Solving Stress : The Power to Remain Cool and Calm Amidst Chaos [1 ed.] 9781565895744, 9781565893184

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What Others Are Saying About Solving Stress “This little gem of a book offers much more than tools for momentary stress relief; it offers long-lasting solutions that address the underlying causes of stress, not merely the symptoms. Kraig Brockschmidt offers you a proven, practical, clear-minded approach to taking charge of your life, and your reactions to it. You can put these powerful techniques and simple strategies to work right away!” —Gyandev McCord, PhD, E-RYT 500, Director of Ananda Yoga, Co-Founder of Yoga Alliance, author of Spiritual Yoga: Awakening to Higher Awareness “Solving Stress offers a clear and concise means to bring greater serenity, clarity, and joy into your life. With patience and persistence, they’ll work for you too!” —Dr. David Kessler, Doctor of Osteopathy “In my business life, I love a guarantee. Guaranteed sale, guaranteed return. However, truth be told, stress is also guaranteed in the world of business! Stress is a very real problem, and Kraig has created for us a concise and precise roadmap to living a calmer, more constructive life. The promise? Follow these simple directions and you will find that this little book delivers you to a life—in work and home—filled with more joy, peace, and smiles.” —Shane McCamey, Director of Sales, West, Boiron USA “With clarity and precision, this book delivers true, elegant solutions to the epidemic of stress. Brockschmidt asks the right questions, delivers the science, and outlines a very simple, powerful practice that will transform your life. From my own practice of twenty years, I testify to the validity, power, and effectiveness of these techniques. As a professional cellist and director, I have found that these simple techniques not only turn the tables on the stress of performing, but also connect me to a joy never thought imaginable.”  —David Eby, professional cellist, director, instructor at Lewis & Clark College, Portland, Oregon

“Solving Stress is one of those books that will change your outlook on everything. Stress is not something to be reduced, avoided, or managed. Rather, it is something you can solve. My own journey started ten years ago, when I ran a software consulting company whose largest customer was General Motors. No matter what I tried, I could not escape the stress surrounding their financial state. Every news report, every congressional quote, even the president was involved. I would start every day telling myself to focus on what I could do, not on the external causes. That peace usually lasted no more than an hour. Without the tools, the discipline, and the focus Kraig describes, I could not solve stress. I’d stumbled on some of these ideas, and they helped. Following Kraig’s cohesive plan would have been much better. Now you can learn these same techniques to solve the stress in your life.” —Bill Wagner, Senior Content Developer, Microsoft “Solving Stress is a wonderful and necessary analysis on the dynamics of confronting and overcoming stress and anxiety. The writing is clear and concise, and is filled with relevant examples and very helpful exercises and strategies. I have already begun applying its insights in my own life.” —John Knight Lundwall, PhD, editor of Cosmos & Logos: Journal of Myth, Religion, and Folklore; author of Mythos and Cosmos: Mind and Meaning in the Oral Age “Solving Stress is a game-changing powerhouse of a book that delivers the promise of its title—the real and lasting solution to stress. Kraig Brockschmidt presents a thorough overview of stress; causes, impacts, and traditional solutions—including some of the humorous contradictions found in much of the literature on this subject. Packed with powerful research and crystal-clear analysis, Solving Stress presents a brilliant distillation of virtually all stress reduction approaches, and then goes beyond them. It penetrates to the heart of what actually causes stress, and then leads us to the simple yet profound approach that quite literally solves the problem of stress. And then it goes beyond again, leading its readers to a life of far greater quality and satisfaction—to happiness itself.”  —Dana Anderson MA, artist, teacher, Founder of Awakening Arts and The Academy of Art, Creativity, and Consciousness 

“Clearly written, very motivating, and full of practical methods that aren’t too hard to incorporate into a busy life. I feel that I have the tools now to not only reduce stress, but also start on a path toward a more balanced and harmonious life, generally.” —Gordon Hogenson, Microsoft group manager, author of C++/CLI: The Visual C++ Language for .NET 3.5 “This book is an indispensable friend to anyone buffeted by stress and worry, which unfortunately includes nearly everyone in the human race. Kraig’s writing style is easy and conversational, but also compelling. He offers time-tested techniques and changes in attitude that are transformative. It’s as refreshing to read this comprehensive guide as it is to practice the techniques. Highly recommended.” —Karen Gamow, Clarity Seminars, Mountain View, CA “This wonderful book contains simple, yet powerful steps to change your experience of daily life. The moments of your life will become permeated with calmness and joy. Even integrating a few of these practical steps will bring transformative results.” —Jamey and Darlene Potter, owners, New Renaissance Bookshop, Portland, Oregon “As a young reader dealing with the stress of being a university student and working full-time, this book deeply inspired me and influenced how I deal with stressors. Initially, I was skeptical. Can a book really help me deal with everything I have to do? It actually did. Brockschmidt writes in a clear and concise way, and speaks from personal experience. While various popular books on stress management give confusing and contradictory advice, Kraig focuses on the few simple things that are most effective.” —Julian Atanasoae, student, University of Bucharest, Romania “Who couldn’t use a little more peace in their life? Kraig Brockschmidt has put together a simple, easy-to-use formula for that purpose. Whether you are struggling up the ladder of success or tumbling down the so-called summit, this author offers a life raft out of the chaos!” —Kent M. Baughman RN, CHPN, certified End of Life Care giver

“Solving Stress penetrates to the heart of the problem of stress in our society and shows us a way out. I highly recommend it to anyone who has tried other methods of stress relief and failed. This method really works!” —Bruce Davis, businessman, owner, Junction True Value Hardware, Seattle, Washington “I love Solving Stress because it’s simple. As Kraig points out, there are hundreds of things you could do to address stress, but how do you know what you should do? This book provides just enough context to understand stress, then gets right down to what you can do about it. The combination of basic exercises, breathing, and meditation is perfect—do them all at once in about twenty minutes, or break up your workday and practice a few minutes at a time. I started with this book a few weeks ago, and it’s really made a difference on how I approach my day, and how I tackle stress.” —Michael Blythe, Senior Technical Writer, Microsoft “Solving Stress is the key to understanding and using non-pharmacological solutions for remaining calm in the midst of chaos. What pushes our stress buttons so that the immediate response is often anger that intensifies the situation? Brockschmidt’s book is a gem that provides tools that allow us to master our immediate responses from fight or flight to calmly finding an articulate solution. Solving Stress teaches us how to master our reactions to stressful situations wherever they occur.” —Sara S DeHart, MSN, PhD

Solving Stress The Power to Stay Cool and Calm Amidst Chaos

Solving Stress The Power to Stay Cool and Calm Amidst Chaos

Kraig Brockschmidt

Crystal Clarity Publishers Nevada City, California

Crystal Clarity Publishers Nevada City, CA 95959 Copyright ©2017 by Kraig Brockschmidt All rights reserved. Published 2017 Printed in the United States of America ISBN-13: 978-1-56589-318-4 eISBN-13: 978-1-56589-574-4

Cover designed with love by Amala Cathleen Elliott Book design and interior illustrations by David Jensen ___________________________________________________________ Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Brockschmidt, Kraig, 1968- author. Title: Solving stress : the power to stay cool and calm amidst chaos / Kraig Brockschmidt. Description: Nevada City, California : Crystal Clarity Publishers, [2017] | Includes index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017029867 | ISBN 9781565893184 (quality pbk. : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Stress management. Classification: LCC RA785 .B76 2017 | DDC 155.9/042--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017029867

~ crystal

clarity publishers

www.crystalclarity.com [email protected] 800.424.1055

Contents Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 1. Life in the Cycle. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

The External Cycle The Internal Cycle: The Fight-or-Flight Response Is Stress Necessary? Motivation Is Necessary Table 1: Physiological Effects of Stress Insert: The Skyrocketing Cost of Stress The Cost of Stress to Personal Health The Cost of Stress to Business and Industry

2. The Search for Solutions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 Relief but Not Cure: The Great Stress Exchange Exchanging Buys Time You Can’t Beat Out the Darkness 3. The Origin of Stress. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .57 4. Breaking the Cycle. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 Responding with Calmness and Relaxation The Relaxation Response Training a New Reaction Stop-Breathe-Reflect-Choose Postscript

5. Methods of Practice. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85

Physical Exercises Squeeze-and-Relax Exercises Breathing Exercises Meditation Exercise Putting It All Together Martial Arts for the Mind Insert: The Effectiveness of Meditation

6. Choosing Your Influences. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119

Planting vs. Weeding Increasing Your Stress Threshold Changes Come Naturally Work from Your Center The “Quality Diet” Insert: But What If I Have Restless Children? Your Inner Environment Changing the Changes

7. Living on Purpose. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143

Simple Living Discovering Your Underlying Priorities Living on Purpose Money, Stuff, and a New Cycle

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159 Acknowledgements. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164 About the Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165

He that can compose himself is wiser than he that composes books. Benjamin Franklin

Patience and tranquility of mind contribute more to cure our distempers as the whole art of medicine. Mozart

Introduction Have you ever been in situations at work, at home, or in social settings when all sorts of stresses and strains found, shall we say, their full expression? Of course you have. That’s why you’re reading this book. Thinking back, you can probably remember how very upset people were at the time: how tempers flared and emotions ran high. Not pleasant at all. Yet perhaps you can also remember others who, standing in the midst of the same crashing chaos, retained their composure—others who shared exactly the same experience as you and yet remained calm, relaxed, and in complete control of themselves. They were the ones who were able to focus their energies on the needs at hand. They were the ones who remained mindful of the realities of everyone involved. And they were the ones who could maximize the impact and effectiveness of their actions to the benefit of all. Would you like to be one of those people? Would you like to know their secret? If so, keep reading.

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There’s one certainty about stress that we can probably all agree on; no matter how it affects us—in our work, in our relationships, and in our personal health—we could all do with less of it! Although a little stress might be a necessary motivator (a subject I’ll explore), the stress levels that many people encounter on a regular basis are nothing short of destructive and greatly limit one’s impact. I imagine, then, that you, your family, your friends, your co-workers, and your employees would like to find an effective means to reduce stress and thus experience happier and healthier lives, if not also to avoid the ever-increasing costs of stress and health care. This book offers such a means. You’ve probably noticed that this book isn’t a big collection of a thousand and one loosely categorized stress-busters. Neither does it offer specific advice for managing stress in a variety of specific situations. In fact, this book isn’t about merely managing stress at all. Rather, it offers simple and effective tools that thousands of people have used to reduce present stress, reverse the harmful effects of past stress, and prevent most future stress. With these tools, you’ll be able to step out of the cycle of stress and stay out. You’ll recover your personal well-being and truly transform your relationship with the demands of an active, purposeful, and meaningful life. For challenges and demands there will be. The very fact that you are reading this book—and not a brochure for oceanfront property in some small Central American country—suggests that you’re looking for a solution to stress that is dynamic rather than passive (not to mention considerably less expensive!). You’re not looking to withdraw from life because you realize, on some level, that the lack of purposeful and meaningful activity—which is to say, a lack of engaged intensity—is itself a stressor. You just want to experience an intensity of joy rather than strain.

Introduction

As we’ll see, the means to achieving this goal isn’t removing potential stressors from your life as if they were merely weeds in a garden. Neither is the solution one of removing yourself from present circumstances, nor is it a matter of “taking control” and attempting to manage (or bully) the world and the people around you. Although you may be able, as I’ll discuss in chapter 6, to avoid a few stressors, control a few circumstances, and maybe—just maybe—exercise a little influence on others around you, the real secret is learning how to control and dynamically adapt yourself to the world’s ever-changing realities. Does this mean turning yourself into some sort of spineless, submissive milksop, tossed about like a leaf by the cruel winds of fate? Does this mean surrendering your power to make any kind of difference in the world? Does it mean sacrificing your most cherished passions? Rest easy, friend—that’s not what I’ll ask of you. I don’t ask you to give up your sense of self or your convictions. In fact, the method given in this book will actually help you become more deeply centered in yourself, more in touch with your own inner strength, more able to act productively on those convictions, and thus more able to have an impact. Consider the difference between water and stone. Water’s fluidity allows it to easily and naturally adapt to any container without losing its essence as water. To do the same with stone requires more drastic measures: it has to be chipped, broken, and pulverized into sand! Being fluid is thus the quality that helps you adapt with the least amount of, shall we say, pain. Indeed, water is ultimately more powerful than stone. You can see evidence of this on any shoreline. Self-control and dynamic adaptation. Those are the secrets. How, then, do you develop these qualities in yourself? By gaining control over your oft-habitual reactions to potential stressors.

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That’s what you’ll learn in this book. And you’ll learn it not by suppressing your reactions but by retraining yourself to habitually react in a new way: where you presently react with tension, you’ll learn to react with calmness and relaxation. That is, I won’t be asking you to change whether you react to situations, because no matter how hard you try, something will inevitably find a way to catch you off guard. Instead, you’ll learn to change the nature of your reaction from any number of things that result in stress to those that don’t: calmness, relaxation, and self-control. Then you’ll discover the magic. By changing the nature of your reaction, you give yourself a moment’s pause in which to breathe, reflect on the situation, and consciously choose an appropriate and beneficial response, even if all it means is letting go. In this there is real power. Too simple, you say? Perhaps. If you started from a blank slate such retraining would be a straightforward matter. The difficulty is that you are likely suffering from stress already—deep in debt, so to speak. Fortunately, and not coincidentally, the same exercises that you’ll use to retrain your reactions also bring immediate relief from existing stress. Thus, if you change only one thing in your life to deal with stress, make it this: resolve, here and now, to practice the exercises in this book every day for the next four weeks. They take about twenty minutes to do, which means investing less than ten of the next 672 hours of your life. But you must make the investment every day: consistent, daily practice during this period is essential to establish a new habit. In the first two weeks, you’ll develop the habit of doing the exercises. In the second two weeks, you’ll develop a new habitual self-awareness and self-control that transforms how you respond to potential stressors. By then you’ll begin to experience direct results that make continued practice an indispensable part of

Introduction

your daily routine—as natural and desirable as brushing your teeth and putting on clean clothes. It is that effective. And it gets better. The added power of this method lies in inoculating you from becoming stressed in the first place. It doesn’t mean that you’ll become a master overnight; don’t expect to handle your biggest stressors right away. But week by week your skills will increase. You’ll discover that you become stressed less often, and even when you do, you’ll experience a lower level of stress and will recover much more rapidly. In time, you’ll discover the capacity to remain calmly active and actively calm amidst even great chaos. You’ll have become one of those exceptional persons mentioned at the beginning of this chapter.

The method offered in this book is effective—and cost-effective—for several reasons. First, it gives you direct, individual control over your stress: there’s no need to wait for organizational, societal, medicinal, or technological changes to lessen the burden or solve your problems for you. Second, the exercises given here induce the physiological counter-response to stress that activates the body’s self-healing functions, gradually improving your health over time. Third, these exercises are enjoyable, are easy to learn, cost nothing but a little time to practice, and require no special facilities, equipment, therapists, supplements, and so on. Finally, this method deals directly with the source of stress—the nature of your reactions. This empowers you to catch stress before it happens rather than deal with the effects of stress that manifest well after the fact. All this sets the method in this book apart from many other commonly proposed stress-management techniques. As I’ll explore, those tools are helpful for certain purposes. Their

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fundamental problem, however, is that they generally attempt to fight one kind of stress with a different kind of stress—forms change, but the stress remains. They also depend a great deal on your ability to think clearly enough in the heat of battle to remember special coping strategies. Unfortunately, clear thinking is one of the first things to vanish when you’re under pressure! The solution offered here also differs in that it concentrates on drawing into your life more of those specific things you’d like to experience rather than merely rejecting the thousands of things you’d rather do without. Instead of dealing one by one with the diverse ways that stress can manifest itself—as futile an effort as playing Whack-a-Mole in an arcade—you’ll focus on the opposites to stress: calmness, relaxation, and self-control. To become calmer and more peaceful, in other words, concentrate on peace and calmness rather than on every little instance of conflict and agitation. To become more in control of your life, concentrate on the only thing you truly can control: your own self. Indeed, with that self-control you’ll discover an added bonus: the power to more consciously direct your life according to what is truly important and meaningful to you. Instead of relying on the experience of others to determine your lifestyle, you will develop a universal means for creatively dealing with the ever-changing demands of your reality. With the yardstick of your priorities, you can measure every demand for its contribution to your overall happiness and fulfillment. Thus many so-called demands and challenges will simply evaporate, and others that even seem at odds will come together harmoniously. In the end, you’ll be left with only those that clearly help you experience what you’re ultimately seeking: less stress and more joy.

To the peaceless person, how is happiness possible? Inner peace is like lubricating oil: It enables the machinery of our lives to function smoothly. Without mental peace, our emotions, and the various demands placed upon us in our lives, grind together and create inner stress, leading eventually to some kind of physical or nervous breakdown. Swami Kriyananda Awaken to Superconsciousness

1 Life in the Cycle

Imagine starting each and every workday with a ceremonial burning of a real twenty-dollar bill: week after week, year after year. Putting aside the fact that torching U.S. currency is a federal crime, it’s clearly crazy to do such a thing. Now imagine every one of the other 150 million or more working adults in the United States doing the same thing and you have an idea what stress costs American businesses—more than a billion dollars a day. Then imagine that you and everyone else sends another Andrew Jackson greenback into fiery oblivion at the end of the day. That’s the combined cost of stress where it can even be accounted—a truly alarming situation as the various statistics on pages 33-40 show. And this doesn’t even count the cost related to personal well-being on all levels—emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual—a cost that cannot even be calculated. Why is stress so costly? Although there are many ways to analyze the question, what it really boils down to is this: both

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the immediate and long-term effects of stress—such as countless health problems, loss of productivity, on-the-job accidents, depression, failed relationships, and feelings of isolation—are also stressors themselves. One stress gives rise to another, then another, then another—a textbook example of a vicious cycle that affects us both internally and externally.

The External Cycle Let’s say you get frustrated on your morning commute because someone playing with their mobile phone caused an accident that delayed traffic for an hour. When you finally arrive at work, even before getting to your desk or workstation, you express your annoyance to a few co-workers who just wanted to say “good morning.” Right away you’ve strained your relationships, perhaps initiating a stress cycle for them as well. Now you sit at your desk. In your edgy mood you’re abnormally startled by the telephone. You answer curtly and perhaps strain a relationship with a customer or vendor. Feeling bad about this, and about snapping at your co-workers, you find it difficult to concentrate on your work. In your state of mental stress, you miss a simple solution to a problem that would have saved you hours of frustration. At the end of the day you still haven’t completed what you needed to, so you call your spouse or partner to say you’ll be working late instead of going on the date you had planned or spending time with the family. “I promise I’ll make it up to you,” you say, and suddenly a twenty-five-dollar night at the movies or a simple trip to the park has turned into expensive gifts, a six-hundred-dollar weekend getaway, or other extravagances. Considering that your credit cards are already maxed out,

Life in the Cycle

this extra expense adds stress of its own…including the need to work more overtime to make ends meet. While working late that night you neglect to have a proper dinner, opting instead for a few selections from vending machines. You also skip your daily exercise and drink more coffee than usual to keep yourself going. Restless and fully caffeinated, you don’t get a good night’s sleep (when you finally do get home), making you all the more irritable when you find yourself stuck in traffic again the following morning. Sound familiar? We’ve probably all had days (or weeks) like this. If stress came in small, isolated nibbles, it would probably be no more a problem than occasionally stubbing your toe on the dining table. But stress often comes in large doses and then builds on itself. A stressful (and likely habitual) reaction to one condition easily becomes a new condition that leads to another stressful reaction that then becomes yet another stressor. Left unchecked, stress snowballs out of control and becomes an avalanche. Eventually the dust (or snow) will settle, of course, but only long after the damage has been done. As for the nature of that damage, there’s the obvious loss of productivity. It’s estimated that at least half of the 550 million sick days taken each year in the United States are stress-related (see reference 6, page 38). That’s a lot of work not getting done! Even when people do show up (and this includes the self-employed), their ability to concentrate and think creatively is greatly curtailed under stress. Projects then take longer, get done less effectively, and are more prone to errors. If these cause a product or project to be late, it could even cause one’s company to miss a critical market opportunity. Poor, error-prone work is also a serious legal liability. As an obvious example, a calm, rested, relaxed doctor is going to be

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more careful and precise, greatly diminishing the risk of malpractice suits not to mention the stress of misdiagnosis or surgical errors on the patient. On-the-job injuries and accidents in other industries are often stress-related as well, leading to lawsuits and increasingly expensive worker-compensation claims, plus the complications and costs of attrition, hiring, retraining, and low worker morale. And lawsuits definitely do not fall into the category marked Enjoyable. Morale is but one example of how stress damages relationships within a single company; it also affects harmonious cooperation between co-workers, departments, and other organizational divisions. Without good relationships, any workplace—even within the most altruistic nonprofits, schools, and churches—becomes a living hell.* The same goes for families, neighborhoods, companies, and even nations. It’s bad enough to lose a customer, a client, or a vendor. It’s even worse to deal with the bitter competition, the lawsuits, and the wars that can be ignited by a simple communication blunder. Difficulties within a business often lead to cutbacks, layoffs, mergers, and other changes that fire up the stress reactors even more. Even without organizational changes, many employees just up and quit because of stress. Early death from stress is, in fact, one of the main causes of attrition among corporate executives; “death from overwork” is a surprisingly common diagnosis in Japan. And with the extent to which stress leads to other ailments, there’s an obvious link to spiraling health-care costs * An acquaintance of mine left a nonprofit organization for this reason. Because the group generally held antagonistic views toward almost everyone on the outside, there was a great deal of competition and backbiting within its own ranks. She then joined a different group, whose approach is based on building cooperative and mutually beneficial relationships between groups who are normally at odds. The internal atmosphere is understandably more harmonious.

Life in the Cycle

and rising insurance premiums, affecting both companies and individuals, what to mention giving rise to one of the most contentious issues in United States politics in recent years. The impact of stress on the individual is enormous in many other ways. Chronic stress is damaging to the body (as discussed in the next section), creating nothing short of a physiological and psychological time bomb. Health concerns, of course, bring financial pressures, loss of personal productivity, damaged relationships, and so on. Then there’s all the stress that comes from simply worrying about these things, whether past, present, or future. It just goes on and on.

The Internal Cycle: The Fight-or-Flight Response Added to the external cycle just described, there is also an inner, physiological cycle of stress that itself leads to a great many ailments. In a healthy body there are two active parts of the autonomic nervous system working together in a state of balance. One part, called the sympathetic nervous system, is responsible for handling acute demands that call for increased blood flow and blood pressure, accelerated heart rate and respiration, increased perspiration, and the withdrawal of energy from longer-term body functions like digestion and reproduction. Those other functions are regulated by the parasympathetic nervous system, also called the “rest and repose” system. In contrast with the sympathetic nervous system, the parasympathetic works to lower heart rate, respiration rate, and blood pressure while activating digestion, peristaltic action in the bowels, reproductive functions, and other

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long-rhythm aspects. Again, these two parts are balanced in a healthy body: like the acceleration and braking systems in an automobile, both are needed at appropriate times for many everyday activities. However, just as sudden, intense acceleration of a vehicle is dangerous and risky, extreme activation of the sympathetic nervous system should ideally be reserved for extreme circumstances. Nature designed it this way. Normal levels of activity in the sympathetic nervous system do not pose any long-term dangers to the body. Higher and riskier levels are encountered only when one perceives a life-threatening situation—that is, when some perceived danger to the body outweighs the hazards of intense acceleration. At those moments, the priority is to prepare the body to either do battle with the threat or basically run like hell; all other considerations are set aside. This is the evolutionary survival mechanism known as the stress response, or fight-or-flight response, first described by Harvard physiologist Walter B. Cannon in the early twentieth century. When a life threat is perceived, a primitive part of the brain called the limbic system (a system we share with fish and lizards, among other animals) triggers a flood of hormones that essentially crank up the volume on the sympathetic nervous system and prepare the body for intense action.* The specific re* In more precise terms, the process is described in a report from the National Institute of Health, September 9, 2002 (nichd.nih.gov/news/releases/Pages/ stress.aspx, accessed August 19, 2017): “[I]n response to a stress, the brain region known as the hypothalamus releases corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH). In turn, CRH acts on the pituitary gland, just beneath the brain, triggering the release of another hormone, adrenocorticotropin (ACTH) into the bloodstream. Next, ACTH signals the adrenal glands, which sit atop the kidneys, to release a number of hormonal compounds. “These compounds include epinephrine…Norepinephrine…and cortisol. All three hormones enable the body to respond to a threat. Epinephrine increases

Life in the Cycle

sults of what you might know as the adrenaline rush are shown in Table 1 (page 30). These physical changes are quite useful when one is standing face-to-face with a tornado, a hungry cougar, or a morally-depraved thug. In fact, for most of history (and still in many parts of the world today), human beings have had to do mortal battle with hunger, pestilence, wild animals, and barbarian hordes almost daily. The fight-or-flight response was thus necessary for survival and became almost automatic. In modern civilization, however, we’ve largely insulated ourselves from such things. Unless you’re a soldier, a police officer, or a firefighter, you rarely encounter truly life-threatening conditions.* Nevertheless, we often perceive even trivial matters as a threat, so much so that it’s again habitual and automatic. Simply being late to a meeting, for example, might trigger worries about whether your boss is mad at you. This, in turn, triggers worries about losing your job, then going bankrupt, becoming homeless, and starving to death—all within a matter of seconds or less. As a result, the body is easily thrown into fight-or-flight mode, but in a situation where it’s not at all helpful. Engaging in hand-to-hand combat with your boss or a co-worker usually blood pressure and heart rate, diverts blood to the muscles, and speeds reaction time. Cortisol…releases sugar (in the form of glucose) from the body reserves so that this essential fuel can be used to power the muscles and the brain.” * A friend recently lamented that we live in a world of “rampant violence and hatred,” which would apparently justify our stress. Through months of observation of the world around me, which has included travel to many cities including internationally, I’ve found this isn’t actually true unless I focus my attention on what’s brought to me through the media. The media, in effect, takes what are actually very rare instances of violence and hatred and amplifies them to the point where we start to believe that they are common. Although this serves the media’s goal of ratings and readership, it distorts reality almost beyond recognition.

