Meditation: A Common Habit Of The Successful

Many successful people swear by meditation, and it's not hard to see why. The practice has been shown to have a wide range of benefits, from improving emotional control and cognitive function to reducing stress levels and boosting productivity. It's a simple, cost-free activity that can be done daily with little effort, and it can have a positive impact on almost every area of your life.

Meditation can be a powerful tool for achieving success. It helps you to focus your thoughts, giving your brain time to rest and process information more efficiently. This can lead to better decision-making and improved performance in high-pressure situations. It also has the potential to improve your physical health and reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression.

The list of successful meditators is extensive and includes entrepreneurs, executives, and leaders in various industries. From CEOs of multi-billion dollar companies to famous entertainers, many credit meditation as a key factor in their success.

Improved emotional control

Meditation is like a workout for building the skill of emotional control, and that is a valuable skill to have when you're a high performer in any field.

Meditation is about training the mind's control over its emotions. It helps you to decrease emotional reactivity so you can proactively create your day and your life, rather than being a walking reflex that sometimes screws up.

Tim Ferriss, for example, meditates every morning for 20 minutes, followed by a two-minute decompression period. He has found that it has improved his emotional control.

Research from the University of Utah has shown that mindfulness training can help us better control our emotions and moods. Higher mindfulness is associated with lower activation at bedtime, which could benefit sleep quality and future ability to manage stress.

A study in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience found that mindfulness meditation can make you feel more focused and zen as it helps the brain to have better control over processing pain and emotions, specifically through the control of cortical alpha rhythms, which play a role in what senses our minds are attentive to.

The National Institutes of Health and the American Heart Association have both concluded that daily meditation can lower a patient's blood pressure and stress levels.

Lowered stress levels

Meditation has been proven to lower stress levels, which is one of the main reasons why so many successful people practice it. Research published in the journal Health Psychology shows that mindfulness is associated with lower stress levels and decreased levels of the stress hormone cortisol.

Meditation helps to clear away the information overload that builds up and contributes to stress. It gives the brain time to rest and process information bit by bit, letting go of what is unimportant. This helps to reduce feelings of being overwhelmed and improves one's ability to handle high-stress situations.

Meditation has also been shown to have a positive impact on physical health. Lowered stress levels can reduce the impact of stress on the body and decrease symptoms and physical aggravation of various health issues, including chronic pain.

Meditation can also help improve sleep quality. By controlling emotions and calming the mind, it becomes easier to drift off into sweet dreams. Improved sleep can further contribute to reduced stress levels and improved overall wellbeing.

The practice of meditation is like a workout for building the skill of emotional control. It helps individuals to decrease their emotional reactivity and proactively create their day and their life, rather than simply reacting to external stimuli. This sense of control and improved emotional regulation can lead to lower stress levels and a more positive outlook.

Many successful entrepreneurs and executives have incorporated meditation into their daily routines to help manage stress and improve their overall well-being. By taking time to meditate, they are able to approach their work and personal lives with increased calmness and productivity.

Improved cognitive functioning

Meditation has been proven to improve cognitive functioning, which is why so many successful people incorporate it into their daily routines.

A 2012 study showed that meditation can lead to a brain process called gyrification, which is the "folding" of the cerebral cortex as a result of growth. This process may allow the brain to process information faster, make decisions, form memories, and improve attention.

MRI scans have also provided evidence that meditation can reinforce connections between brain cells. One study showed that meditation "may be associated with structural changes in areas of the brain that are important for sensory, cognitive, and emotional processing". In other words, meditation may make your brain work better and could potentially slow down the aging process within the brain.

Meditation has also been shown to help with learning and retaining information. A study by researchers from the University of California, Santa Barbara, found that college students who were trained in mindfulness performed better on the verbal reasoning section of the GRE and experienced improvements in their working memory. The researchers concluded that "cultivating mindfulness is an effective and efficient technique for improving cognitive function, with wide-reaching consequences".

Meditation also helps the brain to connect better, making it easier to access and process information. It also trains the brain to quickly release unimportant information. As a result, meditation helps to improve focus and attention span.

The practice of meditation has been shown to improve divergent thinking, which is the ability to jump from one thought to another. It helps the brain to be less judgmental and more accepting, facilitating the generation of new ideas and inputs.

By improving cognitive functioning, meditation can help successful people make better decisions and improve their overall performance and productivity.

Improved physical health

Meditation has been proven to have a wide range of physical health benefits. Firstly, it can reduce blood pressure, which in turn reduces strain on the heart and blood vessels, helping to prevent heart disease. A 2015 meta-analysis of 12 studies enrolling nearly 1,000 participants found that meditation helped reduce blood pressure, particularly in older participants and those with higher blood pressure at the start of the study.

Secondly, meditation can help control pain. A 2017 review of 38 studies concluded that mindfulness meditation could reduce pain, improve quality of life, and decrease symptoms of depression in people with chronic pain. A separate 2014 meta-analysis of studies enrolling nearly 3,500 participants also linked meditation with decreased pain.

Thirdly, meditation can improve sleep quality. It can shorten the time it takes to fall asleep and improve overall sleep quality. A 2014 study compared mindfulness-based meditation programs and found that people who meditated stayed asleep longer and had improved insomnia severity compared to those who did not meditate.

Finally, meditation can reduce the symptoms of several stress-related conditions, including irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and fibromyalgia. A 2017 review of 45 studies suggested that various forms of meditation can help to decrease physiological markers of stress, which often have wide-ranging impacts on sleep, blood pressure, and other areas of health.

Better decision-making

Meditation has been proven to improve decision-making abilities. When faced with a decision, our minds are often bombarded with too many thoughts, and we become stressed, which makes it difficult to arrive at a conclusion.

Meditation helps to calm the mind and clear thoughts, allowing us to see the situation with improved clarity and a more rational mindset. It helps us to focus on the present moment and prevents our minds from wandering into unhelpful "what-if" scenarios.

A study by the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute found that people who meditate regularly use different parts of their brains when making decisions. The meditators in the study showed no significant activity in the anterior insula, the part of the brain linked to emotional disgust. Instead, they drew upon areas involved in interoception and attention to the present moment.

Meditation also helps us to drop our emotional baggage and make decisions from a more unbiased frame of mind. We can better understand other people's points of view and make decisions that consider all relevant information.

Additionally, meditation improves our intuition, which allows us to make decisions more quickly and with greater confidence.

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