POSITIVE ADDICTION #3: RELENTLESS MINDFULNESS

As you might imagine, I am often in situations of intense stress and pressure. But then, aren’t we all? Meditation is my lifesaver. Meditation keeps me sane. It is not something I just believe implicitly. It is something obvious to everyone around me. My friends, family, and business associates can tell instantly if I did not meditate. When I skip meditation I’m a different person. I yell. I’m negative. I’m more harsh. I’m more scattered, less focused. I’m quick to stress out.

I meditate while on airplanes, before speeches, before TV or media appearances, before (and often while) writing the pages of this book. Meditation will clear, refresh, and supercharge your mind, thereby significantly increasing your creativity and ability to focus.

So, how do you meditate? It is so simple. Let me give you the Cliffs-Notes version:

          •    Set your alarm for fifteen minutes.

          •    If possible put on calming music, or simply do your best to ignore outside distractions.

          •    Breathe in . . . breathe out.

          •    Feel your breath in, feel your breath out.

          •    Think only of the single breath you are breathing.

          •    It’s natural to get distracted and think of something else. No problem. Just drop the thought and go back to breathing in and out and concentrating on that single breath as you do it.

That’s it. Do it once in the morning, then once or twice more during the day when you’re under stress, or feeling exhausted. Meditation keeps your energy high, keeps you focused like a laser, and creates massive levels of enthusiasm, creativity, and a positive mindset no matter what you face.

Again, you don’t need to just take my word for it. The benefits of meditation have been proven by scientific research.

A Harvard study shows meditation literally changes your body and your brain. It reduces stress and boosts the immune system.1

A study by a Nobel Prize-winning scientist at UCLA proved that just twelve minutes per day of meditation slows the cellular aging process and extends lifespan. It literally increases the length of your telomeres. So meditation is the real-life “Fountain of Youth”!²

Studies show meditation lowers your healthcare bill, lowers depression, changes the brain to protect against mental illness, reduces the severity of colds, improves grades for kids in college, improves the performance of troops in the military, helps you lose weight, and helps you sleep better. (All the better to implement Positive Addiction #1 and wake up earlier.)³

Psychology Today reported on studies showing that meditation boosts productivity, boosts health, increases immunity, decreases pain, decreases anxiety and stress, increases intelligence by boosting the cortical thickness of your brain (in the area related to paying attention), improves memory, improves focus, and boosts your ability to multi-task, be creative, and think outside box. That explains me (and soon you!).4

The UCLA Brain Mapping Center studied gray matter loss due to aging. In doing so they recruited fifty people who don’t meditate as a control group and fifty who do. Then the scientists compared their brain scans with high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging. Each group of fifty was comprised of twenty-eight men and twenty-two women ranging in age from twenty to seventy-seven. Those who meditated had been doing so for at least four years and up to forty-six years, with an average of twenty years. Although all the older subjects, both meditators and non-meditators, showed signs of diminishing gray matter, large parts of the gray matter in the brains of those who meditated appeared better preserved.

As a matter of fact, according to Dr. Florian Kurth, a co-author of the study and postdoctoral fellow at the UCLA Brain Mapping Center, the researchers were surprised by the magnitude of the difference.

“We expected rather small and distinct effects located in some of the regions that had previously been associated with meditating,” he said. “Instead, what we actually observed was a widespread effect of meditation that encompassed regions throughout the entire brain.”

Meditation not only appears to slow brain cell loss, but also appears to help the immune system by allowing recovery from “fight or flight” hormones, especially cortisol, which builds up with even minor chronic anxiety and worry to the point of inviting, rather than warding off, more illness. Reducing chronic cortisol reduces inflammation, and inflammation is the root of much disease. Therefore, physical as well as mental health is enhanced by meditation.⁵

The best news of all about meditation is you don’t have to become a monk and devote your life to it to gain the benefits. You don’t even need to meditate an hour or longer. Short doses, as little as twelve minutes a day, work just fine. Even if I (and all this scientific research) can’t convince you of the benefits . . . just try it out for twelve to fifteen minutes once a day for two weeks. I’m betting you’ll feel a remarkable difference and become hooked on this positive habit for life.