The 6 Principles of Stress – Guided Imagery Meditation & Talk [Episode 12]

The show you're about to hear is a recording from Dr. Miller's webinar series titled Life Meditations. He began this series in response to the pandemic, and his goal has been to provide wisdom, practical tools, and comfort to people during these stressful times. Watch the entire series at drmiller.com/lifemeditations. That's drmiller.com/lifemeditations. Hello, good day. This is Dr. Miller, um, and we're here to, uh, explore the notion of stress. How to Harness the Energy of Stress for Peak Performance and for Success. For now, I'd like to get started with the 6 Principles of Stress: Harnessing the Energy of Stress for Peak Performance. And I guess by now things have changed from, I guess, one When I first started introducing stress to the world and to the medical profession back in the early part of the 1970s, people didn't know what it was. It was amazing when I would give my talks and I'd say, "I'm going to demonstrate to you some basic principles of stress. Close your eyes for a moment," and at least half the people in the room couldn't— wouldn't close their eyes. "What do you mean close your eyes, surrounded by all of these people?" But I think that by now it should be obvious even to the most dubious of scientists who believe in evidence, the evidence-based approach to medicine, and I must say I'm part of that group. We all know that poorly managed stress and the destructive hormones and free radicals that it releases into the body are at the core of most of our physical ills, and in addition to our emotional ills and our relationship ills and our performance ills. It is at the core of our interpersonal failures, our national failures, and our global dysfunction, at the root of corruption and environmental failures, and even our wars. And that's a pretty big statement I'm making there, but I actually want to show you what I mean by that. And I'm serious when I say that this is a core principle, and I want to talk about why it is so hard— has been so hard for us to understand this, and why it is that basically the system that we're in is dead set on preventing us from being able to deal with our stress, because that stress that we have is the system's way of manipulating us to do what it wants us to do. That's why we have the government we have. That's why we have the corruption. That's why we have the immense amount of child sex trafficking, drugs, corrupt public officials, and the international stresses that we have out there. Everybody is suffering while a few are making a lot of money and gaining a lot of power. And the way it happens is by keeping us on the edge, on the edge of our— on the edge of our chairs. And most people are looking for this magic pill that somehow is going to get rid of the symptoms of stress and give them some temporary relief. Most people don't want to take the time to learn about the true source of stress and take the time to go about healing at this source. The problem is, it's just like taking a tranquilizer. Now you feel tranquil for a while, but your tension comes back again soon, and it comes back, comes roaring back with more power the next time. And so what I want to do is to talk a little more deeply about stress than you usually hear, because I'm interested in getting to the source of it. Relieving your stress for a day or two, a week or a month, that's great. But if we're going to survive, then we need to get deeper into all of this. It's not really, not really very difficult at all. And I want to show you that the stress is primarily, overwhelmingly due to your attitude and your way of thinking about the world. And so what I'd like to do is to begin— a number of people asked me to do this— is to begin with a little relaxation, a little bit of a meditation. So let your body be in a comfortable position, to be aware of the fact that at this moment in time there's no other place that you need to go There's no other problem that you need to solve. You can give yourself permission to be present here in this moment. Allow your eyes to close. Behind your closed eyelids, let your eyes gently roll upward to— you're looking upward toward the back of your forehead. And when you do that, that's a signal to your nervous system that you are going to take charge. This is your mind, it belongs to you, and you have the right and the power to decide on what it thinks about, how it responds to its own thoughts, and to the world around. Take a deep breath in. Now, as you let that breath out, let it be a feeling of letting go. Take another deep breath in and again, let it out like you're a balloon letting out all the air. And then feel that little pause after you've breathed out and before the next breath comes in. That pause is the quietest time of all for all your mind and body. You hardly ever notice it. You notice yourself breathing in, and you'll notice yourself breathing out. But now I want you to pay attention to that little pause. And with each breath out, think to yourself the words It breathes me. It breathes me. Sink down into that little pause and notice a little spark of energy that starts your next breath in all by itself. You don't have to take a deep breath in. You don't have to tell yourself, now to breathe? Well, you can. Let's try that. Breathe out and then take a deep breath in. Let it go and sink into that pause. And now don't start the next breath. Feel it start. Where does that come from, that little spark of life, that spark of love? Something in you that wants to be alive, that wants to be present. With each breath out, feel your body letting go of all unnecessary stress and tension. Feel relaxation starting down