“Success is being and expressing yourself, hopefully in the service of helping others. Some people talk about mindfulness as the new wonder drug. I don’t see it that way, I’ve been doing this for 30 years, and I will continue to do it when it’s no longer a fad. I find it’s a way of life.” -George T. Mumford
George Mumford is a teacher, author, mindfulness and performance expert and coach who has worked with nonprofit leaders, corporate executives, prison inmates, military professionals, students, coaches, and some of the world’s greatest athletes, including Michael Jordan, Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant. Michael Jordan credits Mumford with transforming his on-court leadership, which in turn helped lead the Chicago Bulls to six NBA championships. O’Neal and Bryant describe Mumford as their “secret weapon,” bringing clarity to their minds. 13-time NBA champion coach Phil Jackson has described Mumford’s style as “mindfulness that goes beyond ‘just sitting/breathing’ to focusing while in action.”
Mumford’s website describes his unique journey: “An aspiring basketball player at the University of Massachusetts (where he roomed with Dr. J, Julius Erving), injuries forced him out of the game he loved. The medications that relieved the pain of his injuries also numbed him to the emptiness he felt without the game and eventually led him to heroin. After years of making meditation on and off the cushion the center of his life and getting clean, Mumford enrolled in Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction program and collaborated with him to create the Inner-city Stress Reduction Clinic in the early nineties.”
He reflects in his e-book, The Five Superpowers, that he came to mindfulness “not out of some idea to heal the world. Pain brought me to a place where I needed to find a new way. I had to unlearn many of my habits and had rewire my brain and nervous system.
The path was not easy, but it was through my pain that I was able to find a deep place of peace within. It also brought me to an unexpected place of high performance. The more centered I became the more capacity I developed. The more calm and focused my mind was, the faster I could perform. And the more clear and concentrated I got on what I wanted in my own life, the more my outward reality started to reflect my new inner state.”
On Dan Harris’ 10% Happier podcast (here on YouTube) Mumford explains, “you can go inside, turn within, and start to listen to that still small voice; our consciousness knows, there is a masterpiece there… We access it by being in the moment, by allowing things to speak to us, rather than interpret them all the time… We spend most of our time between anxiety and boredom. Anxiety is when challenges are high and skills are low. Boredom is when the skills are high and the challenges are low… we can say, if I’m not out of my comfort zone, I’m not growing… There is a space where we have the power to choose, to transform.” In his book, The Mindful Athlete: Secrets to Pure Performance, Mumford refers to this place as Eye of the hurricane.
He continues in the 10% Happier interview: “Meditation is not trying to go anywhere or do anything, meditation or being present is just seeing what’s there and letting it speak to you… The goal is to be present to what is. So if you’ve got all these thoughts that are negative or negative self-talk, can you create space where you can observe it and let it speak to you without being identified with it… The enemy is within, it’s not out there… It’s about starting to see how we’re thinking and that inner talk, can we change it so it’s consistent with our goal… have the vulnerability to not know, and just see what is… I don’t know what’s going to happen, let’s just be present and do the best I can, do what I know to do today, manage this moment and that will affect the next moment. Manage this day, it will affect the next day…. let everybody release the divine spark or the masterpiece within them, I think that’s the biggest thing…”
Mumford reflects in the interview on a wide range of topics, including how white the mindfulness world still is, and his interest in reaching young people before negative influences do. He is working on a book for young athletes, and hopes the work will grow more deeply into inner cities, rural communities, and Native American communities. “We have to talk more about values, we have to talk more about what it means to be a human being, and people who are marginalized because they’re a different skin color or they have a different religion. We have to start realizing what the consequences are of that discrimination. How it affects people, when people are isolated, and they’re feeling separate. We have to create a more holistic, communal feel.”
Curated by The Circle’s Creative Director & Editor, Lara Herscovitch (Cohort 10). To reach Lara directly: thecircle@clpnewhaven.org or Lara@LaraHerscovitch.com