Tag Archives: meditation

Why Meditation?

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968876_flowers_41 Meditation has been the subject of many scientific studies. Scientists are becoming more interested in the role of meditation in human health.

Why meditation?

Positive thinking can bring about health and wellness.

But what has that to do with meditation?

We all know that positive thinking brings health and wellness in life. Unfortunately, often times, we simply cannot stay positive, even though we very much want to, because our minds seem to be out of control. That is, our minds seem to be controlling us, instead of we controlling our minds.

Why does the human mind run rampant?

It is because we subconsciously give reins to our thoughts, and our thoughts affect our bodies, which produce biological and chemical changes that, in turn, affect our minds — and thus creating a vicious cycle of ill-health.

Why do we give reins to our thoughts? Why do we let our thoughts control our minds? Why can’t we have positive thinking all the time?

The truth of the matter is that we do not consciously let our thoughts do that. Simply, there are too many things happening around us. Subconsciously, our minds just jump back and forth between events and happenings. As a result, our minds become chaotic. A chaotic mind creates internal chaos and disharmony — a setting for biological and chemical changes within the human body. These changes may adversely affect the body’s functions, making them incoherent and dysfunctional.

Why meditation?

Meditation helps to stabilize a chaotic mind. When you meditate, your mind focuses only on the present moment to the exclusion of everything else in the past or in the future. Meditation is single-minded focus that brings calmness to a chaotic mind.

Meditation is an antidote to stress, which is an important agent in premature aging. Your body begins to age due to deterioration in your endocrine system (which is responsible for manufacturing hormones). Your human growth hormone (HGH) keeps you healthy through repeated rejuvenation of your cells. In particular, your DHEA (dehydroeplandrosterone) is instrumental in delaying aging through controlling emotional and mental stress. Meditation gives your mind a meaningful break, just as restful sleep gives your body an opportunity to relax and to recover.

That meditation can contribute to anti-aging has been validated in a scientific study in which participants who regularly meditated had a significant increase of DHEA; in another study, those who meditated for more than 5 years were physiologically younger by more than 10 years than their chronological age; in yet another study published in “Neurobiology of Aging” meditation had “neuroprotective” benefits on the brain by increasing the brain’s gray matters.

To sum up, meditation brings tranquility to a chaotic mind, thereby enabling us to control our thoughts, instead of the other way around. As an antidote to stress, meditation is anti-aging.

Copyright © 2010 Stephen Lau

For more information on Meditation, go to Stephen Lau’s web page: Meditation Techniques. Stephen Lau also has websites on Chinese Natural Healing, and anti-aging and longevity.

Meditation Made Easy

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By Brenda Campbell

People frequently tell me that they can not meditate, they have tried, can not do it and have given up. So they miss out on all of the benefits that meditation can bring. Learning to meditate is like learning to do anything else; you begin knowing little or nothing and practice until you can do it without thinking. Start right now, find out why meditation is worth doing and follow these five steps that will make meditation easy.

Recently I was working with a young woman who told me that she was extremely stressed and unhappy with her work. She said that she had no time to herself, no time to think and her mind raced constantly. In an average day she had information overload from the time that she woke until she went to sleep. She would rise in the morning to the television, took her iPod when she went for a walk, listened to the radio to and from work – you get the picture. Sound familiar?

To start, we found some time during the day when she had zero information flow. The TV was turned off in the morning and no radio in the car to and from work. Just quiet time to contemplate. We then moved to meditation. “Well”, she said, “I have tried that. I can’t meditate and I hate it.” Turned out she had launched into an hour long session, could only last a short while and decided it was not for her. An all too common story.

What is meditation and why bother? Meditation is a process or technique that you use to clear and calm your mind. You can use meditation just for that purpose or you can focus your meditation on something that you desire such as prosperity or well being. Meditation has been scientifically shown to be a powerful healing tool and a self help tool for achieving stress reduction and better sleep. Many people enjoy the personal development, self awareness, inner peace and freedom that results from meditation. Successful entrepreneurs often claim that meditation creates clarity of mind which in turn effects their success.