in your feet and legs Feet and legs totally relaxed. Now relaxing your pelvis and your abdomen. Your pelvis and your abdomen release with each breath out. Feel the rising and falling of your abdomen as the air breathes you. Feel your chest letting go of all stress. And now your arms and your hands relaxing. Your neck, your scalp, and your face. Muscles around your mouth relaxing. Whenever an unnecessary thought comes along, breathe that thought out. You don't need to think about the past or the future because they don't exist. Just being here in this moment, releasing. And notice the spaces between your thoughts. There are fewer thoughts, longer spaces between your thoughts. Sink into the spaces between your thoughts. You are here now. Good. Now I'm just going to count from 1 to 3, and as I do, feel yourself returning from that inner place, but bring back the relaxation with you. 1, as you become aware of where your body is in space and time. 2, when you're ready, letting your eyelids open and just enjoying your ability to see shapes and color. 3, wide awake. Good. So that's our basic mind tool, which is about relaxing deeply, such as one does in meditation or deep prayer, or doing self-hypnosis, or autogenic training, or Christian Science, or— gosh, so many different tools exist. Mostly they exist in special areas like Christian Science. And but they'll tell you, no, no, whatever you do, don't do hypnosis, that's dangerous. And hypnosis say, no, this isn't the same thing as prayer. And you know, the Christians will tell you, no, you don't want to do Buddhist meditation because that's pagan, or whatever. And yet they're all really teaching the same thing. I mean, the same prejudice and, and lack of understanding that we find among races in this country and races and nationalities throughout the world. That same resistance to really seeing, to really seeing someone else and to see our commonality. But in my experience, the important piece is what they all share, which is the deep relaxation. That's the beginning. —because that, as you notice, you've let go of a certain amount of stress just from that little relaxation. These are what I call mind tools. And when you take that mind tool of deep relaxation, number one, and combine that with guided imagery, with affirmations, and with wise guidance—which we will discover more about wise guidance as we go along—these are what can enable you to harvest the energy of that stress. A lot of energy in stress usually goes into tensing your muscles and pumping out poisonous chemicals into your body and making your mind race and distracting you. Takes a lot of energy to do all of that. Well, you can reinvest that energy to produce happiness and peak performance and even love in your life if if that's something that you want, I think you probably should consider it. So to go beyond relieving the symptoms of stress to actually harnessing its energy, it helps to have a full understanding of what stress is. And if you can understand the following principles that I'm going to share with you and integrate them into your thinking and planning in your life, this can help you live a life that's not only healthy, but one in which there are positive reserves of energy that can be tapped for creativity, for achieving success, and for developing positive relationships. And I offer them in the hope that they will help you find true satisfaction, fulfillment, happiness, and love in your life. So in addition to talking about stress, I'm also talking about shifting to a different paradigm of thinking about things. This is a photograph taken from back in the— in the maybe the mid-'70s or so. I had been working with these tools in my office and helping people, you know, stop smoking, deal with headaches, be more relaxed, do better in their work. But, you know, what about serious diseases? So I was called to the hospital emergency room to see this young woman who had severe ulcerative colitis. She's just about skin and bones here because of chronic severe diarrhea and bleeding and so forth. She had ulcerative colitis, and she was called in— I was called in by her medical doctor who They weren't able to control this over a long period of time, and the only thing left to do was to take out the entirety of her colon. Um, she'd have to wear a colostomy bag, uh, for the rest of her life. Um, but, um, he thought that she was psychotic perhaps in some way. She seemed to be very nervous, and he was having trouble really communicating with her. She was very upset and depressed, things like that. So she just wanted me to check. And he, yeah, he did. He called me in, and, uh, and I asked him, I said, well, you know, can you put off, um, operating on her for a while because I want to try something else? And so I worked with her, um, using these new tools that I had developed, and I helped her deal with some of her the inner stress that she had felt in her life from, I think, a lot of really abusive situations that she had experienced. Um, and I guess I had worked with her, I guess, maybe 6 to 10 visits, and she started to improve. We didn't need to do the surgery, and Here she was back again, no further signs of the ulcerative colitis. She still took some medication to help, but you know, none of the severe things, and she became happy. And I followed her, I guess, for about 5 or 10 years, and it continued because very severe diseases are related to the stress inside, and yet our system doesn't know anything about it. So in addition to learning how to use the tools of psychotherapy and medical hypnosis and neuropsychiatry, all the, the modern things that I had learned about in my medical training, I also looked into the past. Because