Jody Brooks 0:01

You're doing everything right, and you're exhausted. The career, the income, and the life you built. And in the quiet, something asks, Is this really it? You've been chasing fulfillment in the next thing. The next win, the next roll, and return never quite arrives. That's not a character flaw, that is burnout from running in the wrong direction. Today we talk about what happens when you stop running and turn inward instead. This is messy midlife, it's not a crisis, it's a calling to connect. In week three, we sit quietly with the evidence. Tom Cronin spent 26 years in finance, discovered meditation in a crisis, and eventually left a career that no longer matched who he was. He knows that stillness is not about switching off, it's about coming home to yourself. Tom, welcome to the show and thank you for answering the call to connect. Thank you. I'm really excited for this conversation. We were having a chat before, and obviously this stillness and this meditation and how powerful it is, but how people really struggle with it. So I'm can't wait to unpick that in the second half of the show. But with all I think great coaches, teachers, and guests, there is always a messy middle moment that spawns that transformation and empowers people into the work that they do. So what was that messy middle moment for you, Tom?

Tom Cronin 1:37

I think I'd probably have to say there was two ones. One was a critical turning point in my life in my late 20s, which was where I was in my hedonistic, narcissistic, self-indulgent world of being a broker in finance. If anyone's seen Wolf of Wall Street, that was my world. And that led to a major turning point with chronic anxiety, depression, addictions, panic attacks. But that's a whole other conversation. I think we'll focus on the next turning point, which was when I was leaving my career in finance. So at 29, of course, that led me to meditating and turning my life around and finding a lot more balance and health and mental health and purpose. But it wasn't until many years later that having worked in that career still in finance, but as a meditating broker, not doing drugs or drinking and going deep into Eastern philosophy, I got this stronger sense in my mid-40s that me quoting quarter-point price movements in government bonds on global markets was not the best use of my existence. And I had done a lot of studies in Eastern philosophy, into the mind, into mental health, into meditation and mindfulness. And I knew that there was one thing that I could do to change people's lives, and one thing that I was very passionate about, and that was becoming a meditation teacher. And so I did my teacher training, and it was a very challenging time actually to leave the security of the finance industry and my stable income that I'd had for 26 years, and to go out now feeding a family of four with living in a major city like Sydney and setting up a career as a meditation teacher. So it was a major transition. It was something that I felt deeply called to do, but it wasn't easy and it was very challenging, I must admit. Yeah, it was a huge shift to really we all wear cloaks, and these cloaks are our persona. And our persona is the job we're working in, the suburb we're living in, the the political environment we're in and we're brought up in, and our uh our economic status and all these types of things become our identity. And here I was leaving away a world of finance and expensive lunches and dinners with some of the biggest traders in the biggest banks in the world to now go and teach meditation and run retreats in Bali and bamboo huts, and it was very challenging for me because I had a huge sense of imposter syndrome and unworthiness, and it was a very difficult transition. And then, of course, financially it was very challenging as well. It it took a lot to continually steer that ship forward and continue on with that momentum, with many times questioning whether I should be doing that and whether I should go back to finance. And I think a big part of what I do these days is mentor people through that transition, is to if you have such a strong sense of vision and a strong sense of purpose and passion, then there's definitely a way that you can make that successful, but we do need to have a few things to to happen to make that happen. We need to have obviously the right mindset and we did need to have the right systems and the right business model as well.

Jody Brooks 5:04

For me, it wasn't an instant thing, so was that a process of transitioning slowly? Because I think a lot of the time people as well feel like it's a split-second decision that they've got to make, and that keeps people trapped rather than seeing that this is a change of destination.

Tom Cronin 5:21

Yeah, like I did definitely have a strategy and a plan, and it took I allowed two years for that plan to start to unfold. And look, in hindsight, I think I would have been better off if I took a little bit longer in that plan. The runway to get that career off the ground, you know, it's like a heavy 747 jumbo jet, but takes a longer runway than a little pop-up plane because I had a big vision and I had a big financial commitment. And in hindsight, it would have been good to take a little bit more of a longer runway for that to play out. But in hindsight, definitely at least one thing I did was make up a plan and take my time. And I always say to my clients that I'm mentoring who are in that transition, is like, no, don't rush this. You've got many, many years to fulfill this passion and this purpose. And you can for me, I started doing it part-time, so I was just dipping my toe in the water and I was teaching in the evenings after work. So I'd leave a trading room floor and go to a subley studio in the city that a naturopath wasn't using after 5 p.m. And then I'd start teaching meditation courses. In my work holidays, I'd be running retreats in Bali. So I was getting a sense of what was possible and building up the business and taking my time. It did take a little bit longer than I thought, and it needed a little bit of adjusting with the business model. But definitely I would always suggest to people don't do anything rash. This is a time to just slow everything down, be calculated, be sensible, get some mentoring. People like yourself could really help people with some sensible strategy around that process because it can be quite confronting if you suddenly walk away from if we look at Maslow's hierarchy, we do need those basics to be in place, those to sense of security and stability needs to be there.

