For many years I’ve been working hard as a product manager and growth specialist. It stressed me too much until I suffered chronic anxiety. This experience triggered a desire to look for a way that would lead me back to the life I once had. I needed to reclaim my happiness and efficiency.
As a result, I found a simple solution.
The worst experience was when stress hit me even when I was on vacation. My level of energy was too low. I perceived life hastily. Stress and anxiety pushed me to a corner.
As usual, Google does a crappy job at explaining how to fight stress. You will find tons of articles with 10 theoretical tips for fighting stress. Do not drink alcohol, do not overthink and be positive. Who does it even work for?
I tried them all!
Exclusively, the only things that benefited me were fitness and meditation. Do not rush to draw conclusions! While they worked for me, it’s not a guarantee that they will work for you too. Here is why.
Engine for stress
Have you read “Antifragile” by Nassim Taleb? This book transformed my thinking and offers a solution to fighting stress. The thing is, you can’t completely get rid of stress. What really matters is whether or not your life becomes better.
When stress engulfs you, calming down is not your goal. You should instead strive to gain awareness and strength to make the right decisions, to better your life and to enjoy it.
Your body should turn into an engine. Stress is your fuel, and the output is achieving the right solutions and energy to get things done.
I now hunt for stress.
Let’s take a step back to fitness and meditation. These two are important and the key to finding a solution on how to fight stress. And like I have already mentioned above, fitness and meditation do not work for everyone. Not every fitness works and not every meditation works
So why don’t they work and how do we make the best use of them?
Mindfulness
I have listened to countless meditations and a majority of them have nothing to do with meditation.
Meditation is a trend and while there are tons of meditations written for every taste, the one million dollar question is do they really help?
To answer this question, you need to understand why people meditate.
One goal is to usher you into a state of awareness. How can we recognize this? Meditation should get you into a state of raised-spirit. You should feel how the boundaries of your inner self expanded.
Different meditations work for different people. There are several time-tested universal meditations:
- Gratitude
- Visualization
- Expanding Consciousness
- Breathing
- Body Scan
- Disidentification
- I Am
You can try these meditations or try out any other medication you may have. The main thing here is to be noticed on what you feel after meditation.
X10 Meditation results
The brain is an incredible organ. You can’t deceive it. When I tried to sit down and meditate while stressed, I still experienced anxiety and stress levels were overwhelming.
All the articles I have come across instruct that you should meditate for at least 2–3 months for something to work out. Well, I don’t mean to be pessimistic here but that’s utter nonsense! That’s the bitter truth.
Luckily, there’s a help to be had. I found the solution in a study I came across. In fact, according to the study, the secret is to exercise a little before meditation.
How does it work?
Before meditation, subject your body into a short intense workout. It causes energy to circulate in the body. The focus then shifts from problems to body recovery.
This is just one more additional step and sure enough, you don’t have to prepare for meditation for long hours. With this strategy, 5 minutes meditation is enough.
Life energy
Workout is the best way to raise life energy. The absurdity of any activity is that 90% of people quit after 2 months.
This happens because of a lack of motivation. Plus, your brain is not wired to carry out one single activity for long hours. Your brain says “it makes no sense to go for sports; you’d rather stay at home”.
There is truth in it. I studied how sports affect our bodies and found stunning conclusions. Studies show that a person does not need regular exercise to keep fit. The fact is, you can get injured or become demotivated because of fatigue. Daily high-intensity exercises are all that is necessary for receiving vital energy.
Exercises you can do daily with no equipments:
- Plank
- Jumping Jacks
- Push-Ups
- Burpee
- Virtual Jumping Rope
- Side Plank
- Lunges
- Skater
- Punches
- Squats
- Slow Climber
- High Knees
- Side Squats
The human body needs the dispersion of the blood through the body for a couple of minutes at least 1–2 times a day. Anything above is for other purposes such as burning fat, weight loss, and so on.
Billionaires and bio-hackers spend little time sporting. They have mastered the art of taking the most out of any sport within the shortest time possible. They devote the rest of their time to development of their businesses or families. You can learn from them.
Tony Robbins, Tim Ferriss, Oprah Winfrey, and other famous people have similar rituals. They get into intense exercises and increase awareness on an everyday basis. Daily intensive exercises also slow down the aging process.
In addition, according to Forbes, your income depends on how active you are. The more active you are, the higher your income is.
The solution is one simple habit
Let’s put it all together:
- Going for regular sports will not make you happy. Short intensive pieces of training are beneficial for happiness.
- The only daily intensive workout will be your catalyst to change. It’s better to have less, but more often.
- If you meditate immediately after an intense warm-up, it will be much more effective. Otherwise, you will not experience any effect after meditation and even if you do, it will be short-lived.
- Meditation should change your state of mind into a more conscious and resourceful state. If you meditate and do not feel the result, then it does not suit you, or you are doing it wrong.
Your winning recipe — right after waking up, get into a 1–2 minutes intensive workout. Then immediately get into meditation, changing consciousness. Do this ritual every day for at least 30 days. Formation of new habits and changes occur in about a month.
The main thing is always to write your condition. We all know, when a person is doing well, he forgets that something was wrong with him.
As you can see everything is simple. To make things easier, we created a free app called Lilo. With the help of the app, you can set reminders. It contains simple and fun fitness exercises that will help you add variety. There are also special meditations.
So, you’ve just gotten an excellent recipe. It will make fundamental improvements and open new horizons of your life.