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isn’t a good idea (even if it does seem appealing at times!). Fleeing the corporate headquarters usually doesn’t work either, and fleeing a traffic jam is seldom possible. Yet the stress response still happens. This wouldn’t be so bad if the body were allowed to rest and recover after such an episode. Recovery means that the sympathetic nervous system calms down, the stress hormones get flushed from the system, the parasympathetic nervous system becomes reactivated, and everything comes back into balance. Unfortunately, this process takes at least three hours (a large percentage of heart attacks occur within those three hours), and many people today seldom give themselves a chance to recover except during sleep, assuming they actually sleep restfully. It’s even been reported that many Americans are too afraid and stressed to take vacation!* Their lives are thus so full of seeming threats that their sympathetic nervous systems are almost constantly activated, demonstrated by the prevalence of hypertension, heart rhythm irregularities, chronic pain, nervousness, anxiety, poor digestion, and infertility. And once again, these maladies become new stressors in themselves, adding more and more energy to the ever-expanding cycle of stress.** * See “Americans Are Too Afraid And Stressed To Take Days Off From Work,” Huffington Post, August 19, 2014 (huff.to/2jxZnfR, accessed August 19, 2017). The article reports that nearly half of American workers take very little vacation, which is correlated with increased risk of heart disease. I’ve personally been alarmed at the trend in fast-paced high-tech companies to tell employees that they can take as much vacation as they want, which of course results in people taking very little. Other companies, fortunately, do take employee well-being seriously, encouraging employees to take time off and without risk to their positions or careers. ** One might ask whether acute activation of the parasympathetic nervous system is also possible, and whether such intense “braking” (to complete the automotive analogy) would prove equally dangerous to intense acceleration.

Life in the Cycle

Is Stress Necessary? As just mentioned, many people’s lives are so full of perceived threats that they become entirely habituated and conditioned to the fight-or-flight response and actually forget what it’s like not to be in a constant state of stress. They effectively become addicted to the hormonal drugs that constantly flood their systems, addicted to the rush that seems to give more strength and power. As with other habit-forming substances like caffeine, alcohol, and nicotine, the addiction is so widespread that many now believe that they simply can’t get along without it, that it’s a necessary part of a so-called normal life. A newsletter from a well-known health organization stated, “Living a totally stressfree life may sound good, but unfortunately it is just not possible. A certain amount of stress is actually good for you. It helps you stay challenged and stimulated. Without some stress, you would be bored, listless, and unfulfilled.” This is the notion of “managing” stress at some challenging but containable level that is sometimes called “good stress.” To be honest, this is the same justification people use to keep themselves hooked on a habit, even when it becomes dangerous and destructive. Stress is no different: whether it’s “good stress” or “bad stress,” it’s still stress, it still induces the physiological stress response, and it still keeps you in the cycle. Although the stress response may bring a temporary sense of increased power, the long-term effect is debilitating and Paradoxically, the only situation that causes an acute parasympathetic response is an extreme amount of acute stress. In what’s called a “vaovagal faint,” one’s blood pressure and heart rate drop so dramatically that one passes out. It’s as though our instinctive response to immense, overwhelming stress is to take the “possom” approach and play dead. Other than this, sudden “braking” isn’t a concern.

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ultimately disempowering. Trying to manage stress at some “good” level is all about taking things that are bigger than yourself—and therefore typically perceived as threatening—and cutting them down to a size you feel you can handle. The problem is that you never grow beyond your present ability to deal with potential stressors. In fact, because the stress response weakens you little by little, the level of “good” stress that you can handle cannot but diminish over time. The opposite approach is for you to become bigger than the potential stressors and to increase your ability to deal with them so that fewer and fewer of them trigger a stress response. That’s what the exercises in this book help you accomplish—not to manage stress but to inoculate you. With consistent practice, you’ll grow stronger and stronger, realizing that it’s entirely possible to live without stress, and the stress response, for months if not years at a time while remaining highly engaged and fulfilled. As many people who have consistently practiced these exercises can attest, you can be far more engaged and fulfilled if you’re not frittering your energies away through stress and other addictions. This is also why solving your own stress is not a selfish act. You might think, “What right do I have to free myself from stress when so many other people are suffering?” Indeed, at least some of your stress may come from your tireless efforts to help other people live better lives. It’s understandable that you might not want to feel like you’re putting yourself above others by taking care of yourself. But the truth of the matter is that you cannot give to others what you yourself do not possess. If you would alleviate others’ suffering, and give them greater peace, comfort, and joy, you will be far more effective in that service when you’re not suffering yourself. You can help others best from a position of strength, not weakness. And if you find solutions that work,

Life in the Cycle

you’ll be able to truly help others by passing on those solutions, rather than wallowing in mutual misery.

Motivation Is Necessary Although an interesting and fulfilling life doesn’t require stress, such as life does need some form of motivation. Fear, the emotion that gives rise to stress when a threat is perceived, is one such motivator—if we didn’t have to eat or keep a roof over our heads, I imagine far fewer people would bother doing all the crazy stuff that makes them pull their hair and gnash their teeth. However, to say unequivocally that fear or stress is the only motivator, as the writers of the aforementioned newsletter seem to do, is simply narrow-minded. There are many motivations besides fear: intense energy can also arise from love, devotion, dedication, enjoyment, aspiration, and inspiration. What’s important to understand is that energy and intensity are not the same as stress. We need energy to accomplish anything worthwhile in life, even to enjoy ourselves to the fullest. But fire is not necessarily destructive: it can burn, yes, but it can also warm and soothe. Fuel can explode in a useless fireball, or it can drive an engine for many hours. The energy that arises from positive, uplifting motives has an entirely different character—and an entirely different effect—than energy born of fear and stress. For example, some years ago I was involved in modest construction work on a property north of Seattle. One cold, rainy day in late October found me standing two feet down in a muddy ditch, soaked to the bone, shoveling even more dirt and mud on top of the water pipes we’d just laid (not to mention on my boots). The conditions and the work itself were, to most minds, downright miserable. There was also some time pressure as we

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were trying to complete the project by year’s end, so I was applying myself quite energetically. Yet my survival didn’t depend on the success of the project, nor did my income (I wasn’t actually being paid at all). I was driven instead by devotion to the person who inspired the project and by my love for a group of friends on whose behalf I was doing the work. As a result, the experience was fun and inspiring. The same was true when I wrote my first book, a technical tome called Inside OLE 2 (Microsoft Press, 1993). I was entirely motivated by an extremely powerful inspiration. Pulling together a thousand-page programming text with fifty example programs in the short span of seven months was actually one of the most joyfully thrilling and fulfilling periods of my life, if not the healthiest.* Not a single page of that book was motivated by stress or fear. And yes, I had plenty of tight deadlines: I finished the last galley proofs en route to Europe for a two-week conference trip. The manuscript went through three review cycles, and I often had to correct errors introduced by well-meaning but technically uninformed editors and layout designers. On top of that, there was a constant need for corrections and revisions based on feedback (kind and critical alike) from about twenty technical reviewers. In other words, I had plenty of reasons to feel stressed. But I didn’t experience it that way: my powerful inner motivation simply overwhelmed the possibility of reacting in such a manner. The bottom line is that stress, fear, and the fight-or-flight response are not necessary for a successful, energetic, and fulfilling life. Motivation certainly is necessary, but we must acknowledge * The complete story is told in chapter 10 of Mystic Microsoft: A Journey of Transformation in the Halls of High Technology (2016), kraigbrockschmidt.com/ mystic-microsoft.

Life in the Cycle

that different people are motivated in different ways, and that many forms of motivation do not evoke the stress response. Giving to others in service, for example, is its own reward: there is no fear of loss or failure and no threat to one’s survival. Inspiration, similarly, is intensely energetic and stimulating while also being calming and relaxing. These motivations cannot therefore be labeled “good stress” because they simply don’t produce the physiological effects of stress. Seek, then, to direct more of your energies toward expansive rather than selfish ends. Seek to be inspired rather than merely driven, to serve rather than be served, to give rather than take, to change and control yourself rather than changing and controlling others. Then you can—dare I say will—have an increasingly stress-free life. In fact, this is a wonderful side effect of the exercises in this book: they help raise your energy and consciousness and keep them on these higher levels more and more consistently. This doesn’t mean that you never slip on occasion, nor does it mean that you’ll never have challenges or difficulties. You will, however, be able to respond to them more consciously, making a deliberate choice to live without fear and its associated stresses.

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Table 1: Physiological Effects of Stress Body Function

Utility in Life-Threatening Risks Attending Chronic Situations Stress Conditions

Breathing

Increases oxygen and blood flow to muscles, increasing short-term strength

Aggravates asthma and allergies; can become hyperventilation throwing blood chemistry out of balance and leading to panic

Heart rate

Increases oxygen and blood flow to muscles, increasing short-term strength

Increases risk of uncontrolled tachycardia and panic attacks

Muscular tension

Increases blood capacity, thereby increasing strength; also makes muscles more resilient to immediate injury, and promotes clotting if injury occurs

Can cause muscle aches and headache; increases risk of repetitive strain injuries and lower-back injuries

Blood pressure

Augments blood flow to muscles, increasing short-term strength and resilience to injury

Prolonged increase is the condition known as hypertension, which heightens risk of heart attack and stroke

Digestion (stomach, liver, pancreas, intestines, kidneys, saliva glands)

Focus of body function is shifted toward muscular output of energy, and away from restoration and absorption of food nutrients

Dry mouth, heartburn, acid reflux, constipation, flatulence, belching; long-term, increases cancer risk

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Metabolism(a) (stimulated by cortisol, adrenaline, and other hormones)

Increases short-term energy reserves and production of other necessary substances needed for quick energy in the muscles

Aggravates various conditions such as diabetes; can lead long-term to weight gain and obesity

Reproduction

Production of eggs (female) and sperm (male) require significant energy; if you don’t survive the immediate threat, reproduction is irrelevant, so reproductive functions can be sacrificed during a fight-or-flight response

In women, aggravates PMS and can cause menstrual cycle abnormalities or even stoppage; in men, can decrease sperm count and testosterone levels

Hormone secretion and brain chemistry

If your life is threatened, immune system strength (that is, protection against germs and viruses) and getting a good night’s sleep are irrelevant; energy is needed for short-term functions

Affects the immune system and various other functions; serotonin, a hormone necessary for proper rest, can be curtailed(b); other hormonal changes increase the chance of anxiety and panic attacks and increase the likelihood of abuse of anxiety-reducing drugs such as alcohol and marijuana

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Brain function, cognitive function

Intense threats generally require quick reactions and short, intensified focus, not creative or complex thinking

The mind races, bringing anxiety; impaired performance; impaired creativity; and insomnia; chronic stress has also been shown to lead to brain damage, and atrophy similar to the results of a stroke or a seizure

Notes: Metabolism and digestion are distinctly different processes. Digestion is the process by which food is broken down into various substances (amino acids, sugars, and fatty acids) that can be metabolized (that is, burned) while waste products such as urine and feces are eliminated. Digestion happens specifically within the digestive organs. Metabolism is the transformation of those resulting substances into energy and other vital nutrients, along with the waste products of carbon dioxide and water that are removed through exhalation, perspiration, urination, and bowel movements. Metabolism happens throughout the body on a cellular level. Poor digestion starves the metabolic processes and causes toxic accumulation of waste products; poor metabolism leads to an accumulation of excess substances in the body; excess glucose is converted to glycogen and stored in the liver and muscles; excess glycogen is converted into fat. (a)

Serotonin is called the “rest and fulfillment” hormone; it is positively affected by medications like Prozac. (b)

Life in the Cycle

The Skyrocketing Costs of Stress For decades, reports have provided ongoing evidence of the increasing costs of stress to individuals and businesses alike. Such reports, of which the following pages contain only a sampling, describe how stress plays a major role in disease and can be a more powerful influence than diet. The World Health Organization goes so far as to identify stress as the primary health epidemic of the 21st century. It’s estimated that 50% of workers in industrialized countries complain of workplace stress, the prolonged exposure to which is associated with a number of chronic health conditions, raising ongoing healthcare costs. Companies are getting the productivity of only 50 to 70 people for every 100 they employ. Reports also indicate that stress affects the brain in the same way as addictive drugs, alters the structure and functioning of brain cells, and causes death to nerve cells related to memory similar to strokes and seizures.(1)

The Cost of Stress to Personal Health General Statistics 1.  Consequences of long-term stress include mental health problems (depression, anxiety, and personality disorders), cardiovascular disease (heart disease, high blood pressure, abnormal heart rhythms, heart attacks, and stroke), obsesity and other eating disorders, menstrual problems, sexual dysfunction, skin and hair problems, and gastrointestinal problems (gastritis, GERD, ulverative colitis, and irritable colon). From “Stress Symptoms: Effects of Stress on the Body,” Web MD, August 2017.(2) 2. “When it persists, stress can put us at risk for obesity, heart disease, cancer, and a variety of other illnesses.” From

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backgrounder report “Stress System Malfunction Could Lead to Serious, Life Threatening Disease,” National Institute of Health, September 9, 2002.(3) 3. The American Institute of Stress continues to cite stress as “America’s #1 health problem” dating back to the early 1980s.(4) Brain and Immune System Function 1. “‘Stressed people’s immune cells become less sensitive to cortisol,’ says lead author Sheldon Cohen, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at Carnegie Mellon University, in Pittsburgh. ‘They’re unable to regulate the inflammatory response, and therefore, when they’re exposed to a virus, they’re more likely to develop a cold.’” Quoted in “Why stress makes colds more likely,” posted April 2, 2012 on a CNN Health Blog.(5) 2. High levels of stress cause nerve growth factor (NGF), which hinders the ability of disease-fighting cells to ward off infections, suppressing the immune system. From “Stress: It’s Worse Than You Think” by John Carpi, Psychology Today, January 1, 1996.(6) Heart Disease 1 “During moments of high stress, your body releases hormones such as norepinephrine, which the researchers claim can cause the dispersal of bacterial biofilms from the walls of your arteries. This dispersal can allow plaque deposits to suddenly break loose, thereby triggering a heart attack.” From “Stress—Yes, It Really Can Trigger a Heart Attack,” Mercola, July 10, 2014.(7) 2. “Lawrence Brass, M.D., associate professor of neurology at Yale Medical School, found that severe stress is one of the most potent risk factors for stroke more so than high blood pressure— even 50 years after the initial trauma. Brass studied 556 veterans

Life in the Cycle

of World War II and found that the rate of stroke among those who had been prisoners of war was eight times higher than among those veterans who had not been captured.” From “Stress: It’s Worse Than You Think” by John Carpi, Psychology Today, January 1, 1996.(8) 3. “When the body responds [with the stress response] to everyday stressors like honking horns and looming deadlines, the cardiovascular system suffers. Chronic high blood pressure damages blood vessels, leading to inflammation and plaque formation. Turbulent blood flow can rupture a plaque, with the resulting blood clot leading directly to a heart attack.” From “For a Happy Heart” by Anne Underwood, Newsweek, October 3, 2004.(9) Other Effects 1. “Researchers discovered perceptions of work-related stress over the course of a man’s career was associated with increased risk of lung, colon, rectal, and stomach cancer and non-Hodgkins lymphoma.” From “Men’s Chronic Work Stress May Increase Risk of Some Cancers,” by Rick Nauert, PhD, PsychCentral, January 18, 2017.(10) 2. “Stress hormones are also implicated in rheumatoid arthritis. The hormone prolactin, released by the pituitary gland in response to stress, triggers cells that cause swelling in joints. In a study of 100 people with rheumatoid arthritis, Kathleen S. Matt, Ph.D., and colleagues at Arizona State University found that levels of prolactin were twice as high among those reporting high degrees of interpersonal stress than among those not stressed. Other studies have shown that prolactin migrates to joints, where it initiates a cascade of events leading to swelling, pain, tenderness. ‘This is clearly what people mean when they say stress is worsening their arthritis,’ Matt says. ‘Here

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we have the hormone released during stress implicated in the very thing that causes arthritis pain, swollen joints.’” From “Stress: It’s Worse Than You Think” by John Carpi, Psychology Today, January 1, 1996.(11) 3. “Stress suppresses the reproductive system at various levels… First, [corticotropin-releasing hormone, released by the hypothalamus in response to stress] prevents the release of gonadotropin releasing hormone (GnRH), the ‘master’ hormone that signals a cascade of hormones that direct reproduction and sexual behavior. Similarly, cortisol and related glucocorticoid hormones not only inhibit the release of GnRH, but also the release of luteinizing hormone, which prompts ovulation and sperm release. Glucocorticoids also inhibit the testes and ovaries directly, hindering production of the male and female sex hormones testosterone, estrogen, and progesterone.” From backgrounder report “Stress System Malfunction Could Lead to Serious, Life Threatening Disease,” National Institute of Health, September 9, 2002.(12) 4. “High stress teens are twice as likely to smoke, drink, get drunk and use illegal drugs.” From “Teen Pitfalls Are Stress, Boredom and Extra Money,” verywell.com, April 18, 2017.(13) 5. “Our data suggest that life events increase breast cancer risk independently of body mass index, weight change, alcohol use, smoking, and physical activity and that their effect is not mediated or modified by self-perceptions of daily stress, adverse personality, or suboptimal mood.” From “Stressful Life Events and Risk of Breast Cancer in 10,808 Women: A Cohort Study” by Dr. Kirsi Lillberg and colleagues, University of Helsinki, Finland, reported in the American Journal of Epidemiology, March 1, 2003.(14) 6. “Sustained or chronic stress…leads to elevated hormones such as cortisol, the ‘stress hormone,’ and reduced serotonin

Life in the Cycle

and other neurotransmitters in the brain, including dopamine, which has been linked to depression…When the stress response fails to shut off and reset after a difficult situation has passed, it can lead to depression in susceptible people.” From “Stress and Depression,” by Karen Bruno. “Stress and Depression,” WebMD, August 2017.(15) 7. “Alzheimer’s disease, the most common cause of dementia in those aged 65 or older, is characterized by a progressive decline in cognition and memory…Although scientists continue to search for the root cause of this devastating illness, new evidence suggests that increased levels of stress, along with high levels of cortisol, may play a significant role. Research indicates that high cortisol levels may promote degeneration and death of neurons, along with decreased memory function in otherwise healthy elderly men and women.” From “Cortisol, Stress, and Health” by Edward R. Rosik, Life Extension magazine, December 2005.(16)

The Ongoing Cost of Stress to Business and Industry 1. “Job stress carries a price tag for U.S. industry estimated at over $300 billion annually as a result of accidents, absenteeism, employee turnover, diminished productivity, direct medical, legal, and insurance costs, and worker’s compensation awards as well as tort and FELA judgments.” American Institute of Stress, August 2017.(17) 2. “As Huffington (2014) has shown, stress and burnout are increasing at an alarming rate and creating havoc worldwide. Survey after survey in France, Germany, Great Britain, Switzerland, the U.S.A, China and in many other countries have revealed the devastating effects on worker morale, health and productivity. Women, in their struggle to find a balance between care for their families and career ambitions, are

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particularly hard hit…The costs to companies, individuals and society are soaring and reaching billions of dollars every year in developed as well as emerging economies: absenteeism, presenteeism, lack of engagement and innovation, loss of talents, massive health problems…are all taking their toll.” From “The High Cost of Stress in the Workplace,” LinkedIn, August 2, 2014.(18) 3. “Nearly half of all workers suffer from moderate to severe stress while on the job, according to a recent survey,” with about two-thirds of employees reporting difficulty concentrating because of stress. Stress accounts for nearly 30% of disability claims with a 300 percent increase in costs. The estimated cost of stress to American businesses is up to $300 billion a year. From “Employees Reveal How Stress Affects Their Jobs,” Business News Daily, March 28, 2012.(19) 4. “63% [of employees in a study] say they have high levels of stress at work, with extreme fatigue and feeling out of control…Almost half (46%) cite stress and personal relationship issues as the most common reason for absences, ahead of medical reasons or care-giving responsibilities.” From “Burnout up among employees,” USA Today, October 23, 2012.(20) 5. ‘Stress is increasing dramatically,’ said Dr. Paul Rosch, president of the American Institute of Stress, which estimates 1 million workers are absent daily due to stress.” From “Stressedout workers take large financial toll,” Chicago Tribune, August 13, 2003.(21) 6. “The European Agency for Safety and Health at Work reported that over half of the 550 million working days lost annually in the U.S. from absenteeism are stress related and that one in five of all last minute no-shows are due to job stress.” American Institute of Stress, August 2017.(22) 7. “80% of workers feel stress on the job, nearly half say they

Life in the Cycle

need help in learning how to manage stress and 42% say their coworkers need such help. 14% of respondents had felt like striking a coworker in the past year, but didn’t. 25% have felt like screaming or shouting because of job stress, 10% are concerned about an individual at work they fear could become violent. 9% are aware of an assault or violent act in their workplace and 18% had experienced some sort of threat or verbal intimidation in the past year.” Highlights from “Attitudes in the American Workplace VII” report, American Institute of Stress, August 2017.(23) 8. “In today’s always-on economy, a combination of longer work weeks, growing workloads and office politics has resulted in reports that 82 percent of American workers are experiencing job stress at least some of the time. Meanwhile, more than a third of workers say their job is negatively affecting their physical or emotional well being, according to a [2000] Gallup Poll.” From “Employers and employees try to cope with workplace stress” by Jennifer Hamilton, Pacific Business News (Honolulu), January 16, 2004.(24) 9. “Nearly two-thirds of respondents said they thought [stress] had caused them to become ill at some point. More than 45 percent said work-related stress had caused them to lose time on the job, and 7 percent said the illness was so severe it required hospitalization. . . . Nearly 85 percent said it had an impact on their personal lives, with 21 percent saying it had caused problems in their family or in other relationships.” From “Job stress takes heavy toll on workers,” CBS MoneyWatch, April 16, 2014.(25) 10. “It is neither an exaggeration nor is it alarmist to claim that there is a mental health crisis today facing America’s college students. Evidence suggests that this group has greater levels of stress and psychopathology than any time in the nation’s

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history…Trend data clearly suggest increases in levels of stress, depression and anxiety at least since the 1980s. Consider that one study found that the average high school student in the year 2000 has the same level of anxiety as the average psychiatric patient did in the 1950s; and those rates have only increased in the last decade.” From “The College Student Mental Health Crisis,” Psychology Today, February 15, 2014.(26) 11. “The declining popularity of vacation has wide-ranging effects not just on workers, but also on their employers and indeed the overall economy. Studies have found that taking fewer vacations is correlated with increased risk of heart disease in both men and women. Other research has shown that workers who take vacations — and even smaller breaks like naps or walks — are more productive when they return.” From “Americans Are Too Afraid And Stressed To Take Days Off From Work,” Huffington Post, August 19, 2014.(27)

After contemplation, I conclude that this award [is] profound recognition that nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral question of our time—the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to violence and oppression. Martin Luther King, Jr. Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech

2 The Search for Solutions

Given that stress is such a huge problem on many levels, and given the assumptions that stress is necessary and sometimes “good,” people have suggested hundreds of possible solutions. Even the carton of orange juice I enjoyed as I drafted this chapter listed “8 Ways to Help Reduce Stress” from a no-less-reputable source than the Mayo Clinic: • Simplify your schedule • Get organized • Take occasional breaks • Exercise regularly • Get enough sleep • Eat well • Be positive • Stay connected

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These are all great suggestions, and some of the most frequently offered. But how do you feel about them? When you’re already under a lot of stress, simplifying your schedule, getting organized, remembering to take breaks, exercising regularly, getting more sleep, eating well, maintaining a positive outlook, and spending more time with family and friends are the very things you don’t seem to have the time and energy to do! And if you try to do them all you’ll probably end up with more stress, along with feeling guilty or ashamed for having failed in the attempt.* The task of dealing with stress becomes even more confusing when you start doing research on your own. Do an Internet search on “stress reduction” or “stress management” and you’ll literally get thousands of different answers. Alas, such information overload is one of the more frequently cited stressors in recent years! Even popular books on stress management can be overwhelming; one volume I examined offers three or four different remedies on every one of its three hundred pages. That’s more than a thousand suggestions in the book as a whole, many of them directly contradicting others. Here’s a paraphrased sampling of the confusion: • Give credit to others (but make your own accomplishments known to your superiors) • Question every paper that crosses your desk (but don’t sweat the small stuff) • Let go (but go the extra mile) • Make your car as comfortable as possible (but use ride sharing or public transit) * To be fair, the Mayo Clinic also encourages exercises similar to those offered in this book to eliminate stress (see page 98).