Jody Brooks 7:04

But the more guests I interview, it that actually becomes really apparent is that everybody, myself included, made a plan that was to transition and to do it slowly. And for me, it was the first time I'd done that. Previously, I'd just imploded my life, walked out of jobs, just that was it. Enough's enough. I reached breakpoint. So I think it's really important for listeners to understand that this is a journey once you make that revelation, is that you start that process and that journey. I'm interested to know how hard, because again, like we just said before, there's such different worlds. Did it get harder to have your feet in both? Or did in fact the meditation actually increase your resilience in the finance world?

Tom Cronin 7:52

There's a bit of both. And talking about that, those raster sessions people make because they're at burnout or breaking point. A big part of what I recommend to people and a lot of my mentoring around is to have daily systems in place so that you're not at breaking point, that you're not at burnout, that you can, if you need to, have a greater longevity in that particular pathway because it's not crushing you and not killing you. So that's that unruffability. So for me, obviously, there's a number of different things that I use which enable me to sustain that pathway in broking in finance, which was my daily meditation, going to the gym three, four, five times a week, breath work, saunas, ice bars, eating well, drinking well, really looking after my body, looking after my mind, being in a greater sense of sovereignty and stability. So I wasn't getting as ruffled and disturbed by the circumstances of being in that career. It was very telling and very obvious that it was time for me to leave, but I just needed to have a little bit more time up my sleeve financially to get things in place. Yes and no, yes, meditation helped me stay in that career for longer because it reduced the stress and it just wasn't creating such a disturbance on my nervous system as much anymore. But it also was making it much more compelling because I could feel the sense of capacity increasing to actually leave and create more impact in the world by changing people's lives, and that ended up leading me to starting the stillness project and speaking on stages and working with some of the largest companies in the world. So it was a part of the the hindrance and also part of the the support system that enabled me to make that transition.

Jody Brooks 9:29

I think it does for many people, it becomes a beautiful part of that journey. I always explained it like a fork in the road, and I actually travelled down two roads for 18 months and I kept running between the two. I kept running back to the corporate world, but then running over here and following my coaching dream until like the roads were so far apart that it was just not possible to run between the two anymore. And at that point I was like, You have to stick to one road now, Jody. It's this one, but there was a reassurance in it. That was exactly my part. Yeah, reassurance. No, it's there's that reassurance then, like you say there, is that you actually gather pace and I think it fuels your journey in that new direction because there's a confidence in it rather than this lack of confidence of being completely new to a new arena, particularly when it's so different. You mentioned there as well that you obviously had dependence, you had family. How hard was that trying to explain that change to those people around you? Because it's quite a big change from the finance world to meditation and teaching the art of mindfulness.

Tom Cronin 10:46

Yeah, the as far as the career move and the sense of purpose and doing something meaningful was very well accepted. I think the challenge was things didn't work out how we had anticipated, and that was challenging for the family because there was things we had to do to adapt to that new situation. I wasn't on a stable multi-six-figure income stream, and so that definitely became quite challenging. And I think one thing to let everyone know that maybe going through this process or about to go through this process, maybe they've already been through it, it doesn't usually turn out how like you plan. The set plans that we have usually very rarely in life unfold exactly how we would expect them to. So it needs a lot of adaptability, and I was very blessed to have a supportive family that walked that path with me through that. But it was definitely difficult times. Part of it was that I wasn't just moving into a new career, I got quite involved in a big project that we used some funders for to create a film called The Portal, and that became quite a complex project that ended up being quite difficult financially, so that really was quite a challenging addition to the transition as it was. There's a couple layers that made it quite complex.

Jody Brooks 12:03

Was there an element in it though that as you walked your purpose, your new path? I know for me, my partner, even though there was financial constraints and changes going from this very well-paid corporate job with a car and healthcare and all of those things, to okay, now it's me. But my partner always says that they went on that journey because of the positive change in me, because they saw me come to life, they saw me no longer struggling, they saw all of those things, and so the sacrifices were essentially worth it. They were almost priceless to see that development in you as a person.

Tom Cronin 12:46

Yeah, I think it's very telling of the people that you live with as to how much they'll hang in there with you through those difficult times. And one of the things that the people that I am with, my beautiful wife and children, is that that level of, hey, we're all in this together and we'll get through the toughest times if we need to get through tough times. And when you start to reassess core values, which is community and connection, which you talked about before on the early stage of this call, it's that's what's I think humanity itself needs to reassess that sometimes it's quite advantageous to lose some things that you might think are valuable to reassess what are core values, and that was a really beautiful thing to bring it back to basics and look at what are the core values of our reality, which is your own individual health and well-being, and obviously the connection with other and having loving connection is another really important core value.

Jody Brooks 13:41

You've led me beautifully to my next question, which was around those things. That for me, when I made the transition, I realized that a lot of the things that my life had in it before, you said about like expensive meals, these kind of things, my need for those disappeared because it became very clear that they were compensatory for what was actually lacking inside or mentally. Did you find the same? Because I actually found that I required a lot less. The moment I moved my journey, there was so many things that were in my life that I no longer required because they were all compensating for a poor mental wellness, really.

