Most of us likely made New Year’s resolutions, many of which we may have broken already. But for many of us, the promise to live calmly and peacefully may be one we still aspire to – but perhaps haven’t yet achieved.
That’s why I found this piece by Elizabeth Bernstein, “A Daily Workout for the Brain,” with a subtitle of: “Stressed Out, Anxious or Sad? Try Meditating,” so interesting – and even inspirational. Here is part of Daniel Goleman’s advice that she shared:
Every kind of meditation retrains attention. It’s the basic mental-fitness exercise. Ordinarily, our mind wanders half the time. In meditation, you bring discipline to the mind and try to keep it focused on one thing. When your mind wanders, you bring it back to that thing. This is roughly parallel to going to the gym and lifting weights. Every time you lift the weight, you make that muscle a little stronger. And every time you bring your mind back to your meditation, you make the neural circuitry in your brain a little stronger.
There are many beneficial effects of this simple exercise. Attention strengthens. Concentration improves. Memory improves. Learning improves. And because the same circuitry in the brain that focuses your attention also manages the amygdala, which causes you to get anxious or upset or depressed, people have a double benefit: They react less strongly to things that used to upset them and recover more quickly when they do get upset.