The Search for Solutions

• Increase (or decrease) your dependence on technology • Ignore the phone and doorbell (but spend more time with friends) • Ask all the right questions before making a major purchase (but try making decisions with only 60 percent of the information you think you need) • Get a jump on, immerse in, stay abreast of, or leapfrog change (but go cold turkey on it) • Seize the day (but incorporate stress busters slowly) • Contemplate pleasant thoughts (but find some place you can yell, and be sure to complain to the FCC about abusive telemarketers) • Get rid of your TV (but check out movies at the library) • Be consistent with your days (but break your routine) • Plan (but live in the moment) I’m not making these up—all these suggestions (plus those on the orange juice carton and even some of the exercises I’ll offer in chapter 5) are found in the same book. The problem is, that book burdens you, the reader, with the hard task of sifting and sorting and prioritizing to figure out where to even begin. Indeed, it actually suggests that you just skip around and find anything that might help you along. You might as well hang the pages on a wall and select remedies by throwing darts. Again, if you’re already stressed, you probably don’t have the time, energy, or concentration for such a task. Even if you did, how do you really know what’s most effective? What are the costs involved with each remedy? Can you afford them? And how should you prioritize them? Are different remedies equally

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helpful or effective in your particular situation? Are they equally applicable to different stressors? How are you to know? That the author of that book admits, in the first line of the first chapter, that to him the very word stress is stressful doesn’t inspire much confidence. This is a situation in desperate need of clarity. As already mentioned in the Introduction, the exercises given here in Solving Stress are the cream of the crop where stress-reduction techniques are concerned. They are the most universally applicable because they address the real source of stress rather than its symptoms. They are also the most cost-effective (they cost nothing), have no outside dependencies, and work to both heal the effects of past stress and make one more resilient to future stress. Most important, they focus on developing calmness and control within yourself—qualities that you carry with you wherever you go—rather than trying primarily to calm and control the world around you. This is not to say that working with your environment isn’t useful—we’ll come back to that subject in chapter 6. The point here is that most suggestions for dealing with stress—like time management, regular exercise, improving your diet, simplifying your life, and making your commute more comfortable—are best approached from a standpoint of consciously increasing the calmness and relaxation in your life rather than merely decreasing the stress. Get your own self under control first, in other words, and then go back to things you might be able to change in your environment. Otherwise, you’ll find that stress management techniques accomplish just that: managing the pressures you face at some so-called endurable level (what fun) while your physiological time-bomb continues to tick.

The Search for Solutions

Relief but Not Cure: The Great Stress Exchange Have you ever tried to reclaim a little patch of ground overgrown with blackberries? Have you ever tried to keep dandelions out of an otherwise beautiful lawn? If you have, you know firsthand that simply cutting down or mowing the weeds gives only temporary relief. It’s never a permanent fix. Most stress-management techniques similarly offer some immediate relief yet are only temporary solutions at best. Why? Because they fight stress with other kinds of stress. They move stress around but don’t actually eliminate it. Thus you remain in the destructive cycle of stress despite your best efforts. To understand this more clearly, let’s group those management techniques into three general strategies for attempting to deal with stress, which we’ll call venting, discipline, and escape. Venting includes physical and emotional exertion of any kind—like hard exercise, competitive sports, throwing mud, “blowing off steam,” writing angry letters to public officials or the media, gossip, confrontational discussions on social media, going somewhere to yell, or, like one person I know, buying old TV sets and beating the tar out of them with a sledgehammer. Discipline encompasses special diets, time/priority management, planning and arranging schedules, exercise regimens, home and office organization, de-cluttering, ignoring phone calls and media, avoiding gossip, managing information, pacing yourself, limiting working hours, planning your sleep, goal-setting, focusing your communications, chewing your food thoroughly, replacing or upgrading technology, separating real news from trivialities, developing new skills (through classes or study), and making sure you have all the necessary amenities at hand so you

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don’t waste time running back and forth to different stores when trying to complete a task. Escape includes all forms of distraction (which can overlap with the other categories): medications, drugs, alcohol, passive entertainment (TV, movies, theater, music, YouTube, browsing the Web in general), gambling and most other games (especially the role-playing variety), spectator sports, shopping for new stuff (beyond necessities), vacations, “getaways,” retreats, many forms of therapy, wearing earplugs everywhere, using more services (housekeeping, shopping, gift-wrapping, clerical), hot tubs, and basically anything else that passes the responsibility for your stress to another person or thing, or otherwise removes it from your conscious awareness for a time. Again, most if not all of these activities do have their virtues. When used as a means of balancing one’s activities, for example, playing video games or watching movies can be very helpful; Winston Churchill took up painting as a means of balancing the intense political and military demands he shouldered. Time management can help you stay focused; special diets can help you lose weight and feel more energetic; various forms of therapy are excellent for rehabilitation. But as solutions for stress? All they really do is swap one kind of stress for another. I call this The Great Stress Exchange. Venting generally swaps mental or emotional stress with physical stress, thereby taking your mind off troublesome matters for a time by the sheer intensity of the activity. This intensity, however, can increase physical tension and lead to injuries, especially with competitive sports that are both physically and emotionally stressful. (Only those forms of exercise that incorporate deliberate calmness, relaxation, or pacing—walking, gentle yoga, T’ai Chi, and so on—actually transmute the stress into something beneficial.) Oftentimes venting only exchanges one

The Search for Solutions

emotional stress for another—redirecting anger toward your boss to some distant politician, for instance. But it’s still anger and your body is still afflicted with the stress response. I once had the opportunity to experience something like this on a construction project. I needed to break apart a number of concrete blocks with a sledgehammer to separate the rebar running through them for recycling. Not feeling stressed at the time, I broke apart the first mass with hammer swings that were energetic and forceful, but calm. As such the work was simultaneously relaxing, invigorating, and enjoyable. Then I decided to see what it felt like to vent instead. Dreaming up something to be mad about, and deliberately working myself up into the emotion, I then channeled my anger into each swing. Although I still liberated the rebar, I found that my anger hadn’t diminished in the least. The only difference was that my body, over-exerted with both the work and excess tension, was now too fatigued to lash out at anything. In this way my venting would have prevented me from hurting another person, but it didn’t help me become more emotionally calm. As the American Psychological Association reports, “Research has found that ‘letting it rip’ with anger actually escalates anger and aggression and does nothing to help you (or the person you’re angry with) resolve the situation.”* And because of increased tension, venting also increases the likelihood of injury to one’s body. Discipline, for its part, is a way to exchange emotional or physical stress for mental or intellectual stress (or occasionally physical stress as with diets and exercise regimens). All forms of discipline involve an exertion of will power along with self-observation, self-critique, strict attention to rules or regimens, and a focus on details. The drawback is that failing to maintain * “Controlling Anger—Before it Controls You” on the American Psychological Association’s webpage, apa.org/topics/anger/control.aspx, accessed April 11, 2017.

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a chosen discipline can become emotionally stressful. Excessive discipline—by means of, say, crash diets or overly fastidious time management—can also backfire as increased stress in other forms. Escape, finally, exchanges physical, emotional, and mental stresses for other forms of the same, or for financial stress (which, in turn, generally leads back to one of the other stresses). Financial stress is especially true when the exchange introduces dependency on some external factor, like therapists and medication.* Drugs, alcohol, and certain medications are especially dangerous because of their addictive side effects. Therapy itself is usually quite costly, usually introduces a new discipline into your life, and can also be physically challenging. (Your body, for instance, needs some hours to physically recover from a deep-tissue massage). Many movies (and a great deal of music) are not relaxing at all: they’re actually intended to be stimulating or even agitating. Spectator sports can likewise become an emotional whirlpool if you’re wrapped up in the performance of your favorite team or athletes. The common factor in all of these strategies is that they make you less aware of the actual problem you’re facing. Escape is a means of dulling or distracting your awareness. Venting, similarly, diminishes your awareness by overshadowing your difficulties with something more intense. Discipline avoids the problem by focusing your concentration on something entirely different. No matter how you slice it, these strategies are really just ways to avoid the real issue, which is, of course, their very purpose. The reason you want to sidestep a problem is that you find it too challenging and cannot meet it on its own level. How, then, are those challenges to be solved? The trick is * According to a variety of sources, up to three-quarters of adults say money issues are the number one stressor. It’s unfortunate that so many suggested stress remedies require you to spend even more money on equipment, consumables, vacations, therapies, and so forth, exacerbating levels of personal debt.

The Search for Solutions

to meet your stressors on a higher level, which means expanding and increasing your awareness to see a larger picture, to include a greater reality than your own, and to become bigger than your potential stressors. In that larger picture, your difficulties (as well as your own perceived self-importance) become proportionally smaller. This is easier than it may sound. For starters, just look up at the sky, the clouds, or the stars. Imagine how this world and all its troubles must look from that distance. It’s like that wonderful scene in J.R.R. Tolkien’s classic, Return of the King, in which the two main characters, Frodo and Sam, already parched and exhausted, are basically crossing over the closest thing to hell on Middle-earth in order to fulfill their quest. Looking around him, Sam begins to despair about the evil forces that might yet rule the world (as Tolkien may have done during his time in the trenches of World War I). But then, Sam catches a glimpse of a brilliant star, shining through the black clouds that nearly smother the sky. “The beauty of it,” Tolkien writes, smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach…for a moment, his own fate, and even [Frodo’s], ceased to trouble him.*

The exercises in this book further help expand your awareness. Through them you will gain a greater perspective from which your problems become less imposing and easier to deal with directly.

* The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien (Ballantine Books, 1983) p. 211.

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Exchanging Buys Time Now, there is a place for all the remedies in The Great Stress Exchange: they buy you time when faced with acute situations. If you’re about to commit mayhem, it’s much better to go off and do the deed on a renegade patch of blackberries. If you feel ready to punch someone out, it’s better to punch holes in a wall with your fist (as an infamous project manager during Microsoft’s early years used to do). If you’re on the verge of a nervous breakdown, getting away for a week is not a bad idea at all. And Prozac is definitely a better choice than suicide. When you desperately need some in-the-moment relief from stress, by all means use whatever tools you have at your disposal so you and those around you don’t get hurt (directing the energy toward constructive ends, if possible). By exchanging stresses, you gain a little breathing room in which you can deal with your stress more responsibly and intelligently. Each person is better able to handle certain forms of stress than others. These differences relate to four basic means through which people learn, representing people’s particular strengths.* Those who are strong in their bodies handle physical stress better than other forms; those who are more intellectual or mental are better able to deal with details and organization; people with strong will power do well with discipline (or actually working harder to earn more money); and those with a deeper feeling nature can often handle emotional stress better than others. Thus if you’re attracted primarily to venting or physical therapy as a stress-management strategy, you probably have a good body component. If you’re drawn to entertainment or interpersonal * These four “tools of maturity,” as they’re called, are discussed in Education for Life by J. Donald Walters (Crystal Clarity Publishers, 2004).

The Search for Solutions

therapies, you probably maintain a good feeling component; and so on. Most people are a mix of these, of course, but usually one or two predominate, whereas the others are less developed. By the way, if you’re thinking about buying your way out of stress, whether or not you actually have the money for it, remember that even the wealthiest people have never succeeded in doing so. Howard Hughes is the classic example. Toward the end of his life, when he was perhaps the richest man in the world, he was asked, “Are you happy?” “No,” came the gravelly reply, “I cannot say that I am.” Although taking off to some exotic spa might offer short-term stress relief, the fact remains that you simply cannot buy love, happiness, or peace of mind. Clever (and persistent) merchandisers will tell you otherwise, of course, promising true happiness if only you buy their wonder product. But their goal is usually not to help you reduce your stress but to prove, once again, that a fool and his money are soon parted.

You Can’t Beat Out the Darkness Progress differs from motion in that it has a clear direction. Merely swapping stresses is motion: no matter how many times you do it, there is still stress and you’re still caught in the cycle. Swapping to buy yourself time, on the other hand, and then using that time wisely to actually reduce your stress, is progress. It’s like a man I once worked for at Microsoft who managed his workgroups not to maintain them but to dismantle them. His favorite mantra, which he told me when I first joined his group, was “The purpose of your job is to make yourself obsolete” (because by doing so you will have so improved yourself and the processes involved that you’ll likely be invited to engage in ever-more interesting roles).

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Your goal in working with stress is to obviate as many swapping strategies as possible, eliminating them simply because they are no longer necessary. Again, this is not to say you never take vacations, get a massage, play sports, or go on special diets. There are many other reasons for doing all of these things— you’re just not attempting to use them to relieve or reduce stress. There are two ways to fight. One is to fight against that which you don’t want, like saying “no more war.” The other way is to fight for that which you actually do want, like “peace.” If you focus constantly on what you don’t want—like stress, no matter how you swap it around—you continually increase the power of its reality. To fight for something, on the other hand, means giving as much energy as possible to a different reality. As the renowned spiritual teacher Paramhansa Yogananda said, “You can’t beat the darkness out of a room with a stick, but turn on the light and the darkness will vanish as though it had never been.” Let’s say you’re trying to deal with a negative quality like selfishness by affirming “I’m not selfish.” Psychologists say that the negative word “not” is generally ignored altogether by your subconscious mind, as is the self-reference “I am.” The most powerful word in your so-called affirmation, then, is “selfish.” As a result, it gets the bulk of your mental energy and concentration, and you may actually find yourself becoming more selfish! This is why a constant focus on stress itself is largely ineffective for breaking the cycle. Stress simply remains the pivotal reality. The opposite of selfishness is generosity. To overcome selfishness, it’s much more effective to affirm “I am generous,” which, by the same rules of psychology, effectively means repeating the word “generous” over and over in your mind. With such a constant mental reminder, you become much more sensitive to the many opportunities that life gives you to express generosity. And

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the more you express this quality, the more it becomes part of who you are. Indeed, what life gives to us depends on what we give first of ourselves. What, then, are some of the opposites of stress? There are many possibilities: _________________________________________________ calmness peace love

relaxation

self-control

happiness contentment joy

generosity patience

even-mindedness stillness

courage creativity understanding gratitude enthusiasm

openness

service to others

kindness

inspiration willingness nonattachment devotion

_________________________________________________ Thus, although you can use The Great Stress Exchange to buy time lest you hurt someone, your true goal must ultimately be to shift your attention away from stress and concentrate instead—as the exercises in this book are designed to do—on its positive opposites. In doing so, you will discover how much you’ve actually been surrounded by such qualities all along.

Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can and wisdom to know the difference. Reinhold Niebuhr Serenity Prayer

It has been said that the inception of real personality health occurs when an individual stops trying to get the world to meet his needs and wants, and begins seeking out ways to perform some needed and meaningful service to others. Marsha Sinetar Ordinary People as Monks and Mystics

3 The Origin of Stress

Ask a mere handful of people to identify the main stressors in their lives, and you’ll easily get hundreds of different answers. For some it’s commuting. For others it’s noise, pollution, or allergens. Some will complain about their professional relationships, others about their personal ones. Some will be struggling with change or conflict while others wrestle with stagnation and boredom. Some are frustrated by having too many choices, others with too few. Money, death, birth, politics, children, holidays, disease, neighbors, animals, clutter, telemarketers, technology, employment, unemployment…the list is endless. It seems that stress is just an inevitable and unavoidable by-product of life itself. Yet this simply isn’t true. Just because something is challenging or demanding—or even life-threatening—doesn’t mean that it’s automatically stressful. It’s like food: just because something is edible doesn’t mean you necessarily like it. In fact, take a moment to think of a few things that you wholly dislike—say, mushrooms, eggplant, sushi, and beer. “Whoa! Hold on!” you say, “I happen to like those!” I suspected as

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much, and specifically named these personal dislikes of mine to hopefully provoke a little protest. That I happen to find these things rather revolting while others consider them delicious means that it’s entirely a matter of taste: it has nothing to do with the foods themselves. The same holds true for all outer conditions. Circumstances are neutral: whether past, present, or future, they do not force us to feel anything, be it stress, sadness, excitement, or pleasure. What makes them seem stressful or sad or exciting or pleasurable is how we respond to them according to our own desires and expectations. Consider the weather. In a sense, there’s no such thing as truly bad weather. (If it never rained, after all, this beautiful planet would be a parched wasteland.) No matter what the weather is like on any given day, some people will be happy, some unhappy, and others simply won’t care. A so-called perfect day for a sun-loving outdoor enthusiast might be a complete disaster for a farmer with wilting crops, while simultaneously irrelevant to a business manager working weekends inside an air-conditioned office. Even extreme weather, like hurricanes, might be downright awful for coastal homeowners and insurance companies but a real boon to home-improvement stores and construction firms. Being stuck in stop-and-go traffic does not force us to become angry or impatient; a demanding boss does not force us to feel frustrated or unappreciated; airplane turbulence does not force us to be frightened; noise, pollution, and even the direct physical effects of such things do not force us to become upset or irritated. Even traumatic events like an automobile accident, a heart attack, or an act of terrorism do not force us to respond in any particular way. Conditions simply do not dictate our response to them.

The Origin of Stress

“Well, OK,” you say, “but some things are universal, right? I mean, wouldn’t torture and starvation and imprisonment stress out anyone?” Actually, no. Although such circumstances might be unbearable for the vast majority of us, there are plenty of notable exceptions. And I’m not just talking about someone like Jesus here, or the many great saints who endured tremendous suffering. I’m talking about people who, for example, risk their own lives for the sake of helping others. I’m talking about many people who, when put to extreme and even life-threatening tests, make the decision to respond positively rather than let those circumstances destroy them.* In other cases, people who find the strength in themselves to go on after a traumatic loss often fare better than those given extensive psychological counseling to help them cope with the after-effects of those experiences. (Of course, such counseling can be very helpful for those who aren’t able to connect with their own inner strength and thus need to draw strength from others.) The bottom line here is that stress is entirely a matter of one’s chosen response to a potential stressor, whatever it might be. I say potential stressor here because, again, stress is not inherent in any situation or condition. (Even death is oftentimes a welcome release). Rather, stress is inherent in our desire to control those conditions. Stress arises whenever we try to control the world around us rather than cooperate with what’s really happening. As my friend David Gamow defines it in his insightful book, Freedom from Stress (Glenbridge Press, 2006), stress is simply the difference between the way the world is and the way we think it ought to be. * Examples include Viktor Frankl, author of Man’s Search for Meaning, and Corrie Ten Boom, author of The Hiding Place, both of whom not only survived Nazi concentration camps but experienced tremendous inner growth in the process. Mahatma Gandhi and many of his followers also come to mind, all of whom endured intense persecution in their nonviolent efforts to gain India’s independence.

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As Gamow often does with workshop participants to illustrate this point, take a rubber band and loop it around your two index fingers. Your left finger represents the world as it is; your right finger represents the world as you think it should be.

Whenever there's a separation between the two, there's tension in the rubber band. That tension is your stress. When your desires and expectations (right finger) take you farther away from the world's reality (left finger), the stress increases.

The same is true when conditions-the winds of changemove the world farther away from your expectations:

The Origin of Stress

Seen in this light, stress is actually very valuable information. The existence of stress indicates that you've distanced yourself from reality. The intensity of that stress tells you just how far removed you actually are.* Stress also tells you in which direction you must move to alleviate the stress, namely to relax your expectations back toward reality. As a wise man once said to a worried student who had greatly inconvenienced him, "Wrath springs only from thwarted desires. I do not expect anything of others, so their actions cannot be in opposition to wishes of mine."**

* Interesting ly,

if the separation becomes too large, the band snaps, an apt

description of the point at which someone completely loses touch with reality.

** A utobiography ofa Yogi by Paramhansa Yogananda, 1946 First Edition, p. 142 (reprinted by Crystal Clarity Publishers , 1995).

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Let's develop this illustration a little further. Our normal response to stress is unfortunately not to relax toward reality. Rather, because we don't like what the world is giving us, we try pulling the world in our direction-attempting to control or ma-

nipulate it, or even just mentally wishing it were different. Do this now with the rubber band: while holding your right finger (your expectations) steady, move your left finger (the world) away from it. Now holding that left finger steady, try bringing that world back to where it was by pulling with your right. What happens to the rubber band? The tension (stress) increases yet "the world" hasn't budged! /

I

Feeling this increased stress, do we then clue into the fact that we should relax our expectations? No-we think, "Ah ha! Maybe I just need to pull harder." The world, unfortunately, is an awfully stubborn beast because there are billions of other people all trying to pull it in their direction. For a demonstration of this, get a group of friends together. Sit in a circle and have each person loop a rubber band around the finger of one person seated in the middle. Then have everyone in the circle pull toward themselves. It should be obvious that the "world" doesn't shift in the least.

The Origin of Stress

As futile as this pulling is, why do we do it? Because every now and then it seems to pay off, just enough to keep us playing the game. What happens is that the world meanders around somewhat, and occasionally it meanders in our direction, temporarily relieving a little stress. When we experience such a moment of pleasure or happiness-when things are finally "going our way" as we say-we are tricked into believing that that small satisfaction happened because of our pulling. Thus instead of enjoying that moment of relaxation and taking it as a reminder to adjust ourselves to the world as it is, we think, "That was good ... I want more!" and so we try to pull the world yet further in our direction! In doing so we not only replace the stress that was momentarily relieved, we also set ourselves up for even more tension as soon as the world inevitably shifts course to favor someone else.

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In short, when the world moves away from our desires and expectations, we pull on it. When the world moves toward our desires and expectations, we pull on it some more! Is it any wonder that many of us live with chronic stress? Indeed, stress, anxiety, and depression are common even among lottery winners and the very wealthy. Or consider someone like Josef Stalin, a miserable wretch if there ever was one. Although he had more power and control over his own corner of the world than almost any other historical figure, he slept in a different room every night for fear that someone in his inner circle might attempt to assassinate him. Thus we arrive at the fundamental truth. Happiness, peace, and lasting freedom from stress do not come from attempting or even being able to control the world around you: they come from being able to control yourself, and to adjust your expectations to reality, rather than trying to adjust reality to your expectations. This principle contradicts what most of us have been led to

The Origin of Stress

believe our entire lives. When something or someone causes us pain, grief, or stress, we believe the solution is to change that thing or that person. We attempt this approach all the time in our close relationships—with spouses, children, employers, and friends. If we don’t like someone’s behavior, we try and try to change their behavior. If we don’t like what certain politicians are doing, we try and try to change their minds (via emails, protests, or full-page ads in the Washington Post or New York Times), or, seeing the futility in that, we try to change the minds of our Facebook and Twitter friends. Even in religion, many people try their best to change God’s mind through prayer, penance, libation, propitiation, flagellation, and other rituals. I once had the pleasure of meeting a man named Werner Hebenstreit, one of the first patients in Dr. Dean Ornish’s landmark studies on reversing heart disease without drugs and surgery.* Werner, who described himself as having had “one foot in the grave” from extreme stress when he started the program, told how he used to yell at the newspaper every morning. Really yell. Does this sound familiar? I know I once did my fair share of yelling at the radio during my commutes. Yet what does such yelling accomplish? News anchors, politicians, and, for that matter, other drivers, can’t actually hear us. So we think that we need to yell louder or maybe yell together with a group of people. But think about it . . . sports referees and umpires rarely (if ever) change their decisions even when coaches yell at them face-to-face. How much less effective is it to yell at a TV, computer, radio, or magazine? As momentarily satisfying as the yelling might be, all we end up with is more disappointment, more frustration, more anger, and—big surprise—more stress. * Werner is featured along with other patients in Dr. Dean Ornish’s Program for Reversing Heart Disease (Ballantine Books, 1990), an excellent read for anyone concerned about stress as a leading risk factor for cardiovascular problems.

