Category: SCIENCE

Brainy Dose Presents: How to Think Yourself Happy – The Power of Positivity So you want to be happier, but all the self-help books and articles, motivational speakers and life coaches in the world can’t seem to help you.
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Well, maybe it’s not them; maybe it’s you.
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And while the idea of thinking yourself happy might sound like a tall order, it’s really not as difficult as you may think.
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The first step is to acknowledge that your thoughts are powerful and they can make or break your mood.
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This means that in order to change anything about yourself, including how happy you are, you need to start with your own mind.
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So, if you’re someone who struggles with negative self-talk, pessimism, or worry, then this video is for you.
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Here are 8 ways you can think yourself happy! Number 1 – Think Positively It’s important to have a positive outlook on life. But sometimes it can be hard to maintain a positive attitude when you’re going through hard times.
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We’ve all experienced those moments where we feel like nothing is going our way and we just want to give up.
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But here’s the thing, if you want to think yourself happy, then you’re going to need to learn how to stay positive whenever possible.
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That means that even when things aren’t going well, you must find something good in each situation and focus on that, instead of dwelling on what’s wrong. This might seem like an impossible feat at first, but with practice it’ll get easier and easier until eventually it becomes second nature. Number 2 – Think Optimistically Optimism is not about pretending that everything is rosy and good.
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It’s actually the belief that things will get better and that good things will happen. It’s about seeing the glass half full instead of half empty. Optimism is really just a choice you make.
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When you decide to think optimistically, you’re choosing to focus on what’s working instead of what isn’t.
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You’re choosing to be grateful instead of bitter or resentful. You’re choosing hope instead of despair.
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And those choices add up! Number 3 – Think Creatively When you’re feeling down, it can be hard to imagine that there’s another way of looking at things, especially when you feel like nothing is going right. But if you force yourself to come up with new ways of thinking about your situation, you’ll find that it can help you feel a whole lot better.
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If there’s something in your life that makes you unhappy, a job, a relationship, whatever it may be, don’t turn it into a resentment against yourself or anyone else. Instead, try thinking about how you can make it work for everyone involved.
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When you think creatively, you’re not just thinking of new or different ideas. You’re also re-imagining the way that you approach your problems.
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And when you see things in new ways, you also find solutions that weren’t apparent before. Number 4 – Think Purposefully Thinking purposefully is not about being in denial or trying to ignore your thoughts, but rather about being mindful of the way you think.
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It’s about learning how to think in a way that helps you make better decisions and feel happier.
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When you’re feeling sad, anxious, or lost, it’s very easy to slip into a downward spiral of negative thoughts.
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But if you start thinking about what will make you feel good, and then figure out how to get there, you’ll find yourself moving in the right direction and feeling much better as a result! Number 5 – Think Elevating Thoughts This is a process where you think about the things in your life that fill you with warmth, joy, and gratitude as opposed to thinking about things that make you fearful, angry, jealous, or sad.
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For example, think about your best friend, and why they’re so great to be around. Think about the time when someone was kind to you and helped you out when no one else would.
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Think about all the ways in which the world is beautiful and amazing! When you focus on these positive aspects of your life, you feel better not only because you’re appreciating all the good that you have, but also because you’re training your brain to look for these things instead of automatically looking for problems and challenges.
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And when you do that long enough, your brain starts seeing more of those positive things too! Number 6 – Think Funny When you’re having a bad day, giving yourself the chance to laugh is a simple way to turn your mood around, and it doesn’t take much effort.
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You don’t have to go out and do a stand-up comedy routine or anything like that; just try to see the lighter side of things.
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Instead of letting yourself get stuck in a negative cycle, try to think about what could be funny about the situation.
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Even if it takes some time for you to see the humor in something, remembering that we all have bad days will help you keep perspective. Number 7 – Think Long-Term The urge to get what we want or need right now is hard to ignore. It’s one of the most basic human instincts, and it can be a powerful motivator.
