Stress Less & Accomplish More - ft. Emily Fletcher

Welcome back, Kwik Brains. So here's your question: how do you stress less but accomplish more? And that's— this is a topic I think a lot of people struggle with because everyone has to be busy, busy, busy, busy in order to feel like they are accomplishing things. And I'm excited about this conversation. I have a dear friend, Emily Fletcher, and she's a meditation expert. She's one of the leading— and she's been helping— you've been helping me so much lately, so thank you so much. You know, with my travel schedule and book writing and all that, everything that we're doing, It is so helpful to be able to meditate, and I love your process. And Emily is the founder of Ziva Meditation, and we're excited to have this conversation. And I want to talk about stress because it's— this is an epidemic. I mean, people, no matter all different walks of life, all ages, they're just talking about the overload and the overwhelm. What is stress doing to us, and what are we going to do about this?

Well, stress is being called the black plague of our century. Harvard Medical School has said that stress is responsible for 90% of all That's astonishing. It's astonishing.

9 out of 10.

Yeah, and so the harsh reality is that stress is making us stupid, sick, and slow. And we don't want to be stupid, sick, and slow. We want to be fun and fast and healthy. And so the answer that I have found, the single most effective tool at getting rid of stress, not only from the now, but all the stress that we've been accumulating in our body from the past, is meditation. And I know that word, you know, gets a little—

You're seeing it a lot. I mean, everyone knows like all these celebrities and You know, Ray Dalio and Hugh Jackman.

Oprah Winfrey.

Right, everyone's doing meditation. You know, when I'm reading our comments in our Facebook group where people are sharing, and we talk about morning routines, and I always talk about meditation and how important it is, I notice a couple things. First of all, some people, they confuse mindfulness and meditation, and then we'll go— well, I want to touch on that. The other thing is a lot of people don't follow through. You know, for our quick brains, we want execution, we want consistency. A lot of people get all excited about, oh, they're gonna meditate, but they, you know, something happens, right? And maybe because they have a myth, there's maybe a lie, a belief that they have around meditation, like it's gonna take up too much time, or I just can't do it correctly. But let's go back to the difference between, just really quickly, mindfulness and meditation.

Yeah, so a lot of people are using these terms as synonyms, but they're not actually the same thing. Most of the apps out there, most of the YouTube videos, most of the drop-in studios are teaching what I would call mindfulness. And I would define mindfulness as the art of bringing your awareness into the present moment, which is beautiful and powerful and necessary in this technological age. But it's very good at dealing with your stress in the now, like creating a state change as if you're taking an aspirin. Now, this is very different than the style of meditation that I teach in the book or that I teach at Ziva, which is all about giving your body deep healing rest, which is getting rid of your stress from the past.

So instead of like an aspirin, it's like a vitamin.

Exactly, yes, from an aspirin to a vitamin. And the beautiful thing there is that if we have a daily discipline of getting rid of that stress that's been accumulated in our brains and bodies over time, that is the very thing that uplevels our performance capabilities. That is the thing that allows you to stress less so that you can accomplish more.

So we have like a residual amount of stress just through our lifetime, all these open loops. I find that one of the complaints people come to us with is they feel overloaded, they feel overwhelmed, and they don't even know why necessarily. But it could be all this, this history that they have. Like maybe they have too many windows metaphorically on their computer that are open, and even if they can't see it, it's still taking up space.

Yes, actually by the time the average American is 20 years old, we have approximately 10 million premature cognitive commitments, or PCCs, which is exactly like an open window on your brain machine, which obviously is gonna slow you down over time.

Okay, so that's the difference between mindfulness. Mindfulness is more in the present. We get it, you know, we're stressed, we have stress, and it gets us kind of clear the stress in the present but not our personal history. Yes, and meditation is really going deep. So that's really— that's an incredible tool.

It's giving your body rest that's 5 times deeper than sleep, and it is that de-excitation of the nervous system. You're slowing down the metabolic rate, cooling the body, slowing down the heart rate. When you de-excite something, you create order. You start to create order in your cells, and that's what allows that lifetime of trauma and stress to start to come up and out.

Because when you're Body has more energy, it can deal with a lot of this repair.

Yes, just like when you give your body the rest that it needs, it knows how to heal itself, right? But most of us are running around in this fight or flight all the time, just taking in more and more stress. We're never having a time to digest and certainly not to expel or have a catharsis.

So we're talking about stress and how it's a modern-day supervillain, and it makes us, it makes us slow, it makes us sick, and you said it makes us Stupid, right? Because when we have cortisol, adrenaline, it puts us in this fight-or-flight, but that's not really useful if you need to network and meet people and remember your, your, your presentation at the next meeting.

Or be present with your kids or your partner.

