Learn Mindfulness Meditation

As you know, meditation is not only a fantastic tool, but it’s also a great way to practice being more aware of your own thoughts and feelings, such that you can then take full control of them. This brings us to the concept of CBT – or cognitive behavioral therapy.

What is CBT – or Cognitive Behavioral Therapy? CBT is essentially a type of psychotherapeutic intervention that teaches people who struggle with anxiety or other issues, how to better control the nature of their own thoughts.

This all starts with perception, and this is where you can use mindfulness. In mindfulness meditation, we discussed where we mentioned that you should ‘watch’ the contents of your thoughts?

Try doing this the next time you’re stressed: what are you actually thinking?

What you’ll find is that when you’re stressed, you are imagining the worst and this is what is causing you to get worked up. And this is the big secret to stress: other than the physiological response that we’ve discussed, stress is really a result of your perception of what’s going on around you.

Put it this way: if you’re faced with a lion you will get a stress response as soon as you notice it. But if you believe the lion is your friend, then you won’t get the same stress response. Or if you think the lion is a hologram, you won’t get the stress response.

The reality doesn’t matter here: what matters here is what you are thinking.

And the same is true for all those sources of chronic stress we’ve discussed so far. If you are struggling with debt and with work, then your perception is that there’s a great big lion ahead of you. But if you can convince yourself that there’s no benefit to being stressed and if you can convince yourself that it’s not worth getting worked up, then you can overcome that stress and your response will be the same as if there was no pressure in your life.

What is Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT)?

Cognitive Restructuring So how do you do this?

The first step is to note the thoughts that are making you more worked up. If you’re stressed about talking in public, then perhaps you are filled with thoughts like:

• What happens if I stutter?
• People are going to laugh at me
• I won’t be able to talk
• I don’t know my script

None of this is helpful – it makes that lion seem bigger!

You want to replace these for more positive thoughts but simply telling yourself it’s all alright won’t work. You need to genuinely believe it. To do this, you use cognitive restructuring. A big part of this is ‘thought challenging’, where you challenge your assumptions and test just how accurate they’re likely to be.

Are you really likely to stutter? Do you normally stutter? Would people really laugh at you? Are the people in your audience that rude and unkind? And if they do laugh at you – why does it matter? You won’t have to see them again. Everyone knows that people stutter from time to time. And a little embarrassment never killed anyone: it will just make you a better public speaker next time.

3 Instantly Calming CBT Techniques For Anxiety

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy has taken a bit of a bad rap recently with meta-analytical research showing it seems to be getting increasingly less effective in the treatment of depression.

And neuroscience is showing that strong emotions often precede thoughts, so changing thoughts may do little for extreme conditions like Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and addictions.

So in this video, I seek to give you a sense of the true values and limitations of CBT, and I share 3 CBT techniques you can use for anxiety.

If you can do this as you go through your routine and be more aware of your state of mind, then you’ll find that you can prevent the stress response before it arises and rob your anxieties of all their power over you.

For more serious anxieties and phobias, you can even take this one step further and try what is known as ‘hypothesis testing’. Here, you simply test your fears by standing up to them and letting them happen. For example, you would go out onto the stage and purposefully stutter. You’ll find that no one laughs and nothing bad comes from it!

Find Out How Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy Works Here…

Understanding The Complexity Of Your Stress Systems

But what if you’re not stressed?

What if your work isn’t particularly high pressured, your relationships are good and you have plenty of money? Does that mean you’re fine? Probably not. Unfortunately, many other aspects of our modern lifestyles cause symptoms similar to those of stress.

One example is our use of technology and artificial lighting. The brain is designed to use external cues (‘zeitgebers’ to use the correct terminology) to set its own biological rhythms including the sleep-wake cycle (circadian rhythm).

This actually triggers the release of stress hormones at certain times of day. That’s because stress hormones are one of the tools that the body uses to wake itself up when you are sleeping. The release of stress hormones like cortisol and norepinephrine triggers activity in the brain that stirs you out of sleep and makes you fully alert.

But if the light is on at night, or you’re looking at your phone in the evening, this will cause the release of similar stress hormones right when you’re meant to be relaxing. That means you’ll continue to feel alert and won’t give your brain time to recover.

And what doesn’t help is the way that everything on the web and on TV is designed to grab our attention and pull us this way and that – this has been shown to cause effects similar to ADHD in the long term and make it harder for us to concentrate on any one thing for very long.

