#Take the minutes movie

The “things could have been a whole lot worse” scenario. Sometimes an amazing moment can be avoiding a problem or conflict.

If you truly look for it, you will find amazing moments in your day. It can also mean that the stoplight turned green at just the right time or the barista flashed you a wonderful smile.

The important thing to understand here is that ‘amazing’ does not necessarily mean buying your dream house or finding your life partner. The Amazing three is your personal collection of the expected and unexpected bounty of wonderful things that you experienced in a day. Possibly the best moment in the day is allowing yourself to take inventory of all the positive moments – big and small. These are statements that you repeat again and again until they become a self-fulfilling prophecy, such as “I am confident and comfortable in my own skin.” Of course you have to do the work too, but affirmations give you that extra mental push. Hence the operative question – how can you prime your brain to cash in on this?Īffirmations put you in the driver’s seat of your mind and flood it with positive information. Incredibly, these individuals had not done any more work or exercised any more than the control group (their colleagues who had not been informed about how their work was similar to a workout). Several weeks later, it was found that the first group who had been primed to think of their work as exercise had actually lost weight. The other half were given no such information. Half of the participants were informed about how much exercise they were getting every day through their work - how many calories they burned, how similar vacuuming is to a workout, etc.

With consistency, you will begin to create that change from within.Ĭut to a study conducted by Ali Crum from Yale University and Ellen Langer where they performed an experiment to study the effect of brain priming on the state of seven different hotels. Every time you write the daily affirmation, you prime your brain to start building this belief in your mind. I am…įrom Arnold Schwarzenegger to Jim Carrey to Oprah, many people benefit from using affirmations.Ī Daily Affirmation is a simple statement that defines you as you want to be. The most enjoyable part of an activity is often the anticipation.

#Take the minutes movie

One study found that people who simply thought about watching their favorite movie actually increased their endorphin levels (the chemical your brain produces to make you feel happiness and well-being) by 27 percent. Doing this consistently gives you consistently better days. You are creating a new program in your mind that naturally learns to improve your happiness. You are building new pathways in your brain that allow you to ‘see’ what you can do to improve your well-being every day. When you write ‘What would make today great?’ you are taking a step to influence your RAS to point out and engage in activities that would make your day better. Everywhere you go, your RAS will gently remind you of this change by pointing out others who have the same car as you. When you take an action like buy a new car, you have taken a major step in redefining your possessions and your RAS changes to accommodate your new acquisition. There is a small part of your brain at the back called the Reticular Activating System (RAS) that turns on and off your perception of ideas and thoughts and determines the lenses through which you look at the world. Have you ever had the experience of buying a new car and seeing the same model everywhere you go? No matter where you are and what your situation is, your focus can be shifted to something positive. Quite simply, gratitude is the experience of counting one’s blessings.Įven after cutting through the smoke of Law of Attraction-style belief systems, gratitude has shown to be quite transformative in humans ranging from housewives to nursing students.Ī 2003 study by Emmons and McCullough found that keeping a daily gratitude journal leads to better sleep, reductions of physical pain, a greater sense of well-being, and a better ability to handle change. Definitions such as “ the willingness to recognize the unearned increments of value in one’s experience ” look great on term papers but don’t get the point across. Gratitude, derived from the Latin word gratia (meaning grace, graciousness or gratefulness) eludes easy explanation by academics. For those of us without Zen training, the best way you can begin your day is through gratitude. If you are perfectly calm and still on the inside, you can handle anything. One of the greatest gifts of being human is the ability to choose what to focus on.