Tom Cronin 14:26

Yes, no, fascinating when you mentioned that. Thinking back, I hadn't really thought about it too much. My life as a broker was filled with dining in the top restaurants in Sydney every week. Lunches and dinners, going to the best concerts and going into the box seats for events and having expensive suits and expensive shoes and all the things. But it's funny when you walk away from that, you don't miss any of it. You know, I've just prepared it's getting close, it's past dinner time now, but I've just prepared dinner. For me, cooking a home cooked meal is much, much more enjoyable with my family than going to some fancy restaurant with a trader from a bank that you're there. Obviously, but everyone knows why you're there, which is to try and do a business deal. It's phenomenal how we can get caught up in those things and have such a distorted sense of reality when you take it away. It's just life can be really quite simple and uh and much more rich.

Jody Brooks 15:22

I think they trap you almost. It's this weird like smoke and mirrors, where and then you believe that if I remove those things, then what will I do? And it just fuels itself. I do an activity quite often with clients about looking at their expenditure and looking at how many things they're spending money on that is trying to buy back time, so cleaners, gardeners, laundry, like all of these things that you know, and I say, look, if you don't want to do them, I'm on board. But if you're going to work every week for 20 hours just to pay all of these bills, at what point is that skewed? And it always really shocks people that they've entered into this trap of I need more money, I need a promotion, so I'm I I need to do more hours, but to do more hours I now need to pay someone to do stuff that's like a it's a wheel you can't get off.

Tom Cronin 16:20

It's a merry-go-round that just gets faster and faster. And you know, Elizabeth Gilbert did a question. She if anyone knows Elizabeth Gilbert, I think she was Eaton Pray Love someone, but she's a phenomenal author and leader, and she asked her audience to write down the things that they would think of when they think of the word being enchanted. And it was interesting because enchantment is a rare word that we hear of. We think of excitement and we hear of happiness and sadness, but enchantment is such a beautiful word. And what most people wrote when they thought of enchantment was sitting by the windowsill listening to rain fall on the glass and drip down, or having a cup of tea with a crackling log fire, or putting on warm, cozy slippers on a winter's morning and sitting by a log fire or crunching through snow on a walking winter's morning. Just really simple things, and everyone that stood up to read out their things that they felt enchanted was no one was like having a six-course one thousand dollar or pound dinner in a fancy restaurant. It was really simple things that didn't cost any money.

Jody Brooks 17:28

And that is that power of those things, and I'm sure in the second half of the show we'll talk about that stillness and those moments because they are incredibly powerful, and it's something that I do every day, is I make sure I spend fifteen minutes in nature. Some of my friends laugh at me because I am physically a tree hugger, and I I take my dog out into the woods, and I will frequently push myself against a tree and barefoot push myself in the pine needles, and they are priceless moments to me. There is something very priceless about that simplicity, and as you read that list off there, I was like, Yeah, log fire, yeah, cup of tea, yeah, all of these things, and yeah, and it is something very powerful when you remove all of that other stuff and come back to that simplicity because they are things that are priceless really when you think about it. There is no price you can put on them.

Tom Cronin 18:27

I wonder what the planet will be like if we go back to being enchanted by those really simple things and move out of the shopping malls and the big factories and things like that. Anyway, it's an interesting time we're at right now.

Jody Brooks 18:38

I think it would be very powerful. I truly believe that there is an awakening going on, and I truly believe that there are more and more people. And I actually think that AI will help us do it if we use it correctly, but that is a whole other conversation.

Tom Cronin 18:52

Absolutely.

Jody Brooks 18:53

But somehow it comes up in every podcast at the moment, it's it seeps its way into the conversation. I think you know there's some real bits there, some similarities, some unique bits as there always are in everybody's story. Is there any bit about that messy middle that we haven't talked about that you feel it's important listeners know about before we move on to talk about the amazing work that you do now?

Tom Cronin 19:20

I think getting ahead of the curve is really important for people. And what that means is that there are certain aspects to life that make it rich and fulfilling. One thing I actually we talk about midlife, which means there's two harps, which is one before midlife and one after midlife. But I actually think there are three-thirds, which is we've got the first act, and the first act is really naughty, it used to be naught to twenty, but now it's not to thirty, and that's a very self-indulgent, narcissistic act where you're just really after your own personal pursuits and interests. You're not really thinking about anyone else, or it's really ultimately just about your own individual pursuits. Now the second act is very challenging because this is one where we go into usually mortgages, major careers, marriage, and children, and buying, building house. So there's a lot of responsibility. It's about others, it's about sharing, it's about connection, it's about responsibilities. So the middle act is usually the one that's the most challenging. It used to be 20 to 40, now it's like more 30 to 50. And the third act is when the kids are actually moving out of home. We're getting to a point of financial stability usually. And we're starting to really question after being in our careers for usually for a lot of people 25 years, now that we're hitting sort of 50. And that third act ultimately should be a very rich and rewarding and nourishing and exciting time. But for a lot of people, it becomes a very redundant time, a time of confusion, a time of slothfulness, a time of ugly just going to the local club and drinking beer at the bar and not really having a sense of purpose. So I like to recommend to people that I work with to be ahead of the curve and not to wait till that third act suddenly hits you with a great shock that all of a sudden you've gotten low energy, you're not sleeping very well, you're going through, you know, menopause if you're a woman, if you're going through some rapid decline in testosterone, if you're a guy, it's very challenging. But to be ahead of the curve and think, how do I, at the age of 40, 45, start having more purpose, more passion, have start really looking after your physical well-being, really starting to embrace the potential for your fullness with all your wisdom and all your life experiences into something that's very meaningful and purposeful. And it doesn't mean doing something full-time like I did. For the first few years in my 40s, as I was getting that, I was really looking after myself. I was really getting a sense of purpose and passion part-time. So I would on weekends work in soup kitchens, I was doing uh tree planting and forest regeneration. There was a lot of things I was doing just part-time as I felt this sense of purpose and a sense of giving and a sense of contribution. So one thing I think that we really need to start thinking about is to not wait till we're at that breaking point, but to really integrate these things and weaving these things into our life even during our middle act, even though we don't have as much time for that because we're looking after kids, but towards the back end of that, as you're moving towards that third act, start preparing for it.

