May be the only good thing about the increase in stress levels all across the globe is the raising awareness about meditation. It is not just some health-fad anymore as more and more people are embracing this ancient stress busting technique.
1) Finding the calm in a storm
The average human being spends 46.9% of their waking hours thinking about something or the other. That is a lot of time. A research by the University of Waterloo reported that meditation helped decrease mind-wandering related to the future thoughts.
2) Master your mind for happiness and productivity
Sadness is not really a very productive trait. Even a small boost in happiness increases productivity by 12 percent.
The Harvard Business Review reports that our ability to resist an impulse determines our success in learning a new behavior or changing an old habit. It’s probably the single most important skill for our growth and development.
As it turns out, that’s one of the things meditation teaches us.
3) Train your mind to focus effortlessly
Our mind needs breaks too, just like our body. However very few people realise and do not know the process to dump the mental garbage they go on carrying around. Some people tend to think even in their sleep. This takes away the sharpness of our brain and we fail to focus on more important works at hand. But only a few minutes of meditation a day can deal with all of this. It is like flossing, only for your mind.
A 2012 UCLA study showed that people who meditate exhibit higher levels of gyrification — the so-called folding of the cerebral cortex as a result of growth — which, in turn, may allow the brain to process information faster. Scientists suspect that gyrification is responsible for making the brain better at processing information, making decisions, forming memories and improving attention.
4) Make better decisions
When stress is high in our system, there is impairment in our minds regarding the division of attention, decision-making, working memory, and multitasking — all of which we need to be productive in life and to have more balance.
This Wharton article claims that meditation can help glean out the negative emotions and thoughts in the process of decision making.
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