Welcome to our newly launched site, Quiet Confidence. If you’re curious about mindfulness, starting a practice, and, more importantly, putting that into action within all aspects of your life, you’re in the right place.
Quiet Confidence is having both the courage and the ease to be with yourself, just as you are. It’s going beyond thinking or any concept of good or bad. It is the result of having the ability to be fully present and fully aware, here and now, just as you are.
It doesn’t mean our external circumstances don’t change, or we won’t have difficult, sometimes painful situations. Instead, it means that you can be at ease with anything and everything.
I believe that our lives are best lived authentically with calm, clarity, and congruence. When we take the time to discover and develop the most authentic version of ourselves, we give a beautiful gift to ourselves and everyone around us.
Mindfulness can give us a way of looking at things differently and enables us to relate to all of our lives’ experiences, which might be causing stress, anxiety, uncomfortableness, or just preventing us from living our best life. This way of looking at things differently, in turn, can allow us to transform ourselves completely.
Quiet Confidence is a place where you can find practical advice on developing a mindfulness practice and applying it to all aspects of your life.
I’m Bryan. I started Quiet Confidence to be a resource for finding calm, clarity, and congruence in our lives through mindfulness. Mindfulness is purposely, and without judgment, being aware of and awake to the present moment.
My Journey into Mindfulness
I started practicing mindfulness and meditation in 2014. At the time, I was racing triathlons and training for my first Ironman. The stress of work, starting a new job, the uncertainty and fear of the unknown about completing something like an Ironman, the mental fortitude it takes to train and race, along with the extremely high volume of training (I was training 45+ hours a week, seven days a week) in addition to my daytime job and whatever social and familial commitments I could squeeze in, were taxing on me mentally and spiritually.
I knew about meditation and felt like it could be beneficial, but I was so busy and active, I “didn’t have time” to fit in a regular practice. Then I read Rich Roll’s book ‘Finding Ultra.’ One of the things he described was using his long runs and rides as active meditations. I started doing just that, and it was truly transformative.
My long runs (12-18 miles) and long rides (40-60 miles) became wonderful, moving meditations out in the open air. It had such an effect on me that I began also incorporating guided meditation, making it a daily part of my training.
Ever since, I’ve been especially interested in forms of meditation and mindfulness beyond the cushion and finding ways to apply that and maintain my presence and awareness in all aspects of my life.
Throughout my life, I’ve had challenges, life changes, existential crises, health issues, numerous learning experiences, and bouts of depression and anxiety come and go at various times. Through it all, I’ve found that mindfulness and meditation have been significant factors that have enabled me to cope, keep an “even keel,” and lessen the impact and the frequency in which I experience those things.
Mindfulness meditation has helped me learn that I am at my best when I am calm and relaxed, and my inner-self is congruent with my outer self, it has helped me achieve that. Though that’s still sometimes a struggle, it is far more the norm than it used to be.
I believe that our lives are best lived authentically with calm, clarity, and congruence. When we take the time to discover and develop the most authentic version of ourselves, we give a beautiful gift to ourselves and everyone around us.
The Purpose of Quiet Confidence
The mission of Quiet Confidence is to provide a place to find practical advice on how to develop a mindfulness practice and apply that to all aspects of everyday life.
To be present is to be truly alive and at one with those around you and what you are doing. This present moment, here and now, is all that we have and all that is real. The past is memories, the future imagination. Mindfulness helps us to be alive in the present moment, here and now.
Our first step is to be the observer, just to note and recognize what’s going on around us and within us. Just objectively observing as if we were a journalist reporting to our readers. The next step is to be curious and seek to understand. We do this by deepening that observation with the curiosity and objectivity of the beginner’s mind. Purposeful, objective and non-judgmental awareness can then lead to a focused effort to make changes.
My life’s journey is living my purpose of being the most authentic and best version of myself. The best husband to my wife, the best stepfather to my boys, the best coworker, the best friend, the best advisor, and the best “me.” This results in feeling fully integrated and congruent with my true nature, fulfilled, and joyful.
I strive to leave a legacy to be a caring, giving, loving, healthy person who isn’t afraid to be vulnerable and live life to the utmost fullest. I feel that my most important future contribution to others will be to show unconditional love through multiple expressions and help them to live their full, authentic life.
That is my goal here. I’m still on this journey. I have more questions than answers, and I do have moments where I’m off track. As I learn and continue on my journey, I continue to share my experiences here.
