In other words, what should meditation feel like? 

What short-term clues will I have when meditation is working versus spending time trying and either failing to even enter the "alpha" (original phase) of meditation or going too far and completely falling asleep?

Based on my years of experience with meditation and similar opinion from hundreds of others I've practiced with here are a few ways to know meditation is working:

• You have a wide flurry of thoughts that enter your brain seemingly without any trigger… this is quite common in the first 5-10 minutes of meditation as you try and focus or use contemplation techniques such as mantra's or white noise, you must allow this uncontrolled thought storms to rage on in your brain simply telling yourself that you want to put these thoughts aside for now – as if they are floating above you but no longer inside
• Your breathing should become deeper and more regulated.  When you feel your breathing begin to come easier and deeper, you can be confident that you are nearing the first phase of meditation
• You may feel your eyes flutter – similar to when you enter a REM sleep stage.  Sometimes this happens to me, sometimes it does not – use it as a clue not a certainty to know if meditation is working
• Your body may begin to feel light…almost as if you are rising above your body.  Many people describe this is if they were up above their body looking down at yourself, but with a very objective eye
• As you enter the next phase of meditation you begin to lose track of your surroundings and what is giong on around you…it is critical that you both allow yourself the "luxury" of entering this state and that you gently urge your mind to go even deeper
• It is this phase where you know meditation is working – a total sense of calm, serenity, non-hurridness, peacefullness and objectivity come over you.   Best if you can hold that state for at least 10-15 minutes before you slowlyl bring yourself out of the meditation.  If you can stay 20-30 minutes in that state, even better.  I prefer multiple shorter meditations through the day to one long one…it feels more effective to me
• Finally, after 1-2 weeks of consistently achieving meditation, putting yourself in to the sate of meditation becomes much easier – some even learn to do it "on-demand" even in the middle of a busy day. 

Don't worry if your first few meditation attempts don't work.  Try different mantra's, background music such as ocean sounds can often help – anything with a repetitive sound (like waves crashing on shore, wind blowing through a forest, etc…) will work to help make your meditation work. 

Stick with it and after the first few weeks you will notice incredible benefits in health, your ability to focus, be more productive and manage frustration, anger and stress in your life. 

To learn more about meditation techniques and how to combine them with an overall life plan for greater achievement – we recommend applying the techniques found in Attracting Greatness…one of the best programs we have ever put into practice.

Now when you are trying to live your life with passion, on fire and take action everyday, you want your health to keep up – right?

So, I went to my favorite Naturopath – Tony Brunelle from Awakening Potentials and as usual, he hits me with the problem within 10-minutes – an allergy to Wheat and Gluten that is not likely permanent, but is a problem right now.

So, I joyously head out to my local health food store to uncover a diet plan free of wheat and Gluten – not so easy after all!

Positively, I am not someone who has to be 100% Gluten  free, I have not been found to be a Celiac, but I certainly now understand the challenge they face.

Sure, you can get smarter about it, you can become an expert at combining non-wheat flours and come up with a pretty normal diet after a few weeks of learning from friends and health food stores.

I joked with my wife that I could lead a life living on red wine (beer is now on hold), chocolate and blueberries.

Then I opened up my health website this morning and saw this article about how the antioxidant properties in dark chocolate, blueberries and red wine can all combine to be pretty potent cancer fighters.

Great – except you also have to watch your sugar intake or you will be dealing with an overbalance of yeast in your digestive system.

The bottom line, everything in moderation and get yourself checked for allergies.  I am still convinced that the secret to all of these pop-up allergies, system imbalances that lead to auto-immune diseases are largely based on reactions your body has to stress…so liberal amounts of stress management is also one of the best things you can do for your overall health.

One of the best blueprints I have found to follow exists within Attracting Greatness combining mind and body factors influencing overall health, happiness and productivity in your life…take a look.

That was it – how to reduce stress became my new goal in life and over the next few months my entire life changed, more than I ever dreamed possible.

Much of what I learned worked (and didn't work) is now part of the Attracting Greatness Formula, it all started with understanding and managing stress.

How much stress do you have in your life right now?

Even more important, how much chronic stress do you carry around with you each day – do you even know anymore?

