In ancient traditions, open-mind consciousness was considered to be a spiritual awakening, the great enlightenment that dissolves the darkness of confusion and fear, and ushers in peace, happiness, clarity, and contentment. Today the notion that there’s one formulaic way to achieve this spiritual awakening and creative vibrancy has been blown apart. You don’t have to run off to a monastery or practice meditation for thirty years before attaining a breakthrough. A few years ago, I had a client, named Sarah who’d completely given up on psychotherapy until a failed suicide attempt convinced her to try it one more time. I urged her to begin a mindfulness practice, and she agreed. After several months—not years, but months—she had an extremely powerful experience while meditating. As she described it, she felt a rush of light and energy infuse her body, and experienced an ineffable sense of the presence of the divine, the cosmos, and a collective consciousness. After this transcendent experience, Sarah who’d been overweight to an unhealthy degree, lost several pounds, became more engaged by her work and closer to her friends, and was no longer suicidal. It was a major turning point for her.

What Sarah described has been called not only “open-mind awareness” but also, in the West, a “peak experience,” “being in the flow,” or “being in the zone.” I call it accessing your “core creativity,” because I believe that deep inside every person lies this potential for connecting to a universal flow of knowledge and creativity that’s boundless and expansive. Our individual thoughts and memories are a part of this greater, larger resource.

Just as an athlete who’s in condition has the muscle tone to be able to spring into action instantly, someone who regularly accesses their core creativity becomes creatively toned. For this person, the faucet to this remarkable flow of inspiration opens up easily, naturally, and often, allowing spontaneous and dramatic breakthroughs. When you’re creatively toned, instead of merely dipping your toe in the water and playing it safe, you’re willing to be utterly daring. Knowing this, you can navigate through a sea of self-limiting thoughts and transform such unwholesome beliefs as “I had my chance and blew it,” “It’s too late; my time is over,” “I’ll never be happy again,” and “I can’t.”

Here are 6 ways you can stimulate and tone your creativity from my book, Wise Mind, Open Mind.

Mindfulness Meditation Practice

One of the most effective ways to become creatively toned and start accessing core creativity is through a mindfulness meditation practice. Mindfulness allows us to listen and pay attention to what we might otherwise overlook—whether it’s a fresh idea or a new way of perceiving a situation—enhancing our creativity and letting go of our obstacles to innovation. Many people are intimidated with the idea of meditating with excuses of not having the time or ability to quiet the mind. Really all you need is 5 to 20 minutes a day and there are many mediation CDs that can help guide you through the process. In fact my CD Mindful Meditations for Creative Transformation was created to specifically help one access their inner resources.

Dabbling in the Arts

Our culture’s overemphasis on fame and great success often turns people away from their creative inclinations, because they feel that if they can’t reach a professional goal with their writing, singing, or painting endeavors, they shouldn’t bother. What they don’t realize is that simply dabbling in the fine arts, with no specific goals or intentions, awakens our ability to approach life with greater openness and curiosity. In the same way that mindfulness practice jogs the areas of the brain associated with well-being, optimism, and compassion for yourself and others, so too does immersing yourself in any artistic exploration or enjoyment jog your creativity.

Immersing Yourself in Nature

Experiencing nature can awaken in you a sense of vitality and infinity, which becomes a path to your core creativity. Without conscious thought, you can look up at the astonishing number of stars in the sky or leaves on a single tree in a forest, and feel a sense of vastness and spaciousness. As you gaze at the heavens the ancients observed, knowing that humanity throughout history and across continents has pondered these very stars, you experience being a part of something larger than yourself that feels as if it has always existed and always will.

Entering Sacred Space

In ancient times, sacred spaces, such as churches, temples, and sites for group rituals, were built on land whose features evoked a sense of spirituality. Treks to places like Machu Picchu, the temples of India, and Stonehenge have become more popular for Westerners who yearn for a sense of connection to their divine nature. Yet sacred spaces can exist wherever you feel a sense of spaciousness and connection to the creative, life-supporting forces of the universe. Arranging the space in your home or office to bring in light and nature will help you feel expansive and access your core creativity as you open up to your important role in all of creation.

Seeking Out Creative Stimulation

When the Irish band U2 wanted to reinvent their music, they traveled to Berlin, a bustling, gritty city unfamiliar to them, and soaked in the atmosphere, allowing its energy to infuse their songwriting and sound. Similarly, a famous actor I once spotted in an art museum stood before a painting for a good ten minutes before throwing his arms out and his head back, and standing for many more minutes, as if opening his heart to a beam of creative energy emanating from that painting. We all have this capacity to open to the vital forces around us and allow ourselves to take them in, mingling them with our own passions.