So how do you meditate? The following five steps will help you to get started:-

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Thinking Outside the Box

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Do you think that Bill Gates thinks there’s a box? Or Warren Buffet? Do you think that Muhammad Ali thought there was a box? What about Sir Richard Branson? How do you think Tiger Woods or Roger Federer would feel if they thought that they had to operate inside ‘the box’.

Very often, I hear business leaders – I mean ‘normal’ business leaders, not the people whose names we all know – talk about ‘thinking outside the box’. This phrase is frequently used in business, whether it relates to problem solving or innovation. Lots of business people talk about it – very few ever rise to what is in fact not much of a challenge at all. What very few of them have realised is that there is no box!

Only special people, unusually successful people – in other words, not normal people – realise this fact. That’s why we all know their names – they stand head and shoulders above the rest of us.

There is no box – other than the box we create for ourselves. From a very early age, society and education fashion a box for us – and because we’re all in the box together, it seems OK. “Get yourself a good education” (Bill Gates dropped out of university) or “Get yourself a good job” (Richard Branson left school when he was sixteen and started Student magazine).

When you do get yourself a good job, you’re taught how to be a “team player” – that really means “Don’t do anything that would upset anyone else on the team, play by the rules and, for God’s sake, don’t do anything unusual or innovative.” And, of course, organisations have a “corporate culture” – that means “this is how we do things around here – conform”.

So the box – that you’ve effortlessly slid into – is all around you, supported by the mindless behaviour of all the other clones. And when I hear people talking about “thinking outside the box”, I know for a fact, that most of them never will.

Never mind “thinking outside the box” – what about living outside it?
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Using Your Energy to Create Success

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Your intentions, your expectations and your thoughts create your life. It’s the same for everybody – whether you’re stuck in a boring routine life or super-successful – the only difference between both ends of that particular spectrum is that highly successful people know how to use their mental energy.

Everything is made up of energy – you, your body, the chair you’re sitting on, the air you breathe, the trees, this planet, the universe. Your thoughts are energy and they have a measurable impact on all the energy that synthesizes together to create your life. Continue reading →

Small Daily Practices Lead To Big Life Changes

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Here is a story that points out how beginning very small daily practices can create big change in only a little over a week. “Larry” came to work with me because he had suddenly lost his job, and felt overwhelmed, depressed, and lost. He wondered if he should start his own solopreneur business, and was looking for ideas and help. As I scanned his energy, though, I could easily discern that he had more going on than losing his work.

At the age of 42 he still lived with his mother, saying that he did so to help take care of her since she is slightly impaired. When I asked him how he saw that fitting for him, he said “I am waiting for her to die so that I will be free.” He had remained in very low-paying work even though he has accomplished very high results in his work. His dream is to travel the world but he has never owned a passport. Continue reading →

Want to be a Success? Change Your Life

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Is there some aspect of you or your life with which you’re not happy? Are you having difficulty achieving the kind of success you would really like to achieve – whether that’s in business, your career or your personal or sporting life? In other words, would you like to be e bigger success than you are at present? Well, if you want to be successful and happy, you’re going to have to change your behaviour. You’re going to have to take new action. As a client said to me recently, “I decided that, if I wanted to change my life, I had to change my life!”

Let me explain. I first met Billy three years ago. At the time, he was seriously stressed about his job, he suffered from chronic lower back pain, was constantly tired and, as a result, his home life was, to say the very least, less than satisfactory. More recently, Billy spent three days with me in my part of the world, the French Alps. It was the fourth time we’d worked together in three years. In those three years, he’d been promoted to what would potentially be an even more stressful job – right at the very top of his organization. His back problems had vanished and, in fact, he told me he could now do thirty minutes on his local gym’s rowing machine, a couple of times a week – beforehand, he couldn’t even bend down to sit on the rowing machine. He’d also just booked a three week holiday for himself and his family, having spent ten days on holiday at Easter – he, his wife and children were having a great time.

