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Introduction

Ten million people in America practice mindful meditation. That’s quite a lot. Mindful meditation has become popular as more and more people enjoy living a better, less stressful, more productive life.

Why are these people turning to meditation to improve their daily lives? The easy answer is, meditation works. The more complex answer is that today, we are suffering from information overload and stress more than previous generations. Some meditators want to reduce stress and enjoy greater peace. Others seek more awareness to create a more purposeful life. Still others want to gain greater awareness and align their thoughts with their actions.

Mindful meditation is useful for all of these purposes. What is true for everyone, however, is that the more you know about your thinking, the more you are in control of your life.

Whatever the reason, mindful meditation can be a powerful force. Like music, life has many layers, and mindful meditation can help you become aware of all the nuances.

Mindful meditation isn’t magic. It allows you to concentrate your awareness on the here and now. All too frequently, our attention can scatter into the past or the future. We become distracted and unable to focus on what is important in the present.

Mindful meditation gives us power to focus on the here and now.

It increases our mental energy, allowing us to perform better and achieve more. Quite simply, mindful meditation makes us more efficient in many areas of our lives.

More importantly, it puts us in control. The mind is an extremely complex labyrinth, where the subconscious can rule and throw roadblocks in our path. There are times we behave in certain ways without being consciously aware of why. Mindful meditation increases our awareness and opens our minds to more answers.

Our senses are heightened as we enjoy the present more fully.

Everyday activities, from what we eat, how we enjoy art and listen to music, and how we respond to friends and family become more vivid as mental walls crumble.

Mindful meditation relaxes us. With awareness, stress and unpleasant thoughts become less threatening and easier to handle.

We become more relaxed and are able to let more joy and peace into our lives.

Today, we live in a state of impermanence more than ever before in history. More than a hundred years ago, most people spent their lives in the town in which they were born. They knew all their neighbors. Their station in life determined their job. It may not sound ideal to us, but it certainly wasn’t stressful. These days, we live very fragmented lives. We may move regularly and barely know our neighbors. We switch jobs and friends on a regular basis.

Constant change has become the one permanence on which we can rely. There’s no denying that modern knowledge and conveniences have brought us untold advantages. However, at the same time, we have lost our connection to others and our surroundings. Mindful meditation brings back that important lost connection to what is happening inside of us and around us. It’s not an antidote to the problems of living in the 21st century, but it can provide the skills to help us cope with many of its problems.

You don’t have to be a yogi to reap the benefits of mindful meditation. The more you practice, the better you will become. It’s like exercise for the mind. You know what daily exercise does for your body. It strengthens and firms those muscles.

In much the same way, daily mindful meditation strengthens your mind and hones your thinking process. It’s both simple and complex, and at all times, it’s a choice. Hopefully, this book will help you make the right one for you. Consistency is the key to successful practice. Even a short meditation period every day is more effective than sporadic longer meditations.

Like physical exercise, mindful meditation is a process. Success doesn’t happen overnight. But it will happen. When you begin your meditation journey, you may find it difficult to sit quietly for 15 or 20 minutes at a time. You may start making excuses why it’s okay to skip meditation for just one day.

This will make it harder to resume meditating the following day, and you’ll easily find an excuse why you shouldn’t. You’re too tired, too busy, too frustrated … any excuse will do. That’s why making a commitment to regular meditation is necessary. Ask yourself what motivated you in the first place. Make a pact with yourself that you will get up half an hour earlier in the morning to meditate. With a firm commitment, you will gain momentum and see the results.

Mindful meditation is unrivalled in its ability to open your mind.

If you are new at mindful meditation, it is helpful that you ask yourself what has motivated you to start meditating at this time.

There is, however, no right or wrong reason.

Chapter 1

What Is Mindful Meditation?

Mindful meditation is actually very simple, yet it comes with great benefits.

The Origin Of Mindful Meditation

It’s a Western practice with roots in thousands of years of Buddhism, where it’s referred to as “Insight Meditation.” As that name suggests, it is meant to develop our mental skills and become more aware. However, mindful meditation is not associated with any specific ideology.

Mindfulness is a skill we all possess, but not all of us develop and cultivate it fully. The unique thing about mindful meditation is that it allows us to take an active part in our thinking process instead of remaining passive. It’s more than being aware of the world around us; it specifically refers to that exciting and sometimes mysterious world inside of us. Mindfulness increases our awareness of ourselves and how we think. It’s an effective way of knowing ourselves better.