Jody Brooks 22:17

I love that and it's incredibly great advice. Definitely that was I suppose for me, I'm I lost five and a half stone in weight and got rid of type two diabetes because I as you were talking there, it really hit me because I did do that. I need to be ahead of this. I'm gonna be fifty soon. And do I wanna spend, you know, do I want to be insulin dependent by the time I'm fifty-three? Do I want to be losing a leg at sixty? Do I want to do if I act now, I get to avoid all of that and I can act slowly and almost I transitioned to my health over three years, and I now don't have type two diabetes and I lost all that weight and I run 18 kilometres a week, I swim five, and they are just a part of who I am. And ironically, at 50, I'm probably the fittest I've ever been in my life, and I try and say to people all the time, like it's never too late, and there is something very powerful about being 50 and discovering your fitness and your strength. You know, it's very liberating, and you know, we you get like you say, is to not wind down, but I think I've stepped up a gear rather than retirement is now very different, and we touched on that about you know, we get to write the chapter. So I think you know, as we come to the end of this first half, what stands out for me there is the power of this transitioning and understanding that it's a journey, and as you just said there as well, about being ahead of the curve and not resigning yourself to it, not feeling like you are trapped and designing a way out of it and setting a destination and you know, allowing yourself to go on a different journey slowly and to plan for it, but also that there will still be bumps in the road and it may not work out just as you planned, but to keep going on that direction. We'll take a short break now. You can listen to this lovely advert, and we will be back after the break to discuss the amazing work that Tom does now around stillness and meditation. Before we get back to the conversation, I want to tell you about the wider messy midlife space. Every episode has its own home at messymidlifepodcast.world where you'll find the full show notes, practical takeaways, guest bios, and links to anything we've talked about today. You'll also find a link to the Messy Midlife community, a supportive space where you can connect with me, connect with others who get it, and access free tools to help you explore the nine principles of authentic living in your own life. And if you feel ready for more personal support, visit authenticcoaching.me to find out about one-to-one coaching and book a free 45-minute call with me. This show is brought to you completely free. The only thing I ask is that if it's helping you, please subscribe in your chosen podcast app so you never miss an episode. Leave a review, like this episode, and most importantly of all, share it with a friend or loved one who might need to hear it. Because midlife might be messy, but it does not have to be a crisis, it can be a calling to connect. Now let's get back to today's show. Welcome back, messy midlifers. You've joined me again here with Tom. We heard beautifully in the first half how Tom, like many of us, had that messy middle moment, but has definitely gone on to transition into something different, powerful, purposeful, and now has a mission to get a billion people to sit in stillness every day. So, Tom, tell us a bit about what you do now and the people that you work with and your goal to get us to sit in stillness.

Tom Cronin 26:07

No, I I had such a transformation when I learned to meditate deeply, and stillness was the byproduct of me meditating deeply. After meditating deeply, then I experienced stillness, and what happened from there was quite profound. So many different things started to improve in my life and change, and I knew that if I wanted to make an impact in people's lives, the best thing I could do would be to teach them how to experience this stillness and how to calm their mind and their nervous system and get out of that sympathetic nervous system state, the stress response, put the body into that peace response, the parasympathetic nervous system, which the meditation that I was teaching had a phenomenal effect on. So the stillness project was born out of that vision and mission that if I could inspire one billion people to meditate daily and be being on this call is part of that process, then I knew that I could make a dent in the universe, an impact on the planet. So that was my vision and mission.

Jody Brooks 27:02

For me as a coach, when I work with people, the whole I think there's two words that strike fear into every client that sits in a session. The first one is journal, and the second one is meditate. And we struggle so much. I think we live in a world that is so first of all, we're so overstimulated, and secondly, is so much about output about next to achieve. How do you go when we live in a world like that to allowing yourself that moment of stopping and as you call it stillness or meditation? Because for me, I don't meditate as much as I would like to, but it's in my routine at least three times a week where I allow myself that time. But how does somebody go from this crazy external world to understanding and allowing themselves that time?

