It is my sincerest hope that you feel excited and empowered by what you’ve read so far and by your decision to embark on this journey of stressing less and accomplishing more.
I know there’s a stereotype that meditators are just “bliss bunnies” who float around on clouds and talk in artificially soothing tones. Are there some people like that? Sure. But now that meditation is moving into the mainstream, there are far more pragmatists who have embraced the practice and who still act and sound like normal people, who don’t speak in “yoga voice” and have the ability to not turn everything into a ceremony—they just do life far more efficiently and effectively than before. Meditation doesn’t turn you into a sedate, passive person; just look at all the examples we’ve seen from many of the world’s top performers—some of whom I’ve had the honor of teaching—who have experienced exactly the opposite! What it really does is allow you to access and enhance the very best parts of who you are—and who you want to be. It doesn’t change you; it makes you more yourself, but the best version of you rather than the sick, sad, and stressed you. Because the Z Technique focuses on three distinct practices for a multifaceted mental experience, it helps you be fully in the present (mindfulness), heal from the past (meditation), and consciously create your future (manifesting). It offers a complete overhaul of whatever aspects of your life, experiences, and ambitions need up-leveling.
Let’s take a hot second to reflect on the incredible benefits and advantages a twice-daily practice can bring:
I realize that no matter how invaluable meditation may seem, it can still be a little intimidating at first to think about committing to something that will permanently alter your daily routine, even if just by half an hour. Remember, though, that meditation is now an essential part of your daily mental hygiene. Just as you would never leave your house without brushing your teeth (I hope), meditation will now become an equally nonnegotiable part of your routine. The way we treat and respect the nonnegotiables in our lives models for everyone else how to treat those things, too. When you fail to protect your twice-daily Z time—when you permit interruptions, answer “just a quick question” from a coworker, respond to snack requests from the kids, throw the ball for your dog—whenever you’re willing to disrupt your meditation times, you’re demonstrating to those around you that it’s okay for them to disrupt your meditations as well. When you make it clear that this is a new nonnegotiable 2 percent fraction of your day—that you will not be pulled away from your sitting unless there are exposed bones or blood—all you are asking for is fifteen minutes to yourself twice a day—colleagues, family, and even pets will quickly learn to respect and even protect that time. If you act like those times aren’t important, no one else will believe they are, either. If you prioritize them, other people will start to protect them for you. You may even start to hear your child say things like, “Mommy is a lot nicer after she meditates,” or “Have you done your second meditation yet, Daddy? You seem a little cranky.”
You may have seen some version of a popular lecture on how to prioritize time, illustrated with rocks, sand, and a jar. If you start by filling the jar with the sand and then pour the larger rocks on top, there is not enough room in the jar—you’ll never be able to get everything inside. But if you start with the larger rocks and then pour the sand over them, letting the sand fill in the nooks and crannies, everything fits in the jar with ease. The rocks are your nonnegotiables—the major pieces of your day that need to take priority. Make the commitment to establish meditation as one of those rocks. Don’t start the day with coffee, social media, or complaining; start your day for you, with something that has the sole purpose of making you better, then see how your day progresses from there. We all have the same size jar, the same number of minutes in a day; it’s up to you how you choose to fill yours.
When you are first beginning your practice, one of the ways you can get used to making your Z time a priority is to strictly schedule them each day. Set an alarm on your phone to remind you to begin your sitting until it becomes habit. This not only keeps you on the wagon, but the sound can also clue in your friends, family, or coworkers that you have a nonnegotiable appointment to keep. Remember what I said about not using an alarm for Ziva? That applies to the end, not the reminder in the beginning. I still don’t want you to rely on an alarm to bring you out, but I absolutely do want you to set an alarm as a reminder to dive into your new twice-a-day habit. In fact, if you didn’t complete the homework at the end of chapter 8, I’d like you to take out your phone or daily planner right now—go on; I’ll wait while you get it—and open up your calendar. Now take a look at your meetings, appointments, and other commitments for the next twenty-one days. Find a window in the morning and a window in the afternoon in which to schedule your Z Technique each day and enter it into your calendar. Set a reminder so that it won’t slip your mind, then respect that alert when it pops up. As dear friend of mine, student, and Tony Award–winning actress Laura Benanti says, “I make the appointment with myself and I keep it because I respect myself.” Shut your office door, turn off your e-mail alerts, and get this mental hygiene taken care of. You won’t ever regret taking the time to meditate.
