Typically your mind will distract you and pull you into anxious concerns about the past or future or into some random train of worrisome thought. Stress often follows as a result.

Mindfulness involves bringing your attention into the present moment, so you can be aware and notice what’s going on here and now. By learning to be in the present moment more of the time, you’ll not only reduce your stress but you will also connect to deeper levels of who you are.

When you’re mindful of what you are thinking you can stand free of your thoughts, instead of becoming possessed and defined by them. If you train to be mindful, you’ll pull the plug on stress and its consequences, including anxiety, depression, panic, self-doubt, and serious a variety of serious health problems.

It’s your thoughts that drive your stress. Your mind is always thinking automatically and discursively. It wanders without any clear purpose from one subject to another, often times darting back and forth toward concerns that leave you worried and anxious.  If you learn how to be mindful you’ll learn how to control your thinking and your emotional reactions to what you’re thinking.

Most of the time, you don’t intentionally think your thoughts-they just happen.  And most of the time, you just follow them. And if you are not attentive or mindful to where your mind is and to where it’s taking you-you’ll wind up in a negative flow of thought that leaves you starring in one or another stressful movie.

Mindfulness is Paying Attention and Noticing

Imagine a person in a train station, a person who can’t resist getting on every train that pulls into the station. Day in and day out she gets on trains all day long, trains that take her to places she didn’t plan on going to, places that she then has to make her way back from.

If she was mindful, she could pay attention and not get on the wrong trains. Or she could notice that she was on a train heading off to a place she didn’t want to go, and then get off as soon as possible. Mindfulness is paying attention and noticing.

Stay Off That Train

Every day, endless “trains of thought” pull into your mind. And like the person in our illustration, you get on them and ride them to wherever they take you.  And they usually take you for rides and to destinations that are stressful.

Did you know that left on its own, your mind will worry and dwell on the negative? That’s just the way it is. And the more emotional baggage you’re carrying and the more tough times you’re facing-the more negative your thought flow will be and the more stress will drop in your lap as a result.

You Do Not Have a Mind and a Body

Mindbody Science made a breathtaking discovery, a discovery that is still not commonly known or understood by most people, including medical physicians. The discovery is this: Your mind and body are not two separate things, they are an interdependent unit-your “mindbody”.

This discovery renders obsolete the view that our health is a “Body-Only” affair, a view still held by most health care providers. What you think and feel manifests in every cell in your body. And what’s going on in your body affects what you think and feel. That’s the mindbody connection.

The mindbody connection accounts for why stress is the #1 health and quality of life problem in the entire developed world. Here’s the problem: Stress is not just about feeling tired and frazzled and burnt out. It’s about toxic stress hormones that get released into your body in error.

Your body is hard wired for a survival response known as the Fight or Flight Response. When it’s triggered it releases hormones that prepare you to fight or flee life threatening danger. The problem is that your mind triggers this response in error. A part of your brain can’t tell the difference between your fears and worries and actual life threatening danger.

As stress hormones seep into your blood and tissues and linger there over long periods, you become at risk for anxiety, panic, depression and heart disease, cancer and diabetes, among other health problems.

You Can Train for Mindfulness to Manage Stress

Recall that your mind is always moving, you’re always thinking. The problem is that you get distracted by and identified with what you’re thinking and your thoughts and feelings get out of control and begin to define your reality. That triggers your Fight or Flight Response, which unfortunately triggers more worry and so a vicious cycle of stress and stress hormones.

When you develop mindfulness, you’ll notice that you’re following your thoughts and stop, thereby shortcutting the Fight or Flight Response before it releases stress hormones into your system.

Sitting cross-legged in meditation is not the only way or the most effective way to develop mindfulness. MESICS Training is a great way for westerners to develop strong and stable mindfulness. M-E-S-I-C-S is an acronym for the Latin phrase “Mens Sana In Corpore Sano” It means: A Sound Mind in a Healthy Body”.