Tom Cronin 28:02

Firstly, I think it's important we understand different types of meditation, it's going to give you different experiences. So if we're just trying to empty the mind or focus on one thing or trying to not think, then it will become excruciatingly difficult and if not sometimes stressful because you're trying to force your mind to do something that it doesn't want to do. And there's going to be resistance, there's going to be conflict, there's going to be challenge, and this will be uncomfortable. So the technique that I found, and the technique that I chose to teach because it was so impacting and so accessible for my life was one where we use a mantra. Now that mantra is very, very charming for the mind. Now we've got to remember one thing: the mind is always looking for charm. So thinking, ruminating, forecasting, analysing, remembering is all very compelling, very charming for the mind. So to stop the mind from doing that will require either an immense level of force, which is what Buddhist monks will do in monasteries, a very difficult process if you're doing Excel spreadsheets and emails and doing social media and dealing with kids and shopping lists all day long. So that's why they remove themselves from the world so they can just stop and focus on one thing because there's nothing else compelling for their mind to do anyway. Whereas when we're living what we call the integrated life, we need a vehicle, and this is where the mantra comes in. So the repetition of that sound becomes very compelling and charming for the mind. So my clients, I have a very high retention rate with my meditation where most of my students, when they learn, will meditate twice a day for 20 minutes very easily. And the reason why it's so compelling for them to slice that into their day, or let's just call it not even slicing, they're replacing it with something else because it's compelling nature, it's very blissful. So instead of it being something that they've got an aversion to, it's something that they're drawn to because the levels of bliss from that experience are quite high. And that's for that's how they can easily replace it with something else that wasn't providing the same level of bliss that this would.

Jody Brooks 29:58

I think the one of the biggest battles is the mobile phone and social media and this distraction that fills that time, and that's where I try and say to clients, you know, if you put the phone down for 20 minutes, like if you look at your screen time, if you do you know what you are gaining from those things. In that allowing someone you're saying there, you know, to do 20 minutes twice a day, what are the benefits though? What you know, that's the other one that people will say to me, Yeah, but I finished the 20 minutes, and what is supposed to happen? Because again, we're in this results-driven world where you know, like we've been trained, you know, at the end of that, this is what happens, this is the result, this is what I've achieved. So, what can people expect from introducing this into their lives?

Tom Cronin 30:48

Yeah, exactly that. We we're always looking for an ROI on our time and in time and attention, and that our ROI means return on investment. You want to get something back from that time that you've allocated. Everything that everyone is doing on the planet right now, we're all doing the same thing. Every single human being right now is doing one thing and one thing alone. They're in the quest to find fulfillment from an action. Whether you're sleeping, going to the gym, doing a sauna, an ice bath, scrolling through TikTok, eating ice cream, going to the movies, watching porn, doing cocaine, drinking up roll spritz, every action is motivated in the quest to find fulfillment, even though it doesn't look fulfilling, like cleaning your bathroom floor, brushing your teeth, putting bottle tops on bottles in the factory to pay your rent. All of them, in some way, are supposed to be giving them a return on the investment of their time and attention to find some fulfillment through that action. And what we're finding is that we're becoming more and more miserable, more and more anxious, more and more stressed. So the actions that we're committing to to get some degree of fulfillment aren't actually giving us that return on investment that we all thought they would. And so, what I help people to do is understand this almost like investment sort of strategy with time and attention. And what we tend to find with people doing Vedic meditation, even just this weekend, I was teaching a group of people, the big things that we notice is that firstly they sleep so much better because the sleep load to reduce the stress has been relieved by the meditation. Reduce the stress, relieve the load, then sleep become what it meant to be, which is rest. And so we find people sleeping better, we find people getting more energy, we find people feeling more light, more blissful, more happy, more buoyant, more healthy. And these things are quite tangible. Like within minutes after the session, this is what would notice people, which is what happened to me as well. And my anxiety, my panic attacks, my depression all started to go away, and then the elevation of these wonderful biochemicals and energy and creativity and focus are all big benefits that people notice quite quickly from the experience.

Jody Brooks 32:48

You say there as well, and they stack, like I always say to clients, like you just you know, don't finish your practice, open your eyes, and expect there to be, you know, a list of things in front of you. But as you move forward through your day, what you'll start to notice is that things are easier, that it's by the time you get to the next bit, you'll be like, hang on a moment, today was different, and the next day, and that like you say there with sleep as well, it's a huge one. In fact, I notice all the time that when I have found that time in the evening, I have the best night's sleep ever. But it's such a delayed reward, in essence, is the you do that. It's not like when I go for my run and I finish and I get to the end and I hit stop on my watch, and I'm like, yes, 6k, fastest time ever, instant fulfillment and gratification. So you have to play the long game on the reward process.

Tom Cronin 33:40

That's a really good something that I emphasise a lot just on that. It's we're in a world that really wants such immediate gratification, which is why we eat ice cream and drink aparel spritzes. We want that instant gratification, but just really helping people to reframe and play that longer game, as you say, and get that understand there is going to be a delayed gratification, but that's like a long-term investment that's gonna pay off over time.

Jody Brooks 34:03

I'm gonna ask a question now around that gratification. Is it that you know when you then embed this practice and you're having you're you know enabling yourself, your mind to go into this bliss state to calm itself down? Does your need for some of those other gratifications ease because your mind is getting what it really wants, so it no longer a bit like we were saying before when you we left the we left our corporate worlds, that we didn't have those needs anymore. Does the same thing start to appear and happen?

