Are you interested in reducing stress? Would you like to achieve more while doing less? Did you know that by consistently applying one basic principle, you can turn a stress-filled tension-packed life into a relatively stress-free, balanced life? You will be far more productive, and find more fulfillment.

If you think it is a contradiction in terms to say that you can achieve more by doing less, think again. Have you ever noticed how your performance often improves when you stop trying so hard? For example, you are in an important business meeting and for some reason you just know that things are going to work out. You let go of struggling to get your point of view across and you trust. Uncannily, your colleagues start asking for and listening to your opinion, and things go smoothly. Or, you are in a tennis match or out on the golf course, you play exceptionally well, and as you look back at the experience, you realize that during that experience you stopped thinking and started flowing. It all seemed so easy!

In these two examples, you achieve more by doing less. And in fact, the peak experiences of our lives, the moments where we really shine, typically are experiences in which we feel like we are re doing very little or nothing at all. Instead, life is happening through us. The quality of effortlessness is what makes peak experiences special: a lot is happening, but we are the instrument, not the doer.

Peak experiences are moments of flow or of being in the zone. The effortless flow quality of peak experiences is always accompanied by a sense of profound pleasure and total clarity.

For most of us, peak experiences are the exception rather than the norm. We would like to feel effortless more often, and we are fascinated by people who seem to be masters of flow, who have learned how to manifest that flow in what they do. Think of Tiger Woods. Despite the enormous challenges inherent in his situation, he almost always looks composed, and his body is a picture of fluid grace. He knows that even in the face of intense demands, deep relaxation is the key to his success. For example, in an interview several years ago, Tiger Woods described how he worked for years to achieve a lighter and lighter touch with his golf club, because that delicacy of touch was the key to his extraordinary control. He focused his attention on relaxing his fingers and arms to feel more deeply and focus more effectively in order to achieve at higher levels.

Most peak performers focus on maintaining a certain inner state, a state of deep physical relaxation or effortlessness, as key to their success. Effortlessness is a physical feeling that combines deep physical relaxation with a calm mind and pointed focus. Peak performers know that they cannot achieve at high levels without this feeling. They make cultivating this physical feeling priority number one, and let everything else take second place. They achieve more because they refuse to sacrifice their inner calm to achieving any goal.

The reason most people fail to perform at their peak is that they focus too much on what they have to accomplish, and too little on how they feel inside as they go about accomplishing things. Since they pay so little attention to their inner state, they end up feeling wound up with everything they have to do, from the moment they get up in the morning till they get home. They assume that that is the price they have to pay for what they have to accomplish. But the truth is the opposite!

The more stressed we feel, the more we achieve at a level far below our real potential. We live by rules that generate the opposite of an effortless and successful lifestyle. If you dare to stop making achievement at all costs your god, and instead commit yourself to an effortless lifestyle as the foundation from which you approach achieving, then you will attain greater success. You will be following in the footsteps of masters who know that high levels of achievement depend on high levels of inner composure, and that the secret to success is learning to make physical, mental and emotional relaxation the basis for achievement.