Mindful Movement

Many forms of physical movement can be an entrée into open-mind consciousness. Somatic therapy or somatic disciplines such as martial arts, tai chi, and yoga are the most well-known ways of quieting the rational mind and opening up to the intuitive mind and its connection to the numinous creative force. Any physical activity that involves discipline and a slowing down of thoughts, from skiing to dance, actually creates new neural pathways in your brain that become roads to innovation.

Becoming creatively toned can lead to a breakthrough in parenting or relating to others, or it can make you feel vitalized and fully engaged in the mundane chores of the day. The Buddha said that to find enlightenment, one must chop wood and carry water, meaning that the deepest, more purposeful life may not be one dedicated to an extraordinary cause or endeavor, but one that’s simply lived with a deep sense of awareness and openness to both the known and the unknown. A passion for discovery, for embracing the new and the unfamiliar can help you transform your life in ways you never dreamed possible, as you find the strength to move out of fear and resistance and into something new.

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Slowing down your activities and becoming quiet, cultivating a state of listening, and gaining access to the interior sanctum of the soul’s creative self are part of most religious traditions. In Buddhist monasteries, monks go for weeks or even months without speaking. Jesus was said to have spent forty days in the desert praying and meditating. I’ve also known creative artists who spend several hours sitting in a room, surrounded by their painting supplies, staring at a canvas, as Jackson Pollock regularly did, remaining in silence and waiting for the flow of ideas. A world-class drummer once took me inside his music room, slowly moved his hand across the drum kit, and said, “Sometimes I sit here for hours in the silence and quietly wait for the drums to tell me what to write and play.” As he spoke, I realized his ability to patiently wait and remain in an open, listening state was a key element in his ability to create amazing music.

But in a world that operates at a faster pace each year, we feel pressured to stay on our toes, thinking and planning, running from one activity to the next. We’ve lost the ability to completely immerse ourselves in a process of wonder and discovery. As children, we lost track of time while playing. Now, many schedule their lives in fifteen-minute intervals. Disruptions and distractions are everywhere, from our “smartphones” hounding us with text messages throughout the day to our e-mail demanding that we sign the latest petition.

What’s more, a long retreat or vacation is unavailable to many, given the demands on their time. Yet the Buddha taught that it’s the act of slowing down, becoming quiet, and opening up that’s most important, not the amount of time spent on a meditation cushion. Ten to twenty minutes, twice a day, spent in quiet awareness, resting the anxious activity of the monkey mind, tones us creatively.

When you’re in crisis, your body’s immune system may weaken to the point where you become ill and are forced to slow down and be quiet. You become acutely aware of your physical discomfort. You sleep more, accessing the world of your dreams. Rather than wait until your body forces you to retreat, you can actively choose to be in charge of this process of becoming quiet. If you do, you’ll gradually open yourself to the possibility of fully experiencing your core creativity.

Your self-insight and psychological awareness give the experience of core creativity its context. Someone who has very little self-awareness and suddenly opens the doors of perception won’t necessarily be able to use that experience to inform his understanding of himself or his life. A slow approach toward the threshold, achieved by working to become creatively toned and using the rational mind to make sense of your experiences, prepares you to do more than merely marvel at the rush of awareness that comes as a result of accessing an open-mind state. As a result of your reverie and your conscious mind’s understanding that, indeed, you were responsible for turning on this creative flow and you can do it again, you’re forever transformed. You’ll never forget your ability to break through to the deepest state of creativity.

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When we’re in a state of wanting mind, we’re never satisfied, no matter what we have. If we attain the object of our longing, we simply replace the old desire with a new one. If we achieve revenge; we feel worse than we did before. The problem is that wanting mind is rooted in the incorrect belief that something outside of ourselves is the key to lasting happiness so we look there for the solution. The reality is that no emotion or state of being, however strong, is permanent and that happiness can’t be found outside of ourselves only within. Buddhists call this phenomenon of endless wanting and dissatisfaction the “hungry ghost.”

Now I realize that one can never completely avoid the wanting mind or any other hindrance. Desire is part of being human. It causes us to strive toward bettering our lives and our world, and has led to many of the discoveries and inventions that have provided us with a higher quality of life. But there’s a danger in thinking that by ridding yourself of this quality of wanting, you’ll lose the motivation to better your life. The unhealthy side of the wanting mind is despite all that we can achieve and possess, we become convinced that we won’t be happy or contented unless we acquire even more. This unwholesome belief can lead to competitiveness and feeling resentful toward, or envious of, those who seem to have an easier life.

This leads to the unwholesome habit of comparison. Some people look at others’ successes and feel deeply envious. They may be angry that they haven’t achieved what they feel entitled to, start to diminish all that’s working for them in their lives, and obsess over what seems to be lacking.

