Would you like to feel more focused? More emotionally aware? More confident? Be a better lover?

If you answer yes to any of these questions, then you can benefit from taking up a mindfulness practice.

Elisha Goldstein, PhD, is the editor of A Mindful Dialogue: A Path Toward Working with Stress, Pain and Difficult Emotions (Kindle only), The Now Effect: How a Mindful Moment Can Change the Rest of Your Life, co-author of A Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Workbook, Foreword by Jon Kabat-Zinn, author of Mindfulness Meditations for the Anxious Traveler: Quick Exercises to Calm Your Mind.

Five Reasons Why Men Should Start Practicing Mindfulness

By Elisha Goldstein, Ph.D.
June, 2014

From my experience the gender that is overwhelmingly attracted to mindfulness is women, men aren’t quite as attracted to it. Why is this? In the early days, the man’s greatest responsibility was to protect the tribe. Our brains have been crafted over thousands and thousands of years to guard against vulnerability. The problem with mindfulness for men is that the practice of it asks us to look toward and open up to vulnerability because that is where the gold is. We are also asked to relate to it in very feminine language like with “warmth,” “tenderness,” and “gentleness.” However, the physical threats that men were guarding against in the past, in most cases, are no longer the threats of modern day. But the brain hasn’t figured this out yet and treats emotional vulnerability as a threat, keeping men from truly reaching our highest human potential.

But things are changing! There is an evolution afoot as more men are starting to see the benefits of integrating mindfulness into daily life.

If you’re a man or you know one, here are five reasons why I think men should give mindfulness a try.

1. Increase Focus – George Mumford taught the Chicago Bulls and the Lakers mindfulness enroute to their string of championships. Sports psychologist Michael Gervais stepped in to the Seattle Seahawks locker room and taught them mindfulness giving them a boost to their first Super bowl victory. AETNA embraced the Mindfulness at Work® program that thousands of employees have taken because Mark Bertolini, the CEO, knew the value it could bring to their organization and corporate clients. Other companies including Google, Apple, Edmunds, McKinsey, Yahoo, and so many others now have meditation rooms in their offices). Now the military is on board to stay calm and focused out in the field. This shouldn’t come as a surprise, when we intentionally practice and repeat paying attention to an intended object of awareness, of course, it would follow that we would get better and better at paying attention to what matters.
2. Improve Performance – Usually if we’re able to focus better this would increase our performance as is evident by the integration of mindfulness into business and sports. A study in the Journal of Occupational Health showed that The Mindfulness at Work® program saved employees 69 minutes per week in productivity. In a world where we’re trained in multitasking with a continuous fractured attention it’s a slippery slope to get confused between what is urgent and important and what’s not. What’s more important, the Facebook notification on the phone or the project in front of me? Is it the recent sports score update or listening to my coworker? My brain seems to side with the updates, but in reality it’s likely the least urgent and important. There’s nothing mystical about why we can be more effective at what we do if we’re training our brains to pay attention to what matters over and again.
3. Build Emotional Intelligence – Emotional intelligence has been shown to be a cornerstone of effective leadership (not to mention an essential component of mental health and healthy relationships). If we’re constantly guarding against vulnerability, guess what? We’re also guarding against the most critical decision maker in our brains – our emotions. The brain makes decisions based on our emotional state most of the time, so we don’t want to be in the dark about what is happening in our internal world. Our brain goes particularly haywire when it comes to uncertainty and fear. Mindfulness teaches us how to approach these triggering emotions in a particular way so that we not only no optimal responses, but the emotions themselves become our greatest teachers. It’s incredibly important to lean in and start to get curious about our emotional lives, understand the information they are conveying and develop the courage to embrace vulnerability. In doing this we start to feel more grounded, stronger and ignite a sense of trust and self-reliance.
4. Be a Better Lover – The practice of paying attention, on purpose, also has to do with getting increasingly better at tuning into other people in our lives. There is a lot of dissatisfaction that occurs in relationships because people are not tuned into the needs of each other. As we learn to focus and cultivate emotional intelligence we also build the strength of empathy. This is the ability to put yourself in your partner’s shoes and better understand his or her needs. You can learn to be less defensive, more receptive, a better listener and more physically present and responsive which also makes for a better sex life. The insula is a part of the brain that makes us more able to tune into the sensations of our bodies. We learned a long time ago (9 years to be exact) that mindfulness is correlated with a larger insula. In this case, bigger is better. As we learn how to tune into our bodies and are more present for our partners, everyone is more likely to get their needs met emotionally and physically. If you’re not in a relationship, this is good for the future and a fantastic reason to start practicing.
5. Train Confidence – It feels good to get increasingly better at something. We’ve all experienced this with walking, talking and driving a car (to one degree or another). This a part of the brain that records procedures in life and it gets stronger as we practice. This is no different. In Outliers Malcolm Gladwell noted it takes 10,000 hours to experience true mastery. What if you could get increasingly better at all of the benefits of mindful awareness? We can learn to experience more confidence with our focus, performance, emotional intelligence and in our relationships. Of course as we intentionally practice and repeat all of this, the changes that we experience begin to open up a much greater gift than any of this. We start to realize that mindfulness is about far more than this, it’s about experiencing the insight into who we truly are and a sense of freedom arises.

