Many of us spend an exorbitant amount
of time and energy
money -- taking care of our bodies, and
trying to keep ourselves looking and
feeling our best. But when it comes to the
mind, less attention (literally) is paid.
Taking care of the mind can come as an
afterthought, and often we think of the
mind as something outside of our own
control.
"Our life is the creation of our mind,"
according to Buddhist scripture. Buddhist
philosophy developed an entire science of
training the unruly mind to help anyone
overcome its constant fluctuations to
achieve stillness, and eventually,
enlightenment.
But even if it's not enlightenment you're
after, developing a good relationship
with your mind is critical to building a
life that is successful on your own terms.
Here are eight habits of mind to start
cultivating right now for less stress,
more creativity, less distraction and
more enjoyment in life.
Make time for stillness.
Meditation has been around for
thousands of years, and it's perhaps the
single most powerful tool out there for
gaining mastery over your mind. The
mental health benefits of meditation are
virtually endless, from addiction
recovery to reduced anxiety and
depression to enhanced creativity and
improved cognitive function. Meditation
can actually increase neuroplasticity,
making it possible to literally rewire the
brain.
"Meditation research, particularly in the
last 10 years or so, has shown to be very
promising because it points to an ability
of the brain to change and optimize in a
way we didn't know previously was
possible," neuroscience researcher Zoran
Josipovic, who has conducted brain-
imaging studies on Buddhist monks, told
the BBC in 2011.
Pursue meaning over pleasure.
Not all happiness is created equal, and in
your own pursuit of joy and bliss, keep
in mind that the type of happiness you're
after can make all the difference. A
recent UCLA study found that eudaimonic
happiness -- that which was linked to
having a larger purpose or sense of
meaning in life -- was linked with
healthy gene activity, whereas hedonic ,
or pleasure-seeking, happiness was not.
Those who were happy because they had
a sense of purpose in life had lower
inflammatory gene expression and higher
antiviral and antibody gene expression
than others.
"Eudaimonic happiness is something you
build up over a lifetime," Shimon
Edelman, cognitive psychologist and
author of "The Happiness Of Pursuit,"
told The Huffington Post. "In a sense, it's
a great consolation for older people
nice to know that on that component,
people can get more and more happy as
they age if they led good lives."
Read, read, read.
Consider reading your mind's daily
greens. Simply reading a book can lower
stress levels, help you sleep better, keep
your brain sharp, and also stave off
Alzheimer's.
But before you turn to your Kindle, take
note: Reading on screens may drain more
mental resources and make it harder to
remember what we've read after we're
done, as compared to reading on paper,
according to Scientific American.
"Whether they realize it or not, people
often approach computers and tablets
with a state of mind less conducive to
learning than the one they bring to
paper," according to the article.
Let it be.
Sweating the small stuff is one of the
most toxic things you can do to your
mind -- not only can it take over your
thoughts, but dwelling on what's beyond
your control has been shown to be a
contributing factor in the development of
depression.
You know that unfinished project that's
been nagging at you? Try just letting it
go. According to Arianna Huffington, a
great way to complete a project is by
dropping it. Huffington recently
explained at a Women in Business event
in Toronto:
"One of my favorite sayings is
'100 per cent is a breeze, 99 per
cent is a bitch'... That doesn’t
mean ignoring my other needs,
but it means when I’m in it, I’m
really in it. And that means often
saying no to good things, to
things that you might want to do,
but get in the way of sleep, or get
in the way of being with your
children, or whatever it is that’s
also very important to you. Just
have a conversation with
yourself and say these projects
are done, over, and then you
have energy for the things you’re
really going to commit yourself
to."
Flex your memory muscle.
Thanks to technology, we're taking in
more information than ever before, but
we're also losing our ability to retain
that information. A recent poll found
that millennials are even more forgetful
than seniors, due, at least in part, to
their reliance on technology.
Keeping your memory sharp requires
some time and attention
brain will thank you for it. Certain
cognitive tricks and exercises can
significantly boost your powers of
memory, and make sure that you hold on
to those things you never want to forget.
Unplug and recharge.
Constant digital distractions can take a
toll on the mind
technology has been linked with
increased stress levels, reduced focus and
productivity, stunted creativity and poor
sleep quality. And Internet addiction is
increasingly being recognized as a very
real psychological problem.
Many of us never take a break from our
devices, even when we're supposed to be
relaxing (nearly 60 percent of Americans
stay plugged in to work while they're on
vacation). But allotting yourself some
tech-free time could make you more
focused, less stressed, and happier.
“[A digital detox] is almost like a reboot
for your brain and your soul,” Cisco
executive Padmasree Warrior told the
New York Times. “It makes me so much
calmer when I’m responding to e-mails
later.”
Let your mind wander.
In addition to boosting creativity (and
being a generally enjoyable activity),
daydreaming can actually make you
smarter.
According to NYU psychologist Scott
Kaufman's theory of personal
intelligence, mind-wandering is an
adaptive trait that helps us to achieve
personally meaningful goals, and it helps
us to access spontaneous forms of
cognition like insight, intuition and the
triggering of memories and stored
information.
Kaufman recently wrote in Scientific
American that mind-wandering can offer
significant personal rewards:
These rewards include self-
awareness, creative incubation,
improvisation and evaluation,
memory consolidation,
autobiographical planning, goal
driven thought, future planning,
retrieval of deeply personal
memories, reflective
consideration of the meaning of
events and experiences,
simulating the perspective of
another person, evaluating the
implications of self and others’
emotional reactions, moral
reasoning, and reflective
compassion... From this personal
perspective, it is much easier to
understand why people are
drawn to mind wandering and
"willing to invest nearly 50
percent of their waking hours
engaged in it.
Linger on the positive.
Want to wire your brain for happiness?
You can start by savoring those tiny
moments of joy in your day, whether it's
the smell of fresh coffee or a smile from
a loved one. Lingering on these positive
moments can help to overcome the
brain's "negativity bias," which causes us
to store negative memories in our brains
more easily (and strongly) than positive
memories.
“[Lingering on the positive] improves the
encoding of passing mental states into
lasting neural traits," "Hardwiring
Happiness" author Rick Hanson recently
told the Huffington Post. "That’s the key
here: we’re trying to get the good stuff
into us. And that means turning our
passing positive experiences into lasting
emotional memories."
Build daily rituals.
Habit is one of the most effective ways to
make any positive change in your life. By
developing habits, good behaviors that
may have once required a feat of
willpower to put into action become
automatic
be so difficult to break.
"For the things that you decide matter…
the only way to ensure that things that
aren’t urgent but are important happen is
to build rituals," The Energy Project CEO
Tony Schwartz told the Huffington Post.
"Build highly specific behaviors that you
do at precise times over and over again
until you don’t have to use energy to get
yourself to do it anymore
becomes as automatic as brushing your
teeth at night."
No comments:
Post a Comment