Stress Minimizing Technique with Emily Fletcher

THE ULTIMATE RESET

• Meditation is the ultimate reset.
• There is no shortage of things to be stressed about or tabs opened in our brains, and there is always a reason to not meditate, ie. I have six more emails to respond to or things on my to-do list.
• Yet, if you take the time to reset and invest in yourself, you get a return on your investment — you end up having more time in your day; you end up feeling better; your sleep is more productive. You feel fresher like you’ve actually gone in and closed all the tabs on your brain.
• It’s not just a mental reset, over time it ends up being a physiological reset. It gets rid of the stress chemistry or hormones adrenaline and cortisol and it produces dopamine and serotonin, which are bliss hormones.
• You start to feel better in meditation, but the bliss hormones stay with you throughout the rest of your day helping you to feel better about your life, not just during meditation.
• If you keep meditation as a daily practice, it can become a reset for your entire life and body because over time it changes the physiology of your brain and body.
• Meditation can:
• Increase the size of your hippocampus up to 17%.
• Strengthen the corpus callosum, the bridge between the left and right brain hemispheres
• Increase your neuroplasticity.

With medication, you are changing the structure of your brain and healing yourself on a cellular level.

• The stress that gets stored in our cellular and epigenetic memory begins to come up and out, so you can heal traumas from your own life and previous generations.  This has been proven on animals up to seven generations and on humans up to two generations of trauma.
• When we are in utero, everything that happens to our mother affects us. When mothers are under extreme stress, that can impact the baby. It’s like setting the blueprint for that human’s health.
• The good news is, it is just a blueprint — it’s not set in stone.
• Epigenetics are mutable or changeable. Every time we meditate, exercise, read a book, go outside, or eat nourishing food, we are flipping on epigenetic markers.
• Epigenetics are the on and off switch to our genetic code. Every time we take healthy action, it turns on the healthy gene expressions. Every time we take an unhealthy action, it turns on unhealthy gene expressions.
• No matter what blueprint we inherited from our parents, or their parents, we can get our hands on the wheel of our life.
• We have collectively gone through a great deal of trauma as a species this year, many changes of expectation.
• We have the opportunity to take on more trauma and build the calluses around our heart deeper or we can use this as a time to truly reset, get still, go inside, feel the feelings that are coming up and use this as an opportunity to take off the armor around our heart. To make ourselves more vulnerable to feel all our feelings so we can heal them.
• According to a French philosopher, “Life is the C between B and D. B is birth. D is death. C is choice.”
• These difficult times can define us, diminish us, destroy us, or they could develop us. We decide.

ASK THE RIGHT QUESTIONS

• We even have a choice about the questions we are asking.
• We could be asking any of the following questions:
• “Why is this happening to me?”
• “Why is my industry going away?”
• “Why did I get fired from my job?”
• “Why is this pandemic happening to me?”

We could be personalizing everything that is happening, putting us in victim mode, making it very challenging to get out of fight or flight.

• Just switch one word and ask, “Why is this happening FOR me?” If you assume that everything is happening for your own evolution and highest good, to usher you into the most amazing version of who you are capable of being, your brain will start looking for all of the lessons, potential miracles and insights that will change your whole life.
• Your brain does not like an open loop. When you ask better questions, you get better answers.
•  When we change our focus it changes the part of our brain called the reticular activating system (R.A.S).
• Many people are not conscious of the questions they are asking themselves. Often people don’t ask questions like, “how is this here to help me evolve into the version of myself that I am destined to be?” Or, “where is the gift in this?”
• The Ziva technique includes mindfulness, meditation, and the manifesting.
• The reticular activating system serves as a filtration system.
• Manifesting is intentionally creating a life you love. It’s getting intentional about what you want your life to look like.
• If you never take the time to set the direction on your GPS, it becomes very hard for nature to give you the directions.
• If left to its own devices, the R.A.S will just protect you from all the life threatening situations. This is why the combination of meditation and manifesting are more powerful than any one alone.
• If you meditate and release some of the fight or flight chemistry from the brain, the R.A.S. no longer has to focus on the danger or potential threats. Once you feel safe inside your body and surroundings you can begin to ask questions like:
• “What’s my dream?”
• “What would I love?”
• “What is this here to teach me?”
• “Why is this happening for me?”