How Physiological Changes Trigger Stress

The above is an example of how stress is entirely a result of what’s going on in your life or even what you’re thinking. Instead, stress can be a result of outside factors that physically influence you.

A way to think of it is like this: Physical Sensations > Feelings > Emotions > Thoughts > Behaviors That is to say that your emotions are very often the result of physical things affecting your physiology.

For example, if you’re in a colder environment, this actually increases the amount of cortisol and the amount of norepinephrine. Physiologically, this is the same as low-level stress and that’s why a cold shower is a great way to wake yourself up!

This is also why being cold for too long can make you ill – as the stress response is suppressing your immune system.

Likewise, if you are hungry, then this triggers a physiological type of stress. Essentially, hunger causes your brain to release cortisol due to a decrease in blood sugar. When blood sugar is low, cortisol is released and the body responds to this as it would any other type of stress.

Why? Because as far as the body is concerned, this is a form of danger. If you are hungry, then you need to become active and get out there in order to seek out a source of food. Ghrelin, the hunger hormone, is released alongside cortisol and myostatin which breaks down tissue to provide energy.

When you eat, on the other hand, this causes a sudden spike in your blood sugar. That, in turn, will cause you to release insulin, which absorbs the sugar for use around the body (either in the muscles and brain, or to be stored as fat).

This also has the effect of leaving behind another substance called ‘tryptophan’, which is found in most foods but doesn’t get absorbed. Tryptophan makes its way through the circulatory system all the way to the brain, where it crosses the blood-brain barrier and converts to serotonin (as it is a ‘precursor’ to serotonin). Serotonin is the ‘feel good hormone’ and it’s also a precursor itself: this time to melatonin – the sleep hormone.

This is why when you eat a large meal, you tend to feel full, then happy, then sleepy. Christmas dinner ring any bells? This is the opposite of the stress response. This is the aforementioned ‘rest and digest’ response.

And this is another cycle that your body goes through constantly: it moves from fight or flight to rest and digest. You just don’t notice this because in a perfect world, that shift will be subtle and you won’t feel it too much. You just move slightly up and down the spectrum, becoming slightly more alert and focussed and then slightly less so.

Nevertheless, though, this constant fluctuation does have an impact on things like your productivity and your mood. And it is also closely tied to the sleep-wake cycle. When you wake up, for instance, you are in a fasted state having slept all night: thus you have high cortisol.

Hopefully, at this point, you have all the tools and knowledge you need to begin reducing and combating the stress in your own life. This isn’t going to be an easy ride. Stress for many of us has become a normal part of life and habits are hard to change.

But by using meditation, you’ll find that you can reduce your base level of stress and rebuild some of the damage to your brain caused by anxiety.

What’s more, is that this will teach you to be more aware of your thoughts and better able to control them and thereby steer your emotions.

It’s time to wrestle back control of your mind. You tell your body when it needs to wake up and when it needs to focus. You decide what’s worth worrying about. And when you’re home and work is over, you use this power to allow yourself to rest, recover and forget all about the stresses of the day.

Once you can do all this, you’ll find your mood improves, your productivity skyrockets and your health is greatly enhanced in both the long and short term. Stress less, live more

Related Questions:

What is mindfulness cognitive behavioral therapy? Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) combines cognitive-behavioral techniques with mindfulness strategies in order to help individuals better understand and manage their thoughts and emotions in order to achieve relief from feelings of distress.

Is Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy Effective? While cognitive behavioral therapy has always emphasized the end result of the change of one’s thoughts, mindfulness really looks at how a person thinks — the process of thinking — to help one be more effective in changing negative thoughts.

Is mindfulness the same as CBT? CBT generally involves one-to-one sessions with a CBT therapist identifying which thoughts or situations may be a problem and working together to improve or change a particular way of thinking. Both CBT and Mindfulness encourage you to be aware of your thoughts and feelings rather than push them away or ignore them.

 

In our every day lives, we are all guilty of neglecting our minds, allowing our brains to be lulled into a lazy, neglected, and unaware state. It is as if we are allowing ourselves to be sculpted by bland and repetitive consumerism, our individuality being chiseled away by tedium we cannot even be bothered to challenge with any will.

Life need not be like that. We are each blessed with a powerful mind; but normally people have forgotten or, most likely, never even knew how to use it. It is such a waste of our own greatest resource.