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But it’s important to consider how this need for instant gratification affects your long-term happiness.
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For example, if you buy something on credit and don’t pay it off right away, then you’ll have to make monthly payments (with interest) for months or even years, and that can get expensive.
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It will likely put a damper on your mood as well.
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So always think about how your actions today will affect your life in the long run.
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What can you do today that will make sure you’re on track for a better tomorrow? It’s not always easy, but if we all just took the time to consider this question before acting on our impulses, we could all be much happier. Number 8 – Think Possibility and Opportunity As Henry Ford famously said, whether you think you can, or you think you can’t, you’re right. This isn’t just a thought, it’s a fact.
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Studies show that the more you focus on your failures and problems, the more they seem to get worse! But when you start to see them as opportunities for growth and improvement, they become much easier to manage.
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There are virtually no limits to what you can do or how much success you can achieve once you start thinking about the possibilities in life instead of focusing on the problems and hurdles. There you have it! Happiness is something that can be cultivated and nurtured through the practice of positivity.
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You can’t just expect your brain to change its tune and think happy thoughts on its own. If you want to be happy, you have to consciously choose to be. Essentially, happiness is a state of mind.
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Therefore, thinking yourself happy is all about choosing a good mindset, which means you have the power to change your own life by changing how you view it! If you enjoyed this video, give it a thumbs-up, and share it with your friends, so we can keep making them.
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Thanks for watching!

– We are emotional beings. Emotions don’t turn off just because I’ve walked through the door of work or because I’ve turned my laptop on and I’m in a business setting.
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(gentle music) There’s a phenomenon that I write about in my book called emotional contagion.
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We can literally catch the emotions of those around us. And I’m sure you probably have experienced something like this.
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You’re connecting with a peer or a colleague who’s feeling down, and before you know it you start feeling that same emotion.
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And the same can happen for someone who’s really upbeat, really positive, after you finish engaging with them, you just feel high and maybe you can’t explain it.
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We literally can catch the emotional energy of another. I’m Cassandra Worthy.
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I’m a speaker and founder and CEO of Change Enthusiasm Global and I’m the author of Change Enthusiasm: How to Harness the Power of Emotion for Leadership and Success.
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Emotion actually travels faster than rational thought. And so when you’re experiencing a big change like being given a new manager, like your business being acquired by another company, there’s actually an emotional response that happens first. And the first things that we typically face are what I call the signal emotions of change and those are fear, frustration, anger, anxiety, and grief. And I feel too often we are taught or we have learned to suppress those emotions, to ignore them, especially in the business world and the professional setting because the change has to happen. You’ve got to get through it.
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So let go of those emotions and just grit your teeth and bear it.
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And so it’s so important that we are in tune to recognize those emotions because they’re very powerful. When we’re fueled purely by those signal emotions, we do and we say things that we often regret. And I know that either you yourself or you’ve experienced folks around you who have acted in anger, who have acted in rage, and that can take you into that mental downward spiral. (thunder) So as I think about the power of choice and I think about our emotional energy, the geek in me always comes out and I think about the first law of thermodynamics. And it talks about energy, that it can neither be created nor destroyed. Rather, it can either be transferred, transformed, or conserved. So if you apply that to our emotional energy with us being the closed system, we can conserve our energy, holding it in, suppressing it, and then it manifesting in all types of other physical ailments like higher blood pressure, inability to sleep, like driving us to the bar and wanting to drink all night, all the things that stress can bring about. (thunder) We also have the choice of transferring that energy which is like emoting, venting to another. And honestly, this is where most of us go at the very beginning of a change announcement because it’s kind of our natural tendency.
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We want to vent, we want to talk about how terrible this is. Did you hear about this announcement? Can you believe this? And so it’s moving that energy. But if you’re only venting, if you’re only transferring the emotional energy from one individual to another, it’s like playing this game of hot potato, right? You’re just moving that same energy all around. And it’s not just one individual churning and moving into a downward spiral, it’s the entire organization.
