Stress Less, Accomplish More by Emily Fletcher | Book Review
The October book, ‘Stress Less, Accomplish More’ by Emily Fletcher, had us learning all about the benefits fo mindfulness, meditation and manifestation. Presenting all of the benefits that we can gain from a consistent meditation practice, Emily delves into what it actually means to meditate and makes it easy and approachable for everyone to incorporate into our life. From reducing our stress levels, boosting our mood, making us more productive, focused and clear headed, to slowing down our ageing process and even improving our sex life, meditation impacts our overall quality of life and has countless benefits that we all have access to. With more and more research being done to determine just how good meditation is for us, these benefits are backed by science and can no longer be denied. Emily proves that while sleep is rest for the brain, meditation is rest for the body - ideally we need both for optimal function.
To break down the 3 Ms, here’s a run down on each:
Mindfulness is the art of bringing your awareness to the present moment, it is effective at handling your stress that’s happening now.
Meditation comes in many different forms, the Z technique utilises the power of a mantra to focus your mind and in the process it helps you get rid of stress from the past.
Manifestation utilises the art of visualisation to help you clarify your dreams for the future and bring them into existence.
Key take aways from the book:
Meditation can literally grow your brain by increasing grey matter in the brain. It can also enhance the connection and communication between the left and right sides of our brain.
Through meditating, we are able to access a fourth state of consciousness, which is more restful and restorative than sleep.
It’s not bad to be stressed, it’s bad to STAY stressed.
2 months of meditating is enough to see visible changes to your brain through an MRI scan.
Sleep is rest for our brain, while meditation is rest for our body.
Bliss chemicals like dopamine and serotonin are produced only a few seconds into your meditation practice.
Chronic stress makes us stupid, through meditation we can prevent that. Stress is also involved in weight gain, ageing, depression and infertility, just to name a few things.
Happiness is only ever found in the present moment. Your happiness exists right now, inside you.
In meditation, we move out of the realm of thinking and into the realm of being.
Thoughts are not the enemy, the mind thinks involuntarily just like the heart beats involuntarily. The purpose of meditation is not to rid your mind of thoughts.
Things are always happening FOR you, not TO you. We need to remove ourselves from this ‘victim’ mindset.
We can access flow states by training our mind to enter it through our meditation practice.
We don’t get what we want, we get what we think we deserve.
Meditation is one of the best ways to up-level your life.
As you heal, you help others do the same.
I don’t know about you but this book has certainly inspired me to make meditation a more consistent part of my life and I’m going to prioritise this, making it a part of my daily routine. As Emily says, if you think you don’t have time to meditate for 15 minutes, you need to meditate for an hour.
I hope you enjoyed this months book! Time for us all to go practice the Z technique that Emily teaches in this book.
Next month, we will be reading ‘Everything is Figureoutable’ by Marie Forleo. This personal development and mindset book shows us that we have the power to figure anything out and why this is so important. Grab your copy of the November book here - happy reading!