One way to start to extricate ourselves from the mindless quicksand is to gently exercise our minds, using mindfulness and meditation as a way of bringing ourselves more emphatically into the real world, and start the process of exercising control over our minds and our lives.

Mindfulness practices can help us to increase our ability to regulate emotions, decrease stress, anxiety, and depression. It can also help us to focus our attention, as well as to observe our thoughts and feelings without judgment.

Jon Kabat-Zinn, the leading mindfulness researcher in the field of psychology, and developer of the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program, further clarifies that engaging in mindfulness is a secular practice and not a form of religion.

It’s true that mindfulness is often used to complement religious practices by quieting one’s mind before prayer or meditation. But while meditation can be a method of practicing mindfulness, mindfulness can also be practiced in non-religious ways.

What Exactly Is Mindfulness? Exploring Mindfulness And Meditation By Embracing The Present Moment.

Essentially, mindfulness is a form of meditation that has been adopted by CBT. CBT, in turn, is ‘cognitive behavioral therapy’; a psychotherapeutic approach that can be used to treat all manner of psychological conditions like anxiety, phobias, addiction etc.

Mindfulness essentially gives us a tool that we can use to not only calm our thoughts and escape the stressors of the day but also reflect on the contents of our mind in the interests of self-improvement.

Meditation generally has something of a ‘bad’ reputation. That is to say that a lot of people associate it with religion or esoteric ideas and they think that they can’t meditate unless they’re‘spiritual’. This can be off-putting for someone who doesn’t hold any religious beliefs or who don’t like esoteric ideas in general.

But in fact, you can practice meditation whether you are religious or an atheist. All meditation really is, is a directed attempt to control your thoughts and the content of your mind and thereby to gain some peace and quiet or at least to be able to better understand the contents of your own brain.

Often this means completely silencing all thoughts. Many types of meditation, such as transcendental meditation, instruct you to think of ‘absolutely nothing’ and often this is achieved by focussing on your breathing, a mantra or a physical object like a candle flame. This can be difficult for beginners though, as they constantly find their mind wandering.

The idea behind mindfulness meditation then is not to try and empty your thoughts but instead to simply step back from them and ‘observe’ them like a detached third party. This way, you aren’t letting your thoughts affect you and make you stressed but you also aren’t going to struggle with not being ‘allowed’ to think anything.

Meanwhile, using this technique will also allow you to become more aware of your own thoughts and thereby able to edit any thoughts that are leading you into trouble. For instance, if you constantly find yourself thinking about the ways that you could hurt yourself, you might notice that this is a bad habit and then attempt to fix that.

This may be the long term aim of mindfulness when used in CBT. In the short term though, we are simply to use it in order to remove ourselves from our thoughts and emotions so that we can get some calm and thereby recover ready to tackle the day ahead.

Mindfulness in Daily Life – Awareness 101

This is what mindfulness refers to in most cases but it has also been appropriated to mean a lot more. If mindfulness means being more aware of your thoughts, then it can also be applied outside of meditation and to the way you go about your day. In this case, mindfulness simply means being mindful of what you’re focussing on and what you’re thinking at any given point. This is useful because very often you’ll find that your mind isn’t perhaps where it should be.

For example, if you are walking through a beautiful scenic woodland but you are thinking about work, then as far as your body is concerned you may as well be at work. In this case, mindfulness can be used simply to make yourself more aware of where you are and to actually focus on what’s around you. That means feeling the breeze on your skin, looking at the beautiful flowers and smelling the fresh air. When you do all that, you will benefit much more from the experience.

Likewise, you can use mindfulness to direct your attention to all manner of other things. For example your physical sensations. Often we aren’t aware of just how we’re sitting, how we’re standing or how we’re feeling.

Take a moment right now to reflect on this. How comfortable are you at the moment? Does any part of your body hurt? If you’re sitting down, then where is most pressure on you? Can you feel your clothes against your body? A watch maybe? How warm are you? Are you leaning more to one side?

This kind of mindfulness can be useful if you want to try and fix your posture but also if you want to improve your abilities in sports or just move more efficiently.

Being more mindful of the way you speak can meanwhile help you to speak more eloquently, to stop using derogatory words, to stop swearing, or to change the whole way that people perceive you. For example, if you want to sound more intelligent, then you can simply try using bigger words or speaking a little more slowly.