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The other choice that we can make is to transform that energy.
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That’s like transforming anxiety into anticipation. It’s the same energy, but it carries a different signature. It becomes fuel.
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The more that we can be self-aware of these emotions, self-aware of the data, we can use it to inform us in a way that can be productive to help us evolve and to grow. And so as an individual, when you can become empowered to recognize those emotions, of course allowing them to exist, but then knowing that you are in the seat of choice, you have the power to transform it, you’re literally rewiring the chemistry of your brain. I think about our negative thoughts or the thoughts that inspire or nurture negative emotion as weeds that need to be plucked and the soil that the weeds are in as our mental state.
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Farmers remove weeds from soil and it can actually inform them on what that soil is deficient of, what that soil needs more of.
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It’s a really compelling analogy for me because it teaches me that if we can remove the negative thought from our mind and then explore it, understand it, it can inform us of our mental state. And then the more that we are informed of our mental state, what’s lacking, what’s deficient, what do we need to be nurturing, what should we be thinking? It can help us reap our intended crop, or the way that we wish to experience that change. You are going to face an infinite amount of change in both your personal and your professional career.
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We can be empowered for that change to happen for us and not against us.

– I have been fascinated with the hippocampus for many, many years.
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I started in 1998 as a young assistant professor at New York University studying the hippocampus to make a big splash in science and discover something really, really amazing.
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So, I decided that I was just gonna work. For six years, I was only gonna work, trying to understand how the hippocampus forms new memories. I didn’t have a lot of social relationships. I was eating too much takeout food. I was just feeling so lethargic, and that is what brought me to the gym. And a year and a half later, I felt so good. And I had this amazing realization: my memory, my hippocampal dependent memory that I was studying in my own lab, that seemed to be better. Maybe it was this new level of physical activity that was causing this really extraordinary change, that my writing was going better. That was the first moment that I started seriously getting interested in how exercise might be affecting the brain and also helping the hippocampus. My name is Wendy Suzuki.
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I’m Dean of the College of Arts and Science at New York University and Professor of Neuroscience and Psychology. Because I studied the effects of exercise on the brain, people always wanna ask me about the ‘runner’s high.’ What is it? How do you get it? I don’t run. I’m a terrible runner. However, it’s a great place to start, because what it really is, is this feeling of euphoria that comes with running. But here’s the good news: You don’t have to be a marathon runner to get this.
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Every single time you move your body, you are giving your brain what I like to call “a wonderful bubble bath of neurochemicals”- dopamine, serotonin, noradrenaline, endorphins. And that’s really key to the mood-boosting effects of exercise.
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But that’s just the short-term effects. What about long-term effects? What if you give your brain a bubble bath on a regular basis, for a week, or a month, or several years? That’s when those ‘growth factors’ kick in. And what do the growth factors do? We know that the growth factors go directly to two key brain areas. One is the hippocampus.
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The hippocampus is an extraordinary structure.
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It is one of the only human brain areas that can grow brand new brain cells in adulthood.
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And those growth factors help the hippocampus grow shiny, new hippocampal cells. And what does that mean? Your memory is better.
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And the second is the prefrontal cortex, critical for your ability to shift and focus attention. Those are some of the both immediate and long-term changes that you get with exercise, that start with that neurochemical bubble bath. You don’t have to become a marathon runner or a triathlete to get these benefits. You might say, “Oh, well, I’m in the sedentary camp, there’s no hope for me.” Here’s why there’s hope for everybody: And that is the principle of brain plasticity. Brain plasticity is this idea that the brain has an extraordinary capacity to change or modify its wiring. Are you walking a lot? Are you running? Are you keeping yourself physically active? Are you learning new things? With brain plasticity, even if you’ve been sedentary all your life, you can start moving towards that bigger, fatter, fluffier, and happier brain.