Here are a few of the sure signs of high stress:

Increasingly, our entire population is becoming more stressed – with the tough economic times, high expectations,  lack of personal contact and lack of control in our lives, we all should begin to know more about how to reduce stress and gain passion back into our lives.

Step 1: Prioritize stress relief:  If we are truly to reduce stress in our lives, it won't happen by accident or some stroke of luck, we must dedicate time each day.  Managing stress must become a priority in our life just as eating, sleeping and earning a living is a priority.

Step 2: Look inside:  Our ability to lower anxiety stress comes directly from our ability to see inside ourselves.  Using techniques like meditation or yoga – we take back control over our minds for 20-30 minutes each day regaining a command over our life that leads to massive feelings of wellness, insights into what we really want and large improvements in overall energy and motivation

Step 3: Write it Down:  A big part of knowing how to reduce stress is recognizing what is leading to stress in your life.  That means becoming aware of the situations, conditions and causes that lead to you feeling the symptoms of stress.  What makes you irritable?  When does your stomach tighten up?  What makes you worry?  Each time this happens, write it down – not only will you begin to see patterns of stress anxiety emerg so that you can deal with them, the writing will help you to lessen the impact of chronic stress on your life.

Step 4: Consistent sleep and improved diet:  If you are not sleeping well (or consistently) and are living on a diet of high sugar and carbohydrdates then you can do yourself a wonderful favor by incrementally improving these factors (that you DO control) and understand how to reduce stress to an even greater degree in your life.

Whether you feel stress at work or are looking for stress coping techniques at home – learn to recognize what stress is doing to your body, when stress symptoms appear along with what brings them on and use the four steps above to stop stress in its tracks. 

Tackling stress is one of the key pillars of Attracting Greatness, Passion and Energy back into your life…give it a try.

Recently there has been growing evidence linking a whole host of mental and physical ailments to the effects of stress and anxiety – everything from depress and memory loss to weight gain, heart attacks and even cancer.  Outside of smoking and diet, there is no other single factor impacting our overall health and wellness.  Clearly learning how to manage stress is critical to our own life.

We will never be able to eliminate stress or it's impact on our life, but we certainly can do a better job than just coping with stress.  Here are 5 stress management tips from the highly respected "Attracting Greatness" that will help you improve your mental and physical shape by boosting our ability to manage stress.
1. Staying present.  It sounds simple, but one of the best ways to deal with stress is to stay in the moment rather than lamenting or thinking about either the past or what may happen in the future. A good deal of chronic stress comes from us dumping more stress and anxiety on ourselves.  By using more objectivity and staying in the moment we can keep from blowing situations out of proportion and deal with the stress of the moment rather than carry it with us.

2. Meditation.  We mentioned being objective about situations in our life so that we don't add stress to our lives, meditation is one way to make that possible.  By taking 20-30 minutes twice each day and meditating you accomplish a number of things including: breaking the cycle of chronic stress, training your body and mind as to what true relaxation really feels like and gives us an "in the moment" perspective that helps us manage stress.

3. Stress "Power" Thinking.  What I mean by this is that when you are under stress, give yourself 2-minutes and completely stress out over that situation.  Bring it on full-tilt giving yourself permission to let the stress come with the understnding that after that 2-minutes you no longer think about it.  After the 2-minutes use visualizations such a stream carrying your stress away to help relieve stress.

4. Diet. Your ability to deal with stress depends heavily on how taxed or toxic your system is.  When your body is riddled with sugar spikes, toxic with poisons that stress your liver, kidneys and pancrease, full of yeast or infected with parasites – no wonder we are unable to fight stress when we are struggling just to maintain our basic health. 

We talk about this in detail inside "Attracting Greatness" - the need to diagnose and cleanse our systems is critical to getting more out of life.

5. Sleep.  I put sleep as #5 for a reason.  Lack of sleep is a major factor in our ability to deal with the effect of stress, but the factors listed in #1-4 heavily impact sleep.  It's no good to tell someone to sleep better when they are riddled with stress, are in a state of chemically altered depression, are eating or drinking poorly impacting sleep or dealing with health conditions such as digestive or back problems that prevent them from getting a solid 7-hours each night.  Once you begin working on #1-4, then it's great to discipline your sleeping habits to relieve your stress anxiety.