You can also use mindfulness to be happier in everyday life. Simply try to stop letting negative emotions affect you by identifying them as temporary and destructive. You can simply ‘notice’ that you’re getting angry and acknowledge that your thoughts will be tainted by that. With practice, this can make you a much calmer and much happier person. But what do you find when you try and do this?

In all likelihood, you’ll find that you forget. This is just the same way that you forget to pick up bread when your other half asks you to. And it’s just the same way you forget to pick up your keys on the way out of the house. The point is most of the time we have no control over what we’re focussed on or what we’re paying attention to. And as such, we find ourselves forgetting things, getting into bad habits or stressing when we should be enjoying ourselves.

Practicing mindfulness both as a form of meditation and during the day can, therefore, help you to improve your ability to control your thoughts and thereby to decide how you want to improve yourself and what you want to focus on.

Creating a mindfulness meditation is a gentle but powerful exercise. But how do you go about it?

A Simple Mindfulness Meditation Exercise

As with any meditation session, you need to get into a relaxed and comfortable position, eyes closed, and then commence with deep nasal breathing, focusing your thoughts on the breathing to ease yourself into a meditative state.

Once you feel that you are calmed by your breathing and that your breath is under your rhythmic control, then you can move on to focusing on your own body, a part at a time. I was first taught this at yoga class, where we were taught to concentrate first of all on the left foot, focusing on it from a position above ourselves. Then move up the body slowly, left ankle, knee, thigh and so on. When reaching your head, you then do the same in reverse on the other side of the body: right shoulder, right elbow, right hand and so on.

Once you have completed the tour of your own body, as if you were someone else examining it, then it is time to open your eyes and increase the mindfulness of your surroundings.

To do this, focus on any object in the room; it does not have to be anything special: a cup on the coffee table, a vase, a plastic flower, anything. Try to maintain that focus for half a minute, and then move on to any other object. You can repeat this several times, always maintaining a focus on your own body and your own breathing, creating a triple harmony with each object on which you focus.

By using this simple mindfulness meditation you are increasing awareness both of yourself and your surroundings, in a very gentle and easy way. It can serve as a prelude to some mental task, as well as being part of an ongoing mindfulness campaign to strengthen and expand the use of your own mind.

For example, most days I write, but sometimes I just do not seem able to concentrate on what I am supposed to be writing about. I find this type of exercise, even just for 10 minutes, will snap me out of that inexplicable malaise, and I can get right to it and write what I should have written earlier.

By Greg Thurston

Creator of Seven Minute Mindfulness

“Mindfulness” is a bit of a buzz word right now, but that doesn’t mean that you should discredit it. Being mindful is one of the best things you can do for your body and mind!

But you might not be sure what it is. Is mindfulness just being more aware? Or does it mean clearing your mind?

Being mindful, in one sense, is like simplifying things. Normally we try to multitask all day, worrying about 20 things while doing 10. That doesn’t work too well.

Being mindful means focusing on the present moment. Being fully here. It allows you to attend to what’s going on right around you and inside you. So it simplifies things because you can just enjoy the present moment.

You can meditate to be more mindful, and you can practice it throughout your day. Whatever you’re doing, give it all of your attention. Be proactive about putting down your other worries and being present in what you’re doing and who you’re with.

To experience the ultimate feelings of inner calm and presence, I highly recommend that you follow this link…

Click Here To Discover 7 Minute Mindfulness

You’ll gain inner peace, happiness and feel ‘uncluttered’ in your life.

Mindfulness a gift that we don’t give to ourselves much. In fact, our society teaches that we should be getting as much done as possible all the time, which leads to burnout, stress, health problems, and lower productivity.

Mindfulness, on the other hand, offers the opposite, so let’s take a look at all the benefits of mindfulness.

1. Mindfulness reduces stress

Let’s start with the biggie. In today’s world, we really battle stress from all sides.

If we carry around all the things we have to worry about, our mind never gets a break. That’s why so many people are completely burned out, feeling down, and stressed to the point of panic attacks or needing medication.

This kind of worrying steals away any chance of joy or relaxation in our day. You probably know how it goes: you’re sitting at your desk at work, stressed about a deadline, and also about a disagreement with your partner, and some tension you’re feeling with a coworker, and the company party you’re supposed to attend tonight…

Constantly carrying all of these things and feeling continued stress leads to:

Restless sleep
A racing mind
Low energy
Feeling irritable
Feeling defensive
Getting angry easier
Panic attacks
Constant panic
Headaches, body aches, migraines
Jaw pain from clenching teeth
Tight shoulders and back pain
Depression

As you can see, trying to keep everything on your mind leads to all kinds of problems, resulting in lower productivity and even worse things.