Mindful meditation is always purposeful and non-judgmental. We calmly accept and acknowledge what is. Instead of moving through the day on autopilot, mindful meditation allows us to be more present and gain more control over our thoughts and activities. This invariable enriches our lives beyond measure.

Mindfulness To Tackle Daily Challenges

When we practice mindful meditation consistently, we gain an inner calm that will help us deal with life’s many challenges. How often have we become so stressed that we have consciously avoided

thinking about our problems, which then only worsen as we become more stressed? Sometime, it may feel easier not to think at all. But in the long run, reality will take over.

Non-judgmental awareness allows us to remove ourselves mentally from the mental tsunami and remain calm in times of adversity. We become more connected to our experiences in a healthy, non-threatening way.

On a basic human level, it’s natural for us to push aside unpleasant thoughts by distracting ourselves from what is really important. Addictions to alcohol, drugs and social media are just some of the ways we avoid dealing with the present.

This obviously is not helpful and merely generates greater anxiety and stress. Daily mindful meditation keeps us focused on the present and helps us deal with problems rather than avoiding them. Fortunately, becoming more aware is a skill that can be learned. Like playing a musical instrument or a sport, the more we practice, the better we become at it.

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Chapter 1: Why Energy Management > Time Management

What is it that is holding you back in life? A lot of us make the mistaken assumption that it is time. We think that if only we had a little more time, then we could get all kinds of things done. If we had a little more time, then the house would be cleaner, we’d spend more time with our family and friends and we’d be able to progress faster through our career. Maybe we could start a new training program as well and finally get those abs?

But there just isn’t time in the day. We work from 9-5 and when we get home, we often still have a long list of tasks to do that we just don’t have time to finish. That includes checking the mail, paying bills, making dinner, washing up and hopefull y getting just a little bit of time to spend with family!

Man, if only there were more time… right?

Well actually, time is very often not the problem. Rather, the problem comes down to energy. Think about it: if you really don’t have any time to do anything, then how were you able to watch that entire Boxset of Game of Thrones recently? If you really don’t have time to do anything, then how have you been finding time to play Uncharted?

If you genuinely work and busy yourself from the first thing in the morning, all the way up until bedtime, then the answer would be simple: get up earlier, or go to bed later.

No, that is not the problem.

Instead, the problem is energy. Time management isn’t the only big deal here: energy management is just as important. If you can’t effectively manage your energy, then you’re going to find that you can’t make full use of your time. And that’s a problem!

What probably really happens when you get home from work, is that you collapse onto the sofa and watch TV for a bit. Or maybe you just procrastinate a little by not really doing anything much for a short time.

Either way, you could be working. You could be working on that amazing novel.

The issue is not your time at all but rather it is your energy. And this isn’t to say that you’re in some way lazy, or that you could be making better use of your time right now. Instead, it is to say that you’re simply pushing yourself too hard and too far – and it should come as no surprise that you’re not achieving as much as you hope as a result.

Energy is something that most of us ignore: ‘I have a few hours tonight,’ we say, ‘I’ll do it then!’. The only problem is that if you don’t have the energy, then you’re not going to do it. Your energy is finite, it can only go so far, and if you ignore that fact then you’re going to run out of steam and not accomplish the things you want to change.

Coming to Terms With Energy Management

There’s a good chance that you may be reading this and considering energy management properly for the very first time. Perhaps it’s something you never really thought about before – you wouldn’t be alone in that!

But even at this early stage in the book, you’ve hopefully learned a valuable lesson. Simply acknowledging that energy is probably what’s holding you back is one of the very best things you can do to start making life easier.

Once you come to terms with this, you can start to think more logically and realistically about what you can achieve in a day. That means you can remove item from your agenda – knowing full well that you won’t be able to accomplish them – and thus actually get more done as a result and come home with more energy left over.

When thinking about whether you’re going to walk home tonight or drive, be realistic and accept that driving may be easier. When planning to complete a long list of chores this evening, be honest with yourself and ask how likely you are to really complete that list. Did you manage to finish everything you set out to last time? Give yourself a break and organize your day sensibly.

Our Strategy for Boosting Energy

So what is our overall strategy for boosting energy?

It actually comes down to a few things. The first is management: managing our time better and thinking about how much energy we’re likely to have in a given day and what we actually want to do with it. And by finding ways to avoid wasting energy, we can save more for the things that we ultimately decide really matter.

