Our minds, designed or evolved for survival, race to avoid the brutal and cling to the beautiful.
They create a constant rumination of worst-case scenarios and past events that could have gone differently.
Meanwhile, the world moves at a rapid pace around us, demanding that we go faster, do more, attend to this, don't forget about that, and that we should have done better.Â
“Life is brutal. But it’s also beautiful. Brutiful, I call it. Life’s brutal and beautiful are woven together so tightly that they can’t be separated. Reject the brutal, reject the beauty.”
 —Glennon Doyle Melton
To reject the brutal is to deny part of the human experience, and in doing so, we risk missing out on the opportunities for growth, resilience, and connection that come with facing challenges head-on.
Similarly, to reject beauty is to overlook the small moments of joy, gratitude, and love that make life worth living. Embracing the brutiful nature of life means accepting that both joy and pain are inevitable, and that they can coexist in the same moment. It means cultivating the resilience and self-awareness to navigate the challenges with grace and gratitude, while also savoring the moments of beauty and connection that bring meaning to our lives.
Life is brutiful, and that won't change.
However, your mind can change.Â
What if...
- you were able to truly savor the beautiful moments and sit with the brutal ones?
- you were able to remain centered, grounded, and calm as the world continued to race around you?Â
- those seemingly mundane moments of making dinner in the kitchen while your child reads books at your feet were noticed, even enjoyed?
Mindfulness has taught me an easier way of living.
It's not just about meditating, and it certainly doesn't require meditating for hours on end every day in silence. Mindfulness can be woven into the fabric of our existence, and applicable in all aspects of life.
Mindfulness often looks like:
👉🏼 using curiosity to better understand a seemingly difficult person or situation
👉🏼 detaching from negative self-talk
👉🏼 finding yourself present in the tedious efforts of daily life
👉🏼 focusing completely on whatever task is at hand
👉🏼 granting yourself permission to slow down
Mindfulness is a daily, repetitive, micro practice that creates significant change when culminated over time. There's no end goal, no A+ to achieve, and no box to check. These are practices that you'll use again and again.
My experience, supported by research, tells me when you begin to explore your own mindfulness practice, you'll find an easier way of living, too.Â
That's what I want for you.
About This Work
There are long term impacts of ignoring, suppressing, and avoiding present moment self-awareness including physical pain, brain fog, panic, overwhelm, and burnout. What we are not aware of we cannot change.Â
When we bring compassionate awareness to our internal sensations throughout days, we can release, shift, and move through instead of storing stress in the body. Mindfulness is not only a foundational self-care practice, but an act necessary to protect one’s sanity, longevity, health, engagement and ability to truly thrive.
Meriden brings a toolbox of techniques to her Keynote Presentations, including:
- Mindfulness: a mental state achieved by focusing one’s awareness on the present moment, while calmly acknowledging and accepting one’s feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations
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Resilience: is the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats, or even significant sources of stress. Resiliency can be taught and increased.
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Breath Practices: breathing is the only autonomic and voluntary function the body performs, and the use of functional and conscious breath, balances and down-regulates the stress response of the nervous system.Â
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Grounding Techniques: simple practices that provide a solid platform to help mitigate feelings of imbalance or indecisiveness.
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Positive Psychology: the science of optimal human functioning. Positive Psychology teaches a combination of lower order constructs of optimism, self-awareness and positive emotions.Â
You’ll often hear Meriden begin her story sharing about the experience of being hit by a car in her early 20’s and realizing she’d been taught more about square dancing, playing the recorder, and the periodic table than she had about understanding her own inner world. She’d spend the next three months in a wheelchair without the use of her dominant hand, working in a padded cell in the psychiatric unit during grad school, and living through the unleashed flood of emotions and thoughts she hadn’t been taught to recognize, name, or process.Â
A seemingly random discovery of a CD on mindfulness urged her to slow down and turn her attention inward. It opened her eyes to the tremendous benefits of mind-body techniques and kick-started a decades worth of immersion in extensive training and education to refine her expertise in mind-body modalities, mindfulness, and positive psychology.Â
She spent countless hours practicing and integrating these techniques into her own life. Diving deeper into her research, she discovered her underwhelming education in preventative mental well-being was not an isolated experience.
Mental health matters before the need of treatment.Â
Mental training is supported by modern science as a way to counteract our tendencies of worry, anxiety, stress, and frustration.Â
Our mind is our most valuable asset to becoming the best versions of ourselves.
Speaking Topics
- Mindfulness at Work: Neuroscience and Rationale
- Mindful Awareness for Improved Leadership and Innovative
- Thinking Dealing with Difficult People and Situations using Mindfulness
- Moving from balance to work life separation
- Managing Perfectionism to Increase Focus for Better Energy and Time Management
- Navigating change and uncertainty
- Focus and peak performance
- Emotion contagion in the workplace; managing yours and others for success
- Women and burnout in the workforce
Meriden has taken part in more than 275 speaking opportunities, from intimate interviews to large-scale platforms.
Supporting and inspiring others to be wherever their feet are with practical, no fuss tools that work so they can access the simplest ways to being mentally well.
To request Meriden as a speaker for your upcoming event or as part of your Podcast production, please reach out to her team directly at [email protected] or fill out the form below. Someone will return your inquiry in 3-4 business days.