Tom Cronin 34:36

Yeah, we see that definitely happen in my life, but we see that happening in a lot of my students, is that when we're in a stress response, we have very low levels of oxytocin and serotonin, the biochemicals for happiness and love. What we have is high levels of cortisol and adrenaline. And when we flip that by going into a de-excited state that we achieve in meditation, and we're going into the peace response, we see increased levels of serotonin and oxytocin in the bloodstream and decreased levels of cortisol and adrenaline, which means that we inherently within ourselves, independently of any experience externally, any consumption of anything, we naturally inherently start feeling better. We feel more joyful, we feel more happy, more fulfilled. So we find a lot of addictions, which definitely happened to me. A lot of those addictions that we were leaning on to get fulfilled drop away because we inherently are starting to feel more fulfilled within our own right and in within our own selves. So 100% we find this these natural cravings and addictions just starting to just really drop away. So if I meet someone that wants to come and learn and meditate and they've got an addiction, I'm really excited because it means that they're constantly craving an experience, they're just looking in the wrong place for it. And what we want to do is lead them to their inner world where that bliss exists rather than the outer world where they get short dopamine hits.

Jody Brooks 35:51

Yeah, I think it's something that you know, like more and more and it we're understanding and the importance and the power of it. And maybe it is because of the scroll, the doom scrolling and the dopamine kick that the doom scroll scrolling creates, which has overpowered people and turned people into addicts. But I say that the really powerful ones in the mix, in the dose mix, really are the oxytocin and the serotonin, but you have to invest time in those. You can't just scroll and get a quick hit. You know, they take time, but what they provide you with is huge, it's absolutely massive, like that, you know, the serotonin leveling your mood, changing how you feel, your oxytocin, that sense of connection, so automatically a feeling of fulfillment as opposed to this emptiness of doom scrolling. I say to people as well, you can keep scrolling, but what you're looking for will never be there. There isn't a bottom, you will never find it.

Tom Cronin 36:50

It's so true.

Jody Brooks 36:51

The further down you go, the further back up it is. So try and get clients to do a visualization around that and get them to imagine that as you scroll you're going down a hole, and the further down you go, you've got to come back up that hole to try and have that moment where we go for the phone. I am the world's worst coach because I just don't like social media, so I struggle with the fact that my business pinges on it and I have to engage it. I'm r I keep mine to ten minutes in the morning, ten minutes in the evening. That's it. That's good. Good discipline, I like it. Yeah, no notifications, they're all turned off. Um I did but I did the bit where I looked at my screen report and it scared me so much that as someone that I thought was responsible when I actually saw my screen report, I was like, oh my god, how much time has that stolen from me? Yeah, beautiful. What would you say, what would you say is a healthy meditation practice? We all live in busy worlds, you alluded to it in your bit, you know, saying there about transitioning and going on a journey and trying to get ahead of the curve. I think that's something that people need to hear to be encouraged is how can people get ahead of the curve with meditation and this stillness in a way that fits their lives.

Tom Cronin 38:21

I have a very structured practice, one that I teach as well, which is a meditation practice, it's called Vedic meditation, also known as transcendental meditation, where we meditate for 20 minutes, morning and evening, and when people hear that, their first thought is, gosh, there's no way I could get time for that. I've just had a busy life. And so the way I help them understand this, and the way I understood it as well, is that I knew that I was trying to find fulfillment in my day, but I was quite miserable and riddled with anxiety, and that if I look at my day, which comprise of 24 hours, and each hour has three portions of 20 minutes in it, which means that I have 72 20-minute segments of pie in my time and attention allocation in my pie chart that I'm supposed to be getting fulfillment from. So that's sleep and personal hygiene and eating and shopping and working and playtime. So what I realized was that if I take two of those 72 20-minute segments and I make them unconditional and park them aside, and nothing could hijack them or supersede them as their level of priority and importance. And I made that a part of my 21-day process when I first learned to meditate. I'm going to do this for 21 days and see what happens. And so that was one in the morning when I woke up and one in the afternoon around four or five in the afternoon or six o'clock. It completely changed my life. And so that became a very easy and accessible 20 minutes morning and 20 minutes afternoon. And I always liken it to Malcolm Gladwell's book, The Outliers, that talks about people that were phenomenal human beings in history. And if we look at the most phenomenal human beings, they're not sports stars or musicians, they are actually enlightened people that have reached the pinnacle of the human experience. And one thing we know about enlightened people is that they all dedicated a portion of time every single day to sitting in stillness to reach the pinnacle of the human experience. So it doesn't take much, 20 minutes here and there.

Jody Brooks 40:12

I was having a moment there as you said it and thinking, oh my god, 72 20 minute segments like that, you know, it suddenly feels like a very little commitment. You know, that's a very clever way of taking it from something that feels massive and actually showing it as something that's very small and then the benefits that come with that. And would you say that's something really you said there as well, 21 days? So would that be your guidance is to commit to that for 21 days twice a day to then see really a huge impact and change and that level of commitment to you know bring this bliss state and this change in your world?

Tom Cronin 40:55

Yeah, it's just that 21 days is what we've recognized is a period of time where people start to establish habits, and it's also a time where we're gonna have some definitive research validated. One thing that we're all doing is we're seeking through our own personal research where we can find fulfillment. Is it in a bowl of ice cream? Is it in working hard? Is it in buying Bitcoin? Is it at following a sports team? Is it having children? Is it having a wife? And so we're all in the quest to research where we can find fulfillment. And after 21 days, we're pretty guaranteed with all my students that if they do that twice a day for 21 days, they're gonna find their levels of fulfillment will rise, their level of reactivity will drop. That's emotional response and reactivity to situations and circumstances, they'll be a lot more stable, a lot more equanimous, they'll be sleeping better, they'll be feeling healthier, have more energy. So we just find that's a really good length of time for them to do their own personal research to validate yes, this is worth me what worth my while continuing on with this journey of 21 another 21 days and twice a day.