Often, I’ve found that younger people put tremendous pressure on themselves to succeed in their careers at a very early age, not allowing themselves to venture out and explore, take risks, make mistakes, discover their talents and passions, and slowly begin formulating a plan for their personal mandala. Others often have unrealistic expectations rooted in the narratives spun by popular culture. In movies and television shows for example the difficulties of maintaining and nurturing relationships are often minimized in favor of a more engaging and unlikely story of couples who meet, fall in love immediately, have great sex as well as an unwavering long-term commitment, and rarely disagree—and if they do, they quickly resolve all their issues. The amount of effort and time that must be invested to foster a healthy relationship is often surprising to people with little experience of such relationships.

One remedy to addressing these underlying, and distorted beliefs of the wanting mind that contribute to the complexities of depression is through a mindfulness meditation practice. I had one client, in particular, who dreamed of being a successful novelist, and became deeply envious of a talented writer who’d written several best-selling novels that had defined a genre and made her famous. This client, who was only a year or two out of college, had already managed to procure a scholarship to a prestigious writing program but felt disappointed in her inability to find a publisher for her novel.

Through meditation, the conflicted young woman was able to explore her belief that she should have as much skill and success as someone who had spent many years honing her craft and building her profile among booksellers and readers. By becoming mindful she recognized that she’d been repressing unwholesome feelings of low self-worth. I helped her see that the passion she was devoting to envying this best-selling author’s success could be redirected to more productive activity if she would apply a positive antidote of satisfaction to her wanting mind, which had created a grandiose expectation completely out of proportion to a reasonable level of achievement for a writer just starting out. Only through self-love and being in the moment can one open themselves up to the type of creativity they need to improve their circumstances.

By dropping out of wanting mind and negative comparison, you can then drop into an acceptance of what’s ordinary as well as what’s extraordinary within yourself. Each of us has the potential to do something no one else has ever done before, and you open yourself to discovering just what that is when you replace wanting mind and its negative feelings and thoughts with a mind-set of satisfaction.

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One of the most effective ways to become creatively toned and start accessing your core creativity is through a mindfulness practice. Mindfulness allows us to listen and pay attention to what we might otherwise overlook – whether it’s a fresh idea or a new way of perceiving a situation — enhancing our creativity and letting go of our obstacles to innovation.

Here are four techniques from my book, Wise Mind, Open Mind on how you can start today to ignite your everyday creativity.

Working Mindfully with Dreams

If you feel that you simply have no creative abilities, consider your dreams. Most nights, your mind generates at least a few fantastical images that you can recall upon waking if you slowly bring yourself back into consciousness with the intent of remembering your dreams. I often ask my clients to work with the images of their dreams by meditating on them, writing about them, and exploring them to see what ideas and insights they have to offer.

To do this, keep a notebook, or tape recorder by the bed, and when you first become aware of your dream, record as much detail as possible of the entire dream or whatever fragments, images, feelings, or emotions you can recall. Enter a state of quiet, mindful reflection and let the dream replay itself in your consciousness. Note that each symbol in the dream represents some aspect of yourself, so after recalling the dream, think about how each one represents some part of you.

Mood Management

Depression is a loop of unwholesome thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and sensations that feed upon themselves, spiraling the sufferer downward and away from an experience of hope, joy, enthusiasm, or curiosity. It chokes off the pipeline to the creative core. If you want to open up to a sense that tomorrow will bring new situations, new people, and new ideas, eliminating unwholesome moods is very important.

Mindfulness meditation, yoga practice, and regular exercise are all excellent for mood regulation, because they lower the levels of the stress hormone cortisol in your bloodstream, increase your interleukin levels (enhancing your immune system and providing you with greater energy), and streamline your body’s ability to cleanse itself of chemical toxins, such as lactic acid in your muscles and bloodstream, which can affect neurotransmitter receptors and alter your mood.

Becoming Quiet and Doing Nothing

You don’t have to “try” to be creative when you access core creativity. You don’t have to “think through” what to do next, because a sense of possibility and wonder will simply come to you, followed by ideas that flow into you. By becoming quiet, you begin to tone yourself creatively as you allow your unconscious mind to open up. Ideas will start bubbling to the surface of your awareness, often in the form of images or a sense of deep, inner knowing.

A world-class drummer once took me inside his music room, slowly moved his hand across the drum kit, and said, “Sometimes I sit here for hours in the silence and quietly wait for the drums to tell me what to write and play.” As he spoke, I realized his ability to patiently wait and remain in an open, listening state was a key element in his ability to create amazing music.