The effects of stress are massive, your health, happiness and ability to attract positive people and wealth into your life depends heavily on taking action on these 5 steps.  It's time to manage stress and make living life much simpler and rewarding than it is right now.

Sometimes we reach a point where we feel stuck in a rut, where one day seems to flow into the next and we question the meaning of our daily activity. 

Other times we experience a major life challenge such as the death of a loved one, a health challenge or financial challenges that makes us ask questions about our time here on Earth.

Often, we look for short-term direction by aligning our "new" direction in life with someone we know or admire, but that doesn't typically lead to dramatic life change or lasting change does it?

To make sure we experience meaningful change and enhance our health, wellness, peace of mind and earning potential, thankfully there is guideance in the form of The 5 Pillars of Greatness outlined in the "Achieving Greatness" life improvement program.

To change your life, we must begin with finding our life purpose.  To do that, we must look within rather than around us for the answer.  Using techniques that promote introspection, we can identify our inner purpose and values that shine like a beacon in the fog to direct us to more stable, solid ground in our lives.

Next, dramatic life change requires a set of tools and methods for dealing with the negative stress in our lives.  To push forth in alignment with our life purpose it is important to be able to resist the constant winds that fight meaningful change – namely negative stress

In addition to our ability to ward off stress, we must also improve our resistance to fear instead replacing it with steadfast courage – this will lead to momentum, empowerment and the results that give us the confidence and strength to maintain our alignment with our life purpose.

To accomplish all of this, happily there are specialized techniques of yoga and meditation that can be directed to help us specifically help in each of these areas – that is the focus of the Achieving Greatness program – you'll want to see more here.

Finally, even harnessing the incredible inner power of our life purpose, learning to look within and follow our inner voice, resist stress and fear there can still be one factor that prevents us from our desired change of life - it has to do with our system toxicity.  Most of us (very young and older) have reached such a stage of toxicity in our bodies that energy is not permitted to flow to the areas we need most.  Even if we improve everything from this point on, we must go back, take care of business and clean our systems out to start anew. 

This 5-step system to change your life is extremely powerful, highly effective and long-lasting – try applying it to your life now.

Stress and work, worry about your finances, relationships that have gone bad, not living up to your own expectations, the constant bombardment of bad news…the sources of stress anxiety in our lives have never been greater. If we are to keep from being completely paralyzed, we must act now and learn how to manage stress more effectively. 

What's most concerning is the damage that sress can do to your mind and body:

• - Increased risk of heart disease
  – Makes you less likely to eat healthy
  – Stress results in chemical changes in your digestive system
  – Reduces your self-confidence and self-esteem
  – Makes you tired, negative and unable to stay positive
  – Is directly related to unhealthy weight gain
  – Impacts your ability to maintain good relationships

The body of research is still growing each month showing more damage to our lives from stress anxiety. 

In this personal development tips book there are 5 pillars upon which we can have an immediate, positive impact on our life achievement and health – our ability to manage stress is key. 

3 Ways To Manage Stress Now

It's worth stating again, not all stress is bad and ANY stress can be managed – so when you hear someone say that you need to fight stress, what we are really talking about is an ability to recognize how certain situations in our lives impact us and lessen the negative impact erasing the very damaging impact that stress and axiety can have on our lives. 

Follow these 3 stress tips and you will be able to take back control in your life.

1. Use meditation and yoga to accomplish to deal with stress.  Meditation will empower you in two very important ways.  First, you will get a better sense for how stress is impacting your mind and body and you will begin to get a feeling for what a stress-free state of mind actually is.  When you succeed with meditation, you are able to co-exist with all that used to cause you stress without feeling the impact on your mind and body.  In other words, you experience a complete state of bliss or peacefullness from which to analyze the rest of your conscious life.

2. Positive affirmations and guided imagery will help you put your state of mind in a new place…a place where you do have control, where you have already achieved the grand accomplishment of complete stress relief.  Use these positive affirmation techniques to make the most effective use of affirmations and visualization.

3. Leverage the mental and physical power of exercise.  Don't think that you immediately have to become obsessed with exercise, what we are talking about here is moderate exercise but on a consistent basis.  That may mean walking for 45-minutes each day, heading to the gym 3-times a week for 50-minutes, or mixing it up with a swim, jog and exercise class each once a week.  The bottom line is that getting your body moving, your heart pumping, your lungs charged with air are all incredibly powerful methods used to manage stress. 

