As a part of my research, I sat down with Dr. John Sowada, a peak performance psychology coach in Fort Worth. I first asked him to describe his work, to which he replied, “I leave people in better shape than I find them.” He works with people in all different parts of their lives and all with completely different situations. The goal of his work is to help people know, value, and trust themselves; all while getting results, solving problems, and elevating performance.
We talked briefly about the word “mindfulness” and exactly what that word meant. To him, mindfulness is pure, non-judgemental awareness and absorption. We talked about the “limitations of language,” and how it’s hard to narrow down one exact meaning to a word with so many possibilities. Besides the dictionary definition, the word “mindfulness” could mean many things to people in many different situations. How Dr. Sowada uses mindfulness in his job is a completely different story, and because he works with so many different people, he had multiple examples that he was willing to share.
A big part of his job is to help people know and value themselves, and he typically has his clients participate in certain mindfulness activities that require them to pay close attention to their own mannerisms. For example, while working with clients that experience anxiety or stress, one exercise that he might do is called nostril breathing. This is a very simple exercise where he simply instructs his client to close their eyes and breath slowly in and out through their nose. As they do this, he has them take note of which nostril is more open, and if this is changing over time or remaining the same. This exercise typically lasts for five minutes or more, and although it seems tedious, it is small exercises like these that allow his clients to know themselves better. A simple question like this is something that can only be answered by you. There is no right or wrong answer, and no one can determine the answer for someone else. Because it is such a personal question, Dr. Sowada allows his clients to focus and learn about their own bodies and minds. This allows a person to trust and value themselves, and rely less on other people.
Dr. Sowada also works with the TCU men’s tennis team, and because tennis is one of the most mentally challenging sports, the work that he does with the players allows them to manage the control that they have over their emotions as a way to let go and move on from any mistakes, or prevent their opponent from gaining the upper hand.
We also discussed the challenge of being totally and completely mindful. Mindfulness is a skill that you can practice, but even people that have been training their entire lives still struggle with complete awareness. The only beings that are truly 100% mindful are infants, but this is slowly lost during their development. The way to build back this skill is to practice, and the best way to strengthen your practice is by having a positive experience with it. So What do you consider a positive experience with something like mindfulness?
Because this idea is completely subjective, I asked Dr. Sowada how he is able to measure success among his clients. His honest response was that he can only measure the success rate by what they tell him. If one of his players won their tennis match because they were able to regulate their emotions, that is a successful experience. If one of his clients is able to build up their confidence to stand up to someone in their life, that is a successful experience. And if someone is able to repair a once broken relationship in their life, that is also a successful experience.