All those things.

Enjoy your life. And to your point, that cortisol and adrenaline is happening because the body's going into fight-or-flight, and that was keeping us alive thousands of years ago, because if a tiger was gonna jump out at us, you know, the body would launch into a series of chemical reactions.

So what would that look like?

So digestion would flood with acid to shut down digestion because you need You need all of your energy to fight or flee the tiger. That same acid would seep into your skin so you don't taste very good if that tiger bites into you. Your blood starts to thicken and coagulate so you don't bleed to death if the tiger bites you. Actually, your bladder and bowels evacuate so you can be light on your feet, and your adrenaline and cortisol levels spike, and your immune system goes to the back burner because who cares if you're gonna get cancer if you're about to be killed by a tiger?

Right.

So this series of chemical reactions is very useful for you. if your demands are tigers, but if your demands are remembering people's names, presentations, kids, deadlines, midterms, then this fight-or-flight stress reaction has become maladaptive and it's disallowing us from performing at the top of our game. And so the meditation is the thing that gets us out of fight-or-flight and into what I call stay and play.

Stay and play, which is— and we know because chronic stress actually shrinks your brain, and that, that's, that's scary. When— what are some of the benefits And I know you— we've talked about some of the research, but maybe you could talk about a couple of things in terms of what happens to your body or your brain when you meditate. What are some of the benefits on the upside? We know what the damaging effects stress has, but what are the positive effects when you get rid of that stress?

Yeah, it's really exciting because we're living in this day and age where neuroscience can prove not only that meditation is good for us, but how different types of meditation impact the brain differently. So in mindfulness, where we're directing our focus, where someone's guiding you through, or you have a free app or something, a small part of the brain lights up but very, very bright, which is different than in Ziva meditation where the whole brain lights up but not as bright. So it's cool because the type of meditation that I teach is very restful. It's kind of lazy. It's kind of surrendered. And so what's happening in the brain looks similar to what— how the practice is.

Right.

And the cool thing there is that when the whole brain lights up, you're increasing neuroplasticity, which is the brain's ability to change itself, and you're also strengthening something called the corpus callosum, which I'm sure your folks are Yeah. But it's that thin, thin white strip, the bridge between the past and future and present moment. It's the bridge between your critical and creative mind. It's the bridge between your masculine and your feminine. And so I'm sure your folks know, but the reason why I think you'd want a fat corpus callosum is that it allows you to come up with all those creative problem-solving ideas when it counts.

Yeah, and you notice the people who are just really quick thinkers and they're, they're funny and they're able to make those connections because it's like a bridging station.

Yes.

And which is amazing. So meditation helps with that. It also helps— I mean, I'm reading things that it helps to, you know, reduce your biological age. I mean, because we know stress, I mean, what does it do? I mean, like, to people, it ages them.

Yeah, if you want proof that stress ages the body quickly, look at any president the day they take office and that same president 4 years later. They all age a decade. Now conversely, when you start meditating and flooding your brain with dopamine and serotonin, which are bliss chemicals, which feel nice and they're alkaline in nature, you can actually reverse your body age by somewhere between 8 and 15 years depending on which study you're reading.

That's— and who doesn't want that? Who doesn't want to be able to have less stress, accomplish more, and then just, you know—

And look hotter.

That's incredible. Now, how did you— now, I know your background because you started— when did it occur to you that you should meditate? Because I think a lot of people, especially the past few years, know they should do it, they still don't do it. But for you, what was the inflection point?

So I was on Broadway for 10 years, and my last Broadway show was A Chorus Line, and my job was to show up to the theater and I had no idea which character I was going to play.

Okay.

So let me talk about holding a lot of things in one awareness. I had 3 roles, all the lines, the choreography, the songs in my head at all times, and that stress started leading to insomnia. I had insomnia for 18 months, which is so hard, and then I started getting sick quite often, and I started going gray at the tender age of 22. And finally I thought, why am I living my dream and it's a nightmare? And so I found meditation, and on the first day of my first class, I slept through the night for the first time in 18 months.

That's amazing.

I have every night since, and that was 11 years ago. And then I stopped going gray. I'm gonna be 40 in one month, and I have one gray hair, which I promptly pluck out. But I was legitimately going gray over a decade ago. I didn't get sick for 8 and a half years. And so I thought, why does everybody not do this? So I left Broadway, I went to India, and I started what became a 3-year training process. And I opened up Ziva, and I've taught 15,000 people to meditate now. I have this book coming out.

That's astonishing.

It's just a really exciting time.