We might even feel guilty if we forget to worry about something. Do you ever do that? You’ll finally get absorbed in something and it feels really nice, but then you remember all the things that aren’t resolved, and you feel guilty for letting yourself have a few minutes.

But you need those minutes!

Being mindful and present will allow you to get absorbed in what you’re doing, give it your full attention so you can do better, and you’ll feel more clear and mentally energized.

Your body and brain weren’t made to handle constant stress. It’s so much healthier to be present and put aside the other pressing thoughts.

Challenge yourself to be mindful in one activity a day: a walk, meditation, making a craft, writing, drawing, singing, or something else you enjoy.

See how it feels to let yourself be fully present with that one thing and not having thoughts about anything else. And then see how you feel the rest of the day.

Click Here To Discover 7 Minute Mindfulness

2. Mindfulness creates better health

Being mindful and present lowers our stress levels and also centers us, bringing many health benefits.

You might notice that you’re calmer after practicing mindfulness, your head feels more clear and focused, you’re more productive, and more alert.

Being mindful greatly benefits your mind, and that in turn benefits your body and overall health.

People who practice being mindful have higher brain function, an increased immune function, lower blood pressure, lower anxiety levels, and are calmer.

We’ve heard this for years, but experts were talking about meditation and yoga. Both of those are ways to be mindful!

3. Mindfulness decreases depression symptoms

When you decrease stress and improve your health, that can help with depression.

Mindfulness does that and more. It’s been considered an effective part of overall depression treatment for a long time.

Being mindful often helps people see and acknowledge their feelings, and that leads to better coping. Being mindful and let you say, “I see that I’m feeling that way, and that’s okay.”

Being mindful engages the observant self, so you can notice how you’re feeling, and what you’re thinking, but not get completely sucked into those feelings. You can step back and analyze the situation better.

4. Mindfulness increases Neuroplasticity

Neuroplasticity is one of those fun words (in my opinion) that show you what they mean. Neuro, or brain, plus plasticity, or being flexible.

Think about how plastic can be soft and pliable.

Being mindful helps your brain increase its ability to change and adapt, which is pretty important to our survival even though we’re not back in the caveman era.

In a simple sense, neuroplasticity refers to how our brain grows, learns, and changes. When we change our mind or learn new things, we actually make new pathways.

But this has bigger scientific implications. When someone has a stroke and has to relearn how to walk, they’re actually learning how to re-circuit their brain around the damaged area.

Imagine how much stronger your brain will be if you practice mindfulness and therefore improve neuroplasticity. That’s a huge advantage for dealing with all of life’s curves and for any brain damage you might suffer.

5. Mindfulness helps you deal with illness

Studies have found that mindfulness helps people with cancer and people with chronic illness-even terminal illness.

I can see why being in the moment more would help someone enjoy life day by day. Research has found that mindfulness helps cancer patients reduce stress while relieving fatigue.

For many, mindfulness increases our spirituality and sense of purpose, and it helps people handle their emotions regarding their illness.

Mindfulness can greatly improve life for people with chronic pain, such as low back pain. It helps patients focus on something other than the pain.

6. Mindfulness helps recovery

We’ve seen all the ways mindfulness benefits our mental and emotional health. It also helps us physically when we need to recover from illness.

This is probably due to all the other benefits of being mindful.

We have better focus, we’re less stressed, we feel more at peace, and so we’re happier.

We’ve talked about some big areas where mindfulness helps. To zoom in a bit, here’s a list of more specific ways that being mindful improves our lives:

Better mental health
Less stress at work
Better emotional regulation
Fewer problems with alcohol and drugs
Less depression and anxiety
Better performance at school and work
Better relationships
Better self-awareness
Less burnout
Better able to cope with ups and downs
More resilience

We’re just healthier when we’re more mindful because people aren’t really made to multitask 5 things all day long and always worry.

We can benefit from slowing down and enjoying the present moment. Why let other things detract from what you’re doing? You can give those other things your attention in due time.