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I love to advocate for personal experimentation. You know the science now, that you’re giving your brain a bubble bath, it’s gonna make your focus work better, it’s gonna improve your mood.
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When are you gonna apply it in your life? My motivational tip for everybody is start small and start with things you already know you like. If you hate running, don’t run. You don’t have to run.
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As little as 10 minutes of walking will start to give you immediate benefits in terms of decreasing anxiety levels, decreasing depression levels. Anybody can do that.
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You don’t even have to change into your spandex. Or start practically.
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One of the things that I did over the pandemic is I turned my weekly cleaning session into an exercise session. Have you ever seen that movie, “Mrs. Doubtfire”? Have you ever tried to do that choreography that Robin Williams did with the vacuum cleaner? It is hard.
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It is a great aerobic workout.
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And if you bring that play and that joy to even scrubbing the bathtub, it makes it more fun, it makes it more aerobic. Start small, and then just add on. Can you walk a little bit more? Can you park a little bit farther away? Can you do another round of shopping with the big cart in Costco? Be more broad in your definition of bringing more movement into your life.

– [Narrator] Legally, you’re considered an adult when you turn 18.
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But from the neuroscience perspective, your brain is really still developing.
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(music) – [Dr. Adriana Galván] And the current literature suggests that it’s about around age 25 or so is when the brain finishes the period of adolescence. – [Narrator] This is Dr. Adriana Galván and she runs the Developmental Neuroscience Lab at UCLA. The brain develops from the back to the front, so the prefrontal cortex is the last region to fully develop. – [Dr. Adriana Galván] The prefrontal cortex is the part of the brain you need to make good decisions, to think about the future, think about consequences. – [Narrator] You can kind of think of it like the Spock of the brain: logical, calm, and collected. And then deeper in the brain, there are these emotional systems, like the limbic system that are more interested in immediate gratification. They’re sort of like Captain Kirk, a risk taker, and a bit emotional.
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(Captain Kirk screaming) (dramatic music) (Crashing sound) During the teenage years, the limbic system develops really quickly and the prefrontal cortex is trying to catch up. Eventually, as individuals become adults, the prefrontal cortex will increasingly have more influence over behavior than the impulsive part of the brain.
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So without a fully developed prefrontal cortex, you can kind of see why teens might be more impulsive (Crash / clattering sound) or just worry less about future consequences. But don’t underestimate teenagers. This video is actually part of a longer episode all about the teen brain and how it has an evolutionary advantage.
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We’ve got a link to the video in the description. And if you found this video useful, give us a like. It will help other people find us.

It’s not easy being a teenager. There’s the angst. The emotions. The raging hormones! And although hormones do play a big role in puberty, the brain is going through a lot of changes too. Neuroscientists are learning thatt some of the most puzzling teenage behavior may actually have some real benefits. legally, you’re considered an adult when you turn18, but from the neuroscience perspective, your brain is really still developing. “And the current literature suggests that it’s about around age 25 or so is when the brain finishes the period of adolescence.” This is Dr. Adriana Galván and she runs the developmental neuroscience lab at UCLA. The brain develops from the back to the front, so the prefrontal cortex is the last region to fully develop. “The prefrontal cortex is the part of the brain you need to make good decisions, to think about the future, think about consequences.” You can kind of think of it like the Spock of the brain: logical, calm and collected. And then deeper in the brain there are these emotional systems, like the limbic system, that are more interested in immediate gratification. They’re sort of like Captain Kirk: a risk-taker and a bit emotional. During the teenage years, the limbic system develops really quickly and the prefrontal cortex is trying to catch up. Eventually as individuals become adults, the prefrontal cortex will increasingly have more influence over behavior than the impulsive part of the brain. So without a fully developed prefrontal cortex, you can kind of see why teens might be more impulsive or just worry less about future consequences. Another brain region that’s really active during adolescence is this thing called the striatum and it’s a key part of the brain’s reward system. Let’s say you find 20 bucks on the street or someone gives you a cookie. The striatum goes off and it releases dopamine into the brain. Adrianna’s lab discovered that the teenage brain is super sensitive to different rewards like sugar and money.