Persevering and Trusting in the Creative Process

Although artists are often seen as flighty or undisciplined, the most successful ones are extremely disciplined. They may spend a workday seemingly doing nothing, but in fact, they’re consciously choosing to remain in a state of openness. They’ll often pick up a guitar and start playing anything, or sit at a computer and start typing whatever comes to mind, in order to start their creative flow. When nothing comes, they aren’t afraid to shift gears, to take a walk, or break the formula of how they’ve always chosen to connect to their creativity by trying something entirely different.

The reason they’re able to persevere isn’t because they have a particular temperament, but because they’ve experienced breakthroughs again and again. They know that they can rely on two distinct channels to glide into that space where we can all access our core creativity: honing our craft, a left-brain activity that tones us creatively over time, opening one of these channels; and persevering and trusting in this art of creative transformation, which opens the other.

When you’re creatively toned, instead of merely dipping your toe in the water and playing it safe, you’re willing to be utterly daring. Knowing this, you can navigate through a sea of self-limiting thoughts and transform such unwholesome beliefs as “I had my chance and blew it,” “It’s too late; my time is over,” “I’ll never be happy again,” and “I can’t.” The clouds of negativity part and the light of possibility beams down upon you.

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When those who’ve mastered the art of creative transformation feel an internal resistance, they’re able to acknowledge it, and work through it with trust. They’ve learned that openness and awareness are at the heart of the process and the mind’s role is to identify and let go of the emotions that stop them from following their heart’s directives.

If your resistance to change is stronger than your desire for a better situation, you must find your courage and delve deeply into your psyche. There, you can discover your resistance to change, break it apart, to the fuel of your passion. By exploring and dissolving these deeply rooted resistances you can start to release the grip of fear.

Here are five typical payoffs to change from my book, Wise Mind Open Mind. Which ones do you relate to?

Payoff 1: By resisting change, we can avoid the unknown. What’s familiar may not be terribly comfortable, but sometimes it seems that the devil we know is better than the devil we don’t know. We fear that venturing into the unknown will cause us to discover painful secrets about the world and ourselves that have been hidden from us. We don’t think about the change that will allow us to feel more fulfilled.
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Mindfulness can help us move forward through the dark jungle and thick fog of the unknown despite our fear, empowering us to take productive action. Mindfulness creates a container for the mind and its relentlessly anxious thoughts. Rather than whipping themselves up into a storm of fear that paralyzes us, we can observe them in a detached way and make a conscious decision to redirect the mind where we want it to go.

Payoff 2: We can avoid being judged as “strange.” Some parents can instill in a child the belief that being different, using the imagination, and taking risks is something to be valued, admired, and rewarded. When parents are frightened by their child’s differentness and too controlling they’ll try to stifle his creativity. The child, sensing their disapproval and fearing abandonment, shuts down their ability to express his creativity and then either tries to conform to his parents’ expectations or acts out.

As adults, we’ll cling to the desire to fit in with everyone else, at the expense of our own imagination. If we can recognize that our resistance is rooted in the false belief that being different will automatically result in loneliness and suffering, we can start to accept who we are and create relationships with people who aren’t unsettled by or envious of us.

Payoff 3: We can avoid failure. The fear of failure is intimately connected to our childhood fear that if we risk behaving in a new way, our parents will be angry and withdraw from and abandon us. When we fear failure, we tend to overestimate the risk we’re taking and imagine the worst possible scenario. What we picture is so dreadful that we convince ourselves that we shouldn’t even try to change.

Many artists have stories of crippling fear of failure that they could not completely erase but were able to overcome through being consciously aware of it and letting themselves experience it yet determinedly moving forward despite it. Overcoming the fear of failure requires us to consciously examine our long-forgotten experiences of feeling embarrassed or ashamed after taking a risk, and put them into perspective.

Payoff 4: We can avoid success. Strange though it may seem, a fear of success can cause as much resistance to change as a fear of failure can. While you may consciously long for a promotion or hope that your romantic relationship will result in marriage, unconsciously you may be afraid of what will happen if these changes occur. You may fear that your friends and loved ones will envy your success and withhold their love and approval or even abandon you because they can’t tolerate their feelings of jealousy and self-hatred.

If you can muster the courage to face your insecurities, you can heal yourself of the shame that prevents you from soaring to your destiny. Becoming aware of your insecurities also helps you see when others are acting out of envy, fear, or anger, and that makes it easier for you to consciously reject their distorted and hostile criticism.

Payoff 5: We can avoid feeling guilty. If we take a risk and make a change, we may feel guilty because we’re contradicting what others think we should or shouldn’t be doing with our lives. It takes great courage to stay true to the soul’s calling when it’s in conflict with what others believe we should want for ourselves.

To embrace the art of creative transformation, you must work through any feelings of guilt stemming from the belief that if you attempt to express your unique individuality and agenda, you’re being bad or selfish. Attending to yourself differs from being selfish. You’re only selfish if you take advantage of others for your own gain or knowingly cause them to suffer while giving no thought to whether you could prevent their being hurt.