As we practice, something else wonderful happens, we begin to inspire others and this continues to have ripple effects across all the people around us. This may even be the most important motivation to practice.

Why not get started now?

Be well,

Elisha Goldstein, PhD

PS - One way to get started, reconnect or deepen your mindfulness practice is to take the 28 Day Challenge with the new online program Basics of Mindfulness Meditation: A 28 Day Program. Enjoy!

Elisha Goldstein, Ph.D. is author of The Now Effect, co-author of A Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Workbook, Foreword by Jon Kabat-Zinn, author of Mindfulness Meditations for the Anxious Traveler: Quick Exercises to Calm Your Mind, the premier eCourse Basics of Mindfulness Meditation: A 28 Day Program, the Mindful Solutions audio series, and the Mindfulness at Work™ program currently being adopted in multiple multinational corporations. Join The Now Effect Community for free Daily Now Moments, Weekly Updates and tips and free access to a Live Monthly Online Event with Elisha Goldstein, PhD. He is a clinical psychologist in private practice in West Los Angeles.

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This is an interesting article from Esquire - It's short, so below it is a longer piece from the Association for Psychological Science. Below that is the abstract - the full article is hidden from public view behind a greedy pay wall.

The data for this study comes from an open access data collection project, available here and here.

Full Citation:
Hill, PL & Turiano, NA. (2014, May 8). Purpose in Life as a Predictor of Mortality Across Adulthood. Psychological Science. doi: 10.1177.0956797614531799

Have a Purpose, Live Much Longer

It doesn't matter what it is. If you care for something other than yourself, you'll live much longer.

By Ned Hepburn on May 12, 2014

Is your passion riding a bike with a bunch of boxes on it? Good. You'll live longer. 
Unless you die in a horrible bike/box accident.

Life got you down? Can't get a handle on things? Staring into the abyss of your soul, turning frantically to whiskey, weird drugs and the dredges of society in the hopes that you'll feel something, anything? Well, first, perhaps switch to beer. Second, maybe find yourself a purpose. Because if Navin R. Johnson has a special purpose, you should, too.

Seriously. Scientists are saying that "having a purpose" in life will add years onto said life.

Six thousand people from all walks of life were part of a 14-year study. Some admitted to wandering aimlessly while others were focused and driven. Unsurprisingly, the most focused people -- the ones that had a "purpose" -- lived longer. Interestingly, 9% of the subjects died in the 14 year period and those that died had reported of having a lower purpose in life.

