You may be thinking, Me? Meditation? That’s what I thought, too. A youth spent in the Florida Panhandle doesn’t really provide the best opportunity to come in contact with any sort of meditation. I competed in beauty contests, sang the national anthem at the opening of a Walmart Supercenter, and went to a lot of keg parties. But meditation? It never even came up.
By the age of twenty-seven, I was performing on Broadway in the show A Chorus Line, understudying three of the lead roles. Acting on Broadway was a childhood dream, but the reality had become a nightmare. If my performance was off, I was devastated. My anxiety kept intensifying, I had terrible insomnia, and I started to go gray—at the tender age of twenty-seven. I was constantly getting sick or injured. There I was, living my dream—doing the one thing I had wanted to do since I was nine years old—and I was miserable. Broadway was supposed to be sunshine, roses, and martinis with Liza. Instead, my experience of the Great White Way was splitting rooms in overpriced apartments, eating tuna fish out of a can, and complaining about my bunions.
One day I was in the dressing room watching another actress named Deonne. She was understudying five leads, but unlike me, she was completely calm and centered; she was effervescent and a pleasure to be around. Every song she sang was a celebration. Every dance she did was full of joy. Even every bite of food she ate, she cherished. I asked her how she pulled it off, and her answer was, “I meditate.”
I promptly rolled my eyes at her answer and brushed it off as impossible. There was nowhere near the neuroscience then that there is now, so it was hard for me to understand how something like meditation could be impacting her performance so dramatically. But I kept feeling worse—I hadn’t slept through the night in more than a year and a half, which was severely impacting my performance. I finally felt so embarrassed about my ability to perform that I knew I had to do something. Deonne mentioned that her meditation teacher was in town and asked me to come along to an intro talk. Everything the teacher said made sense to me; it rang true. I signed up for the course. After only the first two hours of training, I was “meditating”—meaning I was in a different state of consciousness from what I had ever been in before—and I actually liked it!
That night I slept soundly for the first time in eighteen months. That was over a decade ago, and I haven’t had insomnia since. I stopped getting sick, I stopped going gray—in fact, my hair color came back. Best of all, I began enjoying my job again. And I got much better at it. I stopped seeking validation and approval from the audience, which paradoxically made me a much better performer. I was always ready, and I could finally hit the stage with calmness and confidence. That naturally led me to think, Wait a minute—why doesn’t everyone do this?
That’s when I became inspired to teach meditation. I quit Broadway and traveled to India, where I began what became a three-year teacher-training process. No, I was not in India that whole time. I am not that hard core. This ended up being the most creative, rewarding thing I’ve ever done. When I tell my story, people always ask how I could walk away from a successful career and take the risk of starting Ziva Meditation. The simple answer is that my life goals became much clearer when I began meditating daily, and I tapped into energy and insight that I’d never before realized I had. This book is about giving you, the reader, access to this insanely powerful tool. You can find that same inner-connectedness that my more than twelve thousand students and I access twice daily. You’ll learn how to improve your performance by removing stress, boosting energy, increasing drive, and ultimately how to become more successful at life in the process.
Before we go any further, I want to clarify something. This is not another meditation book heralding the benefits of higher states of consciousness without giving you any real tools to get there. This book is all about extraordinary performance. And I don’t just mean for artistic performers or people on a stage. This book will help you upgrade your personal and professional performance no matter your occupation. It will give you not only an intellectual understanding of how stress may be keeping you from your full performance capabilities, but more important, this book will give you practical tools you can start to use on a daily basis to eradicate that stress and start to up-level your brain, your body, and ultimately your life.
In the following pages, I will train you in a specific technique that you’ll be able to do on your own. It’s called the Z Technique; it’s an adaptation of what I teach live at our studio in New York City and online through our fifteen-day virtual training, zivaONLINE, and it’s designed to help you in work and in life. The steps outlined here are specifically created for achievement-minded individuals who are committed to performance enhancement and excellence. Whether you spend your time closing deals or opening sippy cups, the Z Technique will give you a mental edge to help innovate and adapt at the rate that technology demands. By investing in yourself for fifteen minutes twice a day, you can drastically change your outlook and your output in life. In addition to teaching you a daily practice, many of the chapters have exercises at the end that you can use for specific life challenges and to help you gauge your success along the way.
Maybe you’ve noticed how meditation has quickly transitioned from being a fringe activity to becoming standard practice in the boardrooms of corporate America, and you’re curious as to why. Maybe you’ve tried meditation in the past but gave up because you felt like you could never quite clear your mind, or because you struggled to fit it into your fast-paced life. Or maybe you aren’t interested in the practice of meditation at all, but you are interested in any tool that can enhance your productivity and performance while decreasing stress.
Whatever the case, you’ve come to the right place. Stress Less, Accomplish More is designed to serve as an introduction to not only meditation but also the three mental tools that make up the Ziva Technique: Mindfulness, Meditation, and Manifesting. This book will give you an explanation of what they are and the science behind how they function as tools for high performers to improve their cognitive function and creativity, while simultaneously releasing stress and improving overall mental and physical health.
There are currently more than six thousand peer-reviewed scientific studies on meditation. In the following pages, I will share the most exciting ones with you, including some from Harvard Medical School, Stanford, and Wake Forest University, and translate how these recent findings apply to your busy life. The findings in these studies range from medically verifiable physical benefits to new scientific analyses that point to the neurological advantages of meditation in mental acuity. All the findings confirm what I have witnessed firsthand with my students, and what you can experience if you read this book and put into practice the techniques you will learn in the coming pages: Meditation can give you deeper and more refreshing sleep and increased energy during the day; make you feel more connected, less anxious, and more level-headed in demanding situations; help you experience better relationships; and even have better sex! One of my students likened meditation to putting on reading glasses she never knew she needed: Suddenly, life comes into sharp focus.
Many of my students have attempted meditation in the past but gave it up for a variety of reasons. Using the Ziva Technique, these same people have been able to reclaim their meditation goals without the guilt of past failures or the confines of a highly rigid system or community. My aim is to rid the world of ex-meditators. By this I mean my goal is to give people who previously felt like meditation failures—for being “too busy” or not being able to “clear their minds”—the knowledge they need to accurately gauge their success and a practice that will actually feel worth the time investment. As we progress through the book, I will guide you as you create a self-sufficient practice that can be easily integrated into even the most demanding schedule. No need for apps, earbuds, crystals, incense, or kaftans. As I mentioned, the Z Technique is a gentler version of the Ziva Technique that I teach live and online; it is a painless way to condition your body and mind for better performance. Whether this is your first time dipping your toe into the meditation pool or you’ve been doing this for years, Stress Less, Accomplish More is both the perfect starting point and a refresher course for realizing your full potential. If you have previously been allergic to the word meditation, don’t call this meditation—just try the Z Technique and see how you feel. If you’ve had a meditation practice for years but find it a bit too rigid or aren’t seeing the return on time investment you would like, try the Z Technique and see if you feel a difference.
It doesn’t matter what your profession, ambition, religion, expertise, or experience is. Meditation is simply a tool to help you reach your goals; it’s never the goal itself. The main point is this: We meditate to get good at life, not to get good at meditation.
If you want to elevate your performance—to eliminate the effects of stress, improve your mental energy, increase your physical health, expand your creativity, and hone your intuition—you’ve come to the right place. All it takes is the desire to up-level your life and fifteen minutes twice a day. Are you ready to invest in yourself?