When you give in to hidden fears it’s hard to believe that the discomfort and pain of accepting or making changes is worth experiencing. Your suffering may be so great that it feels as if it’ll never dissipate. However, after a loss, something new will come into your life, and it may well be something of equal or greater value.

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I’ve helped them see their lives as a canvas for self-expression that could, and should, reflect their personal passions and values. You too can open yourself up to the possibility of creatively transforming any crisis, loss or change in your life by following this three-step process based upon my book, “Wise Mind, Open Mind.”

Step One: Letting Go of the Past and Resistance

The art of creative transformation begins with the willingness to be mindful of your hidden resistance to making a change, examining it and breaking it down so that you can sweep it away like sand on a doorstep. If unwanted change has occurred, you’re likely to become angry or upset, and struggle to regain what’s been lost. You might find yourself closing your eyes to any other avenues available to you, obsessing about the past and trying to reclaim what was once yours. This resistance blocks you from recognizing that what lies ahead for you might actually make you happier than you’ve ever been.

If all signs point to the need for change, it’s important not to deny them and cling to the status quo even as it’s slipping away. Instead explore your own resistance to change and let go of all that’s holding you back, so that you can be in open mind and accept, and even embrace, the impermanent nature of life. Then you can stop feeling like the victim of circumstances and begin to see that you, too, can transform yourself and your life in a positive and exciting way.

Step Two: Learn How to Tune into Your Creative Unconscious

The second step is tuning in and listening to the wisdom of your soul or unconscious, the state in which core creativity takes place, beyond the limitations of the mind’s thought processes. Whenever you reconnect to this core, authentic self through open mind, the temporary circumstances of life stop distracting you. You’re able to trust that the creative process will produce opportunities and possibilities in due time.

To access your core creativity and stop identifying with your ego or false self, which insists, “I can’t,” “I shouldn’t,” and “I’ll never” start to develop a meditation practice that you do for five to twenty minutes a day. I particularly recommend a mindfulness or insight meditation practice, which allows you to see the true nature of your experiences. Other forms of meditation that help you access an open mind are prayer, contemplation, mindful movement such as martial arts, tai chi and yoga, and just being in nature.

Step Three: Learn How to Move Forward with a Practical Plan

The final step is to create a practical plan to manifest your goals. Any plan or vision requires research if you want to make it a reality. We’ve all known people who made a major move too quickly, without thinking through the details, because they were so eager to meet their goals.

Quite often, my clients begin the process of envisioning a new life by insisting that they need more money. If you feel this way, explore this idea mindfully. Instead of assuming that money is your golden ticket to a fulfilling life, think about how you can increase the number and range of opportunities available to you. Learning about how people have overcome obstacles and achieved success can help you identify the elements in their winning formulas, but then you must apply their insights and advice to your own life.

If you know what you need to do visual reminders, such as a vision board may help keep you on track. Figuring out how long it should take to reach your goals can be difficult and can generate anxiety or worry. When you look at your goals and your checklist for manifesting your vision, you may find that your progress isn’t as steady or as spectacular as you’d hoped. Also gather and work with a wisdom council of support. Your friends, family or neighbors can offer you practical or emotional support at times, but to come through a crisis and make the biggest breakthroughs in personal transformation, it’s best to cast a wide net and draw in support from multiple sources.

Rebuilding after any great loss can be extremely difficult, but again and again, I’ve seen people use meditation and the art of creative transformation to pull themselves out of a valley of despair and even create successes they never would’ve dreamed of before their initial loss. A forward-thinking view can lead to reinvention and healing.

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Ronald Alexander, Ph.D. is the author of the widely acclaimed book, Wise Mind, Open Mind: Finding Purpose and Meaning in Times of Crisis, Loss, and Change. He is the director of the OpenMind Training® Institute, practices mindfulness-based mind-body psychotherapy and leadership coaching in Santa Monica, CA, for individuals and corporate clients. He has taught personal and clinical training groups for professionals in Integral Psychotherapy, Ericksonian mind-body healing therapies, mindfulness meditation, and positive psychology nationally and internationally since 1970. (www.openmindtraining.com)

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By looking at these four central tenets of Buddhism we can better understand how micromanaging our circumstances can cause us to become agitated and restricted. Instead when we learn to let go of our attachments we can transform our lives in an innovative way.

The four noble truths can help us break out of the need to be in control and, instead enter into an acceptance of the present moment. Only in the present will we find the courage to cross the threshold of the unknown and relax into the changes we cannot avoid. I find it helpful to take a mindful pause throughout the day and check in with one or more of them. It’s a lovely compass to follow.