When we first met, I had explained to Billy that the normal adult mind is in constant turmoil – it is “entertained” by roughly 50,000 random thoughts each day. You know the kind of useless stuff – “I wish this guy would hurry up or I’ll be late for my next meeting!” “I wish I was on the beach, instead of the office, it’s such a lovely day!” “I don’t know if I unplugged the toaster!” “I really am too shy to walk up to that guy and say what I feel!” And, the ones that wake you at four o’clock in the morning “What if I don’t get that sale, will I be out of a job, will I lose my house, what will happen the kids?” (‘Cos the ones at four o’clock in the morning often take us on a train of thought to imaginary ruin – more like an express train to hell!).


I also explained that Billy’s subconscious mind was even more distracted – it’s just that, because it’s subconscious, he’d never be aware of the fact that, like all normal adults, his subconscious mind was incapable of paying attention to the here and now, the task in hand, obsessed, as it was, by his childhood conditioning, the snapshots of his formative years which all normal minds dwell on subconsciously. As a result, it was little wonder that he was stressed – the World Health Organization believes stress will be the biggest killer of the 21st century. It was little wonder that he’d been crucified by lower back pain for years – your mental state is at the root of most, if not all, physical illness. And, certainly, you wouldn’t have to be a genius to work out why his home life was spinning out of control.

But Billy not only understood, as most of my clients do, the importance of changing his mind – he actually put it into daily practice – hence, the results that he could so excitedly tell me about. Billy and I worked together to enable him stop the random noise in his head, to enable him calm his mind. Most importantly, Billy practiced and learned how to pay more of his attention to the here and now, dragging his subconscious mind’s attention away from the past and enabling him be more focused on the task in hand. Billy understood that, when you’re more present, you have more presence and that makes you more impressive to the normal people around you. As a result, he’d been handpicked for his new corporate role – without even realising that he might have been in the running – he was more focused on doing just what he was supposed to be doing.

In short, Billy learned how to meditate. And it made such a practical difference in his life that he committed not just to doing it every day – but to doing it for one hour solid every morning. He told me that he realised that if he wanted to change his life, he needed to change his daily life first – get up at six o’clock instead of seven – go to bed at ten o’clock instead of eleven.

If you’re not the success you want to be, your life is not going to change without you doing something practical about it. If your life doesn’t turn you on, you’re doing something wrong – you’re going to have to do something right instead. You’re going to have to find a way to turn yourself on – to focus your attention in the here and now – so that you will stop paying attention to useless thought and so that your subconscious will stop tripping up your today by focusing on your yesterdays. Your success – your effortless success – is entirely within your own control – but you’re going to have to act.

Copyright © 2009 Willie Horton

Willie Horton’s acclaimed two-day personal development seminars have been running for thirteen years. He teaches that a clear and present state of mind creates extra-ordinary personal and business success. His vast expertise is now available in his Online Workshop at Gurdy.Net. His website also offers daily free personal development video seminars, articles and a Free Personal Development Ezine published every Monday morning.

15 Secrets Boomers Can Use to Stimulate the Mind

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By Linda Hampton

Stress free living includes all areas of your life. When your mind is not active, it tends to lose its functionality. Your simply not as alert as you use to be. Feeling dull and confused can be stressful. If you keep up this inactivity for a long time, you could cause you to suffer from conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease, brain fog, and memory loss. One advantage of stimulating your mind regularly, you have a better outlook in life.

Here are some activities that are sure to prevent your mind from being idle:

1. Play some games that require you to analyze shapes, puzzles, and pictures. Several examples are picture puzzles, card games, optical illusions, strategy games, visualization puzzles, crossword puzzles, and deduction games.

2. Read regularly and often. This helps improve your problem solving skills and memory retention. What you read depends on what your interests are. A favorite of many readers are self-help books, which stimulate the brain and let you figure out the solutions.

3. Exercise is known to bring oxygen to the brain with better blood circulation. Exercising doesn’t only have physical benefits; it also increases brainpower by creating neurons.