As a result, the brain will begin to filter for all of the answers to your new questions.

THE MOST IMPORTANT PIECE 

• The best thing to do is to start a meditation practice.
• Emily offers an online course that’s 15 minutes of meditation for 15 days. Sign up now.
• Know that meditation is a skill that takes training and time commitment. There are different techniques that will do different things for your body.
• Practicing regularly does not require much willpower once you recognize the true benefits.
• When you don’t meditate, you put yourself at a disadvantage. You aren’t as productive, don’t feel as much peace, and lose more time.
• Even for people who say they don’t have time or might be considered “lazy” if you don’t have 20 minutes in your day to meditate, you really need to be doing it more.
• When people start to understand the real benefits and necessity of the practice, we will be able to take meditation out of the “bubble bath for your brain” category.
• It’s not a luxury, it’s the most important piece of mental hygiene that we need to be practicing every day.

TIPS FOR NOW 

• 1. The 1-minute rant. Set a timer on your phone, press start, and let it all out! Everything that you have kept bottled in, you have the freedom for 1 minute to get it all off your chest. Notice what comes up in your one minute of raging or crying, whatever comes up for you.
• 2. The 1-minute dance party. Turn on Beyonce, Justin Timberlake, or one of your favorite songs and have a ball. Dance, get silly and be free to move, and have a great time.
• Notice how you feel after using these two minutes every single day. It will serve as great preparation for your Ziva meditation practice.
• You can use these two minutes as morning practice or as a way to calm down when you are feeling frustrated with your kids or spouse, or overwhelmed about anything. Make it as private a moment as possible, but take your two minutes.
• It’s a great reset for your mind, emotions, and spirit, especially now when so many people are feeling heavy.
• Sometimes we might be feeling good but our bodies are responding to the collective stress that is happening around us.
• Emily suggests, even when you are feeling good to meditate anyway. There is plenty of stress out there that we can help to eradicate.
• Everyone around you can feel the difference when you are meditating. Your kids, family, and friends all benefit from you taking this time for yourself.
• Emily is working on a kids meditation called Ziva kids.
• Parents should know that when they are stressed, their kids will feel it.
• In a study done at Yale, parents of children dealing with trauma were treated in therapy and the childrens’ stress level decreased precipitously. Again, this was not as a result of treating the child, but the parent.
• Sometimes we think we are stressed in a vacuum but there is no way that stress is not negatively impacting the people around us.
• It might feel selfish to take two minutes for your rant and dance party or 15 minutes for your meditation, but it is the least selfish thing that you could do.
• As you heal yourself, you heal the collective.
• Your kids, partner, and co-workers want you happy and smart. No one wants you suffering alone in silence.

‘WHAT WOULD I LOVE RIGHT NOW?’

• Right now, think about the person in your life who stresses you out the most. Emily guesses that what all of our people have in common is that they are not self-sufficient. They are a day late and a dollar short. They are always angry, and stressed, and not present.
• Now, think about your favorite person. If you were to have a dinner party, who is the first person you would want to invite? This is the person that is always present, has time to listen, and makes you feel amazing. What these people have in common is that they are self-sufficient. They know how to handle their own stress, they know how to tap into their own intuition, and they have something to give. It’s very difficult to do that when you are chronically stressed.
• Meditation allows us to “clean our own house first”. When we wipe the stress from our lens of perception, everything in our life changes.
• There is a version of yourself that is burdened and buried under other people’s expectations and opinions. We have to show up for ourselves each day to meet that better version.
• After you are done meditating, imagine going to the deepest, most grounded place inside of you, then ask, “what would I love right now?”
• Asking this question puts you into a spirit of possibility and present moment awareness. Be careful not to ask yourself what you want or need or think you should have because that puts you in a spirit of expectation and lack.
• Asking what you would love puts you in a beautiful place. The response will be different for everyone.
• There is a quote that says, “Everything has been created twice, once in thought and once in reality.” Everything starts with a thought.

SHARE WITH US

• Take a screenshot of this episode, tag me on social media (@JimKwik & @EmilyStellaFletcher), and share your greatest “aha!” moment from this episode with us.
• Share with us the one thing that you would love.
• Get Emily’s book, Stress Less, Accomplish More, here.
• Not sure about meditating? Give Ziva training a try for free, here.