Here are the four noble truths from my book, Wise Mind, Open Mind and how they can help you let go of resistance and move forward out of your dilemma.

The first noble truth: In life, there is suffering, because of the impermanent nature of things.

Because we feel more secure when we have a sense of predictability, we develop a great capacity for denying a simple truth: that nothing stays the same. Then the unpredictability of life shows us that even if we do everything “right” and exercise every precaution, we can still face unexpected loss.

When this happens the shock can make it hard to regain your equanimity and exercise nonreactvity. Too often, rather than surrender to the inevitability of change and work creatively with it, people resort to the fear-based behavior of trying to take charge and force other people and situations to conform to their expectations. The first noble truth of Buddhism is a reminder not to slip into the avoidance behavior of denial. While it’s not wise to create gloomy thoughts about how matters might take a turn for the worse, consciously ignoring the reality that all situations transform sets you up for a great shock when that time comes.

The second noble truth: Suffering is due to attachments and expectations, to grasping and clinging.

Your inability to avoid change may make you angry, sad, and frustrated. It can be hard to let go of the false belief that the only way to achieve happiness again is to regain what’s been lost. Even when you know you can’t reverse the situation, you may agonize over this reality.

Clinging to what once was, avoiding the process of grief and acceptance, causes paralysis. Grasping for a future set of circumstances identical to the past holds you back from discovering what better roads lie ahead, outside of your sight. The desire to backtrack or reconstruct will likely result in your walking around in circles, lost in the dark woods, instead of peering around corners to find new paths.

The third noble truth: It’s possible to end suffering by giving up attachments (clinging) and expectations (grasping).

The shift in perspective that comes when we recognize that there’s no such thing as a permanent sense of happiness begins our healing from suffering. The next step is to accept that we must broaden our definition of what we need in order to be happy, giving up the habits of clinging and grasping, as well as the need to control external circumstances.

After emerging from the shock of a great loss, we’re even more despairing about the possibility of being joyful again. However, the third noble truth offers us the promise of a new way of living that’s as satisfying, if not more fulfilling, than the old. It beckons us to begin the process of transformation.

The fourth noble truth: The way to end suffering due to clinging and grasping is through balance and living in the present.

It’s important to balance a thirst for something better with an acceptance of what is, right now. Balance allows you to live in the present moment and trust that your acceptance will clear the mist of confusion and distractions, and show you the way to move forward into happiness again. Here’s the paradox of change: until you can accept what is, you cannot move into what might be.

When we cling to the past or what no longer serves us, we contract ourselves to the point where we’re unable to be nourished and invigorated by the present moment. We have to accept that what’s past has truly passed in order to open up to what the present moment offers us. In this opening we become nourished, refreshed and revitalized.

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When you access your core creativity, most anything seems possible. You dream big. You may not see any of the details of how this dream will manifest, but you know what your core self is calling you toward. Allow yourself to spend time being mindfully aware of why that dream means so much to you. When you let yourself believe that the impossible can be made possible, you empower yourself to discover all the opportunities available to you. From there, you can begin honing your vision to make it conform even more closely to what you want for yourself.

Whatever your goals are know that they are impermanent, because change is inevitable. Recognizing that you have the ability to alter your vision or create a new one at any point will give you the confidence to move forward. You must formulate a flexible vision that’s true to your core self as well as realistic and achievable, given that you don’t have control over all the circumstances that will affect how your vision manifests.

Here are seven strategies from my book, Wise Mind, Open Mind to help you successfully manifest your goals.

Step #1: Getting Started – Creating a Realistic Vision

As much as I like to encourage people to dream, and I believe the can-do spirit can carry them a long way, we all must accept certain realities. Creating a realistic goal based on your vision requires learning more about what it typically takes for someone to reach that goal and being honest with yourself about how devoted you are to reaching it. Even a goal that’s as simple as achieving balance in your life requires self-inquiry and self-honesty. You have to explore what would constitute balance for you, what skills you’d need to create that balance, and how you might acquire those skills. Ask yourself, “Do I really have the commitment and resources to follow through, or will I easily give up and slip back into the old ways?”

Step #2: Design, Research and Self-Inquiry Stage

Any plan or vision requires research if you want to make it a reality. We’ve all known people who made a major move too quickly, without thinking through the details, because they were so eager to meet their goals. It’s easier now than ever to gather information, yet with so many facts and opinions available, it can be very difficult to sort through it all without going into information overload. You might choose to check a specific, limited number of resources, for instance, reading three books on a topic you know you need to learn more about, or interviewing five people who’ve successfully made the transition you seek to make. When you recognize the same themes coming up repeatedly, you’ll know you have a handle on the basics and can scale back your research.

Step #3: What Financial and Other Resources Do You Need?