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For Werner, he finally realized that all his yelling wasn’t going to change the world and that he was hurting only himself. Bottom line: accept that the world simply isn’t under your control. Good or bad, accept circumstances as they are; put yourself in tune with what’s real and what’s actual. Otherwise, you’re simply living in a state of denial, forever closed to other possibilities. There’s a beautiful story about a man who others thought of as remarkable for his great serenity and peace of mind. One day a young student of his asked, “What is the secret of your calmness?” “Come with me,” he replied, “and I’ll show you.” In his office, he opened a little drawer in his desk and took out a fragile shell. “This is my secret.” Noticing the student’s puzzlement, the man explained, “Many years ago I was a very wealthy person, but in the stock market crash of 1929 I lost everything overnight. I decided I would commit suicide, so I sent my family away and went to our little cabin by the beach. I wrote them a farewell note, then set out to walk into the ocean to just let the waves take me. But as I tried to do so the waves kept throwing me back so hard against the beach that I couldn’t even stand. Each time I’d get up and try again but to no avail. Finally, I tried with all my strength but was thrown down. “As I lay there on the wet sand, I suddenly saw this fragile shell. It amazed me that although the waves were so powerful that I couldn’t stand up in them, this shell had not even cracked. I realized its secret was that it went wherever the waves took it without any resistance. “That moment on the beach was the turning point. From then on I tried to adapt to whatever circumstances existed in my life, to wherever God placed me. Although I never become a millionaire

The Origin of Stress

again, I wasn’t concerned because I had found peace of mind.” As this man discovered, accepting the world as it is does not mean becoming passive and uncaring, an eternal victim of ever-changing conditions. Acceptance is rather the first step toward meaningful and lasting recovery—working with reality as it is rather than against it. The alcoholic doesn’t begin the road to sobriety until he or she faces the reality of the problem; social reform must begin by addressing problems that actually exist, not imaginary ones. Only when you honestly accept and relax into the world as it is can you even begin to see what change is feasible. You may have to begin small, but every great change in the world has started that way. Closer to home, suppose you’re living with someone who, much to your irritation, likes to leave clothes lying all around the house. You’ve probably tried everything from sweet talk to nagging to threats in an attempt to change this behavior, but it still continues. What are your options? Continued nagging and complaining will only prolong your stress. By accepting the reality for what it is, on the other hand, you open up a wide range of alternatives. So maybe the other person really is a slob—does that mean he or she is no longer worthy of your love? Or do you love them enough to happily pick up after them (and not bring it to their attention every other minute)? And which is more important to you: a clean house or a harmonious relationship? Maybe you can make a game out of it by seeing just how much of a slob they can be. Or if you’re afraid that they’ll just take advantage of you, maybe it’s time to ask whether there is actually enough mutual respect to make the relationship work at all. Do you see the possibilities? It’s a real waste of energy to just complain or indulge in wishful thinking. In fact, the more you allow yourself to become angry or upset, the more likely you’ll

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become angry or upset in the future, even over things that don’t bother you now. When you practice getting angry and upset, in other words, it becomes easier and easier. Fortunately, the opposite is also true: the more you practice remaining happy and calm, the more you will be able to remain centered even in the face of increasingly difficult challenges. Stress is simply the signal that you have the opportunity to make a self-reinforcing choice.

Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances. Thomas Jefferson

4 Breaking the Cycle

One of my all-time favorite movies is Groundhog Day. The story follows an arrogant, self-centered jerk of a weatherman (played by Bill Murray) who finds himself, for reasons left entirely unexplained, re-living the same day—February 2, Groundhog Day—in the same town of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, with the same people and the same circumstances…over and over and over. In one scene he’s sitting at a bar in a bowling alley lamenting the situation. When one of the locals suggests he’s just being negative, he asks, “Well, what would you do if you were stuck in one place, and every day was exactly the same, and nothing you did mattered?” To this, another local replies, “That about sums it up for me!” In the second act of the movie the protagonist catches on to the reality that every day is, in fact, the same and that nothing he does makes one iota of difference. He then tries every possible means to manipulate and exploit his circumstances in an all-out effort to find happiness. He tries anger, but that doesn’t work too well. Finding ways to acquire large sums of money, he tries to buy

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his way to happiness but fails miserably. Then he tries to take advantage of others, still to no avail. Utterly lost after failing to find freedom (or get the girl, played by Andie MacDowell) for many months, maybe even years, he loses all hope and decides to end his life. Even in this, however, he finds no escape. Day after day he wakes up “without a scratch on me, not a dent in the fender.” Finally, in act three, he decides that if he really is stuck reliving Groundhog Day for all eternity, he might as well stop resenting his fate and start making himself a better person. Adopting a deliberately positive outlook, he becomes increasingly kind, generous, serviceful, and—lo and behold!—happy, to the point of effectively becoming, as director Harold Ramis describes, “the god of the town.” In the end, only when he has (after maybe ten years) finally lived up to his true potential does he escape the cycle…and get the girl. And whereas he’d said at the beginning of the movie, “I don’t want to spend an extra second in Punxsutawney,” the movie closes with his suggesting to her, “Let’s live here!” In many ways—in so many ways!—Groundhog Day reflects real life for most of us: waking up day after day after day with the same job, the same commute, the same friends and relatives, and the same problems. And how often we try everything except changing ourselves, through which we might discover that we actually enjoy where we already are and what we already have!

Responding with Calmness and Relaxation Stress, as explained at the end of chapter 3, is a signal that lets us know we have an opportunity to make a self-reinforcing choice toward anger, frustration, and other destructive emotions, or toward calmness, happiness, and similarly constructive responses.

Breaking the Cycle

Reacting to potential stressors with negative emotions that trigger our physiological fight-or-flight response is a learned habit. In fact, we’ve probably been practicing these things since we were very young: somebody insulted us, and we wanted to hit back. We may have even been encouraged at some point to retaliate. To break the cycle of stress, we must replace this habit with another, namely, to react instead with calmness, relaxation, acceptance, and self-control. As wimpy as this might sound as a solution to our most intense difficulties (as one of Dr. Dean Ornish’s patients put it, “What could be wimpier than that?”), it also happens to be one of the most important skills for truly heroic people like firefighters, police officers, and soldiers. A firefighter simply cannot afford to charge into a burning building to save lives if he or she cannot remain calm, focused, and alert. A police officer cannot defuse a dangerous situation (say, a loaded shotgun pointed at his or her chest) without being calm and collected. And soldiers—as well as athletes—discover their optimal levels of performance when they are calm and relaxed yet fully engaged in the moment. If you think back to your best periods of performance, you’ll probably discover that these qualities of relaxation and calmness were essential in even mundane tasks. Professional musicians attest to this, as do students taking tests, doctors performing surgery, salespeople giving presentations, and even homemakers preparing dinner.* Indeed, relaxation and calmness really make the difference between being fully engaged in what you do and thoroughly wishing you were somewhere else. To show the power of responding with relaxation rather than tension, let me offer a personal experience. Some years ago I was * Relaxation and calmness are necessary even to play video games effectively. Many games are deliberately designed to make you tense and thus unable to concentrate or see the obvious answers or pathways.

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camping in the Sierra Nevada foothills of Northern California. About two in the morning a HUGE thunderstorm came in and seemed to sit directly on top of my tent—I mean, there was zero delay between the flashes of lightning and the thunderclaps! The pounding downpour was so hard that mist actually sprayed through my normally waterproof rain fly. To make matters worse, I was camping among some very large and heavy pine trees. Every howl of wind awakened a paranoia I’d had since childhood that one of those huge trees would blow down and crush me. This was obviously not an environment conducive to sleep. I tried to ignore it all, but every flash, every clap, every gust, and every drip (into the growing puddle on top of my sleeping bag) induced more and more tension. It seemed I’d be up all night shaking with fear. Once I became aware of this tension, however, I decided to try a different approach. I used my will to react differently than was my habit. With every flash, every clap, every gust, and every drip I made myself relax, a skill I’d only recently learned through the exercises in this book. And, you know what? Although the storm raged in unabated fury, I fell sound asleep for the rest of the night.

The Relaxation Response What’s happening here is that a deliberate effort to relax and remain calm stimulates a different part of the brain than when we react with stress and tension. In the latter case—when we resist what’s happening to us—we stimulate that primitive part of the brain called the limbic system (mentioned in chapter 1) that sets off a fight-or-flight response. It’s no surprise that this is the part of our cerebral anatomy that we share with mice and rabbits,

Breaking the Cycle

the true experts at bolting from danger! Calm acceptance of our circumstances, on the other hand, is a function that requires a higher degree of self-awareness and self-control. It stimulates a more advanced part of the brain—actually the most advanced part that’s found only in human beings: the prefrontal lobes. It’s here that many higher functions occur, including inspiration, insight, empathy, and selflessness. For many years it was thought that the prefrontal lobes weren’t really necessary and could even be problematic (hence the Depression-era frontal lobotomy procedure to remove them). In the 1970s, however, Dr. Herbert Benson at Harvard University discovered another function. Dr. Benson was specifically looking for ways to treat chronic stress-related conditions, especially high blood pressure. In the course of his research he had the opportunity to study a group of people who regularly practiced calming meditation techniques. Though the outward aspects of their lives were quite similar to those of people with hypertension, these meditators manifested few of the symptoms. Intrigued, Dr. Benson had different people suffering from chronic stress practice those same techniques. What he witnessed was amazing. Those simple exercises specifically and repeatedly activated the prefrontal lobes, calmed the limbic system, and induced—within minutes—the physiological opposite of the stress response. In those few minutes there was a deactivation of the sympathetic (fight-or-flight) nervous system and an activation of the parasympathetic (rest-and-repose) system. As a result, there was a marked decrease in blood pressure, heart rate, respiration, and blood flow to the muscles (allowing them to relax). Furthermore, digestive and metabolic functions began to operate optimally, thinking became clearer, and—most importantly—the body began to heal itself from the effects of past stress. Dr. Benson found,

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in fact, that only twenty minutes in this state of dynamic calmness was as restful as five hours of sleep. Just imagine! Dr. Benson called this induced physiological state the Relaxation Response. In his best-selling and highly recommended book by the same title, he describes this response as: .

[A]n inducible, physiologic state of quietude. Indeed, our progenitors handed down to us a second, equally essential survival mechanism [along with the fight-or-flight response]—the ability to heal and rejuvenate our bodies. In modern times, the Relaxation Response is undoubtedly even more important to our survival, since anxiety and tension often inappropriately trigger the fight-or-flight response in us. Regular elicitation of the Relaxation Response can prevent, and compensate for, the damage incurred by frequent nervous reactions that pulse through our hearts and bodies… It is possible that the regular elicitation of the Relaxation Response will prevent the huge personal suffering and social costs now being inflicted on us by high blood pressure and its related ailments.*

After this discovery, Dr. Benson began teaching many of his patients how to elicit the Relaxation Response as an integral part of their treatment. For this he used a simple meditation technique that is easily adaptable to accommodate an individual’s particular spiritual or secular beliefs. He dedicates an entire chapter of his book, in fact, to show how various meditation practices from around the world incorporate the same basic elements: a quiet environment, a comfortable position, a relaxed state of mind, and a mental focusing device coupled with the breath. This is exactly what’s offered in this book as part of the method I’ll explore shortly. But first, let’s delve a little more into why this method works, and how to make it work best for you. * The Relaxation Response, HarperTorch paperback edition (2000), pp. 9, 167.

Breaking the Cycle

Training a New Reaction Just as neurologists used to believe that the prefrontal lobes weren’t important for normal human functioning, recent research is also knocking another pillar out of scientific tradition: the idea that the brain becomes fixed after about age twenty or twenty-five. You’ve probably heard the claim that it’s much easier to learn a foreign language when you’re young. Well, studies have shown that people can learn new languages in any decade of life. It’s the age-related ailments like Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, vascular disease of the brain from diabetes, and even chronic stress, that limit learning ability. When people with these conditions are removed from the statistical samples, all ages except the very elderly show a comparable capacity for learning. The brain, as it turns out, is actually our most adaptable and changeable organ: our brain literally gets rewired to assist and support whatever we deliberately practice. The more we do any specific activity, especially with concentration, the more we stimulate those parts of the brain associated with that activity. This stimulation, in turn, increases the number of brain cells that are dedicated for that purpose, and also greatly increases the neurological pathways (synapses) between cells. The reverse is also true: areas associated with activities that you no longer perform gradually diminish as cells from these lesser-used areas are recruited to those being stimulated. You truly do become what you concentrate on. This helps us understand how habits are formed—indeed, wired into the brain—and how they can also be unformed and replaced with other habits. Neurologically speaking, a habit is simply an activity for which your brain has developed, through

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repetition, a path of least resistance. This means that energy in that part of the brain will most likely flow through that habitual route. Habits are activities we do and ways we respond without having to think. This is good because it’s usually not worth the mental energy to cogitate how to dry yourself off with a towel, how to put your clothes on, or how to write individual letters like e and q. Actions that are committed to habit can be done much more efficiently, thereby freeing mental energy for (hopefully) higher purposes. The set of skills that one habitualizes, in fact, even in one’s thinking processes, is more or less what defines any profession. A musician practices techniques to make certain hand and body motions habitual, as do computer programmers, athletes, surgeons, fashion models, carpenters, tailors, mechanics, and virtually everyone else. Thus, after only a few weeks of practicing the techniques in this book—at quiet moments when you’re not standing faceto-face with a potential stressor—your brain will have begun to restructure itself to favor these new habitual ways of responding when there is a challenge. With continued practice you will become increasingly strong and able to face greater and greater challenges. In the meantime, as you starve your old channels of reacting with stress, your overall threshold for stress will rise dramatically. Things that used to really get on your nerves will simply cease to bother you. What’s more, even when you do feel stress (which will be less and less frequent), your body—which has had a chance to heal and strengthen itself due to the Relaxation Response—will be much more resilient to the effects of that stress. As a result, you will recover more quickly and be far less prone to long-term damage.

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Area between threshold and stress curve is relative degree

of pain and suffering

Curve represents

stress experience

l

Original Threshold Low Resilience TIME

STOP-8 REATH E-REFLECT-( HOOSE In the heat of battle, then, you'll find that you' re increasingly able to remain calm and stop yourself from doing or saying things that you'd only regret later. This ability to catch yourself in the moment is the first step of a simple process that Dr. Benson and Eileen M. Stuart developed in The Wellness Book: Stop-Breathe-Reflect-Choose. Stop yourself first from reacting out of old habits. Then take a deep breath, reflect upon the situation, and consciously choose how you will respond to it. With practice, again, this simple process can become a habit in itself and thus prevent the majority of stress you now experience from ever ansmg. The key to catching-and controlling-yourself is developing a greater degree of self-awareness. Awareness precedes control. By becoming more aware of yourself, your thoughts, your body, and your relationship to everything around you, you're better able to recognize the danger signals that precede a stress response. Instead of tensing-either physically or mentallyyou can deliberately relax.

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As another example, during one sojourn in India I was sitting in the front seat of a taxi whose driver, even by Delhi standards, was a kamikaze. Whereas most cars seldom exceed forty mph in that part of the world, this driver seemed intent on breaking sixty at every possible opportunity. He also approached intersections and roundabouts as if no other cars were there, braking drastically at an uncomfortably short distance. After noticing how I had tensed up at the first intersection we’d come to—habitually bracing for impact, that is—I became aware of the same response starting at the next crossing. Noticing this, I deliberately relaxed and deliberately chose to trust the driver who, against all odds, was still alive after years behind the wheel. I also had to figure that he, too, was interested in staying alive for at least a little while longer. So I allowed myself to relax completely. As a result, what could’ve been a real nightmare of a trip actually became quite enjoyable, like a ride at an amusement park. We relax at amusement parks because we trust that the thrills are safe. I extended that same trust to the taxi driver and relaxed (a general strategy that seems to work well for many other experiences in that country as perceived by Westerners). This story also illustrates a key to the second step in the formula: breathe. On a physical level, breath is what literally connects us to other people and to trees, plants, animals, and even the rocks and the oceans. Every one of us draws something on the order of eleven thousand liters of air through our lungs each day, air that has passed (or will pass) through the lungs of other people and animals, as well as through the leaves of trees and plants. That air contains dust from the earth, water vapor from the oceans, and even trace particles whose origins lie far beyond our own solar system. Truly, breath is life: our first breath marks our very real

Breaking the Cycle

entry into this world; our final expiration marks our exit. The act of deep, diaphragmatic breathing (detailed in the next chapter) is also physiologically relaxing: it gently activates the parasympathetic nervous system and calms the sympathetic. When you feel that stress is about to happen, a simple deep, diaphragmatic breath serves to calm your nervous system and diminish, if not prevent, a stress response. Taking a breath literally connects you to others and expands your self-awareness to include their realities—such as the reality of my taxi driver. It draws you into a deeper relationship with those broader realities, helping you to practice empathy and understand others’ points of view. Breathe with that in mind if you can. In this there is a relaxation toward the world as it is, a release of tension in that rubber band we worked with in chapter 3. It’s like a friend of mine, a former truck driver, who wanted to control his tendency toward the strain of profanity apparently common in that profession. Noting that his expletives normally followed an inhalation and the word “Ah…!” he trained himself to catch the “Ah…” and just exhale, giving no further energy to what could otherwise become anger and frustration. In the expansive relaxation of breathing we can more easily observe what’s really trying to happen in any given situation. It becomes less a matter of “What do I want?” and more “What’s best here for everyone? What would a calm, thoughtful person do?” With such reflection, we allow ourselves to act from principle rather than from habits, desires, or personal and emotional involvements. Most of our stress, again, comes from our desire to control the world in a personally beneficial way. As reported in Dr. Dean Ornish’s Program for Reversing Heart Disease (Ballantine Books, 1990, page 86) studies have even shown a direct correlation between stress-induced heart attacks and how often people

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refer to themselves using words like I, my, me, and mine. By reflecting instead on what’s truly right for the situation, regardless of how if affects us personally, we become much more able to work calmly and cheerfully to improve matters. This is the big secret of “stepping back,” so often misunderstood as a merely passive act. Will Rogers said, “Everything is funny—as long as it is happening to somebody else!” Stepping back increases your perspective and clearly shows you where and how to act. As David Gamow thoroughly explores in Freedom from Stress, it’s like watching a movie or a sitcom—when we’re not so personally involved it’s easier to see the answer, even if it means simply letting go, even if it means self-sacrifice. This is exactly what differentiates a coward, who thinks only of his or her own safety, from a hero who risks his or her life for the well-being of others. Thus the fourth step in the formula: choosing. Its one thing to see what can be done; it’s another to actually choose it and then to act on that choice wholeheartedly. Choosing a difficult path (like meaningful, positive action) over an easy one (like merely complaining) takes courage and inner strength. As a well-known activist once put it, “Don’t get angry: get motivated.”* Not coincidentally, the same exercises that help you become more self-aware also increase your ability to draw on this inner strength—another reason why the tools in this book are so effective. In addition, the exercises through which you learn to relax the body are also very energizing: they both release energy that’s been held in tension and develop your willpower (the ability to consciously direct energy, by choice, toward a specific goal or purpose). As you practice these techniques you’ll develop an * I share my most powerful experience of this in chapter 13 of Mystic Microsoft, available on kraigbrockschmidt/mystic-microsoft.

Breaking the Cycle

ever-greater power within yourself to choose and act in positive, constructive ways for the good of all. In the end, you’ll transform your life, and the lives of those around you, just like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, and truly break out of your cycle of stress. Let’s turn the page and learn how.

Postscript An interesting thing happened the moment I finished writing the first draft of this chapter, as if to underscore its message. After putting down my pen (I was writing longhand), I went to the bathroom of my small cabin at the meditation retreat where I was staying. There, in the shower near the drain, sat a small frog. Yes—ribbit, ribbit—a frog. I have no idea how it got there. The windows were screened, and the drain grill seemed far too small to crawl through (it was also tightly connected to a septic system). Yet there sat this frog, in my shower. There was a time when I would have been startled by such a thing and even a little panicked, trying to find a way to remove this “vile creature” from the house, even if it meant having to kill it. This time, however, my response was to first say, “Oh, hello,” then wonder where he (it looked like a boy frog) came from, as there wasn’t any water near the cabin. After just watching him for a while, I gently covered him with a glass and slipped a piece of cardboard underneath to carry him outside. I made sure to talk to the frog as lovingly as I could, to make the situation less stressful for him, as I walked to a garden pond three hundred yards away. There, amid some students peacefully engaged in artistic painting, I introduced my little friend to his new home—much better than my shower. I’m sure he’s happier to whatever capacity is possible for a frog. In any case, I know I am.

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All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone. Blaise Pascal

5 Methods of Practice

You’re now ready to learn what is really the best stuff around for solving stress. To briefly reiterate, the methods given here: • Induce the Relaxation Response, allowing the body to heal from the effects of past stress • Develop self-awareness, giving you the opportunity to catch yourself and choose how to respond to potential stressors • Develop the ability to relax the body at will, allowing you to release energy held as tension and prevent further tension • Inoculate you from future stress by raising your stress threshold and reducing the time it takes to recover from a stressful event, and • Focus on the positive opposites of stress, namely calmness, relaxation, and self-control.

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Furthermore, these methods: • Can be effectively practiced in about twenty minutes a day • Cost nothing to practice • Do not rely on having to remember anything in a moment of potential stress • Require no special equipment, facilities, clothing, or therapists, and, • Are proven to be exceptionally beneficial for many reasons other than stress reduction: slowing the aging process, reversing heart disease, improving mental health, increasing concentration and creativity, and bringing a greater sense of self-integration and fulfillment to one’s life (see pages 110–117). The techniques come in three sets: (A) physical movement and tense-and-relax exercises, (B) breathing exercises, and (C) a meditation exercise. The first two are very good preliminary techniques for the third, and by themselves they are wonderful methods for relieving stress in the moment. As emphasized in the Introduction, you’ll gain the most benefit from these exercises if you consistently practice them every day. Give yourself two weeks to develop the habit of practice, then another two weeks to develop new habits of relaxation and calmness. After that, you’ll probably be so pleased with the results that you’ll continue doing them. It’s also fine to practice them more frequently and to extend the length of your practice. But do so only from a sense of calmness and joy, not of achievement or competition.

Methods of Practice

Physical Exercises These techniques stretch and relax the body, relieving muscular tension and helping you to sit and move about more calmly. (As a direct, practical benefit, the ability to sit still in a meeting, a class, or an interview, for example, helps you concentrate on what others are saying and helps them focus on you.) Most of these exercises can be done standing or sitting in any order you like. Use them whenever you’d like during the day.

Movement Exercises These exercises affect muscles associated with action and reaction: the arms, the neck, and the shoulders. On a subtle level, increasing your flexibility and control in these areas increases your flexibility and control over how you react to situations. Altogether, these take about two to three minutes once you’ve learned them. Concentrate on slow, deliberate, conscious motion. 1. Arm Rotations. Practice while standing. (A) Exhale completely. (B) As you inhale, raise your arms straight in front and circle them overhead, coming up on your toes as you reach the top of your inhalation. (C) Exhale, circling the arms down and behind, completing the circle. Do this several times; then reverse directions and do several more repetitions. Optional variations: (i) inhale while raising the arms up in front and exhale while lowering the arms in front, repeating several times; (ii) inhale while raising the arms up to the sides and exhale while lowering the arms to the sides, repeating several times.

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2. Shoulder Rolls. Practice while standing or sitting. Place your fingers on your shoulders, and then slowly rotate the shoulders forward, up, behind, and down in large circles. Repeat several times, and then repeat in the reverse direction, emphasizing movement in the shoulder joint its elf rather than the arms by keeping the elbows pointed down throughout.

Methods of Practice

3. Shoulder Stretches. Practice while standing or sitting. Place your fingers on your shoulders and, inhaling, lift your elbows to the sides until your arms are parallel with the floor. As you exhale, slowly bring the elbows together in front, touching them if possible. Inhale and open the elbows wide, stretching back. Repeat several times, concentrating on letting go of tension in the shoulder joints, especially at the forward extent of the motion.

4. Neck Rolls. Practice while standing or sitting. If you

sit, be sure to sit upright with a straight spine. Start first with small circles; if your neck is healthy, you can make larger circles, even with the neck

completely

relaxed.

Rotate slowly and gently several times in both directions. To protect your neck (especially if you've had injuries), lift your shoulders to limit the extent of the motion.

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5. Neck Stretches. Slowly repeat each several times while

standing or sitting. Again, if sitting, sit upright with a straight spine. (A) Drop the left ear toward the left shoulder as you exhale, inhale while coming back up, exhale while dropping the right ear toward the right shoulder, inhale while coming back up. (B) Turn the head to look over the left shoulder as you exhale, inhale while bringing the head back to center, exhale as you look over the right shoulder, inhale while coming back to center. (C) Drop the chin to the chest as you exhale, then as you inhale, slowly lift the chin as if you're dragging it up the chest, then tilt the head back to look up. Exhale again, dropping the chin back to the chest.

Methods of Practice

Again, if sitting, sit upright with a straight spine. (A) Drop the left ear toward the left shoulder as you exhale, inhale while coming back up, exhale while dropping the right ear toward the right shoulder, inhale while coming back up. (B) Turn the head to look over the left shoulder as you exhale, inhale while bringing the head back to center, exhale as you look over the right shoulder, inhale while coming back to center. (C) Drop the chin to the chest as you exhale, then as you inhale, slowly lift the chin as if you’re dragging it up the chest, then tilt the head back to look up. Exhale again, dropping the chin back to the chest.

