Health & Happiness Reminder: Try Meditation

I’m sure you already know this: Scores of studies have shown the benefits of meditation to be broad and profound, including the inducement of positive emotions like feelings of calm.

Personally, I have a long history of intending to meditate (more), and then not doing it. Sometimes it helps me to remind myself that meditation is not wasted time, and it is not time during which I’d be better off doing something else.

Meditation lowers our stress and anxiety, helps us focus, and (somewhat ironically since it involves time dedicated to doing nothing) makes us more productive.

Meditation even makes us healthier! After meditating daily for eight weeks, research subjects were 76 percent less likely than a non-meditating control group to miss work, and if they did get a cold or a flu, it lasted only five days on average, whereas control group illness lasted an average of eight days.

This post is taken from “The Science of Finding Flow,” an online course I created as a companion to my book The Sweet Spot: How to Accomplish More by Doing Less. I’m sharing “lessons” from this online class here, on my blog. Want to see previous posts? Just click this The Science of Finding Flow tag. Enjoy!