back in 400 BC, Hippocrates said, "It is more important to know what sort of person has a disease than to know what sort of disease a person has. Hmm, interesting. So that knowledge was here, and yet along came René Descartes, and what he taught us was that, "I doubt, therefore I am." We say, you know, "I think, therefore I am," but that's not what Descartes said. Descartes says, "I want to know what is it I can be certain of in life, because no matter what I think I know, I can always doubt." That's true. But the one thing that I cannot doubt is the fact that I am doubting. And so he begins his logic from there. So his way of approaching the world is to constantly doubt things, and it gave rise to a great deal of modern thinking and to a great deal of what we call science there. However, one of the things is that he separated the mind and body, and so there's a thinking self and then there's a physical self. And in a way that worked well because up until now the priests would not let doctors cut into the body and do autopsies, so we didn't know how bodies worked. But now after Descartes' work they said, oh yes, you know, this The sacred part of us is in the mind. The body, that's just yuck, so it's okay. So we learned a great deal more, but we still developed this dualistic way of thinking that separated mind and body instead of seeing them as one. Then, um, Along came Louis Pasteur, and Louis Pasteur looked under the microscope and saw these bacteria and said, "This is what's causing our illness." And that really started the kind of medicine that we practice now, for the most part, allopathic medicine, where you look for the enemy, you look for the infecting agent, you look for the thing that's going around— going wrong, and you cut it out or you poison it or, you know, You know, very few things that we do in modern medicine really bring about healing. Your body can heal itself, but in medicine, all we can do is sort of remove the cancer so your body can heal itself, or kill the bacteria so your body can heal itself. Surgery, I guess, is a cure, but other than that, the 99% of medicine is about treating the symptoms while nature heals the disease if it can. Claude Bernard came along at the same time as Pasteur, and he said, "No," he said, "The source of healing is from within, and what we need to do is create an internal balance, a balance in the milieu intérieur," as he called it, to develop homeostasis, to create balance. And when we're in balance, our body heals itself. When it's out of balance, that's when the bacteria can come in injured. When it's out of balance, that's when we have hormonal imbalances within ourselves. So, and this is really important because, you know, now medicine, modern medicine's done a lot to take care of the stuff that's out there in the world, but now most of our illnesses are what's coming from inside. The next person that came along in my history of the development of the modern approach to medicine is Hans Selye. Hans Selye was a medical student, and as a medical student, he observed how his professors would make diagnoses of, of their patients by on the basis of looking at differences in each patient's presentation, history and physical. But what he noticed is the doctors didn't seem to pay attention to the fact that regardless of the way patients differed from each other, there was a fact that there were, there were generic complaints that all patients had in common, such as looking tired, having no appetite, losing weight, preferring to lie down rather than to stand up, not being in the mood to work, and so forth. When he asked his professors about it, they responded that that observation was of no value, since it would be of no benefit in helping to determine the specific source of a person's problem, and so that you could then go after and get that source and cut it or kill it or whatever you can do. That didn't make sense to Selye because people were suffering. He vowed one day to take the time to investigate what he called the syndrome of being sick. So 10 years later, he took the time to do it, and what he did was he performed postmortem examinations on the bodies of deceased patients and also of lab animals. For instance, people whose death may be from infections or from injuries or from severe fear or poisoning or exposure or any strong noxious or deadly force. And no matter what they died from, he discovered that their bodies all displayed similar findings on autopsy. They had enlarged adrenal glands, they had swollen lymph nodes, and they had bleeding ulcers in their stomach in duodenum. And he theorized that this was a result of a kind of reaction that they were all having regardless of what their particular disease was, and he gave it the name of the general adaptation response, or as we call it, the stress response, the stress response. And what he What he told us was that stress, he called the nonspecific changes that take place many organs of the body when they— when we are faced with a demand. Now stress is a two— there are two main pieces of the stress cycle that we can that we need to pay attention to. First of all, there is the phases of the stress response. First, there's the alarm phase. That's when your system becomes aware there's something going on. Second, there's a resistance phase. And thirdly, there's a recovery phase. During the resistance phase, that's when you— when the body figures out You know, when you're in the alarm phase, your immune system goes into action, your muscles of fight and flight go into action, your respiration builds up, so you're ready to deal with whatever. Gradually the body figures out what does it need to do. Is it a bacteria you need to