MESICS Training^TM translates western medical science discoveries and eastern meditative and healing wisdom into actionable knowledge and combines that knowledge with powerful tools and expert support-so people can cultivate mindfulness, gain control of their lives and live long and well.

If you want to enjoy the powerful stress resilience you need to

• lower your stress hormones levels and flush stress hormones from your blood and tissues
• enjoy much better energy and more focus
• prevent premature aging and decline
• protect your health and well-being

and if you want the  mindfulness you need to live your life as an adventure doing more of what you want and love, then contact me now at DrManganiello@comcast.net. I will show you exactly what you need to do so you will experience powerful results right away.

Financial Stress is Contagious

Financial stress goes to the bone of our deepest worry–staying alive. Money represents survival. That’s why money is so important and why so many people are stressed out over finances.

Stress is contagious. In the same way that there can be a flu epidemic that infects many people-financial stress can spread rapidly among many thousands and even millions of people.

Right now we are in the midst of an outbreak of serious financial stress, an epidemic of financial stress fueled by a combination of real and dangerous conditions and the never-ending bad news media hysteria. The news media no longer just reports news. It seeks profits, profits that depend on ratings and ratings go up with sensational news broadcasts.

Unfortunately this creates real problems for us.

Because if the financial crisis doesn’t damage us, our chronic stress over it will. You see a part of your brain called the hypothalamus cannot tell the difference between financial worry and financial disaster.

The Media Can Be Hazardous to Your Health

For example, one financial trend forecaster, Gerald Celente’s, did an interview recently. He’s predicting a total worldwide financial collapse, a collapse worse than anything ever known. And he’s predicting violence in America over it.

It’s a tricky situation because no one really knows whether the roof is going to fall in from this financial crisis or not.

But at the level of runaway financial stress-it doesn’t matter. Because when large numbers of people are infected with stressful concerns, their minds can become enmeshed in a form of primitive and illogical thinking where it become impossible to distinguish fact from fiction.

Today many people are in this bind. They watch CNN blasting yet another financial collapse story, they read more of the same in the newspaper and on the internet, they go shopping to see prices rising again and then they go home and open their financial statements to see that they’ve lost even more money than they imagined. No wonder so many people are anxious, fearful and depressed.

It’s starting to feel like a meteor is heading to earth and there’s nothing anybody can do about it.

Whenever I feel myself getting caught in media stress, I do a little MESICS Free Release BreathingTM and then if need be I use another technique to enter into the Stress Free State TM, a state of relaxed and aware calm and balance. When you move into the Stress Free State, stress hormones are flushed out of your blood and tissues.

I’ll show you how to do MESICS Free Release Breathing in just a few moments. But first, let me explain something important to you.

Your Fight or Flight Response prepares you to fight or flee from life threatening danger. It does so by releasing powerful chemicals, called stress hormones, into your system. But there’s a problem: The Fight or Flight Response is meant for short-term use only. If it’s on too often and too long it will damage your mind and body.

Studies show that when you’re stressed and stress hormones seep into your blood an tissues and linger there, you’re at risk for serious health problems as well as the misery of chronic anxiety and depression.

As Dr. Paul Rosch, President of the American Institute of Stress put it, Stress

“…is a heavy contributor to heart disease, cancer, respiratory distress, lupus and many other life threatening illnesses.”

Stress hormones are indeed bad news. Drs. Lyle H. Miller and Alma Dell Smith, two Senior Stress researchers said it in a nutshell: “Chronic stress kills. People wear down. Stress is linked to the six leading causes of death….”

Do This: MESICS Free Release Breathing

Take 3 deep “Free Release Breaths”. This strategy is drawn from a MESICS® [1] Training routine.

• Breathe deeply into your diaphragm-it’s just under your breastbone and above your upper abdomen
• Pause for a slight moment
• Breathe out from your diaphragm-
  • but don’t walk your breath out-just freely release it. HHHAAAAA.
  • Pause for a count of two-then repeat

Notice that at the end of the out breath there’s a calm, relaxed state. Tune yourself to that and let your stressful thoughts go. Don’t go after them or spin them or feed them. Just let them be. They will go away. Yes, they will return. When they do, just do the same thing.