If you live in a chronic stress state that prevents you from having energy, fun and achievement in your life, then you can bet that the impact on your body and mind is far worse than you may think.  Use these 3 powerful techniques to manage stress over the next 2-3 weeks and you will begin to notice how much anxiety you were really under.

Haven't you found that students, our kids, are bombarded with more and more external information and, in some cases, bad habits these days?

Video games, multiple TV's in the home, the internet, more homework, increased organized sports and more stressed-out parents make schools and homes more tense environments than ever.

Kids are increasingly being stressed out – and so the principles we outline in Attracting Greatness – the methods for calming your mind, unleashing your true inner passion, enjoyment and skill – equally apply to their lives. 

I was happy to see a new book launched today by an 18-year veteran of bringing yoga into schools – Gail Bently Walsh – the book is called "Yoga In the Classroom".  As she outlines on her website, the book has been written as a yoga for beginners course with a specific emphasis on helping kids in school

There have been many studies lately showing the advantage of yoga for kids where even a short period of daily yoga exercises can bring out more confidence, peacefulness and reduced stress in our kids.

In fact, if you ever notice your kids all of a sudden staring off into space – they typically do this several times a day – this is their own, built-in way of practicing meditation.  Yoga exercises and yoga postures for kids are just another way to make sure they are getting enough time to relax, introspect and bring out their full potential in spite of a very fast-moving, challenging society we now live in.

Some of the benefits of yoga your kids can experience include:

• higher self-esteem
• more self-confidence
• better able to deal with social and learning pressures at school and at home
• better chance at higher grades
• happier, healthier child
• more creative and imaginitive

As anyone who tries to practice or teach yoga for kids, you will soon realize the difference from adults in the sense that you need to keep it fun, let kids explore and learn through the process – they need to be engaged to get the best results. 

We've been incorporating aspects of yoga and meditation in our two boys for several months now and I have to say the experience has been incredible – both in terms of how close it has brought us AND how much confidence it has given to our kids. 

I highly recommend any family, teacher or coach to explore how they can introduce aspects of yoga into their respective time with kids – the payback will be tremendous.

We can't rely on much these days, but one thing we can definitely rely on is that we will hit rough times, challenging times – we will be hit with challenges when we least expect them.  Those who prepare themselves now for what may come in the future will be the ones that will make it through these times the best.

A good portion of the "Attracting Greatness System" came from personal experiences facing crisis situations and is now available to those who want to better prepare themselves for the fast-paced, stressful and highly dynamic lifestyle we now live in. 

It's more than motivation, personal development and self-improvement – we are talking about a thorough preparation so that we can ride out storms such as the current economic crisis.

Whether you are stuck in a rut, financially challenged by the latest crisis, facing a job you hate or challenges in your own business or personal life you can heed Tony Robbin's latest words in the video below. 

Asked what his advice would be on the latest challenges in the economy Tony has it right when he talks about our ongoing need to prepare ourselves emotionally for anything that comes up because we never know what is around the corner…

Watch here:

Anthony Robbins on The Today Show

Jeff

Having outlined in detail my own experiences of getting incredibly sick with dozens of vague symptoms in my early twenties, I've become acutely aware of the importance of a healthy gut.

There is a daily war happening on our intestines and colon that, when our systems are balanced, keeps the peace very effectively…we know that is the case when we have maximum energy, have a powerful immune system where we can fight off illness, rarely get headaches or do not suffer from digestive problems such as heartburn, acid reflux, bloating or other very common, 'uncomfortable' intestinal conditions these days. 

The challenge is, when our gut's delicate balance of 'good' bacteria is disrupted, then the nastier bugs can take over and the result is a rapid spiral into pain and suffering. 

In our highly respected "Attracting Greatness" blueprint for leading a happier, healthier and exciting life, we spend significant time outlining a plan to return your body and mind to the place where they must be before we can truly be functioning as we were meant to function.  Right now, 95% or more of us are NOT where we could be once we understand the delicate balance that has been disrupted.

WHAT DISRUPTS OUR SYSTEM

Research has now proven that there are a host of disruptors to normal gut health that result on further impact to our nervous system, immune system, lymphatic system, with direct links to such diseases as Fybro Myalsia, Cancer, Heart Disease, Arthritis, and a whole host of other less serious conditions.