kill? Is it a wild animal you need to fight off? Is it a landslide you need to run from? And then you have a specific response, and now you apply that specific response and your stress can go away and you go through the recovery phase. And the other thing that we notice, however, is if you've ever noticed, if you've almost been in an automobile accident, your car goes skidding off the road and you're sitting there at the side of the road, what do you do? Ah, you take a moment and you relax. That's the recovery phase. And in the world in which we lived 500,000 years ago, when these systems developed within us, that was all we needed to deal with the environment that was around us, because our stressors were primarily physical. The source of the stress— the threat was clear. Is it an animal? Is it a landslide? Is it an attacking cannibal? And the proper response was to stop whatever you were doing. Maybe you're painting a picture on the wall or carving yourself a knife to, you know, to cut your dinner with or something like that. You'd stop and to deal with that. That was called the fight or flight or freeze or faint response. Fight, flight, freeze, or faint, to deal with that stressor. This physical reaction involved raising the blood pressure, breathing faster, all those kinds of things we know are part of stress. But stressors like this weren't really that common, and there was plenty of time for your system to recover, 500,000 years ago, before the next stressor made its appearance. And thereby the body systems were able to maintain, um, a balance over a period of time. So if you'd look at over time, yes, there's a stress one day, ah, but then you have time to recover. Maybe 2 or 3 days later there's another stressor, but then you have time to recover. Maybe a week later there's another stressor, but then you have time to recover, and the system works very, very well. That's how it was then, but that's not where we live now. The modern caveman has a different situation to deal with. Today we're bombarded with a terrific overload of information and disinformation that never lets up. The sources of the threats in our lives are vague and hard to identify. Our physical responses are useless. It's useless to phys— physically strike out when your boss tells you you may be tired, or the government tells you you're going to have to wear masks and socially isolate for another month or so. You can't run away from it. The stressors are not brief and occasional. They're chronic, frequent, and numerous. And as a result, there's rarely an opportunity for a return to that relaxation phase. In turn, the tensions and chemicals of the stress reaction build up. You see, our systems operate in this manner. There's a buildup of tension, and then there's a release of tension. Take a deep breath in. Ahh. Hold it. Feel the tension. Ahh, let go. That's what every breath is. Ahh. And then release. Hmm? Feel your heart collapses and relaxes, collapses and relaxes. Okay, tense relaxation, tense relaxation. You work all day and then you relax at night. So there is this pattern all of life. Those of you who have had experience with sexuality know that there is a sexual tension that builds up, then there's a sexual release, and then there's a relaxation. And during that relaxation, you're supposed to relax. If you're trying to cardiovert someone and you're going to give them a shock to kick their heart into action or to relieve an arrhythmia, you have to give that shock during the tension phase. If you give it during the relaxation phase, you can throw a person into a terminal arrhythmia. So that relaxation phase is a very, very important thing for you to have and for you to— but, you know, what happens in the world that we're in, we often don't get a chance to have that relaxation phase. As time goes on, day after day, there's more problems, tension, tension builds, tension builds, and the products of stress, the cortisol, cytokines, the prostaglandins, all of these chemicals go into your system to design to dissolve the organs of your body, to turn them into glucose, to send them out to your muscles so you can run away from that saber-tooth tiger, which there isn't. So all of this action, not only does it not help you solve your problem, but it's causing distress and anxiety and disease in your body. And pretty soon it shows up The tension, you notice the tension, then you start getting headaches, you'll notice anger, you notice insomnia, you notice allergies, you notice infection, as the organs of your body break down under this constant stress. And the other thing that it does, and I can't— this is really important for you to know, I can't exaggerate this too much. And that is that when you're in a stress reaction, then during that time, your cortical function is diminished. All of these things happen. This is your monkey brain taking over. You don't decide to be stressed. Your monkey brain decides, you know, we're 3 seconds from death, let's tense up, let's, uh, let's stop, don't allow sleep, you know, you may die, you may all this, well, it turns off your higher brain. So you stop painting on the cave walls, you stop carving your, your little knife, you stop thinking. So that when you're in a stress state, you cannot think creatively, you cannot access your wisdom, you cannot access the higher parts of your mind which can perform what we call System 2 thinking, which is what's missing in the world. We're busy fighting with each other, we're busy being polarized, we're busy being violent, families are falling apart, communities are falling apart. We're just about, I think we're about to send our ships into the South China Seas. And so, hey, we may have another