Squeeze-and-Relax Exercises Concentrate now on deliberately and willfully squeezing (tensing) a muscle group and then deliberately and fully relaxing that group. This relaxes specific muscles within each group that are otherwise difficult to isolate. By releasing muscular tension throughout the body, these exercises improve circulation and can also help to lower blood pressure.* When you squeeze, don’t strip your “muscular gears” as it were—start with low tension, and then build to medium and then high tension, up to a point where your muscles literally vibrate. When you relax, release the tension gradually: high, medium, low, to a point of rest. Then focus on the muscle group for a moment, specifically concentrating on the sense of relaxation in that group. In this way these simple exercises relax the muscles and develop your awareness of what tension and relaxation actually feel like. Most people are aware of tension but not relaxation: here you learn how to bring both under your conscious will. * The article “A Sixty-Second Shortcut to Vitality” in Prevention magazine, February 1983, discusses the subject along with how it also slows aging.

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2. Progressive twenty-part body relaxation. Practice while standing. Squeeze and relax different body parts in turn, tensing with low to medium to high tension and then vibrating; and then release the tension, from high to medium to low, and relax. Start with the left foot (1), squeezing and relaxing, and then do the right foot (2), left calf (3), right calf (4), left thigh (5), right thigh (6), left buttock (7), right buttock (8), abdomen (9), stomach (10), left forearm (11), right forearm (12), left upper arm (13), right upper arm (14), left chest and shoulder (15), right chest and shoulder (16), left of neck (17), right of neck (18), front of neck (19), and back of neck (20).

6

4

2

\

5

-

3

Methods of Practice

 ow repeat the exercise more quickly, this time holding N the tension in each part as you come up. When you reach the top, inhale with a double breath, vibrating the whole body. Then exhale with a double breath as you relax the neck (all parts), and then release each remaining body part in reverse order. (This usually takes a little while to perfect, and if you find that you’ve already relaxed your legs before getting there, you can re-tense them together and relax the parts in order.) You can also incorporate double-breathing and muscle squeezing with the arm and shoulder rotations in the previous section, tensing on upward motions, relaxing on downward motions. The same goes for Neck Stretches exercise C, lifting the head up with tension as you inhale with a double breath and relaxing it down as you exhale with a double breath. Again, keep the chin near the chest and the back of the neck extended as much as possible when coming up, protruding the chin only at the end. Final note: other forms of physical exercise are, of course, also helpful in relaxing the body. For the purposes of stress reduction, be sure to choose gentle forms that calm and revitalize the nervous system. Rhythmic walking is an excellent choice, as are gentle yoga postures (originally designed, in fact, for the very purpose of calming the body) and similar practices.* Competitive sports, weight training, and even sex, on the other hand, tend to excite the nervous system, strain muscles, and drain vitality. It would be best to cut back on such activities for a few months to give your body time to heal. * An excellent yoga DVD is Yoga for Busy People, available from Crystal Clarity Publishers; in this context it’s best to avoid yoga that’s presented primarily as an activating or callisthenic workout.

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BREATHING EXERCISES Here the concentration is on control and awareness of the breath. With every inhalation, visualize or feel that you are drawing in not only air but strength, vitality, and joy into every body cell. With every exhalation, similarly, feel that you are expelling all worry, weakness, and negativity. Also try to relax more deeply with each repetition of an exercise; avoid tensing up in the very effort of practice. If you feel any dizziness during these exercises, reduce the volume of air that you're breathing in or make the breathing cycle shorter. Any of these practices can be done separately at any time you feel the need, even in moments of stress. The immediate benefit is that by directing your will power to a deliberate act of breathing you immediately shift your attention away from your desire to control the stressor. Altogether these exercises take about four to five minutes.

1. Diaphragmatic Breathing. Practice while standing or sitting with a straight but relaxed spine. Exhale completely, pulling the belly (diaphragm) in to expel as much air as possible. It's helpful to place your hands on the belly to draw awareness there-when you breathe using the belly, the hands should move out with the inhalation and in with the exhalation. Now inhale slowly, expanding the belly (diaphragm); then exhale slowly, again pulling the belly in to expel all the air. Repeat several times. You may find it helpful to slightly constrict your throat, allowing you to inhale and exhale more slowly.

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Methods of Practice

Optional Variation-Three-Part Breathing. Exhale completely as above. Now inhale, expanding the belly, and then continue to inhale while expanding the middle chest (widening the rib cage-your hands should move to the sides). Continue to inhale as you roll your shoulders back slightly, opening the upper chest. Hold the breath for a moment, and then exhale in reverse order (upper chest, middle chest, diaphragm). Repeat several times.

2. Standing Three-Part Breathing. (A) Using the three-part breathing pattern, first bend forward at the hips as you exhale, letting your arms and head hang free. (If you have lower back or spinal issues, bend the knees to reduce the tension on those areas.) (B) As you inhale, feel that your diaphragm is gently pushing your body into an upright position and that you're filling your whole body with air, not just the diaphragm. (C) As you straighten up, bring your arms upward, elbows to the sides, to help open the rib cage and fill the middle lungs.

'

\

I

\

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(D) Then gracefully extend the arms overhead, filling the upper part of the lungs. Imagine that the air is filling your arms all the way to the fingertips. (E) Hold this position momentarily, and then exhale in reverse order. Repeat several times. With the last exhalation, lower your arms to the sides but remain standing upright. Close the eyes and tune in to the sense of calmness induced by this practice.

3. Alternate Nostril Breathing. Cools the nervous system and soothes agitation; practice while seated with a straight spine so the diaphragm can move freely. (A) Close the right nostril with the right thumb, and slowly inhale with three-part breathing to a count of 6, 8, or 10, however long is comfortable. (B) Close the left nostril with the ring and little fingers of the right hand, and hold the breath

/

for the same count, concentrating at the point between the eyebrows (the prefrontal lobes of the brain). (C) Open the right nostril by releasing the thumb, and exhale to the same count. Then open the left nostril, close the right again, and repeat three or more times (up to 10 total). Afterwards, sit quietly with the eyes closed. From here you can easily move into the concentration/meditation exercise on page 97. Constricting the throat a little is, again, _

helpful here. Also, make sure each part-

/

inhale, hold, exhale-is the same length,

Methods of Practice

using whatever count is comfortable. Remember that this is not a competition and that the point is to relax—there’s no reason to force yourself into a longer count. Let it come naturally.

Note on Diaphragmatic Breathing Tremendous benefits come from teaching yourself to regularly breathe using your diaphragm. As children, we did this naturally. By our teen years, generally, social standards taught us to hold our stomachs in (to look thin), forcing us to breathe using only the middle chest (the rib cage area), or, worse still, the upper chest. Physiologically, middle-chest breathing puts pressure on the heart and activates the sympathetic nervous system (as with the fightor-flight response). In contrast, diaphragmatic breathing gently massages and relaxes the heart and activates the parasympathetic nervous system (as in the Relaxation Response). If you do nothing else in this book, retrain yourself to habitually breathe using your diaphragm. It’s one of the best things you can do for yourself.

Meditation Exercise Meditation means many things to many people. The word can inspire outright zeal in some while inducing misgivings in others. Yet there’s nothing strange or worrisome about it. Meditation is simply the practice of stilling the body and using some mental device to relax and focus the mind. Medically speaking, meditation has been proven to produce a wide variety of impressive benefits, including the Relaxation Response (see page 74). This is not true of ordinary passive forms of relaxation, such as reading or watching TV.

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Besides helping you recover from stress, a regular meditation practice effectively inoculates you against the harmful effects of stress. On mental and emotional (as well as spiritual) levels, meditation transforms your outlook on life and helps you transcend the personal and emotional involvements that so often ensnare you and lead to stress. To quote a report from the Mayo Clinic, “When you meditate, you . . . clear away the information overload that builds up every day and contributes to your stress. The emotional benefits of meditation can include gaining a new perspective on stressful situations, building skills to manage your stress, increasing self-awareness, focusing on the present, [and] reducing negative emotions.”* With regular practice, stressful situations and circumstances will no longer affect you as they once did: you’ll become, by nature, more relaxed and calm as well as more content, patient, generous, and loving. This is why meditation is often employed in spiritual contexts to help people develop such inner virtues. Yet there’s nothing inherently religious, sectarian, or cultish about meditation, nor is it specific to any particular culture—meditation has been known and practiced worldwide for thousands of years in spiritual and secular contexts alike. Meditation is not about watching daisies grow, nor is it a mind-blanking escape from reality. Although it does involve a withdrawal of one’s attention from outer stimuli for a period, there is still focus and concentration—the mind is not idle, just calm. The result is an overall increase of awareness, differentiating it from the escape strategies we saw in chapter 2 that involve a decrease of awareness. Meditation also empowers you with a * ”Meditation: A simple, fast way to reduce stress,” July 19, 2014, mayocl. in/2ouMiXP, accessed August 19, 2017.

Methods of Practice

greater degree of control over your energies, thereby improving concentration, productivity, and creativity. Meditation is thus a serious technique used by people who have serious responsibilities or regularly face intense stress in their work, such as firefighters, police officers, soldiers, CEOs, professional athletes, engineers, doctors, nurses, and so on.* A variety of meditation techniques are available, depending on your goals. For the purpose of quieting and focusing the mind—the most common need among active people worldwide—the Watching the Breath technique given in the upcoming section is one of the simplest and most effective. (Many meditation techniques are clinically equivalent where their effects are concerned. Nevertheless, pick one and stick with it; trying to combine bits and pieces of different techniques would bring results similar to those one might derive from randomly combining food recipes.) The Watching the Breath technique makes use of the intimate psycho-physiological relationship between the breath and the mind. One’s breath instantly responds to different mental and emotional states—observe, for instance, how your breathing changes while watching an engaging movie. At the same time, mental and emotional states, along with certain physiological responses, can be consciously regulated through the breath. After miles of cross-country skiing, for example, Olympic biathletes use breathing exercises like those given earlier to quickly calm themselves for precise target shooting. * My friends David and Karen Gamow (authors of Freedom from Stress who operate Clarity Seminars in Mountain View, California), and Eric and Paula Biskamp (who operated WorkLife Seminars in Dallas, Texas), have taught these techniques to many such groups. I can also personally attest that my ability to hold details in mind while writing or doing computer programming, for example, has dramatically increased since I began meditating regularly.

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Watching the Breath brings the breath and the mind together. By concentrating on the breath itself and mentally repeating a simple word formula with the breath, both breath and mind become increasingly calmer, bringing you more and more to a point of still focus on the object of your meditation. That object can be any quality that you would like to deepen in yourself. For our purposes here, it’s best to specifically focus on qualities of calmness and peace. In this way meditation is the practice of deliberate calmness and thus a highly effective countermeasure to stress. With regular practice, again, this calmness becomes habitual. This is why meditation serves both as an antidote to stress and as an inoculant. Indeed, although you’ll probably find it helpful to meditate in a quiet setting to begin with, you’ll gradually find yourself able to meditate even in noisy, chaotic places. Such is the nature of inner peace: a portable paradise that you can take anywhere!

Meditation is NOT a Pill Meditation is not a pill to use in acute situations. Regular, daily practice is what gives it power. A few minutes every day (or several times a day) is much more effective than a whole hour once a week. It’s like the relationship between diet and health. Maintaining a good diet will generally keep you healthier than a poor one; gulping one cupful of oat bran isn’t going to magically lower your cholesterol. Think of meditation, then, as a means of increasing your resilience to stress, not something you do only when you’re already feeling stressed (at those times, use the breathing exercises).

Methods of Practice

WATCHING THE BREATH TECHNIQUE Begin this practice after doing at least some of the physical and breathing exercises to relax and calm yourself physically. 1. Find a comfortable seated posture (in a chair or on a floor cushion) in which the spine is upright and relaxed. If seated in a chair, keep the feet flat on the floor. Roll the shoulders back slightly to open the chest, and rest the hands with palms upturned on the thighs, wherever it's comfortable. Raise the chin so that it's parallel to the floor, and lift the eyes by looking at the junction of the wall and ceiling. Park the eyes there, and close them for the duration of this exercise.

2. Take a few deep, diaphragmatic breaths, and gently dismiss, to the best of your ability, all thoughts from your mind. Become centered in the here and now. Release thoughts of the past and concerns about the future. If thoughts invade during this exercise, simply dismiss them without a fuss, as if you were watching clouds pass in the sky. 3. Mentally remind yourself why you've come to this practice of meditation (to relax and concentrate on calmness and peace); if you are spiritually or

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r eligiously inclined, this is a good time to incorporate a prayer or invocation of some kind, appropriate to your faith. 4. Now, without counting and without tension, take a long, slow, deep, diaphragmatic inhalation through the nose; then exhale fully through the mouth. Close the mouth and breathe through the nose. 5. Allow the breath to flow in and out through the nose of its own accord. Calmly observe its movement without any attempt to control it. Notice where the breath enters the body—at the tip of the nose or in the nasal passages. You’ll feel coolness on the inhalation and warmth on the exhalation. Observe the breath going in and out at this point. Then gradually feel those sensations higher and higher in the nasal passages until your attention is focused just behind the point between the eyebrows. 6. After a minute or two, mentally repeat the words I am with each inhalation. With each exhalation, mentally say the word peace and feel that you’re relaxing more deeply. You can use other simple and meaningful word formulas such as A-men, calm-ness, still-ness, I am-joy, or the traditional phrase from the East, hong-sau (rhymes with “long-saw”). Or you can simply say “Ahhh . . .” on the exhalation (dropping the inhalation words, “I am”). What’s important is that the words are calming and peaceful to you, thereby helping you relax, concentrate, and deepen your inner awareness.

Methods of Practice

7. As your practice deepens, the breath may become deeper or more shallow; either is fine. Also begin to enjoy the pauses between the breaths. Observe and enjoy this as it happens naturally; don’t purposely hold the breath in or out. Again, if any thoughts creep in, let them pass by without judgment or attachment and bring your attention back to watching the breath. 8. After 5 to 10 minutes of this practice, inhale fully and slowly, then exhale and forget about the breath entirely, letting it return to whatever is normal. 9. Sit now in silence for a few more minutes, about as long as you observed the breath. Focus your attention on the sense of peace, calmness, love, joy, or whatever positive quality you are experiencing. Absorb it. Feel it spread throughout your body and mind. Then, toward the end of your practice, feel that you’re radiating that quality in expanding circles around you.* 10. When you’re ready, come out of your meditation slowly, opening the eyes at first while retaining an inward awareness. Take a moment to view the space around you from that place of calmness. Then begin to move the body gently, breathing more deeply, again maintaining that sense of calmness. As you get up to move on to other activities, continue to hold that feeling as long as you can, even if it’s only a minute or two. With practice, it will stay with you more and more throughout the day. * You can also use this time for quiet receptivity, opening your heart, prayer, or an expansive visualization. Many recordings are available for the last purpose.

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SOME HELPFUL TIPS

• Regularity. Try to meditate at the same time in your daily routine, like first thing in the morning or just before bed. Better yet, practice twice a day---0nce in the morning and again in the evening. Practicing before lunch at midday is also helpful and enjoyable, and of course you can really do it anytime you want a little mental break. After a heavy meal, however, it's best to wait an hour or two, lest you end up concentrating primarily on your digestion!

• Location. Set aside a room or part of a room (or office) just for this purpose. Over time, you'll find that entering that space will automatically draw the mind inward.

• Environment. Practice in a quiet, gently lit place with some fresh air. Use a blanket or shawl to keep the body comfortably warm. Earplugs or ear protectors help to muffle ambient noise.

• Sitting posture. The spine should always be erect but relaxed (not hunched). Your chest should be raised, the head erect, the eyes closed and uplifted, and the hands resting on the thighs (ideally at the juncture of the thighs and abdomen). If you sit in a chair, try sitting up toward the front edge. A small pillow can help give a little forward tilt to the pelvis to relieve tension in the lower back. On the floor, you can sit in a variety of postures using a cushion or meditation

bench,

provided you

keep your spine erect.

Methods of Practice

• Sitting still. When you sit to practice, gently command the body to be still for at least the next few minutes. Try to eliminate fidgeting before it starts. Also, mentally check the body from time to time and relax any areas of tension. • How long? Consistency is much more important than length. Better to practice even 5 minutes a day than 2 hours once a week. Meditate as long as it’s enjoyable (10, 20, 30, 60 minutes, or longer), so that you leave each session feeling refreshed and enthusiastic about coming back for more. You can also drop in a few short one- or two-minute sessions during the day. Remember to relax into it: don’t extend your practice from a sense of competition, achievement, or obligation, lest your very effort to relax becomes a strain. • Bodily functions. If you have to itch or move your body a little, that’s fine. Try, though, to move from a center of calmness, gently and smoothly. Also, in the first days of practice you may salivate more, your stomach might gurgle, and your digestion might start working differently. These are merely signs that your body is starting to work normally again after being chronically suppressed by stress. Such things will settle down after a week or two as your body finds a new and healthier equilibrium. • Thoughts. Almost everyone has to deal with a restless mind, so don’t take that as a sign of failure or inadequacy. Just let all thoughts pass through, whether good or bad. What’s important is not that you achieve perfect mental stillness so much as the intent of moving in that direction; try to be a little more still than when

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you began. Don’t let your thoughts become a cause of agitation. • The goal. The practice of meditation, particularly the latter silent period of absorption, is not about doing; it’s about being. It’s about absorbing into yourself whatever qualities you seek, with no external goal, no set measure of success, no contest with anyone else. Remember: you become what you concentrate on. For the purposes of reducing stress, keep your focus on calmness, peace, and relaxation. Once you’ve gained control over stress, you can shift your focus to other positive qualities (as we’ll see in chapter 7).

Putting It All Together In the preceding sections I’ve mentioned how these exercises individually help to relieve stress. Let’s now review their combined effect of recovering from past stress and preventing a great deal of stress from arising in the future, specifically by retraining yourself to react to potential stressors with relaxation rather than tension. By reversing the effects of past stress, the physical exercises obviously help to release chronic tension and the energies trapped therein. This in turn improves a number of other physical functions such as circulation, digestion, metabolism, heart rate, and the ease with which stress hormones and other waste products are flushed from the system. They also reduce blood pressure. The breathing exercises help too with physical relaxation and specifically relax the nervous system. This aids the onset of the Relaxation Response through the meditation practice. In preventing future stress, the physical exercises specifically teach you what tension and relaxation feel like. This increases

Methods of Practice

your awareness of both stress and tension and specifically teaches you how to relax at will. (How often have others told you to “just relax!”?) Meditation greatly increases your self-awareness (it specifically activates the prefrontal lobes of the brain) and teaches you how to focus your attention inwardly. Together, then, these exercises allow you to initiate the Stop–Breathe–Reflect–Choose process by catching yourself in the very moment that stress is about to strike. Breathing—ideally in the diaphragm—is the second part of the process, expanding your awareness to include the realities of others and the world. In that pause you can reconnect with your calm center, accept the world as it is, then reflect on and choose the best way to respond to the situation for everyone’s benefit. Meditation is again helpful here because it promotes nonattachment and the ability to let go if need be. Along with the tense-and-relax exercises that develop willpower, it also puts you more in touch with the inner strength and concentration needed to follow through on your choices, even if they are difficult. Finally, meditation develops one’s intuitive and creative faculties, helping you to see choices that might not have occurred to you before. Taken together, then, these practices are far more than methods to merely manage stress or exchange one kind of stress for another, because they all focus one’s energies toward calmness and relaxation. Compared with venting, the tense-and-relax exercises release tension rather than creating it from emotional stress. Compared with discipline, controlled physical and breathing exercises use one’s willpower to quiet the body, mind, and nervous system as opposed to producing strain and mental tension. And again, the inner withdrawal of meditation differs from methods of escape in that it increases and expands one’s awareness rather

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than dulling it. Another way of defining meditation is, in fact, as the process of opening yourself completely to reality, an essential skill for accepting the world as it really is and seeing what you might do to improve your relationship with it.

Martial Arts for the Mind Imagine placing two people side-by-side, one trained in the methods given here and the other armed with a thousand-andone miscellaneous stress-busting tips. Now imagine throwing all kinds of potential stressors at them. Who do you think would deal with those stressors more calmly, more creatively, more appropriately, and, in fact, more powerfully? It would be like watching Bruce Lee or Jackie Chan taking on a dozen attackers, compared to some flabby teenage computer geek (like I was) trying to do the same. No contest! Martial artists learn their skills gradually. What they specifically practice is how to instantly and habitually respond in precise ways—without having to ponder matters—to a wide variety of situations such as attacks and falling. A white belt in martial arts, of course, isn’t expected to handle anything but the most basic challenges right away. He or she needs to work up the scale a little at a time—and in a safe environment—before expecting to master greater threats. And it doesn’t take any special skill to achieve mastery—only persistence. As one teacher I know puts it, “A black belt is a white belt who kept showing up.” Similarly, when you begin to practice handling potential stressors, be realistic in your expectations and—very importantly—be patient with yourself. You’re starting off with a white belt, so don’t expect to handle every possible threat perfectly at first and don’t expect to handle even simple ones perfectly. Give

Methods of Practice

yourself room to grow and learn, always keeping sight of your highest potential. What’s more, be sure to practice these exercises in a calm setting. It won’t take long before you can defend against the simpler and more direct stressors you encounter all the time and react to them more mildly. With this you’ll see a marked improvement (that is, a decrease) in your stress level and know that you’re definitely headed in the right direction. Keep up your practice: the changes that you’ll experience are cumulative. Once you feel that you’ve gained some degree of mastery over your first set of stressors—meaning that they just don’t seem to bother you as much—start focusing on a few of the bigger and more complicated ones. Month by month you should again see improvements, allowing you to move on to even greater challenges. As your self-awareness increases, you’ll know where the challenges really are and where to concentrate your ability to deliberately respond with calmness and relaxation. Then, after a year or so, take an hour to really look back at how far you’ve come. Clearly review what your life used to look like and, if you’ve persevered with these practices, how profoundly they’ve transformed you for the better. Then throw a party or treat yourself to something special—for you’ve earned your black belt in these “martial arts for the mind”!