Do you work in a cubicle or on a sales floor or in any other scenario where you don’t have the privacy of an office? Meditate in your car. Ride the subway instead of driving. Meditate on a bench outside or even in a broom closet. The only thing easier than this style of meditation is finding an excuse not to do any meditation at all—and then you’re back where you started or, worse, you’re falling behind the pack. You need to set those alarms on your calendar to prompt you until twice a day every day becomes second nature, no matter how busy your day or how busy your mind. In fact, those days when your to-do list just keeps growing or your mind is preoccupied with a million other demands are actually the days when you need the 3 M’s more, not less.
There may be times as you are first starting out when you are tempted to skip your regularly scheduled sitting because you feel as if you’re just too busy, too tired, or too stressed. Do it anyway. Guess what? Oprah is busy, too, but she manages to make time twice every day. When I say this, I often get pushback from people who argue that Oprah has teams of people to delegate responsibilities to, but I always reply by asking which they think came first: the success or the discipline? Saying you’re too busy to meditate is like saying you’re too busy to stop to get gas for your car; it just doesn’t make sense. Do you have time to feel sluggish, stressed, and stupid? Do you have time for your life to grind to a halt while you get sick? Yes, this does require a small investment of time, but the payoff will be exponential: All this takes is 2 percent of your day to drastically improve the other 98 percent. A to-do list that once would have taken you five or six hours might now only take you two or three because your increased energy, reduced stress, and improved intuition are all contributing to increased productivity, accuracy, and creativity. You’ll soon find you’re not only accomplishing more in less time but are actually accomplishing things at a higher level. Whether it’s connecting with clients, innovating in the workplace, managing your family, or simply enjoying the moment-to-moment delights of your daily life, it won’t be long before you sense that things are beginning to play out more elegantly and you’re stepping into your full performance potential.
The number one thing I like to tell people who want to lump meditation in with various other luxury items like spa treatments or scented candles is this: It’s not a luxury if it gives you more time. Luxuries are, by their very definition, indulgences—things that are nice but unnecessary. I firmly believe that after just a few weeks of regular, twice-a-day sittings using the Z Technique, you’ll find that the positive results it produces in your mind, body, and professional performance have too significant an impact on your quality of life to be considered a mere luxury. In our fast-paced, highly competitive world, cucumber water and pedicures are luxuries; optimized performance is a necessity.
Remember, however, that “optimized performance” is going to look different for every person. Starting a meditation practice is not going to turn you into a different person with a completely new set of skills and aptitudes. On the surface, it may seem as if we all have the same goals: make more money, free up more time, strengthen our personal relationships, and so on. But the reasons behind those goals are unique for each person. Make more money so you can do what with it? Go hiking in the Andes. Fund research for an alternative to plastic. Buy a house for my mom and dad. Start a ranch for abused horses. Free up more time so you can fill it how? Volunteer in my community. Catch up on all the reading I’ve always wanted to do. Finally write that book I’ve talked about for years. Spend more time with my family. Plant that garden I’ve always wanted. Travel. It’s not the money or the time or the relationships we want—it’s the feelings those experiences provide. Our ultimate destinations and ambitions are as individual as we are.
Meditation will help you rid your nervous system of the distinct set of stresses you’ve accumulated throughout your highly individualized lifetime, leaving you better rested, more intuitive, physically healthier, and better able to access energy so you can use your unique expertise to create innovative responses to the specific demands of your life. In short, meditation helps you do you . . . better.