world war on our hands, only nuclear this time. That's what we're doing. This is monkey brain kind of— this is not wise. And it's true for us on the individual basis. I think next week I'm going to talk about awakening the leader within. That's who needs to wake up and take over— you. And we've all learned to feel like victims because this stress that's all over in our lives and that we're so stuck on is creating all of these problems. From— to deal with these problems, we drink, we gamble, we philander, we hide, we go into panic, we go into anger, we shoot our spouse, all that kind of crazy stuff that we do because we're just not dealing with the stress that's inside of us. And again, when we're in a stressful state— and you can tell that because you're feeling anxiety, or fear, or frustration, or anger, or despair, or guilt, or shame, or you're feeling jealous, or you're feeling envious, uh, you're feeling resentful— none of those gives you any access to your wisdom. They block you from seeing the solution that's right in front of your eyes. And I'm going to, in a future session, I'm going to be talking about the new paradigm and we'll be talking about System 1 and System 2 thinking. Those of you who want to get ahead, look at Dr. Kahneman's work, K-A-H-N-E-M-A-N, Kahneman's work, great book that he's published called Thinking Fast and Slow. He's done wonderful experiments to show how in incredibly we are being manipulated by the world around us and we don't even know it. But part of it is keeping you in stress, and that makes it easy for you to be, for you to be manipulated. So, you know, some of the symptoms of stress accumulates, physical symptoms, mental symptoms, tension, irritability, inability to concentrate, feeling excessively tired, the anger that comes up, anxiety, frustration, helpless. We feel helpless. We're a world of victims. We feel that all of this is happening to us. And because we're helpless, then we turn to these ways of escaping: smoking, procrastinating, being irritable, judgmental of self, others, self-abusive traits. And then with continued stress in the body, we suppress our thyroids, blood sugar imbalances, um, type 2 diabetes, decreased bone density, decrease in muscle. All of these things are scientifically shown to be the results of this continued stress in the body, the infections that come. What do we need to do to recover from this horrible situation? We need to restore that relaxation phase, remember? Because there are these stresses, but in order to do that, we need to take a break. And by understanding Dr. Selye's definition of stress, that is stress being the non-specific response to what is considered to be a stress, and remember, or threat. So, and we have to remember that our threats now are not that we're going to die in the next 10 seconds. Instead, we have in mind, "Oh no, I really thought I was going to be able to open my store this week, but now we can't open the store because, uh, because pandemic is, is, is getting worse. And so, oh no, I'm, you know, I don't know if I'm going to be able to pay the mortgage for the next few months." Okay, yeah, that's a stressor. That's a problem. But should you tense your shoulders? Should you grit your teeth? Should you scream and yell? Should you, should you kick the dog? Should you smoke a pack of cigarettes? What should you do? Should you be stressed physically? No, because that kind of stress, those kinds of emotions are for dealing with immediate crises. And once again, they stop you from finding your creative solution. And that's how you harness stress, is you relax the tension. As Epictetus said many years ago in ancient, uh, in ancient Greece, it is not the external events themselves that cause us distress, but the way in which we think about them, our interpretation of their significance. It is our attitudes and reactions that give us trouble. We cannot choose our external circumstances always, but we can always choose how we respond to them. So we want to restore that, that relaxation phase, and then we want to be able to look beyond the symptoms to the source. How to restore the relaxation phase? I would say every time you find yourself becoming tense, you should relax. At the end of a tense day, do some meditation to relax. Um, every week or two, take a day or two off and go someplace where you do no work whatsoever and get to a really deep state of relaxation. Go on vacation once or twice a year, where you maybe take several days or a week or two and just wind down to zero. And when you do that, you get in touch with a deep sense of presence, and you're able to live your life more logically, which is just on the basis of, "I'm safe right now, and I'm calm." Be at peace. And finally, on a moment-to-moment basis, you get a phone call and they say, 'Oh, this terrible thing may happen in 2 weeks.' Okay. Ah, stop. Come back to zero. Empty your mind, empty your body of tension. Yeah, you're gonna have to deal with something, and in a couple of weeks, by then, hopefully you'll figure out a solution to it. Hmm. Now, what would be a creative way to deal with this challenge? But you're not going, "Oh my God, what am I going to do?" You're not doing that. So on a moment-to-moment basis, that's the way, that's how we're designed. Not like your heart can beat and just stay tense like that for 2 or 3 days and then relax. Breathe in, embrace the tension, and then let it go. And we want to be able, number 2, to look beyond the symptoms of our stress to the source of our stress, so that we're not just reacting to it, but we're looking deeper to find out just what is the source that the stress is coming from. These symptoms of anxiety, tension, all of the