For the ULTIMATE experience of mindfulness, I highly recommend that you check out 7 Minute Mindfulness

This method will make your mind as calm as water…

I’m talking about a method that will allow you to sink into relaxation, and feel abundantly positive and happy within minutes…

It will fill your life with joy and satisfaction…

And teach you how to easily defeat any life problems that you may be facing.

And it only takes 7 minutes!

Follow this link: 7 Minute Mindfulness

By Greg Thurston

Creator of Seven Minute Mindfulness

By Greg Thurston
Creator of 7 Minute Mindfulness

Watching videos of centurions, you start to see a theme: they seem content.

That might be shocking to younger people, especially anyone who fears old age. Maybe we fear missing out on opportunities in life and worry that we’ll find ourselves too old to do things.

But we have many interviews of people 100 and older, and they love to share their lives and offer advice to the rest of us.

Dr. Mercola (of the Mercola Video Library) interviewed three centurions for this very information, and many other people have as well.

Quite a few of us (more now than ever) have relatives or know someone who is 100 or over.

One lady I know who is 104 is full of sassy attitude and enjoys talking to people.

From this wealth of information, we can form the following ten lessons.

1. Happiness comes from what we do

At 100 years old, or older, people don’t seem to sit around and smile about the things they accumulated in life.

Rather, it’s more about their life experiences. Happy memories can go a long ways toward happiness later on!

One man over 100 years old said he did all he wanted to do. Now he wants to be helpful and keep going.

“I have so many beautiful memories,” said a woman over 100. “I got to do all the things I wanted to.”

That tells us to jump in and live life – remember that it’s about really living and making memories with people we love.

Science backs this up as well. We know people derive more happiness that is long-term from experiences such as vacations rather than from possessions.

2. Happiness comes from a positive attitude and optimism

People over 100 seem to remember life through rose-tinted glasses, making it sound like an adventure even through hard times, like war.

“I’ve always been lucky,” says one centurion despite living through 2 great wars!

She also talked about how “everything makes me happy. I love talking to people… going shopping.”

Common advice from people who are doing well at 100 is to “Decide to be content.” Others say, “Don’t chase happiness. Just be satisfied.”

Deciding life is good changes our perception and makes life better, and apparently, it helps you live much longer!

3. Happiness comes from living in the NOW

Age is only a number. You live for the day and keep going.

This is wisdom from someone with a very long past-but they enjoy the present.

The past is the past; we can’t change it. But we can rob ourselves of our present happiness and good emotional health by hanging onto old regrets, grudges, and pain.

To experience the ultimate feelings of inner calm and living in the now, I highly recommend that you follow this link…

Click Here To Discover 7 Minute Mindfulness

You’ll gain inner peace, happiness and feel ‘uncluttered’ in your life.

4. Love and Partnership is critical for long life

Centurions often talk about their “good” marriage, all their happy memories, and all their good times together. It’s another area where they might be applying rose-tinted glasses, but it’s apparent that they got emotional support and felt like they have a life partner.

They also say that people today give up too easily these days-so there was hard work involved, but at the end of their life that part isn’t really important anymore.

“Being happily married and happy in general is the remedy for all illness.”

We don’t have studies on how marriage or long-term relationships affect life span, but you don’t have to be a scientist to take note: centurions all speak about their decade’s long marriage with a smile on their face.

Even people who have been widowed for a few decades say they have many, many warm memories about their married life, and that still makes them happy.

5. Eat natural, real food to feel good and live long

Many people who are 100 say they feel strong and like they’re 69 or 79. These are the people who stay active physically and mentally and have a lot to share with other people.

Many people over 100 talk about eating fresh food that they grew themselves.

And older people will tell you over and over: eat in moderation!

6. Learn to adapt for a better and longer life

“Life goes on regardless” is a common theme. People who live well into old age understand that there is a hardship in life but they know life goes on and they must too.

If you live 7, 8, 9, 10 or more decades, you’re going to see a lot of change.

People who adapt and change with the times do better. It’s part of having a positive attitude-they’re excited for new opportunities instead of fearing change.

7. Help others

Helping others is one way to build relationships and connections, and it makes you feel great.

It’s another common theme among people who live to be over 100.

Being kind and helping others gives you a sense of purpose too, and it fights depression and anxiety. Not only that, it’s a way of staying active and productive after you retire.

It’s a win-win for everyone involved, and being older and retired can mean having more time for volunteering.

