Know your elements of well-being

Hey guys, a couple of years back (Sept 2015) I had a great day out listening to experts in well-being – and saw the Dalai Lama interviewed on stage at a London Theatre.

An uplifting day it was too – being reminded of the value of compassion – a word I think the Dalai Lama must have used 20 times or more.

Also on stage, giving a talk that day, was a Neuroscientist called Richard Davidson – who is high on my list of #ideamastersIRATE.

I thoroughly recommend Richardson’s book, ‘The emotional life of your brain’ which I’ve listed with other books I RATE here.

And in his short talk I show here, he shares some of his biggest Insights from a lifetime of research into what underpins our well being.

Davidson validates his ideas by (MRI) scanning the brains of his volunteers whilst they’ve given stimuli to prompt various emotional reactions.

Some of these volunteers have been the Tibetan Monk friends of the Dalai Lama who, incidentally (and unlike some religious leaders) is very keen to understand more about the science around human behaviour.

Davidson has looked at what meditation and mindfulness can do for our brains – and for our resilience and outlook on life too.

And the good news is that we can change the way we react to what goes on in the world . . . with practice.

To change our resilience, apparently takes a great deal of practice but to change our outlook on the world does not, it seems, take too much effort at all.

And his evidence based warning is this,

A wandering mind – is an unhappy mind

He tells us that, on average (in the US anyway) people spend half their time not concentrating on what they’re doing.

So, quite clearly, if we ‘flit’ around all day and allow ourselves to be constantly distracted by noise on our laptops or our mobile phones, for example, we’re really not helping ourselves to find happiness.

And, with that in mind, let me leave you in peace now.

As I’m sure, you’ll want to focus on what you’re doing  – and have a happier remainder of the week 🙂

All the best

Paul

 A bigger list of the books I RATE can be found here

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