Self-development techniques abound. Which of them affords the best bang for your buck? Meditation is diverse in its benefits— even a quick glimpse into its impact on mental and emotional well-being reveals its profound potential to improve your quality of life. And rest assured, improving your state of mind also positively affects the physical health of your body.
How Meditation Creates More Happiness
Society is plagued by a laundry list of mental ailments. By consciously befriending your mind through meditation, you can positively affect its condition, and thus, your mental health.Meditation is mind training.
The human mind is drawn towards the negative. Initiating in a time when survival was the name of the game, we inherited from our ancestors a mind hard-wired for vigilance, always being on the lookout for the next combat or survival challenge. And vigilance’s kissing cousin is worry. Nowadays, the news does much to feed our negative, worrying minds.
Besides the news’ effect, in today’s fast-paced, information-overloaded, “keeping up with the Joneses” world, we stressourselves by always striving to accomplish more; we are rarely still. We’re propelled toattain, whether it is more status, wealth, or possessions, often for the wrong reasons. We are never satisfied, and put off true happiness until the next want is fulfilled. Or, we worry too much aboutlosing our newly acquired status and material gains. Due to our over-striving for more, and our fear of losing that which we’ve attained, we often fail to enjoy these very things today.
The desire for a better life is not the issue. Conscious striving is healthy. The problem is that we are rarely present in the current moment, and we keep putting off happiness until some future date which never arrives.