Quite often, my clients begin the process of envisioning their goals by insisting that they need more money. If you feel this way, explore this idea mindfully. What does “more money” represent to you? Is money the resource you most need, or do you have an even greater need for creativity, flexibility, knowledge, courage, passion, or something else? Instead of assuming that money is your golden ticket to a fulfilling life, think about how you can increase the number and range of opportunities available to you. Too often, I’ve seen people direct their efforts into making more money, only to be disillusioned when it doesn’t make them feel any happier.

Step #4: Learning by Example

Learning about how people have overcome obstacles and achieved success can help you identify the elements in their winning formulas, but then you must apply their insights and advice to your own life. By remaining creatively toned and in touch with the passions of your core self, you’ll find it much easier to see the possibilities for using what they’ve learned to construct your own winning formula.

Step #5: Tolerating the Learning Curve

Overall, I believe that most people are lulled into thinking that they have more expertise, more mastery, than they actually possess, because they want to avoid the pain of having to face the unknown and start at the beginning of a learning curve. When we open ourselves up to the possibility that we have to go back to beginner’s mind, we open ourselves up to a personal transformation that may take great effort and be very frustrating, but ultimately turns out to be very rewarding, because it can lead to the most brilliant breakthroughs.

Step #6: Working with a Vision Board or Visual Reminders

Once you know what to do, and what your steps should be, visual reminders may help keep you on track. You might want to work with a vision board you create on your computer with the drawing function in your word-processing program or with specialized visual-thinking software such as Inspiration Software. You might want to work with a dry-erase board, doodling and writing on it, and altering its content at will. It may also help to place visual reminders anyplace where you might stop in the course of your day and meditate for a minute on what this note or symbol means for you.

Step #7: Assessing Your Progress & Assistance from Your Council of Support

Figuring out how long it should take to reach your goals can be difficult and can generate anxiety or worry. When you look at your goals and your checklist for manifesting your vision, you may find that your progress isn’t as steady or as spectacular as you’d hoped. Instead mindfully focus on the progress you’ve made not on how far you have to go. In my book, Wise Mind, Open Mind I have a chapter titled the Council of Support. In moving our vision forward we all hit hidden resistances and hindrances and with a council of support we can seek out expert advice and wise council to assist us in moving our action plan forward to create our vision.

Your journey to manifesting your goals can be one of self discovery and embracing new ideas that can transform your life in ways you never dreamed possible. What are you waiting for? There has never been a better time to take that first step.

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The mind has the marvelous capacity to re-live the emotions connected to a memory over and over again, each time you recall it. When you close your eyes and imagine yourself standing at the shore of a lake, happily tossing in stones with your grandfather at your side, you recreate the feelings of contentment and love. You can use such a wholesome memory as an antidote to emotional pain whenever you feel unloved or insecure.

In my therapy practice when a client has an unwholesome self-judgment, I help her experience its wholesome antidote. For example, an interior designer I work with felt that she wasn’t unique or special. I knew from our sessions that this belief was holding her back from expanding her business and I asked her to recall a time when she felt unique or special.

Sometimes my clients insist that they never, not for a moment, felt a particular wholesome quality, but I always press this point, because I know that with some effort, they can find one, however small. I tell them that it’s as if their computer has given them the error message “file not found” because they’re searched for it in the wrong area of their hard drive. Through a mindfulness meditation practice, you can recover such moments that the conscious mind has forgotten and “restore the file.” Then you can reprogram your belief system, consciously choosing to lay a new neural network. However, if you decide to retain that file, you reinforce the old unwholesome belief, ensuring that it will affect your self-image in the future.

You can return repeatedly to this wholesome memory, all the while using it as a positive antidote. When you do, you’ll reinforce a new, consciously chosen, wholesome self-judgment. My client was able to access a memory of putting her senior art project on display for the class, and the tremendous admiration and respect her classmates showered on her. Each time she recalled this memory, it re-created in her feelings of being talented, creative, and special.

Here are two more tips from my book, Wise Mind, Open Mind on how to transform a painful memory:

Create a New Memory

Another technique for transforming an unwholesome memory into a wholesome one is to consciously rewrite a traumatic memory. Doing so lessens the intensity of the unwholesome feelings attached to it and lays new neural networks for remembering a positive, enhancing experience (albeit one created in the imagination). By creating this healing memory, you ensure that whenever the original memory arises in your awareness, it won’t cause you as much pain as it used to.

Make an Unwholesome Memory Wholesome

Practice the following mindful meditation:

Becoming more insightful and reflective through a mindfulness practice leads to greater awareness of the unwholesome memories produced by your mind. You may be tempted to be critical of your ability to meditate or quickly shift the painful memory, but what you really are is a person making a long and sometimes arduous journey of self-discovery and self-acceptance. Don’t hold yourself to unrealistic standards and expect to quickly transform what are often lifelong thinking habits.