The 3 Free Release Breaths are a preliminary technique to help shut down your Fight or Flight response. If you can learn to let your thoughts go-it will stay shut down more often. Learn how to develop the presence of mind to not jump on every train of thought that pulls into your station.

Financial Worries Are Not Facts

Stressful thoughts and feelings about money are often not accurate or true. But when you’re caught in contagious financial stress, they will present themselves to you as if they were absolute fact. Yes you may have money problems, even severe ones-but that doesn’t mean that all hope is lost. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you won’t survive.

Please don’t think I underestimate the hardship of serious financial trouble, I don’t. But even if you’re bearing a heavy burden -you’ll be a lot better off if stress hormones aren’t running around in your system.

If you’ve been foreclosed or close to it or if you’ve watched your life savings shrink along with the value of your home. All the more reason you need to safeguard your well-being so you can get on the other side of this hardship.

If you learn how to stand free from stressful financial worry, you won’t get poisoned by toxic stress hormones. Learning how to do this is a form of mindfulness and what we call “Inner Fitness”. Inner fitness will strengthen your ability to avoid identifying with your worries. If you do identify with your worries, you’ll mistake them for facts and pay a steep price.

Develop a Prejudice Toward Action-Act NOW

STOP listening to, watching or reading sensational news stories about financial doom. If you’re facing chronic financial stress, learn how to develop an action plan that will empower you to feel in control. Seek help doing that-from reliable sources.

Expect financial worries in the form of negative thoughts and feelings. Expect to feel fear, anxiety, depression, self-doubt and self-blame. These are natural. But learn how to stand free from them and not buy into them at levels that cause you hopeless despair and panic.

If You Pray, Pray for This

The more action you take, the more control you’ll feel and the more control you feel, the more action you’ll take. If you pray, don’t pray for money to drop out of the sky-pray for the patience, confidence and strength to get through this and to make the money you need.

Think positively, but positive thinking alone is not enough. You must marry it to decisive action. Or else you’ll be waiting for a bus that doesn’t come.

Get angry if you have too. But make it a healthy anger-let it become fuel for you to take charge and act. Healthy anger can free you up and push you into a new way and a new day.

Consider working with a capable stress expert and a financial advisor you can trust.

Take the Long View

See your financial woes as a temporary challenge not as a final defeat. Don’t just think short term-think up ahead. And take things one day at a time. Again, get expert help-don’t move off in an unknown direction on your own.

And beware of people who don’t know enough to really help you. Or people who’ll want take advantage of your situation. Make sure you can trust someone before you give them any money and don’t pay anyone a large sum in advance.

If you have a lot of debt, or are at risk for foreclosure, then consider contacting The National Foundation for Credit Counseling: www.nfcc.org

This Too Shall Pass

Keep in mind that “This Too Shall Pass”.

Be thankful for the little things and for any support you can count on from people who care about you. The philosopher Nietzsche said it well when he noted: “Whatever doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger”.

While that’s not always the case, it most often is. Necessity can be the mother of invention. By meeting the challenge of financial stress, you’ll master new learning and open up new possibilities in your life.

Your thoughts and feelings define your reality, so avoid news media that sensationalize the financial crisis by blasting you with it from every doom and gloom angle possible.

Again, studies show that we’re very susceptible to the opinions those around us. So take a holiday from opinions that breed more and more fear and worry in your life. Just focus on today and tomorrow.

I invite you to download my new book, “The Little Black Book of Stress Relief Secrets”. It’s Free for a limited time-get it on the home page. It will give you much of what you need to know and do.

[1] M-E-S-I-C-S is an acronym for the Latin phrase “Mens Sana In Corpore Sano” It means: A Sound Mind in a Healthy Body. MESICS Training™ translates scientific discoveries into actionable knowledge and combines it with powerful tools and expert support—so you can put that knowledge to work to conquer stress and live long and well.