Yeah, and I encourage everyone to pick up this book. We'll put links also in all the show notes. When we're talking about optimal performance, we know if we get out of our own way sometimes, you know, that that could be the key. And so people are probably at home, they're probably thinking 2 things. They're thinking one thing, You know, why don't I follow through with meditation? And then if I commit to it, how do I do it? And so what— why don't people, even if this— if it's such an incredible— it does all of this, like literally it does, it makes everything in your life better.

Yes.

And why don't people do it? Is it because they don't have time? Because for me, especially the training that you and I are doing right now with Ziva, it's like I don't have I don't have— I can't not do it because I feel like it doesn't take time, it makes time.

Yes.

Again, so if people know that, so either they don't realize the real benefits or what's keeping them from committing and doing it consistently?

So you're absolutely right. There's 2 big barriers. One is people think they don't have time, and that's because right now, even though we— even though the science is in, we know it's gonna help us make more money and have better sleep and better sex and better parking karma, as I call it, but we think I'm too busy because we put it sort of like in the like pedicure for your brain. Like, that's like a luxury item that I'll get around to when I have some extra time. But it's not like a must. But I would say we need to reframe it to be the most important piece of mental hygiene that we need to do every day.

I love that word. I love that, mental hygiene.

Every day, right?

It's like you— It's like you shower, you brush your teeth.

Yes, and it's rude to leave your house without brushing your teeth. It's gross for you, and it's rude to the people around you. Same thing with meditation. It's like, clean this thing up. Don't go spewing your stress around the land. But I think the thing is, and this is really the whole reason that I wrote this book, is to reframe meditation as the performance and productivity tool that it is. To your point, so that people can see that it actually makes time. Now the other big obstacle is that people oftentimes assume that they should already know how to meditate. Because it's simple, they think they should already know how to do it. And there's like one dude out there telling everyone that in order to meditate, we have to clear our minds.

That one, we gotta get to that one guy. We gotta find him. We ought to get him a copy of the book.

We do, we gotta teach him how to meditate.

Because it's not true. I mean, I've been meditating for years. People think that it's just like you meditate and like for 20 minutes or whatever, you have no thoughts or just a blank slate. That's absolutely not true.

It's not true at all. The mind thinks involuntarily, just like the heart beats involuntarily. So trying to give your brain a command to stop thinking is always going to feel frustrating.

It's like trying to stop your heart.

Yes, exactly. You're always going to feel like a failure, and then none of us will do anything for very long that we feel like we're failing at. And that's why a lot of people don't commit, is that they really just haven't had training yet, and then they don't have a technique that was designed for them. And what I love about Ziva is that it was designed for people with busy minds and busy lives. It's not for monks.

Right, and Ziva means, by the way?

Bliss.

Bliss.

Yeah, it's a Sanskrit word that means bliss, and it's a Hebrew name that means one who is radiant or kind. And since bliss, radiance, and kindness are very common side effects of meditation, I thought it'd be a good name.

So we know the why, and, you know, obviously people need to schedule it, right? Because that's very important, because if they don't schedule it and put it in their calendar— calendar is like one of the most important productivity performance tools you have. How do you do it? People are watching like, I'm sold, I want to look my best, I want to have less stress, I want to be more productive, have a great sex life, and have more fun and play. Where do they start? Do they have to go to India or go to some kind of ashram or go to like the Himalayas?

Well, that's what I did. I've done that work for you. I went to the ashrams, I went to India, I've been to Japan, I've been to China, and I've been studying this stuff now for 11 years. And I've taken all of this and put it into this book, Stress Less, Accomplish More. I have a beautiful online course. It's only 15 minutes a day for 15 days. 15 minutes a day. That's it. And then you have this tool to take with you for the rest of your life. And, and I think that it's— for me, it's not about meditation for the sake of meditation. I think we meditate to get good at life, not to get good at meditation, right? And so I think to your point, where do people start? It's find a teacher that you trust, find a technique where the return on investment is exponential. If you're gonna invest your time, which is your most valuable resource, make sure that you're getting that investment back. Make sure that you are performing better at life.

Sure.

If that's not happening with the meditation practice you have now, Maybe try something new.

That makes sense. I love what you said about, you know, no one's meditating for the sake of just meditating, right? But you're doing it because you want to get better at the things that matter to you. And this is— meditation is, it's like the ultimate multiplier in your life, right? So it's one of those things, few things that you could do that makes everything better from there. So let's say people are at home and they, they find a A tool, a practice, a teacher— I would recommend Ziva— where do they go from there? Are they meditating now?

Well, so it depends on what they do. Like, a lot of the apps are sort of guiding you through, whereas there are trainings that make you self-sufficient. And once you have a practice where you feel like, okay, I have the tools, I can do it on my own, then it's scheduling it, right? Then it's actually putting— because for me, if it's not on my calendar, it ain't getting done, right? And then I recommend getting an accountability buddy. Someone that you can keep— make a promise to, because it's easy to break a promise to yourself. It's harder to break a promise to someone else.