symptoms of stress, whatever that is— queasy stomach, headache— look at them as like on the dashboard of life a signal that at this moment in time— and this is an important point— you are thinking about the world and you're envisioning yourself in conflict with it. This is how you want the world to be, but in fact, this is the way it is. This is the way you wanted it to turn out, but this is how it's turning out. And they're different. And so there's cognitive dissonance within your brain. There's a conflict between what you want and what you've got. Your monkey mind looks at that difference and it says, "Oh, conflict! Tapaswup Tiger is attacking! Breathe! Stop digesting and send that blood flow out into the muscles. Crank out the cortisol. Turn off creative thinking and let's deal with this immediate threat." Mm-hmm. So you want to learn to see those things on your dashboard Relax and go back to that moment at which you felt the stress coming on, but just be relaxed and calm because you're safe, you're physically safe. And then ask yourself, what is the wise way to respond to this situation? How can you do something like that? Well, you can do it if you have been practicing, if you have been practicing your meditation, your deep relaxation, your selective awareness on an ongoing relation, uh, on an ongoing basis. In order to deal effectively with stress, number 3, balance. When we examine our evolutionary history as animals, It's obvious that the normal healthy life is one in which there's an ongoing pattern. Get up around the same time every day. Go to bed around the same time every night. Eat the same kind of time every day. If you're studying, study at the same desk with a light coming over the same shoulder at the same time. Because when you move through these different phases of life, what actually happens is your brain goes into a different state of consciousness each time. And when you're in that state of consciousness, you can deal much better with the situation if you're in the state of consciousness that's designed to deal with it. And if you're doing it at the right timing, your mind and body will be ready to slip into that state of consciousness right away. And that helps you create the balance. And that's what you want is balance and flow in your life in as many ways as you can think about it. Balance and flow. I love the metaphor of surfing because here you have, you know, 20,000 pounds of water bearing down on you, but by balancing yourself properly, not only can you survive getting crushed by the wave, but you can harness its energy and have a great ride. So, remembering, of course, then, that stress is one half of a normal, healthy cycle. The other half of it is relaxation, and we don't get the relaxation by eating or turning to any of our other habits. Our attitude to things is a very important aspect of it. What is your attitude? Attitude is key. As the Buddha taught us, the source of all suffering is wanting things to be different from how they are. Think about it. Wanting things to be different from how they are is the source of all suffering. Dr. Kobesa, Suzanne Kobesa, studying at the University of Chicago, it was quite a few years ago, but she studied people whose professions put them under constant pressure and unremitting demands. She found two easily identifiable groups: one that became ill and one that didn't, did not become ill. She found the primary difference between these two was that those who stayed well had a different attitude. Namely those who stayed well. Number one, they felt committed to their jobs. The job was important to them. They had a commitment. They weren't just punching a clock and earning money. They had a commitment to that job. The second thing is they saw the problems in their life not as obstacles, but as challenges. They were interested in it. Hmm, let me see if I can solve this. I mean, when I— before I go to sleep every night, I look at the New York Times crossword puzzle for the day and I try to solve it. It's hard, makes me work, and I usually fail, but sometimes I'm successful, especially on on Monday. But that crossword puzzle is a challenge to me. It's not an obstacle. Oh my God, I've got to figure out the answers to this before I go. No, it's a challenge. So if you can see it as a challenge and not a commitment, and not an obstacle. And then number 3, they felt a sense of control in their lives. And that meant that somehow, you know, people were listening to what they had to say. They had an opportunity to choose what it was, you know, what their, what the rate of work was, rather than feeling helpless. And so, if you're an employer, Yeah, you want, you want people to, to have that, that sense of control. And one kind of control that you have is when you're beginning to feel tense about things, you can relax using these tools of relaxation that you're developing. You have control It's so nice once you've learned this, when something bad happens and you choose consciously to become completely relaxed for 3 or 4 minutes and then say, "Okay, I'm ready to go back and solve that problem," and you feel in control. But when it's like, "I don't know what to do. I'm go— should I do this? Should I do that? Where should I go?" So we're in that helpless victim role. I've talked before, and I will talk again, about learned helplessness. We have that learned helplessness. The system has taught it to us. The learned helplessness makes it possible for us to be controlled, so we buy what they want us to buy and vote for who they want us to vote for. Principle 5: Stress in itself is neither positive nor negative. Stress can be good for you if you harness it to produce peak performance. Because