4. Meditation is believed to relieve stress, increase IQ, and allow your brain to function at a higher degree. It stimulates the brain’s prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for complex thinking and performance.

5. If you’re having difficulty concentrating on the task at hand, try some deep breathing for about 10-15 minutes. This increases the flow of oxygen into the brain, increasing brain functionality.

6. Take fish oil supplements. Studies reveal that the 2 major fish oil components are EPA and DHA. They boost focus and strengthen the part of the brain that is responsible for emotions.

7. Listen to soothing music as it strengthens the brain’s right hemisphere and studies show that structure even changes from listening to this type of music often. It also boosts your emotional intelligence.


8. Write to improve your memory and stimulate your thought processes. Making articles, blogs, and journal entries are ideal for keeping your mind alert.

9. Get sufficient sleep. If you’ve slept well, you do not get brain clutter and your memory is improved too.

10. Many people swear by painting as a tremendous brain booster. It also sparks creativity. You might have a creative side that you have yet to discover.

11. Have a full breakfast. It is effective in supplying energy to the entire body. Don’t skip breakfast, you are placed at disadvantage mentally and physically.

12. Go for a walk. It allows you to rid your mind of worries and it’s a terrific form of exercise for the body too.

13. Take at least one serving of fruit juice a day. Fruit juice has nutrients that refresh and revitalize the brain. For enhanced focus and high energy, try cranberry, pomegranate or blueberry.

14. Caffeine. You may think of caffeine as something good but it’s on this list because it does stimulate the brain and leads to better focus as well as thinking ability. A word of caution is needed though, since it can be harmful if you take too much of it. So one of two cups a day is fine. Consuming 300 mg (3 cups) of caffeine is generally considered safe

15. Take up drawing as a hobby. This activity also stimulates the brain. Bring out your colored pencils to start stimulating your brain.

You don’t have to do all of these to reap the effects. Choose several that you know you can do well and those that are fun for you to do. You can do a few of them with a friend. Remember that the brain needs to be taken care of too.

Linda Hampton RN, MSN a Wellness and Stress Management Breakthrough Life Coach is the publisher of Transition Your Life, a free 5-part ecourse full of revealing information to help you deal with the stressful changes in your life.

Emotional Intelligence and Business

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There is a growing role for emotional intelligence in business.

Emotional Intelligence is increasingly relevant to organizations and businesses today, since it has been proven to help understand and assess people’s behavior.

Although Emotional Intelligence became popular after the publication of Daniel Goleman’s Book, “Emotional Intelligence”, in 1995, it was researched and developed during the 70′s and 80′s.

What is Emotional Intelligence?

Peter Salovey and John Mayer defined EQ (Emotional Quotient) or EI (Emotional Intelligence) as made up of 5 elements:

1. Self-awareness – Observing yourself and recognizing a feeling as it happens.

2. Managing emotions – Handling feelings so that they are appropriate, Realizing what is behind a feeling and Finding ways to handle fears and anxieties, anger, and sadness.

3. Motivating oneself – Channelling emotions in the service of a goal, Emotional self control and Delaying gratification and stifling impulses.

4. Empathy – Sensitivity to others’ feelings and concerns and taking their perspective, as well as Appreciating the differences in how people feel about things.

5. Handling relationships – Managing emotions in others and Social competence or social skills.

Can an individual increase emotional intelligence? Can a business organization increase its emotional intelligence?

Absolutely.

Coaches and counselors and solution oriented therapists teach or remind us of our skills in this area routinely.

The one thing that the coaches and counselors and solution oriented folks do not teach us is that we need to recreate the optimism that Seligman talks about in our minds frequently, in order to stay optimistic, and if enough people in the organization do that, then the organization stays optimistic.

I first learned this from an AA friend who used to routinely repeat the phrase to himself, “What is the next right thing to do?”

Folks who come into AA know that urges to drink or use happen in very short periods of time, and they know that they must do “the next right thing” fast in order to dispute the craving that says, in so many words, “Go ahead, just this one time, you won’t get caught today.”

