5 Reasons To Meditate

In a  video titled, How to Meditation Without Moving to the Himalayas,  Brian Johnson gives us 5 reasons to meditate.

Brian Johnson
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Brian Johnson is 50% Philosopher and 50% CEO and creator of en*theos. He is 100% committed to helping people optimize their lives so we can change the world together. Brian is also the author of Philosophers Notes, which is a collection of big ideas from 100 transformational books. You can find out more about them here.

Brian writes,

Meditation. At this stage, most of us are aware of the fact that meditation is supposed to be pretty good for us. Whether or not we actually meditate is a whole ‘nother conversation!

I say it’s time to demystify meditation. Fact is, you don’t need to be a levitating monk to get a LOT of uber-practical benefits.

So, let’s take a quick look at why I think meditation rocks…

“Suppose you read about a pill that you could take once a day to reduce anxiety and increase your contentment. Would you take it? Suppose further that the pill has a great variety of side effects, all of them good: increased self-esteem, empathy, and trust; it even improves memory. Suppose, finally, that the pill is all natural and costs nothing. Now would you take it? The pill exists. It’s called meditation.” – Jonathan Haidt from The Happiness Hypothesis. [Read More…]

His 5 reasons to meditate are:

1. Strengthen your mind – training our attention is one way to create sustainable happiness. We have seen before that energy follows attention in both the Silva Life System and the enneagram.
2. Build willpower – willpower is one of the clearest indications for success and meditation is the best way to build willpower. We have featured Kelly McGonigal and her book, The Willpower Instinct in many articles. Brian quotes from her book:
   

   “Neuroscientists have discovered that when you ask the brain to meditate, it gets better not just at meditating, but at a wide range of self-control skills, including attention, focus, stress management, impulse control, and self-awareness. People who meditate regularly aren’t just better at these things. Over time, their brains become finely tuned willpower machines. Regular meditators have more gray matter in the prefrontal cortex, as well as regions of the brain that support self-awareness.”

3. Optimize your immune system – give yourself the gift of the relaxation response during your periods of meditation by ordering one of the Guided Meditations.
4. Change your DNA – consistent meditation has the effect of stimulating the neuroplasticity of the brain and also has a significant effect on the genes.
5. Connect to something bigger than you – use your meditation practice to develop mindfulness (mindfunness), concentration, and insight and contemplate the insight of interbeing – the interconnectedness of all things.

I think that you easily can see that these 5 reasons to meditate have all been presented in one from or another in multiple previous articles on this site. We keep coming back to the ideas of mindfulness, concentration, insight, willpower, and interbeing.

These five reasons can give you the motivation to start a daily meditation practice. If not now, when? I’m here to help you all the way.