Here are just a few things that disrupt our normal ability to keep peace in the war that constantly goes on inside our gut:

 - antibiotic use, even from 20-years ago, will destroy our 'good' bacteria
 - poor eating habits, too many refined and processed foods will lead to an overgrowth of 'bad' bacterias
 - parasites which a large percentage of us have in our gut right now from children, pets, food, and more…
 - negative stress, a recent scientific study has shown proof that stress on our nervous system DOES directly impact the checmical functioning of our gut
 - exposure to chemicals and toxins, we are all exposed to these at some level – eventually these impact our 'good' bacteria and allow the 'bad' to win the war.

As you can see, this is not a third-world problem, not a problem for one race, income level or sex – but is a chronic problem across all of us. 

WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT IT

First, we must realize the link between what happens in our gut and the rest of our body function is direct and very real.

Second, we must accept that our own gut health has been challenged at one time or another and so we must do what we can to help bring it back into balance – the good news is that it's not that hard and the upside benefit is massive.

Third, we must learn to manage stress in our lives.  It doesn't matter how healthy a life you live, if you cannot manage negative stress, your gut will not operate properly and you will find yourself subjected to the same diseases and bad health as a life-long smoker or obese person. 

In 'Achieving Greatness' we tell our story of how we learned about all of this the hard way and how we completely turned around my own health in less than 6-weeks – we also share the blueprint so you can do the same. 

The sooner we act on bringing back a healthy system, the sooner we can improve our enjoyment of life, achieve incredible breakthroughs and fight disease that may already be rearing its ugly head deep inside our bodies.

Have you ever known those people who never seem to get sick?  They can keep a highly productive, consistent schedule and always seem to be up earlier to get their day rolling?  Is there a way to go from a weak immune system to boosting immunity without having to completely change your life?

Flu boosters and vitamins immediately come to mind, and yes, these are multi-billion dollar industries, but the truth is that the better response may be within us right now.

A very big part of getting things done and attracting other high quality, achievement oriented, balanced and happy people into your life is your ability to stay consistently healthy. 

One of the 5 principle pillars for Achieving Greatness  is the #1 missing piece most of us do NOT get…that is the impact that stress has on how happy, healthy and effective we are in life.

All of us are impacted by negative stress…those of us who learn to manage stress at an early age and STILL get what we want done are the ones that will achieve incredible things in their lives.  Stress may manifest itself as outright fear, but more likely it will do you more damage by ensuring you have a weak immune system.

In Achieving Greatness I cover in detail how a stress-induced chemical malfunction in my body nearly led to my total desctruction back when I was in my early twenties…unfortunately this same set of circumstances is playing out over and over again impacting millions of us from the early childhood ages through to older adults. 

It started with symptoms of a weak immune system, where I would pick up colds and flus whenever someone even mentioned the word cold…then the symptoms became more serious until I could no longer function, had lost more than 30-lbs and could barely keep the simplest of foods down. 

After months of tests, doctors, and worsening symptoms, I finally hit a doctor and naturopath combination that figured out that my body and immune system were under severe stress due to a combination of stress and toxicity – overriden with bad bacteria, they put me on the right path, boosting my immune system along the way.

Within weeks I was a completely new person with renewed energy, a new lust for life and happiness and able to get things done for the first time in over a year.  Even better, bringing my body back into balance and learning to manage stress built my immune defences stronger than they had ever been.

The entire experience and methods we used to get out of this very common, unhealthy state and return to achieve some incredible things over the last few years – including the techniques we used to manage stress – are outlined in the Beyond Greatness – Improve Your Life Blueprint.

A recent study completed by Duke University researchers http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/09/080919142642.htm has finally proven there exists a genetic link between our nervous system and our immune system. 

Simply put, they demonstrated a direct link between stress messages in the body overriding chemical balances in our gut causing an imbalance and rather severe impact on our immune system.  Unfortunately, there are other negatives as well…not only will these messages impact the immune system, they will impact digestion, our absorption of food and vitamins, our brain and cognitive functions, our self-confidence, energy and nearly every part of our lives you can imagine.

The message is clear, we MUST learn to manage negative stress in our lives to not only achieve feel better and break free of current limitations, but our very survival will depend on us doing so.