8. Always learn!

Older people will advise getting a good education to help you go far in life, and science has shown that people with a Bachelor’s degree actually do live about a decade longer than people who don’t have one. (From the U.S. Centers for Disease an Control Prevention)

Older people will tell you to keep learning all through life, both in and out of school.

Be curious-it makes life more interesting and fun. And it helps you stay engaged with life and the changing technology and times. That helps you adapt too.

9. Practice Mindfulness

People over 100 tend to live in the moment as it comes, rather than worrying about plans, regrets, and getting caught up in pressure and worry.

They cherish special time with family and friends, the colors and smell of a new flower in spring, or the feel of the grass on their feet.

When life is enjoyed at the moment, it’s just better…

…And people who live in the moment more tend to live longer, happier lives!

For the ULTIMATE experience of mindfulness, I highly recommend that you check out 7 Minute Mindfulness

This method will make your mind as calm as water…

I’m talking about a method that will allow you to sink into relaxation, and feel abundantly positive and happy within minutes…

It will fill your life with joy and satisfaction…

And teach you how to easily defeat any life problems that you may be facing.

And it only takes 7 minutes!

Follow this link: 7 Minute Mindfulness

Actively practicing mindfulness is one of the best things you can do for yourself.

When we disconnect from the mental chatter (the past, future, worry, expectations, and judgments), we are able to approach life with greater perspective – we tend to see the opportunities, instead of carrying around the weight of worry and mental baggage.

There’s a wealth of research on the long term and short term health benefits of mindfulness, including boosting your immune system, Preventing cellular aging, and reducing the likelihood of age-related diseases. (UCLA)

If you’d like a disconnect from the mental chatter but don’t have time for long drawn out meditation, then try 7 Minute Mindfulness.

In just 7 minutes you can release the stress that builds up, wipe away the mental chatter, and relax your mind and body… so you can enjoy a long and prosperous life!

By Greg Thurston

Creator of 7 Minute Mindfulness

Click Here To Discover 7 Minute Mindfulness

 

Having a meditation blog requires a lot of research and development of my writing skills. I found this infographic on how meditation can improve your writing skills from Wordcounter.net I thought you might enjoy.

So, how can meditation improve your writing skills?  Meditation can help anyone re-train their minds to perform with better focus and productivity. The biggest challenge of meditation is not the practice itself, but learning how to engage in it correctly. When creative efforts are stifled, many people grow desperate for a solution that can break them out of their funk and restore both focus and inspiration. Meditation is such a proven effective tool.

Meditation calms down your inner voices and you can listen and feel the peacefulness of mind which is essential for creativity. If you practice this process, you will realize over time, your creativity will improve to a new level.

Mindful writing? Isn’t that an oxymoron?

Meditation is about training your mind to be focused and dedicated. So whatever you do that requires focus and dedication, meditation helps.

Mindfulness aims to still your mind. When writing, you want your mind to be working in high gear. The following infographic, “How Meditation Can Improve Your Writing,” describes a short and easy mindfulness practice that anyone can commit to—and benefit from.

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Check out this 5:00 video on how a Guided Meditation to Activate Creativity from Caren Baginski, a yoga instructor, and writer on how to use mindfulness for creativity.

5-Minute Guided Meditation to Activate Creativity | Sacral Chakra

Activate creativity and your ability to be “in the flow” with this 5-minute guided meditation. This meditation style is useful for busy minds, allowing you to ease into deeper concentration and relaxation through visualization. Practice daily to open and energize your Sacral Chakra. Benefits include enjoying the pleasures of life without guilt, surrendering control to be “in the flow” of your creativity.

 

Related Questions

How can you use meditation to increase creativity? Be playful with your meditation, show yourself compassion and kindness. Plant idea seeds in the form of an intention, but then trust the universe to work out the details. Try a guided meditation video or mp3 if you normally practice silent meditations. On the other hand, try silent meditation if you usually listen to guided meditations. Be mindful outside of your meditation time and stay connected for the answers from the universe.

How does meditation relate to helping creativity? Mindfulness meditation is a great technique to learn to help improve overall creativity for more than just writing as well. It has side effects which have been shown to reduce the reactivity of the reptilian brain (something we could all use!), increase resilience to whatever life throws our way, stimulate the brain’s neocortex function, as well as improve emotional intelligence, this also continues to be an increasingly popular skill to have in the professional world.