"Purpose" is defined here by living for something other than yourself. Be it religion, your job, a kid, your folks, family, your career, whatever -- life is better, and now longer, if you have a reason to get up in the morning.

Patrick Hill of Carleton University in Canada, who conducted the study explains:

"There are a lot of reasons to believe that being purposeful might help protect older adults more so than younger ones. For instance, adults might need a sense of direction more, after they have left the workplace and lost that source for organizing their daily events. In addition, older adults are more likely to face mortality risks than younger adults. To show that purpose predicts longer lives for younger and older adults alike is pretty interesting, and underscores the power of the construct."

Now that these scientists spent 14 years studying a concept as vague as "purpose," maybe they could be spend a year or so on a deoderant that works past lunch. Just a suggestion that might make your life even longer, scientists.

* * * * *

Having a Sense of Purpose May Add Years to Your Life

May 12, 2014  

Feeling that you have a sense of purpose in life may help you live longer, no matter what your age, according to research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

The research has clear implications for promoting positive aging and adult development, says lead researcher Patrick Hill of Carleton University in Canada:

“Our findings point to the fact that finding a direction for life, and setting overarching goals for what you want to achieve can help you actually live longer, regardless of when you find your purpose,” says Hill. “So the earlier someone comes to a direction for life, the earlier these protective effects may be able to occur.”

Previous studies have suggested that finding a purpose in life lowers risk of mortality above and beyond other factors that are known to predict longevity.

But, Hill points out, almost no research examined whether the benefits of purpose vary over time, such as across different developmental periods or after important life transitions.

Hill and colleague Nicholas Turiano of the University of Rochester Medical Center decided to explore this question, taking advantage of the nationally representative data available from the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) study.

The researchers looked at data from over 6000 participants, focusing on their self-reported purpose in life (e.g., “Some people wander aimlessly through life, but I am not one of them”) and other psychosocial variables that gauged their positive relations with others and their experience of positive and negative emotions.

Over the 14-year follow-up period represented in the MIDUS data, 569 of the participants had died (about 9% of the sample). Those who had died had reported lower purpose in life and fewer positive relations than did survivors.

Greater purpose in life consistently predicted lower mortality risk across the lifespan, showing the same benefit for younger, middle-aged, and older participants across the follow-up period.

This consistency came as a surprise to the researchers:

“There are a lot of reasons to believe that being purposeful might help protect older adults more so than younger ones,” says Hill. “For instance, adults might need a sense of direction more, after they have left the workplace and lost that source for organizing their daily events. In addition, older adults are more likely to face mortality risks than younger adults.”

“To show that purpose predicts longer lives for younger and older adults alike is pretty interesting, and underscores the power of the construct,” he explains.

Purpose had similar benefits for adults regardless of retirement status, a known mortality risk factor. And the longevity benefits of purpose in life held even after other indicators of psychological well-being, such as positive relations and positive emotions, were taken into account.

“These findings suggest that there’s something unique about finding a purpose that seems to be leading to greater longevity,” says Hill.

The researchers are currently investigating whether having a purpose might lead people to adopt healthier lifestyles, thereby boosting longevity.

Hill and Turiano are also interested in examining whether their findings hold for outcomes other than mortality.

“In so doing, we can better understand the value of finding a purpose throughout the lifespan, and whether it provides different benefits for different people,” Hill concludes.

Preparation of the manuscript was supported through funding from the National Institute of Mental Health (Grant T32-MH018911-23), and the data collection was supported by Grant P01-AG020166 from the National Institute on Aging.