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Too often, our lives become all about our distractions, and in quiet moments, the thought occurs to us that we’re not living authentically, in alignment with our deepest desires. With mindfulness, we can begin to quiet what the Buddhists call the “monkey mind,” the chattering self that, like an untrained monkey roaming about a house alone, wreaking havoc and causing mischief, relentlessly generates distracting thoughts. When the monkey has been put back into his cage, we can begin the process of tuning in to the creativity deep inside of us.

Here are 6 strategies from my book, Wise Mind, Open Mind to help you mindfully make the most of each day.

Step #1: Mindfully Tuning the Instrument of Self

Like a musician who tunes his instrument before playing a mindful meditation practice allows you to train your brain to be in a mindful state throughout the day. Each morning take 5 to 30 minutes to meditate. First get in a comfortable position, and focus on your breath. As you inhale, say to yourself,” in” or “rising.” Exhale from your lungs and then your abdomen, saying to yourself, “out” or “falling away.” As you breathe in and out, mentally note the thoughts, feelings, sounds, tastes, smells, and physical sensations that you experience. Don’t try to analyze any of what you’re noting. Simply be present, open, alert, and watchful as you allow the witnessing mind to emerge. This exercise will help you to train you’re brain to be in mindful state all day so that everything you do will be part of the mindfulness mediation.

Step #2: Mindfully Listening to Your Dreams

After you meditate write down in your mindfulness journal, tablet, or computer any dreams that you had the night before as they can be existential messages to alert you to situations in your life both outwardly and inwardly. Dreams are also psycho spiritual guides that provide us with intuitive markers and pointers that arise from the unconscious mind. As well you can include anything of importance that revealed itself to you during your meditation. Put aside your distractions and mindfully contemplate what the dream or meditation thoughts symbolize. When you are ready its meaning will come to you. If you have repetitive disturbing dreams or thoughts I would recommend seeing a professional therapist to discuss their hidden meanings.

Step #3: Mindfully Stretching the Body

Take 5 to 15 minutes at some point during the day for mindful yogatation where you practice yoga asanas – stretching exercises that create flexibility, tone, and more spacious movement. When practicing yogatation or any other stretching exercises it is important to focus on your breathing in a mindful way. After you’ve hit your pose, close your eyes and inhale deeply. Hold this breath a few seconds, and then exhale slowly. This is a way of tuning into your body and finding out where energy is flowing and where it is blocked, where there is pain, stress or constriction and where energy is flowing with aliveness and wellbeing. Focus on the constricted areas and visualize energy flowing into them so they move into a state of expansion.

Step #4: Mindfully Taking a Sacred Pause

When under pressure or stressed out learning to take a mindful or sacred pause helps you to self regulate the “fight or flight” aspect of your nervous system. When you are first triggered, stop yourself from responding with an unwholesome reaction such as anger. Then for a couple of minutes focus on your breath. Feel your body expand as you breathe in and contract as you exhale. While focusing on your breath silently repeat to yourself words such as comfort, calm abiding, relax, and harmony, until you feel a shift in your emotions. You are now able to respond to the situation with more equanimity.

Step #5: Mindfully Transforming Your Emotions and Thoughts

For 2500 years in the Zen teachings of the Buddha thoughts and emotions were viewed as both creative and destructive manifestations. Several times throughout the day take time to mindfully inquire into what you are thinking and feeling. Is it positive, neutral or negative? If it is positive, ask how you can amplify the thoughts to harness their power and direct them into wholesome, generative activities and emotions. If it is in your personal life, how can you improve your relationships with family and friends? If it is in your work, how can you manifest more clarity and open mind thinking? When harnessing positive generative energy you can take action or effort to move forward in your life or work.

Step #6: Mindfully Mining the Gold Within

Living a mindful life awakens your intuition and allows you to access your core creativity so that you can break through the hard rock that’s hiding your vein of gold. When you think of your talents or skills, you might imagine what you’d list on a résumé, but some of our most valuable assets can be less obvious: patience, reliability, flexibility, the ability to see the big picture or the fine details, the ability to communicate effectively with a variety of people, and so on. You may also have the gold of specialized knowledge, not just in your chosen professional field, but gathered from your life experiences. You might be street smart or know a lot about the habits of a particular group of people or understand how to motivate others. Because we so often think only about skills that are marketable or talent that’s exceptional, it can be easy to overlook your own gold, which can take many forms.

Mindfulness improves your capacity to be reflective and receptive. Being reflective gives you access to information in your unconscious that’s hidden from your conscious mind. It lets you receive subtle communications to help you live with more happiness, energy and grace.

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