The next step is to start small and not be too ambitious. That’s true with the other things we’re trying to achieve and it’s also true of the lifestyle changes we’re introducing in this book. Simply put? You’re not going to transform your energy levels and your health overnight – and you shouldn’t try! Work up to it slowly and be smart about how you’re raising your energy. We’re going to introduce the concept of ‘kaizen’ here, which means that we’re introducing small changes with the aim of eventually seeing big results. Kaizen is a Japanese concept that basically means any journey is best accomplished with lots of little steps.

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A lot of marketers have all sorts of wrong ideas about social media marketing. Some think that you only need to post "viral content" to get tons of traffic overnight. They actually believe that if you are able to pump that much traffic to your target website, a large chunk of those people will buy whatever it is that you are selling.

Maybe you're selling services, maybe you're selling an event, or maybe you are selling products from an online store, it doesn't matter. According to this idea, you just need to have a lot of traffic; courtesy of viral content on social media, and you will get the conversions you're looking for.

There is an assumption that social traffic, regardless of which platform it comes from and regardless of how you qualify that traffic, converts to sales readily.

Sadly, none of these assumptions are true. In fact, all of them are tragically mistaken.

If you believe in any of these, don't be surprised if you spend a lot of time, effort and money only to end up with a whole lot of nothing. Welcome to the club.

Effective social media marketing can be reduced to one metaphor. Master this metaphor and you probably will make money on autopilot with social media traffic. Screw up this metaphor or remain clueless to it, and you'll continue to struggle; you'll continue to believe that social media traffic can easily be generated through viral content. You might keep running after that unicorn only to get tired and frustrated.

It doesn't have to be this way. You just have to have the right metaphor or the right conceptual model to make social media marketing work for you. Best of all, you can make it work on autopilot.

You probably have heard of all sorts of "set it and forget it" systems. You probably bought at least one of these products. Well, they're definitely on the right track as far as their label. Social media marketing can be automated. It can be mastered to the point where it can produce income after you've set it. But getting there is another matter entirely. And that's the price people have to pay.

And unfortunately, most people are not willing to pay that. They're excited about shortcuts, but they're not willing to take the stairs to get to the top. At the back of their minds, they're thinking that there has to be some sort of elevator.

There is no shortcut. You have to work with this metaphor

What am I getting at? Well, the secret to effective social media marketing is an inverted pyramid. It looks like a funnel. That is the metaphor you should have in your mind when thinking of ways to get traffic from social networks and social media platforms and turning that into cold, hard cash in your bank account.

I need you to keep this idea of an inverted pyramid in your mind. It should have a wide base at the top. The top of that pyramid is heavy visibility. It has to be there. You need to be visible on the four major social media platforms. I'm talking about Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Pinterest.

Taken together, the traffic volume you can get from these four platforms is mind blowing. They can potentially pump a tremendous amount of traffic. But that's just part of the equation. That's just the top of the funnel. Potentially, you can push a lot of traffic from the top. That's how wide the top of the funnel is.

This training will focus on these four platforms, but you can pretty much use the tips that I'm going to share with you and modify them to market on other platforms since many of these principles easily apply.

You might need to modify them a little bit. For example, if you are thinking of marketing on Instagram, a lot of the things that I will teach you about Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Pinterest, can be tweaked to work well on the Instagram platform.

Now that you have a clear idea of the heavy visibility that you can achieve with social media, keep in mind that visibility does not mean traffic or clicks to your

site. This is a myth. The visibility that I'm talking about means visibility on those platforms.

When people share your content within those platforms, you can enjoy a tremendous reach within such platforms.

But this does not automatically mean that when you share content on Facebook, people who see your link on the materials shared by their friends would automatically click them.

Get the idea out of your head that raw visibility, or as Facebook terms it, "reach," automatically translates to traffic. It doesn't work that way. Instead, you need to start with heavy content visibility on each platform. People must see your stuff there. You must achieve a wide enough reach.

People may not necessarily click on through to your site, but that's secondary. At this point, you just want your brand to be visible. You just want people to become familiar with your brand.

So what's the big deal about visibility anyway? You may be thinking, since visibility doesn't mean actual visitors to your website, what good is it?

Think about it this way, when was the last time you saw an ad for the first time and automatically clicked it? If you're like most other people, you probably would want to see the ad show up a few times for you to become familiar with it. You might glance at if from time to time, you might read the description from time to time, but after enough showings, you might seriously think of clicking through.

The same applies to your content on social media platforms. Don't expect that just because you come up with catchy titles and nice, attention-grabbing graphics that this is enough for you to expect a tremendous amount of clicks to your website. It doesn't work that way.