Having trouble focusing?  Is your memory slipping?  Are you always tired, or bogged down by stress?  Learn how you can improve your mood, think clearly, and naturally make better decisions in only 20 minutes a day with our exclusive offer!

Okay, okay…  I'm not selling anything – yet.  But PsyBlog did just tip me off to a new study published in the journal Consciousness and Cognition that shows that simple mindfulness meditation, even in complete beginners, can improve a whole host of mental functions and significantly improve overall functioning.

This is good news, as many studies have been geared towards investigating the impact of meditation on long-term meditators, and it's no secret that "research has found that long-term mindfulness meditation practice promotes executive functioning and the ability to sustain attention," yet not much has been done in the way of investigating the benefits for beginners.

This study found that compared to a control group (people who relaxed while listening to an audio book), beginners practicing meditation for only 20 minutes a day over the course of 4 days, saw "improved mood, reduced fatigue, anxiety, increased mindfulness, improved visuo-spatial processing, working memory and executive functioning."  How much improvement?  Anywhere from 15% to a whopping 50%!  That's quite a return on just chillin' for 20 minutes.  Seems a worthwhile investment to me!

So now you want the goods, eh?  Alright, I'll fork 'em over.  And it won't even cost you (first one's free).  Here's a link to PsyBlog's beginner's guide to meditation:  How Meditation Improves Attention.

Posted via email from Roderick Russell / amalgamate.stream

I was considering skipping my training today due to an enormous at-home workload – and was feeling guilty about it – when I stumbled upon this great little Forbes article from 2008.

Much of it is mental. While many endurance athletes say there’s nothing special about their physical abilities, clearly people who are drawn to and are able to accomplish feats such as marathons, triathlons and challenging ultra endurance events differ from the rest of us somehow. A big piece of the puzzle is how these athletes think about their lives, goals and the obstacles they face.

“Moderation bores me,” says Dean Karnazes, who completed 50 marathons in 50 states in 50 consecutive days and wrote about the experience in the new book, 50/50. He is also currently trying to be the first person ever to complete the world’s five major desert foot races in one year. “Once I did a marathon, I thought, ‘Huh, I think I can go further than this.’ I wanted to explore not only my physical limits but my mental confines.”

An accompanying slideshow outlines several characteristic traits of endurance athletes:

• An active interest in seeking their own mental and physical limits.
• An ability to focus on extraordinarily small steps – or micro-goals – while seeking an unusually enormous overall goal.
• The tendency to seek out activities that create discomfort or pain.
• An unflappable commitment to training. “You can’t fake your way through an ultra marathon,”
• Tendency to compete against themselves more than anyone else.
• They embrace failure as a chance to learn and grow.
• Tend not to ever “give up”, despite challenges.

via Forbes.com

Posted via email from Roderick Russell / amalgamate.stream