When I heard my friend talk about the “next right thing”, I thought he meant doing something outside his body, like a workout, or going to a meeting, and then it occurred to me that the next right thing might be a thought, and then it occurred to me that I could create a pattern of thoughts that left me feeling content, like I felt after a 20 minute Transcendental Meditation where I repeated a mantra while sitting quietly.

Emotional intelligence does mean keeping myself feeling good, like after a meditation or workout, but in an organization, I also need to interact with other people, and those interactions are going to require my awareness of my feelings and thinking and those interactions are going to require skilled use of listening and assertive communication techniques, so I am going to need to think the next helpful thought and do the next right thing many times per day.

What tools are available to help in that thinking and feeling endeavor? Does brain fitness play a role?

Facial Expressions and Emotional Intelligence and Business

Paul Ekman,Ph.D. has been working to categorize facial expressions for a long time, and I find his work fascinating because it helps me to understand why I respond to certain facial expressions so strongly, for example, I have a very quick and powerful response to a look of contempt, and Ekman explains why.

All humans respond to a look of contempt very powerfully, across cultures, and that expression happens in 1/25th second according to Ekman. I blink my eyes in 1/10th second, so I respond hormonally to a nonverbal communication twice as fast as I can blink my eyes.

Does my response to facial expressions have a bearing on my emotional intelligence and my organizations emotional intelligence?

Again the answer is absolutely.

Increasing Emotional Intelligence in Business

I like experiential learning. I think we can learn emotional intelligence faster from an experience than we can from reading a book, although book reading is in integral part of learning.

The tool that has made my emotional intelligence effective in response to the non-verbal communications of others in any kind of relationship is HeartMath, which is a biofeedback tool that allows me, after a few pratices, to cue an affiliative and cooperative heart intelligence inside my body on any given heart beat or to sustain a coherent heart beat so that I do or say the next right thing in my business environment and increase the emotional intelligence of my business.

HeartMath has grown out of the study of the heart’s own nervous system. The heart has a brain of its own, which can learn and make decisions independently of any other brain I have, and it can do this heart beat by heart beat.

By the way, this tool has been tested in my domestic violence and anger management program.

I have used it with couples to help them understand that they can self-soothe when upset, and then the individuals, with a little bit of practice, can establish a heart beat for their marriage, by using computers and holding hands.

Cannot coworkers and companies establish a heart beat for their working relationship and cannot companies ask employees to attend to the heart beat of the company?

If employees are doing that, which has the benefit of feeling good, the company EQ will go up, and employees will have a tool to use when they find themselves responding to a customer or co-worker’s non-verbal communication.

Another helpful side effect of HeartMath? It opens the higher perceptual centers in the brain for brain storming. Solutions appear to previously intractable problems.

Can an Organization Increase its Brain Fitness Too? Absolutely.

However, each individual will have to work on that. The good news is that their are a number of software programs which can be used at an employees PC. (There are some Mac versions available too).

I really like the the programs that increase IQ, that wonderful tool to have along with EQ. You can improve your fluid intelligence too. It is an addictive experience, so you should volunteer to be the first VP in charge of corporate brain fitness.

Michael S. Logan is a brain fitness expert, a counselor, a student of Chi Gong, and licensed one on one HeartMath provider. I enjoy the spiritual, the mythological, and psychological, and I am a late life father to Shane, 10, and Hannah Marie, 4, whose brains are so amazing. http://www.askmikethecounselor2.com

Suggestions for Learning the Purpose Driven Life

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Have you ever thought what are the tools and techniques needed to craft a purpose driven life? If not! You must! There are a few valuable suggestions for learning the Purpose Driven Life Though there are many factors required to find the purpose of your life, like leadership, perseverance, dedication, decision making skills, and meditation and so on. But in this article I would like to emphasis on decision making skills. Decision Making skill is a powerful tool which culminates and leverages your efforts and tactics to lead towards a purpose driven life. Anthony Robbins says: “It is in those moments of decision that your destiny I shaped”, how true that is, think about it! Therefore, how important do you think one’s Decisions Making skills should be as sharp as a razor blade?