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The Effectiveness of Meditation Meditation is widely known to be exceptionally helpful in overcoming stress, as shown by the sampling of reports on the following pages. Its benefits have been reported by many diverse periodicals, including: Journal of the American Medical Association Better Homes & Gardens International Journal of Neuroscience

Huffington Post

British Medical Journal

Business & Health

Ladies’ Home Journal

Journal of Social Issues

IndustryWeek

American Family Physician

Psychology Today

Forbes

Men’s Fitness

Journal of Rehabilitation

Muscle & Fitness

Fortune

Training & Development

Nursing

Medical Economics

Essence

Parks & Recreation

Restaurant Hospitality

Purchasing

School Administrator

Brandweek Online

Ebony

Atlantic Monthly

Jet

The Gale Encyclopedia of Alternative Medicine offers an extensive list of the many stress-induced or stress-aggravated ailments that are alleviated by meditation. These include anxiety, chronic fatigue, mononucleosis, asthma, ulcers, insomnia and other sleep disorders, hypertension, heart disease, cancer, sexually transmitted disease and sexual dysfunction, irritable bowel syndrome, indigestion, neck pain, PMS, cancer, cold sores, acne, headaches, epilepsy, nausea, anorexia, glaucoma, menopause, obesity, panic

Methods of Practice

disorders, alcoholism and substance abuse, constipation, dizziness, hyperthyroidism, lymphoma, muscle spasms, pneumonia, arthritis, and diabetes. It also suggests meditation as a helpful preventative step against even the common cold, susceptibility to which increases with stress. A comprehensive review can be found in The Physical and Psychological Effects of Meditation: A Review of Contemporary Research 1931-1996, by Michael Murphy, Steven Donovan, and Eugene Taylor, (Institute of Noetic Sciences, 1997). Also see the extensive research list on stress and meditation in Freedom from Stress, by David Gamow (Glenbridge Publishing, 2006). A simpler report that outlines many benefits is “Mindfulness Meditation Benefits: 20 Reasons Why It’s Good For Your Mental And Physical Health,” Huffington Post, April 8, 2013, huff. to/2pBsL7i (accessed August 19, 2017). 1. “ When stress becomes chronic and is not properly managed, it can wreak havoc on our mind, body, and spirit. It can interfere with our enjoyment of life, relationships, and our work. “That being said, we also know that relaxation is the opposite, and antagonist, of stress. This is because meditation decreases the release of stress hormones—adrenaline and cortisol—and changes the frequency and amplitude of our brain waves. Meditation helps to provide perspective, calm – and aids against those storms of life on the outside from coming inside. In doing so, it can have a number of health benefits…[including] decreased blood pressure, better sleep, decreased depression and anxiety, alters pain perception, [and] improved immune function.” From “Health and the Art of Meditation” by Dr. Nina Radcliff, Washington Times, Jan 6, 2017.(1)

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2. “ Meditation helps to deal with stress and is excellent for reducing anxiety. It helps to modify the suppressive effect strenuous physical exercise has on immune function. It aids recovery from addictions. It significantly improves blood fat levels, and can assist those convalescing from heart disease. It improves the balance between cortisol and DHEA. These hormones are often out of balance in people under long-term stress. Insomnia can be eradicated by using meditation.” From Stress Protection Plan: Everyday Ways to Beat Stress and Enjoy Life by Suzanne Oliver (Collins & Brown, 2000), p. 151. 3. “ [Meditation] is just like exercise. It’s a form of mental exercise, really. And just as exercise increases health, helps us handle stress better and promotes longevity, meditation purports to confer some of those same benefits.” Researcher Sarah Lazar, PhD, in “Harvard neuroscientist: Meditation not only reduces stress, here’s how it changes your brain,” by Brigid Schulte, Washington Post, May 26, 2015.(2) 4. D  allas patent attorney Thomas Crisman has found meditation enables him to compress twelve months into ten. The key is to train oneself to not react negatively to life’s inevitable stressors. In court with an emotional adversary, he says, “You can’t lie down and roll over when these jerks come along. You’ve got to push back. But to do it without the agitation, without the suffering, with a balanced mind—that was probably the No. 1 thing that I saw happen to me in my law practice.” Of him, a friend and partner says, “Most attorneys look forward to the cocktail hour to go out and drown their stresses. Tom goes to meditate.” From “God and Business” by Marc Gunther, Fortune magazine, July 9, 2001.(3) 5. “ [Meditation] changes our brain. The cells and neurons in the brain are constantly making new connections and disrupting

Methods of Practice

old ones based on response to stimuli, a quality that researchers call experience-based neuroplasticity. This affects the neural circuits of the brain, which in turn affects how we respond to situations. It also affects the actual structure of our brains — thickening some areas and making others less dense.” From “Meditation Health Benefits: What The Practice Does To Your Body,” by Meredith Melnick, Huffington Post, April 30, 2013.(4) 6. “ The overall body of research on meditation suggests it may help both prevent and treat cardiovascular disease.” From “Meditation good for the heart, study finds” by Amy Norton, MSNBC News, May 21, 2005.(5) 7. “ [Meditation] has been shown to significantly improve symptoms and side effects from cancer and its treatment. This includes stress, anxiety, depression, vitality, fatigue, and sleep levels.” From “Science Confirms: Benefits of Mindfulness Meditation Are Legit” by Kimberly Yawitz, dietvsdiease.org, December 19, 2016 (6) 8. 7 5 percent of long-term insomniacs who have been trained in relaxation and meditation can fall asleep within twenty minutes of going to bed. Described in Say Goodnight to Insomnia by Dr. Gregg Jacobs, Psychologist at Harvard Medical School (Owl Books, 1999). 9. “ A growing number of studies has shown that, given its effects on the self-control regions of the brain, meditation can be very effective in helping people recover from various types of addiction. . . . Some schools have start[ed] implementing meditation into their daily schedules, and with good effect: One district in San Francisco started a twice daily meditation program in some of its high-risk schools – and saw suspensions decrease, and GPAs and attendance increase.” From “7 Ways Meditation Can Actually Change the Brain,” by Alice G. Walton, Forbes.com, Feb 9, 2015.(7

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10. “Meditation training helps patients with chronic illnesses ranging from AIDS to sleeping disorders reduce their symptoms and improve their quality of life, according to a new study [published in the July/August 2001 issue of General Hospital Psychiatry].” From “Meditation Training Lessens Symptoms of Chronic Illnesses” by Nan Meyers, Center for the Advancement of Health, August 30, 2001.(8) 11. “Stress contributes to a host of medical conditions confronted by health care practitioners[,] and current pharmaceutical and surgical approaches [cannot] adequately treat stress-related illnesses. Mind/body approaches such as the relaxation response and those related to utilizing the beliefs of the patients, have been used to successfully treat these disorders.” From United States Senate Report 105-300—Departments Of Labor, Health And Human Services, And Education And Related Agencies Appropriation Bill, 1999.(9) 12. “’Many of my most creative thoughts have come out of meditation.’” Former Medtronic CEO William W. George, quoted in “Striking a Balance,” by Tim Stevens, IndustryWeek, November 20, 2000.(10) 13. “Neuroscientists have found that meditators shift their brain activity to different areas of the cortex—brain waves in the stressprone right frontal cortex move to the calmer left frontal cortex…This mental shift decreases the negative effects of stress, mild depression and anxiety. There is also less activity in the amygdala, where the brain processes fear.” From “The Benefits of Meditation,” by Colin Allen, Psychology Today, April 1, 2003, reviewed June 9, 2016.(11) 14. “[Meditation and caffeine] both have the effect of energizing you and boosting your productivity, but meditation accomplishes this without the adverse effects associated with caffeine…

Methods of Practice

[Caffeine] stimulates more neural activity in your brain, which triggers your adrenal glands to release the stress chemical adrenaline. Eventually (whether you’re drinking lots of coffee or not), remaining in a chronic state of ‘fight or flight’ that adrenaline engenders can lead to any number of stress-related disorders. Meditation, on the other hand, energizes you and makes you more productive without triggering an adrenaline rush. According to [meditation expert Emily] Fletcher, meditation provides your body with rest that is two to five times deeper than sleep.” From “The Many Benefits of Meditation,” by Dr. Mercola, mercola.com, June 18, 2016.(12) 15. “The amygdala [in the brain] is involved in the way we experience negative emotions like stress. The region actually grows more dense as a result of stress. But those who practice meditation show decreased activity in the area during stressful moments and also a reduction in density over time. That means meditation can not only alter acute stress response, it actually plays a role in shaping the structure of the brain.” From “Meditation Health Benefits: What The Practice Does To Your Body,” by Meredith Melnick, Huffington Post, April 30, 2013.(13) 16. “In a small but highly provocative study, a University of Wisconsin-Madison research team has found, for the first time, that [meditation] produced lasting positive changes in both the brain and the function of the immune system…The findings suggest that meditation, long promoted as a technique to reduce anxiety and stress, might produce important biological effects that improve a person’s resiliency.” From “University Of Wisconsin Study Reports Sustained Changes In Brain And Immune Function After Meditation,” Science Daily, February 4, 2003.(14) 17. “Many studies have investigated meditation for different conditions, and there’s evidence that it may reduce blood pressure as

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well as symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome and flare-ups in people who have had ulcerative colitis. It may ease symptoms of anxiety and depression, and may help people with insomnia.” From “Meditation: In Depth,” National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health.(15) 18. “ Some remarkable benefits are possible for women who meditate regularly. One study found that women with PMS (premenstrual syndrome) reduced their symptoms by 58 percent. Another study found that women going through menopause could significantly reduce the intensity of hot flashes. . . . Even those women struggling with infertility can benefit: In a study of a 10-week group program that included meditation (along with exercise and nutrition changes), the women had significantly less anxiety, depression, and fatigue, and 34 percent became pregnant within six months.” From “Why Meditate? Because It’s Good Medicine” by William Collinge, PhD, CNN, June 22, 1999.(16) 19. “Perhaps one of the most fascinating studies published on meditation is one from several years ago — but one that is good to keep in mind if you’re interested in mental health and brain plasticity. The study, led by Harvard researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), found that meditating for only 8 weeks actually significantly changed the brain’s grey matter — a major part of the central nervous system that is associated with processing information, as well as providing nutrients and energy to neurons. This is why, the authors believe, that meditation has shown evidence in improving memory, empathy, sense of self, and stress relief.” From “The Mental Health Benefits Of Meditation: It’ll Alter Your Brain’s Grey Matter, And Improve Memory, Sense Of Self,” by Lecia Bushak, Medical Daily, Jan 24, 2015.(17)

Methods of Practice

20. “Meditators [after six to nine months] showed a marked decrease in the thickness of their artery walls, while . . . non-meditators actually showed an increase. [This change translates to] about an 11 percent decrease in the risk of heart attack and an 8 percent to 15 percent decrease in the risk of stroke. From Stroke, reported in “The Science of Meditation” by Cary Barbor, Psychology Today, May 1, 2001.(18) 21. “Meditation is more than a stress-reduction technique. ‘It’s a whole affect management approach,’ [says Scott Bishop, PhD at the University Health Network, affiliated with the University of Toronto]. ‘It’s a way of developing a different relationship with our experiences of stress and affect and thinking that helps with all aspects of life.’ . . . Ongoing practice helps people bring more of their behavior under conscious control, says Assistant Professor of Medicine Saki Santorelli, EdD, director of the Center for Mindfulness at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center.” From “Finding the peace within us” by Bridget Murray, Monitor on Psychology, (a publication of the American Psychological Association), July/August 2002.(19) 22. “In World War II, I fought with all types of weapons systems—105mm howitzers, bazookas, you name it. But I’ve never found anything as powerful as meditation.” Bill F., a participant in Dr. Dean Ornish’s studies quoted in Stress, Diet, and Your Heart, (Signet, 1984, page 105).

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Your success and happiness lies in you. Resolve to keep happy, and your joy and you shall form an invincible host against difficulties. Helen Keller

6 Choosing Your Influences

My wife and I once went to a “white elephant” Christmas party—or, as it turned out, a “white hippo” party. Keeping with tradition, everyone brought either a serious present or an outrageous gag gift of some kind. Opting for the latter, we paid homage to a local thrift shop and found a combination toothbrush and soap holder. But not just any combination toothbrush and soap holder: this one was a white porcelain hippopotamus with rainbow-colored polka dots, designed to hold six brushes in its back and a bar of soap in its open mouth. It was perfect. For good effect, we wrapped it up in some exquisite gold paper and included a few used toothbrushes and a half-used bar of Ivory from our shower. When we arrived at the party, we did our best to slip the package under the tree as inconspicuously as possible. It’s a tradition at such parties, as you may know, that all presents are anonymous. Those who bring gifts put their names into a bowl, which are then drawn at random to determine the order of selecting presents. What makes it fun is that you can select either

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a present from under the tree or a present that’s already been opened, making its former owner select a new one. You can thus never be sure what you’ll end up with. With suppressed anticipation then, we gleefully watched someone select our package who was obviously expecting a gift of superb refinement as the wrapping suggested. You can imagine their shock when the hippo emerged with its special accessories: no one in their right mind would ever consciously choose to select it over a new present! Of course, given the influence of alcohol that evening among a segment of the partygoers, people were not necessarily in their right minds. The hippo, in fact, became the most coveted prize, changing hands not once or twice but at least seven times, even favored over such items as an espresso machine and other beautiful housewares. We, of course, never fessed up to our role in the affair. For myself, I came home that night in possession of a large poster of Donald Duck on one side and Daffy Duck on the other (which I selected, by the way, after it had been opened by someone else, lest I become a victim of my own mischievousness). I’d loved both characters since my childhood and happily hung the poster in my office at Microsoft the following week, flipping it around every few days to enjoy both sides. After a time, however, I took it down. Why? Because both of the beloved waterfowl were shown in states of extreme anger: Donald raising his firsts and throwing a tantrum, and Daffy, his shoulders hunched and fists clenched, filling the entire space around him with the usual expletive symbols (#!*&, etc.). Was it any surprise that I had a tendency to become angry myself? I finally decided that I didn’t need the encouragement and support of these cartoon characters in such matters. (Poor things! I don’t imagine that real ducks could actually survive such stress.)

Choosing Your Influences

Along similar lines, some friends of mine, a couple, were antique dealers who specialized in armor and weapons. Although they had a generally harmonious relationship, they found that when they worked together in their shared office they were abnormally antagonistic to each other. They finally realized that the problem stemmed from the fact that the walls of their office were decorated with swords, maces, flails, and spears. As soon as they removed the influence of those weapons and replaced them with items that expressed harmony, their working relationship improved dramatically. Everything we surround ourselves with, and everything we take into ourselves physically, mentally, and emotionally, exerts a subtle—or not so subtle—influence on our consciousness. It affects our behavior and outlook on life, despite our best intentions. Our environment, in other words, has a very real magnetism that attracts certain thoughts and behaviors to itself—effectively encouraging us to think and behave in those ways while repelling or discouraging their opposites. It’s like the owner of a convenience store (this is a real story) whose parking lot was plagued by various drug dealers and social parasites. He struck upon the idea of broadcasting classical music into that lot through a pair of loudspeakers. Within a short time the troublemakers had cleared out: the very vibrations of that harmonious music created an environment that made illicit behavior extremely uncomfortable.* If you’re seeking to be more calm, more relaxed, and more in control of yourself, then, as has been our focus in this book, it’s absolutely essential that you consciously surround yourself with an environment that supports your aspirations and helps to focus your concentration. This means making conscious decisions about what * Additional examples of the power of an environment to encourage or discourage certain behaviors can be found in The Tipping Point, by Malcom Gladwell.

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you do, what you own, where you go, whom you associate with, and even how you think, because no one is going to create such an environment for you. In fact, the world is fairly bursting with examples of stress, strain, and people who simply lose it over the slightest annoyance (like Donald and Daffy Duck). In their company, your very efforts to stay calm and relaxed will be looked upon or ridiculed as an abnormality. Some people might even see your dedication as a kind of threat and seek to undermine your resolve. Even though it’s not in your power—nor is it your right—to try to change everyone and everything else in the world to be more supportive, it is in your power to decide how you move about within that world. No matter how chaotic or senseless the world might be (or merely seem!), you have the power to determine your exposure to unsupportive behaviors and to choose the influences you allow within your environment. You can choose to avoid certain influences altogether and alter those over which you have a say.*

Planting vs. Weeding However you begin working with your environment, it’s essential that you focus your energies on bringing in more of the positive qualities you want to experience in your life rather than merely decreasing the negative ones. People dealing with stress often focus solely on ridding their l * Indeed, you have a say about almost every influence. Most troublesome circumstances come from choices we make for ourselves. Sitting in traffic every weekday morning and afternoon, for example, is a choice you make because you’ve chosen to pursue a career that demands it. That career is also a choice based on the lifestyle that you’ve chosen to lead and the income necessary to support that lifestyle. None of these choices are forced upon you by anyone other than yourself. As such, you have the power to choose differently by changing your desires.

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lives of troubles and difficulties. Although you can do this to some extent, what are you left with? If all you ever do is pull weeds, and never plant anything else, the best you can end up with is an empty field. What's more, the very thought of fighting negative influences is itself a negative influence: it carries the very sense of stress and strain that you're trying to overcome. Positive focus, on the other hand, carries a sense of calmness and even joyous relaxation. You're not fighting anything: you're rather expressing love for something you want. This creates a magnetism that automatically draws you into those positive qualities without any strain on your part. To illustrate this point, imagine a metal pendulum suspended between two sets of magnets: one representing the negative influences in your life and the other the positive influences. If you're dealing with stress-and likely a fair collection of negative influences-you're probably starting off with a situation that looks like this:

FIGURE A

-

===- - Negatives

Positives

Obviously you'd like to increase your positive life experience.

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If all you do, however, is weed out certain negatives (the ones you

can avoid), the overall effect, while positive, is still somewhat minimal: the positive magnets simply aren't strong enough to shift the pendulum to the right more than a little. Although there might be some relief, it's only in the sense of things being less negative:

FIGURE B

Negatives

Positives

In fact, even if you succeed in getting rid of just about every negative influence (an impossible job, practically speaking), the remaining positive magnetism is too weak to affect more than a small shift to that side:

FIGURE C

;Negatives

Only slightly positive

Positives

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If instead you focus on increasing the positives-and keep your awareness itself focused on those positives-you can accomplish an equal or even greater shift without changing any of the negatives: FIGURED

-

Change from original state

====-:

- - -

\

Negatives

Positives

And if you take away a negative influence and replace it with

a positive one, all the better. Indeed, this is how beautiful gardens are created: even while you are pulling weeds, your focus can be on the beautiful flowers you already have and those you still want to plant.

INCREASING YouR STRESS THRESHOLD

There is another important difference between Figures C and D. Look at those diagrams again. What happens when new negatives are introduced? What happens when the world inevitably brings new challenges, like a natural disaster, drops in the stock market, an unexpected election outcome, problems in a relationship, corporate restructuring, or a career change? And what happens when you find yourself in negative environments over which you have no control, like airplanes, shopping malls, family gatherings, and even your workplace?

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The effect of even a single new negative in Figure C is somewhat pronounced because there are few positives to offset it. This is another way of saying that your "stress threshold'" is rather low, that even little things are enough to literally bend you out of shape. Imagine the shift that takes place when the challenges are even greater:

FIGURE E

Change from original state

I

Negatives

Positives

In Figure D, on the other hand, the overall effect of a single new negative is almost inconsequential. Greater difficulties too, although having a stronger potential pull toward the negative, are largely countered by the still more powerful positive influence (Figure F). See the difference in the pendulum? This is another way of saying that your stress threshold is higher and that you're better able to remain calm and relaxed even under pressure. You're simply more resilient. This kind of positive focus also increases your awareness of what's good in such situations, giving you more strength to accept and work with those environments as they are, as opposed to fighting them and losing your composure. Again, stress

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originates not in things themselves but in our reactions to them. By reacting with calm acceptance and relaxation, the potential stress in every new challenge evaporates or even becomes a new positive. As stated in a timeless maxim, "There are no problems, only opportunities!"

FIGURE F

•

Change from original state

-

-

-

J_

Negatives

Positives

CHANGES COME NATURALLY

Keeping a positive focus has yet another important benefitperhaps even the most important: it helps you avoid fighting with yourself. Learning and self-transformation are largely matters of breaking old attitudes, self-perceptions, and self-identities. If what you're trying to become-a calm, relaxed, and poised person-is something you perceive as foreign to your nature, some part of you will resist the change. This makes the whole process difficult and even exhausting, leading ultimately to failure, disappointment, and-here we go again-stress. And because it's foreign, you expend a great deal of energy trying to remember all the

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rules and details about how you’re supposed to act and what you’re supposed to say in specific situations. This is why big laundry lists of should’s and must’s and quickie stress busters don’t really work in the long run: until you’ve developed a sense of relaxation around such self-directed changes, they can easily lead to the same kind of stress you feel when changes are imposed on you by others. If, on the other hand, what you’re trying to become or absorb feels natural, or is something you truly want, the process requires little effort. Far from being exhausting, it’s usually downright enjoyable and energizing. What’s more, when you become something there’s no need to remember rules and details: you simply are that new reality and would have to deliberately try to behave differently. Your response to life’s challenges is fresh and creative. Thus, as you begin to experience greater peace and joy in yourself, you’ll naturally begin to reevaluate your lifestyle and your external surroundings, bringing them more in tune with this new inner reality. Your choices will be wholly motivated by your desire for more peace and calmness. In time, stress will find itself no more comfortable in your presence than those drug dealers were around classical music, and, like that business owner, you will not have to deal with the problem on its own level.

Work from Your Center Now I want you to be completely honest with yourself. If you’ve already started to make a list of all the things you’d like to change, but have not yet incorporated the methods of practice in chapter 5 into your lifestyle, STOP NOW. Go back and do the exercises. Make them your first and most fundamental lifestyle

Choosing Your Influences

change. Practice those exercises for at least two weeks BEFORE you begin working with your surroundings. This is because the self-awareness that you develop through those practices, especially through meditation, will bring you the inner desire for change and a clear sense of your own center. The practice of meditation effectively turns off your outward senses for a time, isolating you from the effects of your environment and bringing you into your own center. In that state of rest from external stimuli, you develop a more detached and relaxed perspective from which you can relate appropriately to everything you encounter. Only from this center can you really see what changes are truly necessary: which influences you need to keep, which ones you need to alter, and which ones you need to avoid or discard altogether. Otherwise it’s all too easy to lose sight of your intentions and chase after the latest fads and fancies, a sure formula for entering into the cycle of stress all over again. To repeat, if you aren’t yet practicing the exercises in chapter 5, focus on them for the next few weeks. Then you will be ready to look at how you might go about making outward changes.

The “Quality Diet” There are literally thousands of specific things you can change in your life. As mentioned in chapter 2, pick up a book on stress management and you’ll probably find a long list of possibilities. Volumes could be written on the subjects of diet and exercise alone. On this level, the task of wisely choosing your influences appears quite complex, maybe even stressful. If, however, you look at the qualities involved, the job becomes simpler. That is,

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evaluate every outward change you might like to make not in terms of the specific forms involved but in terms of the feelings and/or qualities being expressed through them. That poster of Donald and Daffy Duck (which are forms), for example, clearly expressed anger and emotional reactivity to life despite the lovable reputations of those characters. Seen this way, the effect of that poster in my environment was hardly different than if I’d played a continuous recording of some heated argument. You already know how to make this mental categorization with regards to food, thinking in terms of a few components: protein, fat, carbohydrates, plus vitamins and minerals. Those components determine your real need for intake, and you’re happy to fulfill those needs through a variety of forms. Similarly, the “diet” that we ingest through all our various senses at the banquet table of our environment (which includes food itself) is much simpler to think of in terms of component qualities. You can break the hypnosis of form (such as my attachment to those cartoon characters) and more clearly see the influences that are truly at play. It then becomes much easier to choose forms that bring into your life the most positive, supportive, and uplifting qualities while reducing the negative ones. What’s more, a focus on qualities rather than forms makes you much more resilient to changes in form. Changes in form— which is to say, in outer circumstances—are often perceived as stressful. But if you can perceive that those forms merely express certain qualities, and recognize that those qualities are what’s important to you, then it’s relatively simple to find new forms to express those same qualities. Here are a variety of qualities to consider; not an exhaustive list, but plenty to think about:

Choosing Your Influences

Positive Qualities

Opposite Negative Qualities

Peaceful, calm, harmonious

Agitated, conflicting, anxious

Relaxed

Tense

Quiet

Noisy

Loving, kind, compassionate

Hateful, cruel, judgmental

Clear, wise, understanding

Confused, foolish, upset

Generous, content, grateful

Selfish, greedy, jealous

Serviceful, humble

Conceited, prideful

Self-controlled

Frenzied, obsessive, indulgent, habitual

Inspired, enthusiastic, joyful

Depressed, bored, hopeless, dull

Flexible, free, open

Stubborn, attached

Thoughtful, considerate, sympathetic

Reactive, prejudiced, self-involved

Bright, light

Heavy, dull, dark

Sweet

Sour

Cool (soothing), smooth

Hot (burning), rough, scratchy, irritating

Warming (soothing), friendly

Cold (chilling), immobilizing, lonely

Soft (comforting), accommodating

Stiff, rigid, imposing

Firm (supporting), reliable, loyal

Weak, flimsy, unreliable, disloyal

Brave, courageous

Cowardly, despairing, depressed

Clean, clear

Dirty, muddy, obscured

Focused, grounded

Scattered, spacey

Present

Anxious, worried, guilt-ridden

Creative

Habit-bound

Patient, still

Impatient, restless, hurried

Reverent, devoted

Irreverent, apathetic, contemptuous

Optimistic, faithful

Pessimistic, cynical, skeptical

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Again, these qualities can be expressed through a myriad of forms. Every experience, every object, and every person—even your every thought—is a vehicle for any number of these qualities (positive and negative) to enter your environment. Of course, few things are wholly one or the other. Making choices is largely a matter of maximizing the positives while minimizing the negatives, according to your specific needs. If, for example, you’d like to bring more sweetness into your life (perhaps to offset a generally sour disposition), you could try eating more sweet foods—not mindlessly or to excess, of course, but with the thought that you’re literally taking in the quality of sweetness. All such foods, however, have other qualities and may or may not be calming for your particular physique. Chocolate mousse is sweet, yes, but potentially also heavy or dulling unless you specifically need also to become more grounded. Watermelon, similarly, is sweet and also light but might be too chilling— especially in the depths of winter when a warm pudding would be more soothing. As another example, if you feel too stubborn or fixed (mentally, physically, emotionally, or spiritually) you might experiment with certain forms of exercise that develop fluidity and flexibility. At the same time, you’d want to avoid those exercises that induce tension through their intensity of exertion or competition. You could certainly write a whole volume to catalog the qualities of all kinds of foods and activities. Rather than pursue that course, let’s explore the various channels through which qualities might be expressed in your environment. Then you can really begin to evaluate things for yourself. • Sound and music. Sound is a powerful force that affects attitudes and even brain structure on deeper-than-conscious levels. Ask, then, what each choice of music is really

Choosing Your Influences

saying: what qualities of energy and feeling does it express in its lyrics, in its vibrations of consciousness, and in its philosophy of life? Music, indeed, transmits the consciousness of both composer and performers better than other forms, especially when done with clarity. Are those the people you want to associate with? Would you invite them into your home or take them on your daily commute? Do they express the qualities you seek?* • Media. In addition to music, what you focus on in movies, TV, books, magazines, newspapers, social media, and Internet sites has a strong impact on your mental outlook. News, for the most part, is reported in such a way as to be highly engaging—and the most engaging emotion is fear because when you’re afraid of something, you don’t want to take your eyes off it! The impact of movies is also important to consider because they involve us more emotionally than reading material. Indeed, a huge part of the movie experience that often goes unnoticed by our conscious minds is the accompanying music soundtrack. • Imagery/visuals. As with music, all other forms of art express qualities of consciousness. With everything you own or might acquire, ask again whether those qualities are the ones you want to have around you. As an exercise, visit a gallery in a shopping mall where artwork is organized by different themes. Look at the various pieces carefully and note the feelings you have in response to them. And, as with music, ask yourself whether the artist is someone you’d want to hang out with. * For a more in-depth discussion of this subject, see my paper titled “The Hidden Messages of Music” on my website, kraigbrockschmidt.com.