Please remember that beginning this journey is not suddenly going to solve all your problems and make you happy 100 percent of the time. Don’t let “I’ll be happy when . . .” syndrome find a back door into your life by attaching it to meditation. You were happy a million times before you started meditation, and you’ll be happy a million times on your journey; your happiness is not dependent on how well you do with this practice. In fact, remember that your first few weeks with the Z Technique may actually bring up old feelings of sadness, anger, fogginess, or fatigue as you bravely move through the initial emotional and physical detox. But remember: “Better out than in.” For real. This stuff can either get cried out into your tissues or stuck in your physical tissues, where they may manifest into sickness and disease over time. So choose activities that will help you move this old stress up and out, without taking it out on your nearest and dearest. I want to repeat this for emphasis. As you start your daily practice, you might notice a lifetime of old stress coming up and out. This might feel intense and you might not like it. It might even be confusing if you skipped chapter 3 and have no idea what I am talking about and expect to be floating on a cloud of bliss from day one. The Z Technique will not make you numb or immune to feelings. Think of it more like a purge, and the more deliberate you are about scheduling activities that help you move things up and out, the easier it will be to not take them out on your partner, roommate, dog, or local barista. While this purge might not be what you were expecting or hoping for when you picked up this book, take comfort in knowing that it is the very thing that creates more mental space for heightened performance.
As you move through this unstressing period, there is an advanced technique I sometimes share with my more experienced students to use a few minutes after their practice to reframe events from their pasts. I invite them to reflect on a particularly difficult or trying period in their lives and see it through the lens they have now. Knowing that everything is working out exactly as meant, they comfort or encourage this younger version of themselves by communicating anything that would bring strength. I am obviously not suggesting meditation as a kind of time travel, but simply that this subtler state of consciousness can impact your perception and experience of time, and taking a few minutes to revisit important events from your past from your least excited state of awareness can help you answer the question “Why did that happen for me?” Did it help you gain new perspective? Did it make you stronger? Did it prepare you for a future job? In a roundabout way, was it the first step on the journey that led you to where you are today? By looking at how your past challenges set you on the course to your present circumstances, you might up-level your perception of and attitude toward the past and finally be able to release any stress attached to it once and for all. This isn’t magic. It takes commitment to do every day, twice a day.
There is an old story that meditation teachers often share about the way monks in the Himalayas dye their saffron-yellow robes. The fabric doesn’t get that bright on the first dip in the vat of dye, or the second, or the third. It has to be immersed over and over again until it achieves its distinctive hue. The fabric can’t just be dropped in the vat and left to soak for weeks on end, either; it must be soaked in the dye until it is saturated and then placed in the sun to dry. Otherwise, it mildews. Conversely, it can’t be left in the sun too long, because it can become faded and brittle. Instead, the fabric must be moved back and forth, from the dye to the sun, sun to dye, countless times before it becomes totally colorfast. Then no amount of sun or wear will change the colorfastness of this cloth.
Meditation is doing this for our bodies! It is making us colorfast with bliss. But the timing matters and consistency matters. There is no need to meditate for hours and hours or days and days on end. That would be the equivalent of sitting in the dye for too long. After fifteen minutes, we’re saturated. Similarly we don’t want to go days or weeks without meditating. That would be the equivalent of drying in the sun for too long.
What we do instead is wake up and flood our bodies and brains with bliss and fulfillment in the vat of meditation, then we dry out on the demands of our day. In midafternoon, we dip back in the dye, and then dry out on the demands of the evening and night. We go to sleep and do the whole thing over again the next day. This cycle of meditation and activity—saturating the nervous system with dopamine and serotonin, and then drying out on the demands of our day—is the very thing that ushers us into higher states of performance.
What I love about this story is that it illustrates that the goal of meditation is not to eliminate your demands; your demands are not keeping you from enlightenment. Neither is the goal of this technique to just luxuriate in the bliss field all day while the rest of the world continues to tick away around you. You need to have both the dyeing and the drying, the meditation and the activity. It is in the constant meeting of the two—the demands and the fulfillment you deliver to them, the sun and the dye—that you achieve the most elegant version of you.