* * * * *

Purpose in Life as a Predictor of Mortality Across Adulthood

Patrick L. Hill [1], Nicholas A. Turiano [2]

1. Department of Psychology, Carleton University
2. Department of Psychiatry, University of Rochester Medical Center, Rochester, New York

Abstract

Having a purpose in life has been cited consistently as an indicator of healthy aging for several reasons, including its potential for reducing mortality risk. In the current study, we sought to extend previous findings by examining whether purpose in life promotes longevity across the adult years, using data from the longitudinal Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) sample. Proportional-hazards models demonstrated that purposeful individuals lived longer than their counterparts did during the 14 years after the baseline assessment, even when controlling for other markers of psychological and affective well-being. Moreover, these longevity benefits did not appear to be conditional on the participants’ age, how long they lived during the follow-up period, or whether they had retired from the workforce. In other words, having a purpose in life appears to widely buffer against mortality risk across the adult years.

James Fell Meditates . . . While Lifting Heavy Things

James Fell shared this article over at the Good Men Project, a reflection on his exploration of meditation to help him focus and relax while trying to run a 3:25:00 Boston Marathon. I don't know if he made his time, but he learned a lot about his own approach to meditation.

Like James, I tend to be most focused and in the present moment (other than during sessions with my therapy clients) while lifting heavy weights. There is nothing like a heavy squat day to keep your mind focused in the moment . . . failing to do so could mean serious injury.


One of the thought leaders in this field is Rob McNamara, author of Strength to Awaken, Make Strength Training Your Spiritual Practice and Find New Power and Purpose in Your Life (2011). You can listen to (or read) a nice conversation with Rob (conducted by Vince Horn) over at the Buddhist Geeks Podcast.

How the Universe Responded When I Tried Meditation

October 19, 2013 by James Fell

James Fell meditates. He just happens to be lifting heavy things while he does it.

That’s the last time I listen to Jane Seymour.

It was her idea. She was telling me about how great Transcendental Meditation is, and how after a 20 minutes session she obtains amazing powers of concentration. She also told me that her son, a musician, does TM right before performing; again, to help with concentration.

It got me thinking that perhaps it was worth a shot. Not because I have trouble sleeping (I don’t), or that I’m stressed out (I’m not), but because if it actually does help the mind relax and focus, then perhaps it would be something that could get me in the proper headspace immediately before my attempt to qualify for the Boston Marathon this fall.

I’m learning that concentration is going to be key. I can’t just power my way through this like I did in Los Angeles last year. In the past few months I’ve learned a great deal about proper running technique, and being able to hold form and run in as efficient a manner as possible is critical to sustaining the 4:40 per kilometer pace (roughly a seven-and-a-half minute mile) for the entire 42.2km in order to finish in under the required 3 hours and 25 minutes to meet the Boston Athletic Associations time requirements for my age group.

Sorry about all that metric stuff for my American readers. I know it weirds you out, but I’m running this race in Canada, so I need to think in kilometers. If you get confused, there’s an app for that.

Anyway, maintaining proper form and pace takes a lot of concentration, and when I run my mind has a tendency to wander. I used to listen to music all the time while running, but had to stop that because it hampers the ability to concentrate. Music is great for beginner and intermediate exercisers; it helps them create a “dissociative state,” which means it distracts them from the discomfort of training and allows them to push harder and longer. However, when you get to an advanced level, music actually inhibits running performance. To go to the wall, you need to be in an “associative state,” which is like embracing the pain, or something. (Read my entire article for the Chicago Tribune about using music for fitness motivation here).

And I’ve been doing some runs at marathon pace and putting all of my brainpower into expending as few calories as possible. This isn’t about fat loss – if I was chasing that an inefficient technique where I ran like I had a scorpion shoved down my running shorts would be the best way to maximize caloric burn per mile. It’s about enhancing my ability to sustain the fastest pace possible for the full distance, and to do that I need to not waste a single iota of energy. It means perfect form, with minimal vertical movement, a soft landing on each stride. A glide like I’m on a low-flying magic carpet.

Yeah, gotta think about all that. Get to the meditation part.

As a confirmed skeptic, I don’t go in for what Eric Cartman would refer to as “tree-hugging hippie crap,” so I began my investigations in to meditation not by going to any official Transcendental Meditation site, but by reading what others outside the organization had to say, and I found this story, which automatically put my guard up. Meditation may be valuable, but I balk at lining someone’s pockets with thousands of dollars to lead me down the garden path and off the deep end into mystical bullshittery.