when there's something you care about and now there's an obstacle that you see as being a challenge, and so you relax. Instead of that stress going into you being tense and worrying and going, becoming obsessive-compulsive, instead of that, the reason that there was a The reason that there was stress, the reason that there was a feeling of conflict is because you care. C-A-R-E. So we talked about the 3 C's of stress management. When you feel committed, you see things as a challenge, and you have some sense of control. And if you— the fact is that you care about it. So when you relax, Now your higher mind comes online. You have just invited a very wise advisor on hand, and that inner wisdom can now guide you to being creative. Why does it guide you? Because you care. Because you care. You know, like you see these things where, you know, a child falls off the the deck of a cruise ship and some guy just instantly pulls off his shoes, dives in the water, and manages to save this child in the rough water. And they run over and they interview him, "How were you able to do that? Where do you get the courage? Weren't you afraid?" He says, "No, I just saw a child who was going to die and I said, 'I can't let that happen.'" And he did it. I have no idea. You know, it's like I knew how to swim, but I never saved anybody before, and I've never swum in the ocean, you know, but doesn't make any difference. You have these powers, but they're being denied to you, and I'm going to show you how to get to them if you work with me. You can harness that stress, and the peak performance comes by your tuning into that internal, internal wisdom. And then, sixth principle: Stress management is an inside job. No medications or supplements are going to relieve that true source of your stress. Only you can do it, and it is important that you create your own program for dealing with those stressors and demands in your life in such a way that you can produce the final effects that you want to produce in your life and achieve the kinds of successes in your life, the kind of lifestyle, the kind of love, the kind of happiness. Okay, I'm going to offer you a little meditation around stress, but, um, afterward you may not want to stir yourself Find yourself a relaxed place to be, to sit or lie comfortably. Become aware of the fact there's no other place that you need to go, nothing else that you need to do, no problem that you need to solve. Therefore, you can give yourself permission to relax. Begin with your eyes open and choose that point over on the wall or the ceiling opposite you where it's easy to focus your eyes. Let everything else fade out of focus and let yourself slip into that daydreaming kind of state where your eyes are open but you're really not paying attention to what it is that you're looking at because your attention is inside. You're aware of your breathing and you're aware that each breath in breathes in healing oxygen. Each breath out is emptying your body of tension and stress. Imagine you can see the word relax on the back of your forehead as your eyelids close and your eyes roll upward. See the word relax there on the back of your forehead. Relax the muscles of your eyelids down to the point they don't want to open, and when you have that feeling and you your eyelids. Test them. They just don't want to open at all. Pretend your eyelids weigh 100 pounds each and then try to open them. And as you do, take that feeling of relaxation from your eyelids and let it flow through the rest of your body, through your forehead and scalp, your face, muscles around your mouth, relax, your neck relaxes. The relaxation flow down into shoulders and your arms and your wrists and your hands. When that relaxation reaches the tips of your fingers, you may feel a kind of a tingling or warmth or a heaviness. Then take a deep breath in and draw that relaxation from your fingertips up into the center of your chest. And as you release it, thinking to yourself, "It breathes me. It breathes me." And sink into that little pause after each breath out. Feel the delightful feeling of life renewing itself as each new breath begins itself, filling you with pure white light, relaxation, and peace. The rising and falling of your abdomen with each breath in and out. Relaxes all your internal organs. As you become more and more relaxed, your chest moves less and less. Instead, you're breathing down into your abdomen. Feel your abdominal breathing happening. You can put your hand on top of your chest and one on top of your belly. And feel how you can breathe into your belly and let your chest relax. That's a signal that tells your deeper mind, your limbic system, that you're safe, that there's nothing you have to do, that there's no problem that you have to solve because you're in a safe place. And then let that relaxation flow through your pelvis and thighs and knees, down through your legs and ankles and feet, all the way down to the tips of your toes, releasing and letting go. In a moment, I'm going to ask you to open your eyes and close them again. And as you do, your relaxation will double over what you have now. Open your eyes. Close them. Let your relaxation double. See the word relax in the back of your forehead once again, and— or you can just look into the darkness there. Feel that doubled relaxation in your eyelids, and then test your eyelids. And as you do, let that doubled relaxation flow from your eyelids throughout every cell of your body, all the way down, right out through the palms of your hands and the soles of your feet. Good. You'll notice that each time I guide you into relaxation It's very similar to the other times. There are lots of different ways of entering