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Be especially honest with works that are famous or otherwise popular. Just because it’s celebrated doesn’t mean it’s right for you. How does it make you feel? Does it really support your aspirations? If not, it has no place in your environment. (Goya’s paintings of the Spanish Civil War, for example, might be famous, but would it suit your focus to surround yourself with scenes of violence and death?) • Colors. Every color has its own energy and consciousness, both subjectively and objectively. What colors, in your mind, support your aspirations? Which ones detract? Which ones predominate in your home, office, car, and clothes, and do they support the feelings and experience you’re seeking? • Shapes/paths. Consider also your furniture, the shape and layout of your home, and even perhaps the styling of your car. What do these say about the movement of energy in your life? Do they express the ability to flow with life, or do they express resistance? Do they suggest confusion or clarity about where you’re going? Do the shapes suggest harmony or conflict with the rest of your environment? As an example, I once lived in a house in which getting from my office to the kitchen for a drink of water was difficult and frustrating. From my office, I had to go through a smaller-than-normal door, down a narrower- and steeper-than-normal staircase, make a 180-degree turn into a dark hallway, then make four more ninety-degree corner turns—through the living and dining rooms—to finally get to the kitchen sink! Had that not been merely a temporary residence, I would certainly have begun some serious remodeling to ease that flow.

Choosing Your Influences

• Scents/fragrances/odors. Here you might explore the whole field of aromatherapy, which directly studies the psychological qualities of scents. Many scent-related products are available, of course, but also consider the fragrances of your personal-care products like laundry detergent, shampoo, deodorant, toothpaste, and perfume/cologne, as well as those of flowers and foods. A good question to ask is: Do the scents around you invite you to breathe deeply, or are they repulsive to the point where you’d rather hold your breath? (The harmful effects of smoking, especially where stress is concerned, are obvious considerations here.) • Textures. This applies to clothing as well as carpeting, wall coverings, towels, toilet paper, furniture, pillows, mattresses, and so on, even to the kind of shower head you stand under every day, the sorts of foods you eat, and how you prepare and present those foods. Are they soothing or irritating? Do they relax you, or do you find them overly stimulating or irritating? • Tastes and foods. Foods vary widely in the qualities they express: sweetness, sourness, spiciness, blandness, heaviness, lightness, stiffness, fluidity, cleanliness, stimulating, calming, and so on. They also have dramatically different effects on physical health. You’ll really need to decide what different foods say to you, personally. You might also take note of how certain foods affect your eating habits and whether those habits and the manner of eating (slow or fast, for instance) are supportive. How, also, do you feel about natural versus artificial/refined foods?* * Some natural foods are said to directly resonate with certain qualities: peaches with selflessness; pears with peace; spinach with simplicity; grapes with

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• Associates. Who we surround ourselves with (in our leisure time, especially) will determine the examples, role models, and behaviors that we bring into our awareness. Do they express the qualities or attitudes you seek to develop? Or would it be better to avoid them? This also applies to the company you keep inwardly: those whom you might not know personally but to whom you look for guidance and inspiration, including the creators and performers of the media you consume or follow. As with the foregoing qualities, this is not meant as an exhaustive list. The point is to give you an idea of how to look at your environment and understand what, exactly, is being communicated to you through different vehicles.* Then, when you see a form that can be changed for the better, you will know exactly what you’re trying to accomplish with that change. If you have a shower head, for example, that irritates you because it shoots out prickly little droplets (or big, sloppy bloblets), change it! If you have scratchy towels, buy softer ones. If you have uncomfortable clothes, get new ones (within your budget, of course). If your car is dirty, clean it. If you’re phone’s ring tone is devotion and spiritual love (turning to lust when fermented into wine); bananas with calmness and humbleness; apples and almonds with self-control; strawberries with dignity; pineapple with courage and self-assurance; cherries with cheerfulness. See step 10 of the The Art and Science of Raja Yoga by Swami Kriyananda. Related to tastes and scents are also the qualitative effects of flower essences, preparations extracted from blossoms of different plants. My friend Lila Devi has written one of the seminal books on the subject, The Essential Flower Essence Handbook. * In fact, not to miss the opportunity for a bad pun, you might consider starting with the inside of your car—for many people it’s the one and only place where they have complete control over the environment without offending or having to negotiate with anyone.

Choosing Your Influences

annoying, pick a new one, or at least turn down the volume. And, if your job really does stink, maybe it’s time to find another, but only because you now truly understand why and can explore new roles with a greater awareness of what you’re really seeking. You get the idea. With a little effort on your part, you can improve a great many things in your environment. Nothing is forcing you to suffer with them except your own unwillingness to put out the effort.

But What If I Have Restless Children? For those with families, a strictly personal attempt to introduce more calmness and relaxation into a household may seem like a utopian dream. Yet there are many steps one can take to encourage these qualities in children of any age. For a complete exploration of this subject, I highly recommend Calm and Compassionate Children, by Susan Usha Dermond (Celestial Arts, 2007), a highly experienced educator in whose Portland, Oregon school I had the privilege of working for a time. The book is, in fact, very helpful for bringing more calmness and compassion into the lives of persons of all ages.

Your Inner Environment Examine the thoughts that are uppermost in your mind— those messages that you constantly feed yourself. Indeed, your inner mental and emotional environment has a stronger influence than your external surroundings because you cannot get away from yourself. You cannot avoid having certain thoughts by the mere wishing. The solution here is the same as we’ve been discussing all along: instead of focusing on negatives, introduce stronger

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positives. Instead of worrying about your negative thoughts (such as worry itself), focus on specific positive thoughts—known as affirmations—that can serve as antidotes.* Affirmations can be found in a variety of books. Here are a few you might find useful from Affirmations for Self-Healing, by Swami Kriyananda (Crystal Clarity Publishers, 2005): • Acceptance: I accept with calm impartiality whatever comes my way. Free in my heart, I am not conditioned by any outward circumstance. • Self-Control: I am strong in myself. I am complete in my Self. The joy and perfection of the universe await discovery within my inner being! • Calmness: Though the winds of difficulties howl around me, I stand forever calmly at the center of life’s storms. • Peace: From pools of inner silence, I sip the sparkling waters of…peace. No matter which affirmations you choose, try the following method (outlined in the same book) to implant the thought deeply into all levels of your awareness. You can use this technique by itself or at the beginning or end of your meditation routine. 1. Repeat the affirmation out loud, several times, to command the attention of your entire being. 2. Repeat the affirmation several more times at a normal speaking level to address the conscious mind. * Which is exactly what you’re doing with the meditation practice described in chapter 5. Its purpose is not to shut the mind off but to focus it more and more clearly on a single, positive idea.

Choosing Your Influences

Keep the affirmation energetic even while you’re speaking more softly. In other words, convert volume to inward intensity. 3. Repeat several more times in a whisper, addressing the subconscious mind with even deeper intensity. 4. Repeat again, this time silently, while focusing your awareness at the base of the brain (specifically at the medulla oblongata in the area of the small depression at the back of the neck). This is the seat of the subconscious mind; focusing here strongly implants the affirmation in that part of your awareness. 5. Finally, shift your awareness to the point between the eyebrows, the seat of the superconscious mind. Silently repeat the affirmation again—and several more times—with as much inward energy and intensity as you can, but not with strain. More than focusing on the sounds of the words, try to feel their vibrations; try to feel that you’re infusing those words, and yourself, with the power of Truth. After you’re done, sit in silence for a few minutes to deeply absorb that power throughout your entire being. Feel that the affirmation is true NOW; don’t put it off until sometime in the future. In fact, the more you can concentrate on an affirmation as an immediate reality, the more it has the power to affect instant change.

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Changing the Changes In closing, there’s one last important aspect to consider: however you choose to work with the influences around you, avoid becoming attached to the choices themselves. As mentioned before, any quality like peace or beauty can be expressed in many different ways through many different forms. If the circumstances of your life change, be willing to adjust the forms as necessary and appropriate. For example, if you’ve created a lovely garden with certain plants and colors that you find peaceful or inspiring, but then move to a different climate, you may need to find different plants. Or if you move to a place that doesn’t lend itself well to gardening, you can find expressions for those same qualities that work in your new home, rather than lament over the fact that you can no longer garden. What matters are the qualities being expressed, not the specific vehicles through which they find expression. The other reason for this nonattachment is that you will also change over time—not merely because you age but because you are growing, inwardly. Don’t be surprised if you literally outgrow certain things. Music that you once found soothing or inspiring, for example, may in time hold you back or even pull you down. Your sensitivities to colors and textures might also change, as might your dietary needs and your ability to participate in certain kinds of activities. This is especially true in a positive way as your body heals from past stress and your physical health improves. In short, always remember that stress originates in your resistance to reality as it is, and this applies to your inner reality as much as the world around you. As you grow and change, accept what you’ve become, adapt accordingly, and move on, always referring your choices back to your own center.

Not even the direst suffering can shake the equanimity of the wise man. He stands unshaken amidst the crash of breaking worlds. Paramhansa Yogananda

7 Living on Purpose

A well-known American writer once said, of a visit to some acquaintances, “I was well entertained, and after learning the kernels and very last sieve-ful of news, what had subsided, the prospects of war and peace, and whether the world was likely to hold together much longer, I was let out…”(1) Sounds pretty applicable to modern times, doesn’t it? Yet this passage appeared in Walden by Henry David Thoreau, published in 1854. It seems that things aren’t all that different; indeed, similar sentiments have been expressed in pretty much every generation. Back in 1995, when the Internet was suddenly becoming important, one of my co-workers at Microsoft remarked how “Everything is changing so fast!” His tone was partly one of excitement for what those rapid changes might bring, technologically, but also one of dismay that they would be so rapid. (In the decades since, I’ve heard this same sentiment repeated many times.)

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My friend’s comment gave me much cause for thought. I wondered, “Is it really changing?” Yes, the Internet was changing how we did a great many things—how we communicated and made friends, how we shopped, how we gathered news and information, how we entertained ourselves, and (as we were especially experiencing within Microsoft) how we did business and even the priorities of that business. At the same time, I reflected on how much things actually hadn’t changed at all—as the French say, “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose”: The more things change, the more they remain as they always were.” Having a new way to communicate doesn’t replace the fact that we communicate. Shopping online doesn’t change the fact that we shop, as we’ve basically been doing for all of recorded history. Much of the news and information available on the Internet is generally available elsewhere, albeit perhaps harder to find.* Playing games on the Web has little effect on the fact of play or our enjoyment of it. And even with all the changes that happened at Microsoft in the mid-to-late 1990s, the Internet didn’t change the company’s core mission statement: it was just the latest means of fulfilling it. * This point is arguable. One thing the Internet has done is give an equal appearance to all information, regardless of quality. A well-researched and carefully edited article doesn’t appear much different than random musings on someone’s blog, and search engines treat them both, to a certain extent, as nothing more than words to index. Before the Internet (and vanity publishers), information usually had to go through an extensive selection and editorial process (that is, quality control) before seeing the light of day. Now you can post anything you want, true or not, without any regards to quality. Wikis, forums, reference libraries, and similar resources are good examples, where anyone can contribute articles or edit those written by others. Thus, the burden of quality filtration has passed to the individual. A certain degree of quality, upon which a publisher stakes its reputation, is what you really pay for with magazines, books, and other scrutinized publications.

Living on Purpose

Even the existence of computers and app-laden smartphones hasn’t changed the fact that we write letters, draw pictures, add up numbers, and engage in a host of other activities that people have been doing since long before the technological age. Certain things are easier or more convenient to do than before, of course, and thus the expectations are also higher. Yet the fact that expectations increase is itself a constant. It’s exactly what gives rise, I believe, to the oft-expressed sentiment that “we’re living in hard times,” which merely reflects the fact that people’s desires are generally outpacing their ability to fulfill them. The more I probed this question of change, then, the more I realized that the so-called rapid changes were mostly just surface noise. Like the waves on the ocean, they can seem quite turbulent, whereas the vast majority of the ocean remains calm and undisturbed, like the sky above and the land beyond the shore. In this realization then there is a choice, exactly the choice that you would have while facing any potential stressor, and indeed, while facing life itself: Do you focus on that which is disturbing and agitating, or that which is calm and stable? Do you focus on the complexity of the specifics, or on the simplicity of the underlying constants?

Simple Living When the subject of stress arises—and the thought that most of our stresses stem from the demands of modern (and usually urban) life—you often hear talk about “simple living,” that is, going out to live on a farm in some backwoods village (often in a trendy “tiny house”) where one imagines life to be easier. Indeed, many books on simple living paint this sort of rosy picture.* * Thoreau’s Walden is often cited in support of the idea, but such citations

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It’s easy to understand why: life seems more stable in rural areas where people are basically doing the same things they’ve been doing for centuries. In this bucolic sameness there is a sort of calmness and a more relaxed attitude toward life. Yet today, especially, no one is isolated. As technology continues to shrink the world and change the nature of rural life itself, there is little pristine land to “go back” to. Furthermore, just because a place is rural doesn’t guarantee the absence of demands and challenges. If you think living on a farm is simple, arrange to spend a couple of months working on one. You think work is hard now? Indeed, you’ll likely find as much stress in any country village as you do in the city because most people, no matter where they live, are continually trying to control the world around them rather than controlling their reactions. It’s well worth remembering, too, that every city originally began with a few people moving into open country, hoping for the most part to escape the pressures of whatever life they left behind, only to bring their miseries along with them. The truth is that simple living has nothing to do with where you live or with any aspect of your outward lifestyle: it’s entirely a matter of consciousness. Real simplicity—regardless of your lifestyle or profession—comes from knowing what you truly want from life and focusing all your activities, decisions, and choices in that direction, letting go of anything that doesn’t support that focus. In that focus there is clarity, purpose, and joy. Complexity and confusion, on the other hand, automatically arise when you don’t really know what you want, or when you have so many scattered desires that there’s little sense of direction in anything you do. (Fatigue, in fact, comes not so much from overwork as from a scattering of one’s energies.) often ignore the fact that Thoreau lived only a mile or two outside of Concord, Massachusetts, and remained rather engaged in the town scene during the time he lived in the woods.

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We’ve already discussed certain aspects of this focus in the preceding chapter, primarily in the context of your surroundings and the various qualities related to calmness, relaxation, and self-control. Truly breaking the cycle of stress, however, can bring such a dramatic transformation to your life that it’s good to chart a broader course. Through the methods of practice in this book, you are gaining real control over your life and learning to reclaim energy that you’ve long been wasting on stress and strain. What, then, do you do with that control, and where do you now direct those reclaimed energies? These are critical questions, for unless you direct your energies in meaningful ways—toward real fulfillment and joy—they’ll inevitably become scattered once again, leading to yet another round in the cycle of stress. What do you want from life, truly? What is most personally meaningful to you? Let’s find out.

Discovering Your Underlying Priorities Imagine that you’ve just been given the proverbial Magic Wand. You’re allowed to wave it as many times as you’d like to change anything in the world—anything at all—whether in your personal life or globally. Just think! You could make yourself perfectly healthy, wealthy, and wise. You could get rid of that annoying co-worker, make hot-tubs instantly appear in your office, give your spouse a better body, and make your kids behave like saints and hit the hundredth percentile on all their tests. You could end crime, fix climate change, bring Peace on Earth, eliminate taxes, clean up immorality, solve hunger, end injustice, eradicate corruption, make all bastard politicians vanish…the list is endless! Go ahead and write down all those thoughts: make an honest list of everything you’d change in the world if you had the power.

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Make a special effort to identify all the potential stressors in your life, all those things you had to let go of back in chapter 3 when you learned to accept the world as it is. Now is the time to think again about “the way things ought to be” and jot down your answers. Make a list too of all your lingering dreams and desires—not so much changes you’d like to make but the new things you’d like to do and experience, relationships you’d like to form, fancy things you’d like to own, and so forth. Again, the sky’s the limit! Do work quickly, though. Avoid getting caught up in details and complexities and especially avoid getting caught up emotionally. We’re not looking for a sociological essay or grist for a new radio talk show here. We’re rather starting a process to tease out the hidden motives behind your answers, to discover exactly why all those things are important to you. That is, your answers are likely expressed in terms of the specific structures and forms involved, or in terms of how other people behave. What we’ll do now is translate or reframe every answer into the qualities and feelings that you, personally, would experience if those changes actually took place. This is the key to a fun and enlightening process of self-discovery. It shifts your focus from the outer world that, as illustrated in chapter 3, you really cannot control, to your own inner world over which you can be the master. It’s a process that I explore more fully in my follow-on book, Finding Focus, but we’ll get an excellent start here. Looking again at each desire on your list, describe how you, personally, would experience life differently if it was fulfilled. Express these answers in terms of qualities or feelings. Would you feel more relaxed? Would you feel more secure? Would you feel more trusting of others? Would you feel more empowered?

Living on Purpose

Would you be having more fun? Would you feel more loved? More respected? More valued? As we did in the last chapter, stay focused on positives, especially when you contemplate sweeping global changes. As difficult as this can be, the effort is well worth it. Let’s say, for example, that you’d like to see an end to hypocrisy in politics. Why? “Well,” you say, “if that happened, I’d feel less frustrated.” OK, but that’s not a clear statement of what you want: it’s really only stating what you don’t want. What does your frustration over political hypocrisy mean to you? What does that frustration prevent you from experiencing? “Well . . .” you pause to ponder for a moment, “it means that I can’t really trust what politicians say, so I can’t really support their proposals. I always expect that they’ll change their minds later on, and I’m discouraged when they squander the funding for a worthy project in careless waste. I’d really like to trust people more, and I’d like to see those projects actually happen.” Ah! Now we’re getting somewhere. Your desire is not about experiencing less frustration, it’s about experiencing more trust and the happiness of serving people and helping them live happier lives themselves. Trust, happiness, and service are the qualities you’re really seeking, and now that you understand this you can find any number of ways to create experiences of those qualities. That is, it’s no longer a question of what others are or aren’t doing: it’s a question of how you focus more of your energies on building trust and serving people directly. There are many ways you can do this; you need not wait for some kind of revolution to bring integrity and honesty into politics. The same holds true for your personal desires. So you’d like to have a million dollars? How would life be different if such funds suddenly fell into your lap? “Well,” you say, “first I’d pay

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off all my debts, then I’d buy a boat, take a month-long family vacation in Tahiti, and make a big donation to a special cause I believe in.” OK, that’s a nice list, but these are just forms and structures. How would these things make you feel? What experiences would they bring? Getting out of debt might make you feel more in control of your life, more free to choose how you invest your life energies. Keywords: self-control and freedom. How about the boat? Perhaps boating gives you a sense of freedom and expansiveness from being out on the water, maybe also a sense of simplicity by being distant from the noise and bustle of the land. Keywords: freedom, expansion, simplicity. The tropical vacation, similarly, might bring a sense of simplicity, a deeper experience of connection with your loved ones, and the joy of exploring something new. Keywords: simplicity, love, joy, exploration. And the donation to a special cause? This might make you feel as though your life is valuable and give you a sense of supporting others who are dedicated to making a difference. Keywords: meaning, caring, and love. In short, it’s not about the million dollars. It’s about freedom, expansion, simplicity, joy, exploration, meaning, caring, and love. These are the real underlying motives behind your desires. Now it’s your turn: explore the items on your list and work your way to the core qualities, feelings, and experiences that they express or would allow you to express. Also explore the activities you enjoy most, the people you admire, your choices of books and entertainment, and how you spend your discretionary income. Write out as much as you see fit. It’s very enlightening! The next step is to find the commonalities (a process I elaborate on much more fully in Finding Focus). Look over all your responses and see which words—which qualities, feelings, and experiences—occur more than once or twice. Because you’ve

Living on Purpose

been reading this book to find a solution to stress, I imagine that peace and calmness will probably appear on your list. Yet you’ll probably have many others qualities that go well beyond peace—wholeness, perhaps, or integrity, love, wisdom, truthfulness, freedom, self-awareness, vitality, self-worth, and so on. It doesn’t matter what they are—just make a list of your words with the most frequent ones at the top. Also identify words that are variations of the same feeling or quality: peace, calmness, quiet, tranquility, serenity, and stillness, for example, are somewhat synonymous (a thesaurus would be helpful here). Combine such variations together into a single word and rank it higher on your list. You can do the same with words that seem to conflict with one another, such as fluidity and firmness. Ask yourself, why are both of these important to me? In probing each one more deeply you might discover, for example, that you’re really interested in things like appropriateness and truth, qualities that require different expressions in different circumstances, yet always stand upon a solid base. Expect a few surprises, too! I know I was surprised when I discovered that efficiency and effectiveness were important to me and had been for most of my life. I would never have said so, but it was obvious from my answers in my list. In fact, that’s what this process reveals: not what you think you want but what is truly important to you based on how you’ve actually lived. It helps you look at yourself from the standpoint of a neutral observer, to look in a magic mirror that reflects only your true underlying motives. Thus, from possibly hundreds of specific, complex details about your life, there emerges something far simpler: a clear vision of the calm, stable constants behind your thoughts and actions.

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Living on Purpose These constants—these qualities—are the reference points around which you can now consciously build a lifestyle that is virtually immune to even the mightiest storms. That’s what I mean by “living on purpose”: to be so conscious of what’s truly important to you that you can stand unshaken, as stated in the opening quote for this chapter, “amidst the crash of breaking worlds.” Knowing what you really want from life, and dedicating yourself to those priorities, is to have purpose, no matter whether anyone else on this planet shares that purpose. This is not to say that you should bowl others over with some newfound righteousness. It means, rather, to live in attunement with your own higher self within, not with the opinions of others.* Living from that center, you save yourself from all the anger, frustration, and stress that comes from waiting for the world to deliver on your expectations. As it says in a song I love to sing: Follow your dream, Though it lead to worlds unknown. Life’s but a shadow, Once our dreams have flown. What if men cry, “Your dream is not our own”? Your soul knows the answer: Go on alone!** * Of course, if you can find others who share at least some of your goals and will support you in pursuing them, all the better! There is real power in joining together with others of like mind. ** The song is titled “Walk Like a Man” and can be heard in its entirety on the album Windows on the World by Swami Kriyananda.

Living on Purpose

Building a lifestyle around this inner dedication (which I also explore in more depth in Finding Focus), is then a gradual process of letting go of old forms and habits and redirecting all your life energies to flow toward your priorities. First, it means surrounding yourself with supportive influences, both outwardly (through your environment) and inwardly (through your thoughts), as we’ve already discussed in chapter 6. Second, it means putting your priorities into action through study, skill development, service, and other activities that express those priorities—that is, engaging in whatever forms and structures help you experience the qualities that are important to you. How you do things should also reflect those qualities. No use becoming anxious about a “peaceful” visit to the ocean! I say this is a gradual process because these two aspects work together. Your environment and various forms of inner work (like meditation, affirmations, and other practices that deal with thoughts and emotions) are necessary to support outward action: they give you the strength to stick to your priorities, especially in the face of challenges. Outward action serves to further clarify those priorities: what you worked out by answering a few questions on paper is the starting point, generally speaking, not the end. In the very act of expressing your priorities, you’ll deepen your understanding of them and enter into a continual process of refinement. In fact, even if you don’t feel like you’ve really nailed your priorities yet through this short process—or even if you’re totally confused—go ahead and act on what you have. In doing so, you’ll be able to test different possibilities, make a few mistakes, and gain deeper insights into what really matters to you.

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Money, Stuff, and a New Cycle Now there is one more piece of the landscape that we need to explore: namely, our stuff. That’s right, my friend; we need to take a hard look at all those things we like to acquire and own. It may seem odd that the subject is coming up here, almost at the very end of this book. Worries about money are, after all, pretty much the number-one stressor today. Wouldn’t it have made more sense to have started there? I might have written, “If money is your biggest stressor, then to relax around it you need to either earn more or require less.” Then we could’ve spent all this time talking about how to decide what job is right for you, how to maximize your income without getting burned out, and how to clip coupons, shop garage sales, and make wise investments. However, none of this would have actually addressed stress itself. What we’ve done instead is come to a place where you can now look at money—and every other stressor in your life—from a point of real clarity. This is what I promised at the end of the Introduction, which is worth repeating: The solution offered here [concentrates] on drawing into your life more of those specific things you’d like to experience rather than merely rejecting the thousands of things you’d rather do without. Instead of dealing one by one with the diverse ways that stress can manifest itself—as futile an effort as playing Whack-a-Mole in an arcade—you’ll focus on the opposites to stress: calmness, relaxation, and self-control. To become calmer and more peaceful, in other words, concentrate on peace and calmness rather than on every little instance of conflict and agitation. To become more in control of your life, concentrate on the only thing you truly can control: your own self.

Living on Purpose

Indeed, with that self-control you’ll discover an added bonus: the power to more consciously direct your life according to what is truly important and meaningful to you. Instead of relying on the experience of others to determine your lifestyle, you will develop a universal means for creatively dealing with the ever-changing demands of your reality. With the yardstick of your priorities, you can measure every demand for its contribution to your overall happiness and fulfillment. Thus many so-called demands and challenges will simply evaporate and others that even seem at odds will come together harmoniously. In the end, you’ll be left with only those that clearly help you experience what you’re ultimately seeking: less stress and more joy.