I’m a pretty good do-it-yourself learner, and I didn’t think I needed some $2,500 yogi-guided course to learn how to relax and enhance my concentration. So I searched some more, and came across this article at “How Stuff Works.” It seemed pretty basic, but since I wasn’t trying to learn brain surgery I figured basic = good enough.

I should mention that during this whole learning process I was sitting on the deck at my parents’ condo on the coast of B.C. with my wife. She wanted to give it a whirl too, so I read her the basic instructions I found at How Stuff Works and we decided to try it and see what happened.

The first thing I noticed was that there was too damn much stuff to remember. Breathe in and pretend like it’s a lotus blossom opening in your stomach, and then the lotus blossom closes when you breathe out. Let your mouth hang partially open. Don’t close your eyes, but don’t focus on anything either. Imagine some kind of totem image in your mind. Repeat your mantra over and over. (TM says you’re supposed to get your mantra given to you from an official yogi as part of the $2,500 fee, and then keep it secret so it doesn’t lose it’s magical powers, but I don’t mind telling you that the one I came up with was running specific: “glide” was the word I chose.)

As far as a totem image goes, an appealing part of the female anatomy popped into my head – my wife was sitting next to me, remember – so I went with that.

And it was all too much.

After a while I ditched most of it and just tried to relax and do the opposite of letting my mind wander, if that makes any sense. This was about being able to enhance concentration for focusing on running form, so I just imagined good running technique over and over in my mind while lying there in the sun next to my beautiful and also meditating wife, who finished top of her class from med school and has never shown any indications of lacking the ability to concentrate.

It was a few minutes later when I felt a wet blob fall on my chest.

“Son of a bitch!” I exclaimed, looking down at the brown goo that had suddenly appeared on my bare pectoral muscle. “A bird just shit on me!”

My wife burst out laughing like I hadn’t heard in a long time. “Well, I guess that tells you what the universe thinks of your ability to meditate.”

With love from The Universe.

Yeah, we all had a good laugh. The bigger laughs came about 10 minutes later.

After cleaning up I’d given up on the meditating and was just enjoying a beer on the deck when my 14-year-old son came out with a look of undisguised mirth on his face. “Dad,” he said, “I should tell you that I was up on the next deck above eating chocolate ice cream, and some fell from my spoon and landed on you. When I heard you swear I couldn’t help it, I just ran away laughing.”

Well, everyone else laughed harder. For some reason I was disappointed that it was ice cream and not poop. Not sure why. Perhaps I’m warped.

Anyway, screw meditation. If it works for you, great. I don’t think I need it. Every time I lift weights it’s an act of supreme concentration, and during my pace-holding runs I’m learning how to put all my concentration into holding proper running form and pace. I’m learning by doing. I don’t need to enhance my calm or de-stress, because neither of those things are issues for me. I already engage in plenty of meditation; I just happen to be lifting heavy things while doing it.

– Originally published on SixPackAbs.com

About 18 months ago, or so, I took up cycling. In the beginning it was just an in-home spin bike, similar to those in most gyms. Than a year ago I bought a used bike - a Colnago with Campagnolo components. It has been a tough transition from the spin bike to the road bike, and an even tougher transition from training like a power lifter to training like a cyclist.

However, I love it. I love forcing through the pain, digging for more power on a climb, the whole thing. And, as the video below points out, it is totally a mind game.

It's All About the Mind: The Psychology of Cycling

Jim Taylor, Ph.D., internationally recognized for his work in the psychology of performance in sport and business, looks at the concept of prime cycling. Learn how to define your cycling goals and get motivated to achieve those goals using techniques to measure your confidence, intensity and focus.

Series: "UCSF Osher Center for Integrative Medicine presents Mini Medical School for the Public" [8/2013]