* Work on Decision Making skills (DMs) *

How to make a right decision at the right time is yet another query that may pop up in your mind? Most successful people think from a very rational and positive point of view and this is the reason they are successful. They don’t do “different things” but they do “things differently”. There are two types of people. Type one are optimists and type two are pessimists. If you fall in the category of pessimists you need to work harder to change your perception towards viewing things around you. For example, if a half filled glass of water is kept before you, you may say “it is half empty” or you may also say “its half filled”. You need to be in the later category only then you can view your surroundings with an entirely different viewpoint. If your viewpoint of viewing the things is right only then you can take right decisions.

* Don’t panic, find alternate options available to you *

How could you do that? I cannot say it is that easy, let’s face the truth, however, it is far from being impossible, as well! You might have gone through the rough patch of your life. But sometimes the adversity takes a toll on your decision making power, and subjugates your flow of positive energy that is very important to take right decisions in life. I encourage you to not let this happen to you. When there is some trouble, there is a way out also. It is said when “one door closes, another opens”. Keep this positive approach in your mind and behave accordingly to deal with the tough and challenging days of your life. You will find that you are able to find out the second option available before you, if one has shut down.

There is no such adversity that cannot be passed through, bravely, with Faith and knowing there is a rainbow at the end of the storm!…Always! You need to be a bit tougher to brave the situation and need those guts of inspiration (or desperation it seems at times…), to find out the hidden way out to the terrible situation. It will help you look at important decisions from a number of different perspectives. It will help you make better decisions by pushing you to move outside your habitual ways of thinking. As such, it will help you understand the exact complexity of a decision, to spot issues and opportunities that you might otherwise not notice in the first place.

* Steps to make the right decision *

First of all, focus on the data available. Look at the information you have, and analyze what you can learn from it. Look for drawbacks in your knowledge, and either try to develop them or take account of them. After that, look at the decision using intuitions, gut reactions, and emotions. Also try to anticipate how other people will react emotionally, and try to understand the intuitive and immediate responses of people who do not fully know your discretion. Then look at things pessimistically, cautiously and defensively. Try to see why ideas and approaches might not work. This is vital as it will highlight the weak points in a plan or course of action. It will allow you to eliminate them, alter your approach, or prepare contingency plans to counter problems that arise.

* How good decision making skill can push you towards your life purpose *

This thinking strategy will help you make your plans tougher and more resilient. It can also help you identify lethal flaws and risks before you embark on a course of action. Taking this course of thinking your creativity will come forth and it will bloom your course of action a success. These are the steps and techniques for looking at the effects of a decision from a different point of view. It opens up the opportunity for creativity within Decision Making. It also helps persistently even the pessimistic people to be positive and creative. Moreover good Decision Making skill will lead you towards your life purpose also. In other words your life purpose can drive you to be a good decision maker.

Actually, life purpose and Decision Making traits are inter-related and cannot be separated. It is proved that a good decision maker is bound to approach his purpose of life smoothly and in a better way than that of a poor decision maker. In the same way, your purpose of life will make you stronger and intuitive to take vital and difficult decisions to reach the goal of your life.

That way, Decision Making skills and life purpose cannot be put apart. That’s because absence of any one of it, will frustrate the very purpose of life and its approach to it.

I am hopeful the above suggestions, for teaching the purpose driven life, will open up new avenues before you to lead a contented and purpose driven life.

I wish you all the very best you deserve. Find Your Purpose and Live it with Passion!

Nicolas Baron developed a system to help you succeed in Finding your Purpose in Life to experience a more fulfilled life and feel happier in general. These worksheets & exercises are incredibly helpful for self awareness and a greater understanding of the key principles to finding your life purpose. Discover more about how to Find your Purpose and Passion from his popular free e-Course, available at: => http://www.find-your-purpose-now.com