the state of deep relaxation. It's important for you to find the one that works best, and it's usually best to stick to that one. Just like if you're going to learn a foreign language, you should probably learn one at a time, not 5 or 6. And by repeating this pattern, taking charge of your attention again and again in the same way, you're training the deeper part of your mind to obey you. Like anything else that you practice, you get better and better at it. You become more and more relaxed. And anytime any unnecessary thoughts come along, imagine those unnecessary unnecessary thoughts are like words suspended in the center of your head. With your next breath out, empty those unnecessary thoughts from your mind. And let your next breath in— breathe in pure white light that swirls through your mind. And then feel that white light flow down through your body, relaxing every part of your be— breathing and every part of your body. And every cell of your being. Another thought comes along, empty it in the same way. Let yourself sink into the spaces between your thoughts, more and more relaxed, more and more calm. And allow yourself to know that any time of the day or night when you begin to feel strong emotions that aren't helpful anxiety, anger, fear, frustration, despair, resentment, all of those— resentment, guilt, jealousy, whatever it may be. Stop. They're not helping you, and you know it in the higher level of your mind. Come to the higher level of your mind. By closing your eyes, focus on the point, close your eyes and empty. It's really not that difficult because you know you're safe and you know you're calm. Go to your special place. Go for a walk on the beach, lie down on the hammock between two beautiful trees. Take a walk in a mountain meadow strewn with wildflowers. Wherever you might like to be, go into a beautiful chapel, a safe place where you can now access your wisdom and allow yourself to know. That you have the power to find this place of serenity. And here in this place of serenity, you can accept this moment exactly as it is. Because at this moment, nothing has to change. There's not a— there's not an emergency. And in touch with this wisdom, you can ask yourself, what are the things that I can change in the future? What triggered this feeling in me? What is the challenge in my life now? I'm smart. I'm connected with a deep wisdom. There's a sacred spirit within me that will guide me. I have talents, I have gifts, and I have skills. And in touch with my wisdom, I can figure out how to approach this challenge. Successfully, and I'm kind of excited about it. And now I can see in my mind how I want to go about it. I may not see the whole series of steps, but I can see the first. I can see the next step. I need to call on this person. I need to check this website. I need to look at these notes. I need to take a break. Maybe I need the sleep. Maybe I'm hungry. I can start with the first step, because the first step is so important. The journey of a thousand miles begins with that first step. The wise part of you tells you the first step. In your life now? What's the wise first step for you? Visualize yourself taking that step. What is it that you need to do in the next few minutes, or in the next hour, or maybe not for the next day, but whenever? A logical, reasonable, rational, and wise step for toward dealing with that challenge. Visualize yourself doing it. Project ahead, act it through in your mind. By doing this, you're training the subconscious part of your mind exactly how you want it to behave. Feel yourself doing it. And feel yourself happy, joyful, stimulated, excited, successful, empowered. And feel it in your gut. Feel the emotion. That emotion is the jet fuel that will empower you, because each time you picture yourself doing things the way you really want to do them, you empower yourself more and more to become the person you really want to be, because that's the person you really are. That's the person you came here to be. Good. Repeat this process, and as you do, you actually reprogram and rewire your whole system. Now just form an image of yourself on vacation somewhere. Let all of that work stuff go for now and picture yourself being really happy, doing something you really enjoy, far, far away from anything that could ever disturb you. And feel that happiness, feel that comfort. Good. And then bring yourself back to an awareness of where your body is resting, feeling comfortable and clear. But please, please, please practice, practice. One of my favorite stories, it's about the fellow who's lost in New York. He's trying to get to a concert in Carnegie Hall, and he's driving his car through Manhattan, and he's got, got discombobulated. He didn't know to make a left or a right, and yet he's got to try to get there, and he's already late as he looks at his watch. And finally he pulls up next to a taxi driver, and he leans out the window, and he says to the taxi driver, "Hey buddy, can you tell me how to get to Carnegie Hall?" And the taxi driver says, "Practice, practice, practice." That's the secret. You can learn to relax yourself at the click of a finger if you practice. And that is the key to taking charge of your your wife. So let's do it. Foment a revolution and take charge of your life. This is Dr. Emmett Miller wishing you happiness, freedom, love. This video and found its information helpful, please like, comment, and subscribe to Dr. Miller's YouTube channel. Doing this will help to get Dr. Miller's content to more and more people. If you'd like to watch the entire webinar series, you can do so at drmiller.com/life meditations. That's drmiller.com/life meditations. Be present, be kind, and be well.