Jody Brooks 41:59

You say something really interesting there as well about being reactive, and that's certainly something that I noticed, particularly when I was in the corporate world and I was, you know, constantly on cortisol and fired, is that the moment that I actually calmed that down, I noticed that you know it was magical, like the world had suddenly got friendlier, but I realized that it was me that had got friendlier. I heard a great phrase the other day is that you know, if you meet three arseholes in a morning, the chances are you're an arsehole. And I was like, it's so true, and as you said there, that bit about reactive is I was a really reactive person. Like I went in fired up, cortisol loaded, adrenaline pumping, and so what I noticed there is yeah, when you said like you become less reactive, is when I calmed my system, the world around me calmed as well.

Tom Cronin 42:54

I like that.

Jody Brooks 42:55

The other thing I think that people attempting or trying to find this time is how important is the time at which you do it, and how important is the environment?

Tom Cronin 43:08

Yeah, it's a really good question. It's so relevant because I actually did a video of this yesterday on my Instagram. Because spiritually in traditions we always talk about between four and six is the most auspicious time to meditate. It's when the environment that you're in is very still. You know, that if you think about when you wake up at four, there's not much movement happening in the streets and there's not air conditioning buses, and the environment itself, the air is very quiet and still. So usually it's a very conducive time to meditate. However, what we're also finding when I did some training with the Flow Research Collective to become a pick performance coach is that we wake up with quite a burst of energy, mental and physical activity. The mind is very active because it's been resting all night and there's a lot of energy in the body. Usually we should be waking up with a dose of cortisol so we can collect the wood and light the fire and round up the cows and protect the fort. And so the field, and so we're generally waking up ideally with a burst of energy, not so much for most people these days, because we just have too much stress in our system. That morning meditation, if we meditate straight away in the morning, it can be quite uncomfortable for some people or quite difficult to drop in. And so I'm suggesting these days that you could actually, if you're feeling compelled, rather meditating at that time in the morning, to either for me, I like to go to the gym first thing as soon as I wake up, do my morning routine, which is about half an hour of personal hygiene and stuff, and then I go to the gym and do some physical strenuous exercise. Or it could be a burst of mental activity, which is writing your book or doing your marketing plan or doing some creative impulse that you've got a lot of project that you want to work on, big project you want to work on, that first hour and a half or two of the day could be the best time to do that. Excuse me. These days, if you feel that you want to have a burst of activity and then have some replenishment with your meditation around nine or ten o'clock in the morning, that's a really good time to take some time out and meditate. When it comes to your environment, it's nice to have a beautiful sanctuary and a sacred place with your candles and your shawl and your nice chair and the crystals if you've got crystals or your incense if you're into incense. But what we do recommend is that it's not necessary. It's nice if you have it, and it's nice to or pre-frame your meditation by setting things up in your nice sacred space. But at the same time, I meditate on trains in my parked car, on park benches. There's nowhere that you can't meditate as long as you can close your eyes and be safe with your eyes closed.

Jody Brooks 45:44

I love all of that. I got lost in it there because I was again thinking I am that person that's full of energy first thing in the morning. So I know it's not a time for me to do it. Like I am up and like you, I'm either now out running in the woods or I'm at the pool swimming, and that's it. Is and then I usually come back and my mind is a hundred miles an hour, so it's straight to my desk, it's got get whatever difficult piece of work out the way. And I find the most common time for me now is to meditate at lunch times. Like it's I actually like about 12 o'clock is you know, before I have the afternoon slump, is that's when I find it works for me is you know, is to actually stop in the middle of the day. And yeah, and I find it, you know, you were saying that it was interesting, I find that it then helps me cope with my workload in the afternoon. Like it gives my brain a mini reset halfway through the day before I push through my afternoon work.

Tom Cronin 46:48

So I love that.

Jody Brooks 46:50

Yeah, I think it's very uh powerful. I'm still struggling with the evening though, Tom. Like it's that one where I think it's because then what happens is I push through, leave my desk late, and uh and so I've allowed myself just to allow just lunch time at the moment.

Tom Cronin 47:06

Um so there's no right or wrong, it's whatever is working for your day. If you want to do one in the morning and then one when we're cleaning up at the end of the day, four, five, six in the evening is a really nice thing to do. Or for you, you're just doing one in the middle of the day, it's beautiful as well. So there's no right or wrong where people are going to meditate.

Jody Brooks 47:23

Yeah. And I think you said there as well, I probably do sneak in other moments that are maybe not as formal. But another one, quite often I'll walk my dog in the evening, and there's a beautiful park here, and I sit on the bench, stare at the tree for twenty minutes, she goes off, and I think I have my moments of stillness, but maybe not as formal in the evening. But I think it's very true you said there, I've definitely learnt to be able to do that trains, buses, cars. Car parks I learnt to do when I was still working because a lot of my job involved me going to visit customers, and I would always find myself with 20-30 minutes, and so that's where I and I just used to then meditate in the car before I went into a meeting and make use of that 20 minutes in a car park. It doesn't look very spiritual, but it feels very spiritual, and uh my favourite place to meditate.