Having this yardstick in hand means that you don’t need to carry around someone else’s list of a thousand-and-one little stress busters. Think about it for a moment. How did people come up with those lists in the first place? They knew what they wanted to experience in different situations and simply found creative solutions as needed. Knowing what’s truly important to you empowers you to find those creative solutions for yourself, appropriate to the specifics of every situation. This is much more fun (and far less stressful) than trying to apply someone else’s experience that may not be at all appropriate for you and your circumstances. Let’s now hold the question of money up to your yardstick. In doing so, you’ll get a good idea of how that yardstick applies to other stressors. We live in a culture that equates success with the ownership of things, and our cultural structures are primarily oriented to support this thought form. From virtually the moment of birth, we’re repeatedly told that happiness comes with accumulation; we become conditioned to always want more stuff. Even when our

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three-car garage is fully loaded with an impressive array of goods (save the automobiles parked in the driveway) we still want more. So we get an even larger house and rent storage units. We purchase RVs and vacation homes. More and more stuff, with an ever-increasing amount of money and worry and life energy committed to maintaining it all. What, then, is left for those experiences that truly bring joy? Hold up your yardstick. Do your possessions—like everything else—truly support and serve the fulfillment of your priorities? And are the activities implied by those objects ones that will serve that purpose? For example, owning ski equipment implies that you’ll go skiing sometime in your future. That means that skiing must fulfill one or more of your priorities, because if it doesn’t, there’s no point in owning that equipment and engaging in that activity, is there? By letting it all go you thus reclaim an enormous amount of past and future energy that can now be directed toward your real fulfillment. You also avoid making truly unnecessary purchases in the future. The ramifications of this are astounding. As you become less and less dependent on a certain (and usually increasing) level of income, you have a diminishing need to exchange your life energy for money. This gives you greater and greater freedom to choose your vocation according to your priorities rather than the paycheck involved (there goes the number-two biggest stressor). What’s more, inner fulfillment diminishes the need to spend that income (or worse yet, borrowed money) on things that will supposedly make you happy. Money is simply a portion of your life energy frozen into form, obtained through an exchange of that life energy via work. Every penny you spend is thus an expenditure of life energy. With your yardstick you can easily ask whether that expenditure is actually helping you find the

Living on Purpose

fulfillment you seek. If not, why are you incurring the expense? Naturally, then, knowing what you specifically want and need in life tends to reduce your expenses, pay down debt, and acquire savings. Those savings, in turn, can be invested to produce income, giving you even more freedom to express your priorities in creative ways rather than only those that merely pay the bills. Indeed, with some determined discipline you can even reach the point of financial independence before retirement age, freeing yourself from all the worries that come with trying to hold a job and an income. You would have the freedom to live and work in whatever ways help fulfill your goals.* This is not to say that you’re necessarily going to up and quit whatever job you have. You may decide that it is fulfilling, or that the extra income derived from that work enables other forms of expression that wouldn’t otherwise be possible, like funding the efforts of a non-profit organization dear to your heart or exploring some form of creative expression. In either case, you’ll no longer be doing it out of fear of the repercussions. And ironically, by bringing a new level of inspiration to your workplace, you’ll actually be a far better employee and can even help to inspire others. Your employer will likely recognize your increased value, leading naturally to a greater income. In the end, what you’ve really started is a new, self-reinforcing cycle. Breaking the cycle of stress means, ultimately, breaking out of the idea that stress is somehow necessary, and replacing it with a new idea—the idea that you can be entirely motivated by love and joy—indeed, the love of joy! And that, my friend, is truly transforming. * The step-by-step process to achieve financial independence in this manner is the subject of a wonderful book titled Your Money or Your Life, by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin. I add my testimony to those of others that their process works.

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References All online articles last accessed August 19, 2017 unless otherwise noted. Introduction Facing page quotes: Benjamin Franklin: searchquotes.com/quotation/He_that_can_compose_himself%2C_is_wiser_than_he_that_composes_books/27275/ Mozart: likesuccess.com/749568 Chapter 1 Facing page quote from the introduction to Awaken to Superconsciousness (Crystal Clarity Publishers, Nevada City, California, 2008), p. 7. (1) These facts and figures were drawn from the following sources that are not available online: “Workaholistics,” by Haidee E. Allerton, Training & Development magazine, August 2000 “Supply Chain Stress: Coping with Professional Pressures,” by William Atkinson, Purchasing magazine, Oct 18, 2001 “The Burden of Occupational Illness,” World Health Organization Press Release WHO/31, June 8, 1999

“ How stress may make you sick,” by Christine K. Nowroozi, Nation’s Business, December 1994

“Breaking Point” by Merry Mayer, HR magazine, October 2001

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(2) wb.md/2nnawBs (3) nichd.nih.gov/news/releases/Pages/stress.aspx (4) stress.org/americas-1-health-problem (5) thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2012/04/02/ why-stress-makes-colds-more-likely/ (6) psychologytoday.com/articles/199601/stress-its-worse-you-think (7) articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2014/07/10/stressheart-attack.aspx#! (8) psychologytoday.com/articles/199601/stress-its-worse-you-think (9) newsweek.com/happy-heart-129595 (10) psychcentral.com/news/2017/01/18/mens-chronic-work-stressmay-increase-risk-of-some-cancers/115279.html (11) psychologytoday.com/articles/199601/stress-its-worse-you-think (12) nichd.nih.gov/news/releases/Pages/stress.aspx (13) verywell.com/teen-pitfalls-stress-boredom-extra-money-63732 (14) academic.oup.com/aje/article-lookup/doi/10.1093/aje/kwg002 (15) wb.md/2ivmHuy (16) lifeextension.com/Magazine/2005/12/report_cortisol/Page-01 (17) stress.org/workplace-stress/ (18) linkedin.com/pulse/20140802162919-15251082-the-highcost-of-stress-in-the-workplace (19) businessnewsdaily.com/2267-workplace-stress-health-epidemicperventable-employee-assistance-programs.html (20) usat.ly/2n7XkV1 (21) articles.chicagotribune.com/2003-08-13/business/0308130318_1_ job-stress-stressed-out-workers-dr-paul-rosch (22) stress.org/workplace-stress/ (23) stress.org/workplace-stress/

References

(24) bizjournals.com/pacific/stories/2004/01/19/focus1.html (25) cbsn.ws/1h7z9Hl (26) psychologytoday.com/blog/theory-knowledge/201402/ the-college-student-mental-health-crisis (27) huff.to/1pHZQLo Chapter 2 Facing page quote from nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/ laureates/1964/king-acceptance_en.html Chapter 3 Facing page quotes: Reinhold Niehbuhr: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serenity_Prayer Marsha Sinetar: Ordinary People as Monks and Mystics (Paulist Press, Mahwah, New Jersey, 1986), p. 3 Chapter 4 Facing page quote from margiesmessages.com/PDF_Thoughts/ Nothing%20gives%20one%20person%20so%20much%20 advantage.doc Chapter 5 Facing page quote from goodreads.com/author/quotes/10994. Blaise_Pascal (1) washingtontimes.com/news/2017/jan/6/health-benefits-meditation/ (2) washingtonpost.com/news/inspired-life/wp/2015/05/26/harvard-neuroscientist-meditation-not-only-reduces-stress-it-literally-changes-your-brain/?utm_term=.5951304993ef (3) marcgunther.com/god-and-business/ (4) huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/30/meditation-health-benefits_n_3178731.html (5) nbcnews.com/id/7915296/ns/health-heart_health/t/ meditation-good-heart-study-finds/

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(6) dietvsdisease.org/benefits-mindfulness-meditation/ (7) forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2015/02/09/7-ways-meditation-can-actually-change-the-brain/#6a373f9a1465 (8) eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2001-08/cfta-mtl082801.php (9) congress.gov/congressional-report/105th-congress/ senate-report/300 (10) Meditation Research, menstuff.com.au/services/ meditation-for-men/meditation-research/ (11) psychologytoday.com/articles/200304/the-benefits-meditation (12) articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2016/06/18/benefits-meditation.aspx (13) huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/30/meditation-health-benefits_n_3178731.html (14) sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/02/030204074125.htm (15) nccih.nih.gov/health/meditation/overview.htm (16) edition.cnn.com/HEALTH/alternative/9906/22/meditation/ (17) medicaldaily.com/mental-health-benefits-meditation-itll-alteryour-brains-grey-matter-and-improve-319298 (18) psychologytoday.com/articles/200105/the-science-meditation (19) http://www.apa.org/monitor/julaug02/peace.aspx Chapter 6 Facing page quote from brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/h/ helenkelle392962.html Chapter 7 Facing page quote from “The Second Coming of Christ,” Inner Culture magazine, November 1936. (1) Thoreau, quoted from en.wikisource.org/wiki/ Walden_(1854)_Thoreau/The_Village

Acknowledgements For the seed inspiration behind this book I’d like to thank J. Donald Walters (Swami Kriyananda)—and Crystal Clarity Publishers for permission to quote his writings—along with David and Karen Gamow of Clarity Seminars, who have also allowed me to borrow from their research and seminar handouts. I can happily recommend their book, Freedom from Stress, as an excellent companion to this present volume. I’d also like to thank Dr. Peter van Houten of the Sierra Family Medical Clinic (Nevada City, California) for his help with understanding the physiology of stress, relaxation, and the brain, and his careful review of applicable sections of this text. Gratitude also goes to the Ananda University (Nevada City), the Ananda Center of Portland (Beaverton, Oregon), Bellevue Community College (Bellevue, Washington), and Providence Health Care (Portland, Oregon) who gave me a number of opportunities to develop the presentation of this subject with live audiences. Richard Brodie deserves mention for his fine book, Getting Past OK, which inspired the process of finding your priorities given in chapter 7 and my follow-on book, Finding Focus. And love to my wife Kristi for reviewing the manuscript and continually encouraging me throughout the process.

About the Author

Kraig Brockschmidt began his professional career as an intern at Microsoft Corporation, and continued there as a regular employee after graduation. Over the course of the next six years, he became highly respected throughout the software industry as a bestselling author, creative software engineer, and public speaker. His frequent seminars at software development conferences consistently drew sincere appreciation and praise from programmers and managers alike. His first two books, Inside OLE 2 (1993) and Inside OLE 2nd Edition (1995) were very successful. Within Microsoft itself, Kraig made a number of significant contributions to the Windows and Office products. In late 1996, satisfied with his accomplishments in the computer industry, Kraig felt drawn to broaden his interests outside

of Microsoft, especially to explore methods and techniques related to personal effectiveness, well-being, and creativity. Retiring from the company, he enjoyed the ability to work across many fields and within many disciplines, gaining direct experience in creatively applying simple and universal principles to day-to-day challenges. His activities included construction, music direction and singing (both solo and choral in a number of domestic and international concerts), real estate, importing, photography, forest management, office management, cooking, graphic design, mechanics, retail sales, and childhood education. In this last role he appeared in a program that ran on National Public Radio, and served on the Board of the Living Wisdom School of Beaverton, Oregon and the Ananda College of Living Wisdom in Nevada City, California. During this time, Kraig became a nationally certified Yoga instructor and a certified meditation instructor, and received intensive stress-management training from the former Director of Stress Management for the hospital-based version of Dr. Dean Ornish’s Reversing Heart Disease program. He was a regular guest instructor at the Ananda College and offered insightful training seminars to corporate workgroups. In addition to these activities he authored The Harmonium Handbook, Finding Focus, and a spiritual perspective of his Microsoft career, Mystic Microsoft. Kraig returned to Microsoft in 2008, working on content and support programs for the software development community. During the production of Windows 8 he trained many of Microsoft’s internal developers to work with the new system, then shared that knowledge publicly through two editions of Programming Windows Store Apps with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript (Microsoft Press, 2012 and 2014). He’s currently doing similar work as a

content developer with Microsoft’s Cloud and Enterprise Division. Kraig resides with his wife and son at Ananda Village near Nevada City, California, and serves on the boards of the Living Wisdom School of Nevada City and the Ananda University. More information can be found at kraigbrockschmidt.com.

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THE ART OF SUPPORTIVE LEADERSHIP

A Practical Guide for People in Positions of Responsibility J. Donald Walters (Swami Kriyananda) Improve your leadership skills and learn how to bring out the best in your employees, co-workers, or students. Used by individuals and corporations around the world.

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MONEY MAGNETISM

How to Attract What You Need When You Need It J. Donald Walters (Swami Kriyananda) Change how you think and feel about money. Learn powerful techniques for quickly attracting material and spiritual success.

CHANGE YOUR MAGNETISM, CHANGE YOUR LIFE Naidhruva Rush

Why do some enter a field of work and everything flourishes, yet others don’t succeed, no matter how hard they try? Success in every area depends on the

strength and quality of your magnetism. Discover how to release the enormous energy latent within and direct it onepointedly toward whatever you want to achieve.

AFFIRMATIONS FOR SELF-HEALING Swami Kriyananda

This inspirational book contains 52 affirmations and prayers, each pair devoted to improving a quality in ourselves. A powerful tool for self-transformation.

THE HARMONIUM HANDBOOK

Owning, Playing, and Maintaining the Devotional Instrument of India Kraig Brockschmidt

Provides detailed instruction in how to play, maintain, and repair this popular devotional instrument, and reveals the colorful history of harmoniums.

AWAKEN TO SUPERCONSCIOUSNESS Swami Kriyananda

Many of us have experienced a momentary “flash” of heightened consciousness. But is it possible to draw that energy at will? Superconsciousness is the hidden force behind all creativity, awareness, problem solving, intuition, healing, joy and inner peace. Through meditation, chanting, affirmation, and prayer, readers will learn how to reach this state successfully and regularly, and maximize its beneficial effects.

1946 unedited edition of Yogananda’s spiritual masterpiece

AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A YOGI

Paramhansa Yogananda Autobiography of a Yogi is one of the best-selling Eastern philosophy titles of all time, with millions of copies sold, named one of the best and most influential books of the twentieth century. This highly prized reprinting of the original 1946 edition is the only one available free from textual changes made after Yogananda’s death. Yogananda was the first yoga master of India whose mission was to live and teach in the West. In this updated edition are bonus materials, including a last chapter that Yogananda wrote in 1951, without posthumous changes. This new edition also includes the eulogy that Yogananda wrote for Gandhi, and a new foreword and afterword by Swami Kriyananda, one of Yogananda’s close, direct disciples. Also available in unabridged audiobook (MP3) format, read by Swami Kriyananda.

ADDITIONAL TITLES FROM CRYSTAL CLARITY TEACHINGS OF YOGANANDA Demystifying Patanjali The Wisdom of Paramhansa Yogananda Presented by his direct disciple, Swami Kriyananda The Essence of the Bhagavad Gita Explained by Paramhansa Yogananda As Remembered by his disciple, Swami Kriyananda Conversations with Yogananda Recorded, with Reflections, by his disciple, Swami Kriyanand The Bhagavad Gita According to Paramhansa Yogananda Edited by his disciple, Swami Kriyananda The Essence of Self-Realization The Wisdom of Paramhansa Yogananda Recorded, Compiled, and Edited by his disciple, Swami Kriyananda Revelations of Christ Proclaimed by Paramhansa Yogananda Presented by his disciple, Swami Kriyananda The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Paramhansa Yogananda Edited by his disciple, Swami Kriyananda Whispers from Eternity Paramhansa Yogananda Edited by his disciple, Swami Kriyananda

ABOUT YOGANANDA Stories of Yogananda’s Youth Swami Kriyananda The Flawless Mirror Kamala Silva Yogananda for the World Swami Kriyananda

THE WISDOM OF YOGANANDA SERIES How To Be Happy All the Time Karma and Reincarnation How to Love and Be Loved

How To Be a Success How To Have Courage, Calmness, and Confidence How To Achieve Glowing Health and Vitality How To Achieve Your True Potential The Man Who Refused Heaven

ABOUT SWAMI KRIYANANDA A Tale of Songs Swami Kriyananda Swami Kriyananda As We Have Known Him Asha Praver Stories of Swamiji Richard Salva Faith Is My Armor The Life of Swami Kriyananda Devi Novak The Story Behind the Story My Life of Service Through Writing Swami Kriyananda Visits to Saints of India Swami Kriyananda

MEDITATION How to Meditate A Sstep-byStep Guide to the Art & Science of Meditation Jyotish Novak Meditation for Starters with CD Swami Kriyananda Aum the Melody of Love Joseph Bharat Cornell

THE PATH OF KRIYA YOGA Lessons in Meditation The Path of Kriya Yoga - Step 1 Jyotish Novak The Art and Science of Raja Yoga The Path of Kriya Yoga - Step 2 Swami Kriyananda Energization Exercises Booklet

Swami Kriyananda

YOGA AND YOGA PHILOSOPHY Spiritual Yoga Gyandev McCord Ananda Yoga for Higher Awareness Swami Kriyananda Eastern Thought, Western Thought Swami Kriyananda God Is for Everyone Inspired by Paramhansa Yogananda As taught to and understood by his disciple, Swami Kriyananda The Hindu Way of Awakening Is Revelations, Its Symbols: An Essential View of Religion Swami Kriyananda Rays of the One Light Swami Kriyananda The Promise of Immortality J.Donald Walters/Swami Kriyananda Religion in the New Age Swami Kriyananda Out of the Labyrinth For Those Who Want to Believe, But Can’t Swami Kriyananda (J. Donald Walters) Awaken to Superconsciousness Swami Kriyananda A Renunciate Order for the New Age A Breakthrough in the Evolution of Consciousness Swami Kriyananda The Beatitudes The Inner Meaning Swami Kriyananda The Light of Christ Within Elena Joan Cara and John Laurence

SPIRITUALITY IN DAILY LIFE The Four Stages of Yoga Nischala Cryer

Secrets of Spiritualizing Your Daily Life Swami Kriyananda Secrets of Success and Leadership Swami Kriyananda Secrets of Meditation and Inner Peace Swami Kriyananda Secrets of Health and Healing Swami Kriyananda Change Your Magnetism, Change Your Life How to Eliminate Self-Defeating Patterns and Attract True Success Naidhruva Rush The Meaning of Dreaming Savitri Simpson Touch of Light Living the Teachings of Paramhansa Yogananda Jyotish and Devi Novak Touch of Joy A Yogi’s Guide to Lasting Happiness Jyotish and Devi Novak Sadhu, Beware A New Approach to Renunciation Swami Kriyananda Art as a Hidden Message A Guide to Self-Realization Swami Kriyananda (J. Donald Walters) Ask Asha Asha Praver Finding Happiness Day by Day Swami Kriyananda In Divine Friendship Swami Kriyananda Intuition for Starters Swami Kriyananda Education for Life J. Donald Walters (Swami Kriyananda) Living Wisely, Living Well Swami Kriyananda

Loved and Protected Asha Praver Solving Stress Satyaki KraigBrockschmidt The Joyful Athlete George Beinhorn Love Breathing Experience Divine Joy with Every Breath Eric Munro From Bagels to Curry Lila Devi

BUSINESS Money Magnetism J. Donald Walters (Swami Kriyananda) The Art of Supportive Leadership J. Donald Walters (Swami Kriyananda) 30-day Essentials for Career Jyotish Novak

RELATIONSHIPS Self-Expansion Through Marriage Swami Kriyananda 30-Day Essentials for Marriage Jyotish Novak

HEALTH AND HEALING Affirmations for Self-Healing Swami Kriyananda A Healer’s Handbook Mary Kretzmann Divine Will Healing Mary Kretzmann The Essential Flower Essence Handbook Lila Devi Flower Essences for animals Remedies for Helping the Pets You Love Lila Devi

VEGETARIAN COOKING The Healing Kitchen Diksha McCord Global Kitchen A Cookbook of Vegetarian Favorites from The Expanding Light Retreat Diksha McCord (Blanche Agassy McCord)w Vegetarian Cooking for Starters Diksha McCord

NATURE Deep Nature Play Joseph Cornell Sharing Nature Joseph Cornell The Sky and Earth Touched Me Joseph Cornell Listening to Nature Joseph Cornell

COMMUNITIES The Need for Spiritual Communities and How to Start Them Swami Kriyananda Cities of Light What Communities Can Accomplish in the New Age Swami Kriyananda (J. Donald Walters) Hope for a Better World The Small Communities Solution Swami Kriyananda (J. Donald Walters) Crystal Hermitage Gardens A Photographic Pilgrimage to the Spiritual Heart of Ananda Village Barbara Bingham, inspired by Swami Kriyananda Space, Light and Harmony The Story of Crystal Hermitage Swami Kriyananda (J.Donald Walters) The Spirit of Gardening Nancy Mair Good Morning, Great Souls Transformations in Community Gyandevi Fuller (Editor)

Reflections on Living Nischala Cryer (Editor) A Fight for Religious Freedom A Lawyer’s Personal Account of Copyrights, Karma and Dharmic Litigation Jon R. Parsons

CHILDREN For Goodness’ Sake Supporting Children & Teens in Discovering Life’s Highest Values Michael Nitai Deranja I Came From Joy Spiritual Affirmations and Activities for Children Lorna Ann Knox Scary News 12 Ways to Raise Joyful Children When the Headlines Are Full of Fear Lorna Ann Knox Bradley Banana and the Jolly Good Pirate Lila Devi, Illustrated by Chitra Sudhakaran

METAPHYSICS, HISTORY AND REINCARNATION Chakras for Starters Savitri Simpson Two Souls: Four Lives Catherine Kairavi Soul Journey from Lincoln to Lindbergh Richard Salva The Yoga of Abraham Lincoln Richard Salva Blessed Lanfranc Richard Salva Your Sun Sign as a Spiritual Guide Swami Kriyananda The Yugas Joseph Selbie & David Steinmetz The Yoga of Ghost Hunting Richard Salva

SPIRITUAL FICTION AND LITERATURE Love Perfected, Life Divine Swami Kriyananda A Pilgrimage to Guadalupe The Final Journey of the Soul Swami Kriyananda The Time Tunnel A Tale for All Ages and for the Child in You Swami Kriyananda Through Many Lives Savitri Simpson Through the Chakras Savitri Simpson Through the Gates of Death—and Beyond Savitri Simpson Protectors Diary (Vol. 1)The Fifth Force Joseph Selbie Protectors Diary (Vol. 2): The Six Joseph Selbie The Land of Golden Sunshine An Allegory of Soul-Yearning Swami Kriyananda (J. Donald Walters) The Peace Treaty A Play in Three Acts Swami Kriyananda The Singer and the Nightingale Swami Kriyananda Touching Soul Devotional Poems & Words of Inspiration on God, Religion, and Yoga Sue Cooper

SPIRITUAL TRAVEL Walking With William of Normandy A Paramhansa Yogananda Pilgrimage Guide Richard Salva The Pilgrim’s France A Travel Guide to the Saints James and Colleen Heater

The Pilgrim’s Italy A Travel Guide to the Saints James and Colleen Heater

BOOKS ON HOW TO CHANT Ananda Chants Chants by Paramhansa Yogananda and Swami Kriyananda and Other Popular Chants from Ananda Sangha The Harmonium Handbook Owning, Playing, and Maintaining the Devotional Instrument of India Satyaki Kraig Brockschmidt

ANANDA WORLDWIDE Ananda, a worldwide organization founded by Swami Kriyananda, offers spiritual support and resources based on the teachings of Paramhansa Yogananda. There are Ananda spiritual communities in Nevada City, Sacramento, and Palo Alto, California; Seattle, Washington; Portland and Laurelwood, Oregon; as well as a retreat center and European community in Assisi, Italy, and a community near New Delhi, India. Ananda supports more than 140 meditation groups worldwide. For more information about Ananda’s work, our communities, or meditation groups near you, please call 530.478.7560 or visit www.ananda.org.

THE EXPANDING LIGHT The Expanding Light is the largest retreat center in the world to share exclusively the teachings of Paramhansa Yogananda. Situated in the Ananda Village community, it offers the opportunity to experience spiritual life in a contemporary ashram setting. The varied, year-round schedule of classes and programs on yoga, meditation, and spiritual practice includes Karma Yoga, Personal Retreat, Spiritual Travel, and online learning. The Ananda School of Yoga & Meditation offers certified yoga, yoga therapist, spiritual counselor, and meditation teacher trainings. Large groups are welcome. The teaching staff are experts in Kriya Yoga meditation and all aspects of Yogananda’s teachings. All staff members live at Ananda Village and bring an uplifting approach to their areas of service. The serene natural setting and delicious vegetarian meals help provide an ideal environment for a truly meaningful visit. For more information, please call 800.346.5350 or visit www.expandinglight.org.

CRYSTAL CLARITY PUBLISHERS Crystal Clarity Publishers offers many additional resources to assist you in your spiritual journey, including many other books (see the preceding pages for some of them), a wide variety of inspirational and relaxation music composed by Swami Kriyananda, and yoga and meditation videos. To request a catalog, place an order for the above products, or to find out more information, please contact us at: Crystal Clarity Publishers / www.crystalclarity.com 14618 Tyler Foote Rd. / Nevada City, CA 95959 TOLL FREE: 800.424.1055 or 530.478.7600 FAX: 530.478.7610 EMAIL: [email protected] Visit our website for our online catalog, with secure ordering