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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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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We all know that we live in a very stressful world and have been reminded over and over that too much tension can lead to chronic psychosomatic disorders, autoimmune, heart disease, adrenal burnout, cancer, migraines, ulcerative colitis as well as eating disorders, drug and alcohol abuse. For many the easiest way to deal with their excessive stress level is to turn to anti- anxiety drugs such as Prozac and Ativan instead of first taking a run in the neighborhood or a weekly yoga or mindfulness class? Of course there are certain brain chemistry disorders that cannot be completely regulated with these types of activities and many of my patients thrive once they do get on the right medication. My colleague, Dr. Mark Epstein wrote a very informative article on this topic entitled Awakening through Prozac. I also address this issue in my book, Wise Mind, Open Mind.

As a young man when I first started university I was initially overwhelmed with campus life and began getting anxiety and panic attacks for the first time in my life. I didn’t know exactly what they were but I had the good sense to go to the Student Mental Health Center for help. Thankfully I saw a young psychologist who had just returned from studying in India. He asked me, “I can give you medication for your anxiety attacks or I can teach you meditation. What would you like to do?” Well I knew about medication but the meditation aspect intrigued me so I started to learn it. Shortly afterwards my attacks stopped and I was delighted to discover an incredibly valuable lifelong tool to help me through life’s challenges.

Now a certain level of stress can be beneficial but the key is to know when you have reached that magical threshold, which is different for each individual. People who are able to let things roll off their back can generally handle more stress than those who are sensitive. One indication that you are maxed out is when your body starts to break down and you develop chronic illnesses such as gastrointestinal problems, insomnia, chronic worry or immune related disorders. Working primarily in the entertainment industry I know that many of my patients thrive on a certain amount of stress. It gives them drive, vitality, purpose and stimulates their creative juices. The challenge is to help them find a healthy balance without always or immediately resorting to medication. With their hectic lives they don’t have the time to meditate for hours sitting in a lotus position so I work with them on techniques that I call Meditation in Action.

Meditation in Action is at its core learning to take a mindful or sacred pause and self regulate the “fight or flight” aspect of your nervous system, which can affect positive changes in the neuronal pathways to the amygdala, the walnut-sized area in the center of the brain responsible for regulating emotions. When the amygdala is relaxed, the parasympathetic nervous system engages to counteract the anxiety response. Instead it activates what we call the relaxation or healing response when the heart rate lowers, breathing deepens and slows, and the body stops releasing cortisol and adrenaline into the bloodstream; these stress hormones provide us with quick energy in times of danger but have damaging effects on the body in the long term if they’re too prevalent. In mindfulness you learn to slow down and how to take your body’s pulse. Even though mindfulness originated in an eastern culture it is a standalone practice that is not associated with any religion or spirituality.

So the next time you’re under a deadline, your partner comes home in an ugly mood, your supervisor wants you to work overtime once again or you just get cut off in traffic try these four simple steps from my book, Wise Mind, Open Mind to help you respond with more composure and calmness.

With practice mindstrength is an effective tool to help one develop a deeply grounded core rudder so that no matter what the size of the wave they encounter they can recover quickly and proceed with more focus. The business yogi of the 21st Century has the capacity and ability to pair together intention and attention to make life’s entire daily challenges a true meditation in action.

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I asked if I could interrupt and work with them for a few minutes. By taking 12 minutes to practice what was once an ancient meditation practice but is now very mainstream we applied the basic principles of intention setting the mind on a positive outcome coupled with focusing on the breath. After about fifteen minutes the group entered what I call in my book Wise Mind, Open Mind the practice of mindful meditative inquiry and it didn’t take long for the group to recognize that they were all experiencing similar fears and concerns. They realized that they all saw the core problem and wanted to solve it, whereas before, all they perceived was a power struggle—each one determined to win. Now the marketing team was able to find common ground and get to the heart of what had worked for this recording artist in the past. This time I noticed “no” was used approximately16 times and “YES” was the predominate word of choice. They finally worked out a solution that the star agreed to and soon after the new marketing push, the recording shot to the top of the charts.

Whenever we’re facing an unpleasant or alarming situation, we’re likely to become anxious and try to figure out what we can do instead of becoming quiet and seeking new ideas or revisiting what worked in the past. We quickly make a decision about our course and focus on getting others to agree to go along with the program. This desire to take control can lead to great suffering.

Twenty five hundred years ago the Buddha understood how to accept the impermanent nature of things, stop clinging and grasping, and let go of the need to control the situation that one can find themselves in. He developed an eightfold path of wise view, intention, speech, action, livelihood, effort, mindfulness and concentration to find balance between acceptance and doing what needs to be done to positively affect your circumstances. Here is a brief synopsis of these strategies from my book, Wise Mind, Open Mind where I give additional practical advice on accepting change.

The Eightfold Path to Letting Go of the Need to Control

First Path: Wise View

In wise view, you recognize that it’s not your job, nor is it in your power, to control what happens outside of you. You understand that instead, you can only control what happens within your own mind.

Second Path: Wise Intention

To exercise wise intention, you must be mindful of any propensity toward allowing your fear to rule you. When operating from a primitive, fearful state, everything seems to be a threat to survival, and the mind begins to justify actions it otherwise would recognize as domineering and manipulative.

Third Path: Wise Speech

The greater our facility with language, the more tempting it can be to try to control situations through our words. Insults and sarcasm can intimidate others. Gossip and left-handed compliments are also common weapons in the arsenal of one who doesn’t exercise wise speech.

Fourth Path: Wise Action

Wise action means not acting in controlling, manipulative, or coercive ways. It means not being vengeful, regardless of how badly you’ve been hurt. The thirst for revenge comes from clinging to the past and to the lost opportunity to prevent suffering. People can obsess over what they should’ve done differently, and sometimes that obsession turns into vengefulness as they try to “right” a wrong.

Fifth Path: Wise Livelihood

Livelihood refers not just to what you do for a living but your purpose, which weaves meaning into every action. Whatever you spend your time doing, whatever it is that gives you a sense of purpose, Buddhist tradition says that you must do it mindfully, giving it the focus and effort it deserves.

Sixth Path: Wise Effort

To exercise wise effort is to focus and discipline your mind to align it with your wise intention. It’s very easy to resort to controlling behavior in a difficult situation, even if you intend not to. Wise effort requires letting go of what no longer works and engaging in courageous new actions that leads to transformation.

Seventh Path: Wise Mindfulness

Mindfulness is what grounds you in the present so that when you start to drift off into obsessing about the past, or start making plans to wrest control of a situation, you instead stop and look deeply at your negative and controlling patterns. Being fully focused on what’s happening in the moment, experiencing your unwholesome and painful feelings, requires what I call “mindstrength,” the ability to very quickly and easily shift out of a reactive mode and become fully present in the moment.

Eighth Path: Wise Concentration

By exercising wise concentration, you remain present in your awareness of a situation exactly as it is, and instead of being reactive, you’ll find that you suddenly know how to respond to it in a wholesome, productive way. You’ll be able to focus on what’s going on inside you instead of what’s going on outside of you.

So take a deep breath inhale and exhale, set your mind on what you wish, and await a more positive outcome. Enjoy your day with mindfulness!

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