Tom Cronin 48:18

Parked car and a car park's the best place to meditate. Yeah, it's really quiet and peaceful.

Jody Brooks 48:23

Yeah. I can see that I just glanced at my watch and see that we're rapidly running out of time. Is there anything in that second half there, Tom, this discussion that I haven't brought out, we haven't talked about that you feel it's really paramount that those listeners struggling in their messy middle moment or trying to get through that that you would like to share with them?

Tom Cronin 48:50

I think one thing is that we have a very deep code and construct in our society, in the fabric of our society, is that we generally expect good things to make us feel good and bad things to make us feel bad. And we're in this constant flux of trying to make life work out for us in the outside world so that we can feel good on the inside world. And we're trying to avoid things on the outside world that are going to make us feel bad so we don't feel bad on the inside world. What we want to do is we want to cultivate and learn to create a inner state that is sovereign and independent of the outcomes. We call this moksha in Sanskrit, moksha, which means freedom from the binding effects of life. But it's in every TV drama, it's in every movie, it's in every book that good things will make you feel good and bad things will make you feel bad. Yet it doesn't have to be that way. We can establish and sustain greater levels of peace and tranquility and calmness and joyfulness and enchantment, regardless of what's going on in the world around us. Now, ironically, when we do cultivate these levels of equanimity and peace and high vibrational essences or energies, then under the laws of attraction and magnetism, we actually, like you said, start attracting more of that in our world anyway. And so it becomes self-perpetuating on the downside or self-perpetuating on the upside. So just coming back to what is your state, what are you doing on a daily basis to cultivate and sustain your inner state that is not dependent upon external circumstances and situations.

Jody Brooks 50:24

I'm a huge proponent of for gratitudes for that reason, and I do some work with in a charity working with vulnerable mental health, post-addiction men. I run a men's group, and that was our whole conversation yesterday was about our reticular activating system and the importance of gratitudes, and that you said it there is that our brain is also predetermined to keep us safe, so it's looking for all the negative and finding those positive moments and using those gratitudes, like is that you can tip that balance in the other direction as well. Before I go into my final question, if any of the listeners today have more questions, which I'm sure they do and would like to reach out, have a question, or just want to connect, what's the best way to get in touch with you, Tom?

Tom Cronin 51:19

Yeah, I think Instagram is a really nice personal place to hang out. So Instagram, my Instagram is at Tom Cronin. Otherwise, they can find me on LinkedIn or on my website, which is tomcronin.com.

Jody Brooks 51:30

Oh, and I will make sure all of those are in the show notes below. My final question, as always, to every guest. If you could plant a seed in the mind of the listeners today that would slowly grow over time and bear fruit, what would that seed be?

Tom Cronin 51:47

Such a good question. We're magnificent beyond our imagination. The incredible potential, incredible loving capacity, the incredible creative capacity that we all have. It's just that we're so conditioned to think small, to play small, to be reactive, to succumb to the conditions and the conditioning of our society, but just to continually free yourself of the shackles of your bad decisions and the difficult life you've had and the traumas and the things that you've been through, which is very challenging, I know, for many of us. But to continually look forward at how do you create and utilize and realize that magnificence that you have access to, because we do have access to incredible magnificence and incredible potential. So just get excited about what's ahead, get big on your visions about what you want to create and what you want to do and who you want to become. Because the infinite intelligence, the creator source, is always looking to create through you, and we just have to somehow get out of the way and allow that to happen with almost reckless abandon in the way that it becomes a full expression of that creative intention.

Jody Brooks 52:54

Incredibly powerful, Thomas has been an absolutely phenomenal conversation. I've loved every moment of it. I'm going away now. Inspired and with a new commitment to allow myself that time. So I'd just like to thank you. I know it's at the end of your day and opposite time zones. So I'd like to thank you for giving me this time and sharing this time with the listeners. It's been truly inspiring.

Tom Cronin 53:20

Well, thanks for creating space and having this conversation that these are important conversations, and here we need these sorts of people like yourself to create a space for the uh the richness of these conversations to happen.

Jody Brooks 53:31

Thank you. Listeners, that unfortunately is the end of another amazing episode. I think today what stands out for me is those two very tiny segments in the possibility of 72 segments in a day to honour your state of bliss. And that that is the reward is taking your mind back to where it really wants to be to help it find its fulfilment, which is this state of bliss, which then makes the possibilities that Tom talks about at the end there, is that this infinite power that we have to create magnificent things that we all have. And that ultimately from the messy to this beautiful life, that it's really about transitioning and going on a journey. I'm going to have a new commitment to find my two segments in my 72 this week and allow my brain more of that moment of bliss. As always, listeners, remember you're not broken, you're simply becoming something you are always destined to be. Take care until the next episode. I'll see you soon. Thank you for spending this time with me on Messi Midlife. If this episode resonated, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who might need to hear it today. You can find the show notes below and more resources at authenticcoaching.me. And just a little gentle reminder, Messy Midlife is here for information, reflection, and personal growth. It will substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, treatment, therapy, or any other professional healthcare support. If you have concerns about your physical or mental health, please reach out to a qualified professional. Until next time, take good care of yourself. And remember, midlife might be messy, but it's not a crisis, it's a calling to connect.