With accountability buddy, are you meditating together or—

You don't have to be together. They don't even have to be doing meditation. Maybe your partner wants to go to the gym every day this week and you want to meditate every day this week. Well, make a bet with each other, you know, and if one of you doesn't do it, pay the other one $100, or, you know, put some skin in the game.

No, I mean, there should be consequences. I feel like a lot of people don't You know, and so how would you describe— now you're a new mom, and so people have excuses all the time. They have— there's always something that's there. What is— when do you meditate? Like, how do you— is it first thing in the morning, or—

So you're right, I have a 7-month-old son, and I'm doing this book launch, I'm running this company. So, you know, I have all the excuses in the book, and this is actually the time that I am doubling down on my meditation. I'm doing it every day, twice a day, non-negotiably, because this is the time that I need it the most. And so, but I recommend people do it in the morning, first thing, before coffee, before breakfast, before computer. That's the ideal time to meditate.

Okay.

You just wake up, pee, meditate. And then the second meditation I recommend that people do somewhere in that mid-afternoon slump where you might have had the coffee or the chocolate or the nap. It's like steal away, go to a conference room, go to a stairwell, sneak out to your car, close your eyes. It only takes 15 minutes, and then you come back and you have this hit of productivity and energy and creativity. As if you've taken a nap but without the sleep hangover.

That's beautiful. And then are people lying down or they can just do it sitting in their office and just be—

Yeah, you could actually do it in an open floor office plan. I'd say pop in some headphones with no music just so that people don't bother you. Or we have these awesome sweatshirts that like cover up your whole face. Or you could go out in your car, put a little sign in your window. But you don't have to go into a— there's nowhere on the planet Earth that is silent. So you can do this thing even when there's noise around you.

And that's good, whether it's external noise or internal noise in terms of your own chatter, that's okay. That's part of the process.

Yeah.

Because I think a lot of people, they make excuses or they just, they learn misinformation saying that, again, things have to be absolutely quiet either inside or even in your environment. But there's always, you're right, there's always something that could potentially distract you.

Even in the caves of the Himalayas, there's sound there too.

There is, at the very least, the sound of your own breathing.

Or wolves or wind or rain or, you know, there's sound everywhere. So noise is no barrier to meditation.

Wow.

You just gotta do it. So don't let perfect be the enemy of good. Don't let good be the enemy of done. Just do it.

I love that so much. Emily, I'm so excited about this book. So where do you recommend people get it?

So you can get it on Amazon, Barnes& Noble, anywhere books are sold.

Okay, and then if there's one challenge you would have for everybody here, I recommend everybody obviously get the book, but take a screenshot of this episode, this video, this post if you will, Tag Emily, tag myself.

So I'm @ZivaMeditation, so Z-I-V-A meditation on all the socials.

That's perfect. And then I would ask people, I would challenge you to put your big aha and maybe talk about your meditation experience and maybe a new thing they could do. What's one thing that you would recommend they could do? I mean, obviously this is rich, you know, in depth, and also in your online course. What could— is there something people could do right now when they leave this?

So there's a really great tool that I use almost before we go into the technique that I teach in the book, and it's called the 2X breath.

The 2X breath.

2X breath. And this is cool because it's actually going to strengthen the vagus nerve, which is the thing that connects the brain to the body, right? And it's perfect to use if you feel like you're having an anxiety attack or some panic or you're just feeling a little overwhelmed. So it's really simple, very powerful. You want to do it together?

Yeah, let's do it.

Okay, so you simply inhale through the nose for 2. And you exhale out of your mouth for 4. So again, inhaling through the nose for 2, exhaling out of your mouth for 4. Then you can close the eyes if you haven't already. Inhaling through the nose for 2, biggest inhale you've taken all day, and exhaling through your mouth for 4. If you're really feeling anxious, you could do this as you pace around the room. So inhaling for 2 steps and exhaling for 4. And on this inhale, I invite you to feel the sensation of the breath as it enters the nostrils. And as you exhale, actually feel the tactile sensation of the breath exiting through the mouth. And as we double the length of the exhale from the inhale, we're softening and strengthening that vagus nerve. So you can do a few more on your own time. 1, 2, 3, 4. And as you soften, as you exhale, just letting all your muscles relax. And this last time, we'll breathe in the word let.

Let.

And we'll breathe out the word go.

Go.

Just letting go of our illusion of control and surrendering to this moment, knowing that you're exactly where you're meant to be in the perfect time. And whenever you're ready, you can start to slowly, gently open the eyes.

I'm like all blissed out right now. Feeling crazy, Siva. Thank you, Emily.

My pleasure.