Let’s explore this mind hack with a simple 3-question Mental Strengths self-assessment and then, one tip that can help increase mental resilience:
1. Do you believe that having mental strength and resilience is critical for your future success?
2. Do you train mentally every day or at least regularly, to build your mental strength?
3. If the answer is no, is it because you don’t know what to do or how, you don’t believe it’s possible or because you make the excuse that you don’t have enough time?
What would you think if I told you that neuroscience proves meditation to be a quick, easy, no cost method that doesn’t just quieten the mind, but actually strengthens it?
I’m not talking about the spiritual or ritualistic kind of meditation where people sit with legs crossed and fingers pinched, humming or chanting to themselves (no offence intended for any Buddhists or spiritualists reading this) but practical meditation for the modern world we live in today.
We all know that mental strength and resilience is a ‘high achievement’ predictor and results from neuroscience research show that meditation strengthens the part of the brain that houses functions like pain resistance, willpower, motivation, focus, and emotional resilience.
This brain region is called the Anterior Cingulate Cortex (ACC), which lies in a unique position in the brain, with connections to both the “emotional” limbic system and the more “logical” prefrontal cortex.
According to studies conduced by the university of Montreal, the brain of meditators have much “thicker” grey matter, suggesting that meditation fortifies the brain’s ACC “mental resilience” centre.
If it’s beneficial enough for business giants like Ray Dalio -Billionaire founder of Bridgewater Associates, Jeff Weiner – CEO of LinkedIn, Bill Ford – Executive chairman of Ford Motor Company, Marc Benioff – Founder of SalesForce and many others, why not use it for your benefit too?
Source: Business Insider – successful business leaders that have used meditation to improve productivity, creativity, and business acumen.
Part of the strengthening process is without doubt the fact that meditation helps to remove the mental blocks that often get in the way of progress, such as dwelling on the past, poor memory, lack of emotional control and overall tension and stress.
It’s no surprise therefore, that some of the world’s most transformative companies like Apple, Google, Nike, AOL Time Warner, McKinsey & Co, Deutsche Bank, Procter & Gamble and more are offering meditation classes to their employees. With the benefit of reduced stress levels, improved productivity and more positive and collaborative work cultures, surely other companies will follow the lead to help employees gain these noticeable results.
Source: Sonarrari.
And here’s the thing, you don’t have to wait for your company to come forward with offers of meditation classes because you can start easily enough and without any cost to yourself right now.
It can take as little as just 5 minutes to kick off the practice and you can begin with very simple and practical guided meditations like the Frantic World series below.
I hope you’ll check it out if you haven’t tried meditation before or get back into it if you’ve tried before but fallen back into old habits. There are plenty of free meditations available on You Tube too of course so try a few out until you find the ones that work best for you because we’re all different.
They really can help stop the frantic thoughts going round in your head, help ground you instantly and get you focused on what’s important to you going forward.
All The Best,
Reece
PS. You may want to check out the benefits of mind hacking as well from the link below because this new brain science could prove helpful to you too.