to your breath, which is meditation, but this like so many simple things to do. And we don't need to overcomplicate these things. And it's almost like that movie, The Karate Kid where it's like wax on wax off. And, of course, the kids like you just got me doing chores, and but the master is like, Well, I was teaching you that. And so we should set up a master list of simple mind hacks that can make you awesomer. So what would be a mind hack that you use yourself that lets you know, become awesomer could be productivity, or it could be self-care or mindfulness? What's one technique you want to share with the audience before we part company today?
Bruce Langford 19:01
Well, one technique that really works for me is just getting out. And like I said earlier, I have a habit of getting out for one hour and I run for one hour. Now I didn't do that for a long time for a long time I walked and so I made a commitment to myself that for an hour I'm going to walk and I'm just going to allow myself to just think thoughts that I want and breathe deeply and, and not force myself to do all kinds of things just to have that habit. And then after I did that for around a year, I found myself thinking oh geez, I think I'd kind of like to run and I'd run a bit but not I wouldn't be like putting expectations on myself. I wouldn't say you know, I have to run for half an hour I have to run for 10 minutes or anything. I just ran because I felt like it and I stopped if I felt like it. And now I run for an hour every day. And it just really feels great, it makes me feel more mindful, more grounded, more centered. And so my hack is just starting making it a habit, even if it's even if it's like 10 minutes a day, it doesn't matter and just go from there and allow what will happen to happen. I think that can really work for a lot of people.
Umar Hameed 20:23
That words to live by I was talking to a neuroscientist and he was saying the number one thing you can do for mind health is not vitamins, not puzzles, not learning a new language. The number one most impactful thing is physical exercise.
Bruce Langford 20:37
I think that's true.
Umar Hameed 20:38
I really agree. That's exactly what you're talking about. So it not only helps your body help you be mindful but keeps your mind healthy as well and your brain healthy.
Bruce Langford 20:46
Yes, it definitely does.
Umar Hameed 20:47
Bruce, thank you so much for coming to the program. I really appreciate it and the 20 some odd minutes just flew by.
Bruce Langford 20:55
Yeah, they did, and I really appreciate everything you're doing Umar, thanks for all the work you're doing and everything you're putting out there for people to benefit from and improve their lives. That's awesome.
Umar Hameed 21:06
Thank you.
Umar Hameed 21:11
If you enjoyed this episode, please go to iTunes and leave a five-star rating. And if you're looking for more tools, go to my website at nolimitsselling.com. I've got a free mind training course there that's going to teach you some insights from the world of neuro-linguistic programming and that is the fastest way to get better results.