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Way, way more than in the brains of adults and children. And all of this activity in the brain’s reward center, it may actually serve a purpose. “We asked teenagers to come to the lab and we scanned their brains while they performed a learning task. They were shown a picture of a butterfly and two flowers and they were asked to guess which flower the butterfly would land on.” After each guess, they were given feedback. When the teens got it right, their striatum would get really, really active. “They would learn over time that the butterfly preferred one flower over the other — and everybody learned this, but what we found is that the adolescents learned it more quickly than adults and with greater accuracy.” So having this reward center that’s hyperresponsive to feedback actually helps teenagers learn from their environment.
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But this same region of the brain is also connected to risk-taking data from Adriana’s lab suggests that teens with a more reactive striatum are more likely to engage in risky behavior and to enjoy it. “Rather than ask how you keep your teenager from taking risks — because we know the brain is really oriented towards risk during this time — it’s better to ask, ‘How do I provide opportunities for healthy risks?'” Like trying out for the school play, even if you’ve never acted before. Or asking someone out on a date. Those are real risks to a teenager, but they’re not the kind of risks that parents typically worry about. “It makes sense from an evolutionary perspective that there’s a time in life when teens want to become more independent, seek out new opportunities. In the animal world, this would translate into looking for new food resources or foraging behavior and in teenagers it often manifests as risk-taking behavior and simply moving away from a family unit.” Teenagers are gonna make mistakes, but they’ve got this brain that’s encouraging them to learn and explore and push boundaries. “So adolescence is a really special time and I think we don’t appreciate enough their energy and their ability to lead and to motivate and how excitable they find life in a way that we maybe — maybe we don’t later in life.” Our brains keep changing throughout our lives and researchers at UC Berkeley are learning that if you give people a little bit of power it can have a big effect on the brain.
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Learn more by watching our video here and be sure to subscribe for more Figure 1

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You may have heard this word mindfulness. It’s become something of a buzz phrase of late.
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So I’m going to give you one simple, serviceable definition which is this: Mindfulness is the ability to know what’s happening in your head at any given moment without getting carried away by it. Imagine how useful this could be. Just as an example, you’re driving down the road, and someone cuts you off in traffic. How do you normally react? I think most of us normally react by having a thought, which is, “I’m pissed.” And then what happens next? You immediately, habitually, reflexively inhabit that thought. You actually become pissed! There’s no buffer between the stimulus and your reaction. With just a little bit of mindfulness in that same situation, you might notice, “My chest is buzzing, my ears are turning red, I’m having a starburst of self-righteous thoughts, ‘I’m getting angry.'” But you don’t necessarily have to act on it and chase that person down the road screaming at them with your kids in the back of your car thinking you’ve gone nuts. Now you might be thinking, “Don’t I need to get angry sometimes? Aren’t I justified?” I would say yes, but probably not as much as you think. The proposition here is not that you should be rendered by mindfulness into some lifeless, non-judgmental blob. The proposition is that you should learn how to respond wisely to things that happen to you, rather than just reacting blindly.
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And that, my friends, is a superpower. How do you get it? The way to get it is through meditation. I believe that meditation and mindfulness are the next big public health revolution. In the 1940s if you told someone you were going running they would’ve said, “Who’s chasing you?” But then what happened next? The scientists swooped in, they showed that physical exercise is really good for you, and now all of us do it, and if we don’t, we feel guilty about it. And that’s where I think we’re headed with mindfulness and meditation. It’s going to join the pantheon of no brainers, like brushing your teeth, eating well and taking the meds your doctor prescribed for you. Let me just close by saying mindfulness is not going to solve all your problems, it’s not going to render your life a nonstop of parade of unicorns and rainbows. Nonetheless, this is a superpower, and one that is accessible by you, immediately.