by Yunha Kim, founder of Simple Habit
Just one week of brief daily meditation has been found to produce significant improvements in attention, energy, and stress. Simple Habit is aimed at helping people make mindfulness a part of their daily routine by offering a variety of 5-minute meditations personalized for all kinds of life situations.
Here are six ways meditation can improve your personal and professional life:
1. Decrease Stress.
Stress has been linked to a wide range of medical problems, including hypertension, heart disease, substance abuse, anxiety, depression, and gastrointestinal disorders. Luckily, studies have shown that those who practice mindfulness meditation display greater reductions in stress related symptoms, and report increases in their sense of control in their lives. For instance, mindfulness meditation can produce a 30% reduction in symptoms of stress among those with a serious illness.
2. Sleep Better.
Insomnia is one of the most common sleep problems among adults. Studies have shown that mindfulness meditation can help decrease how long it takes you to fall asleep and increase the amount of time you stay asleep. Getting adequate sleep is essential to your health, energy, and ability to tackle daily tasks.
3. Focus Your Attention.
Practicing mindfulness and meditation has repeatedly been shown to improve our ability to sustain attention. Meditation affects the anterior cingulate cortex, a part of the brain involved in monitoring our focus and self-control. Even in high stress work environments, research shows that people who are trained in meditation are able to stay focused on a task longer.
4. Release Your Creativity.
Mindfulness meditation practice does more than simply help you regulate your emotions and attention – it also can impact your thinking. Research has found a link between mindfulness and creativity, and can lead to improvements in problem-solving creative solutions as well as promote divergent thinking. The more a person continues to practice mindfulness meditation regularly, the less rigid their thinking becomes.
5. Improve Your Mood.
Consistent practice of mindfulness meditation can also have a notable beneficial impact on our overall mood, including depression and anxiety. In fact, mindfulness and meditation-based programs have been found to lead to significant reductions in clinical levels of anxiety and depression across a range of conditions.
6. Strengthen Your Relationships.
Learning to be more mindful doesn’t only have a positive impact on you – it can have a positive impact on your relationships too. Research has shown that increased mindfulness leads to significant improvements in marital quality, as well as work relationships and friendships, due to improvements in the identification, communication, and expression of emotions. In fact, people who meditate tend to display more empathy and non-judgmental acceptance toward each other.
A former investment banker on Wall Street, Yunha Kim founded Simple Habit in early 2016 after personally discovering the benefits of mindfulness. Designed by a team of world class meditation experts and a Harvard psychologist, Simple Habit meditations are just 5-minutes and personalized for all kinds of life situations. Whether first thing in the morning or before a big meeting, Simple Habit can help get you through your day.
