Today, the connection between mind and body is well understood. Our mental well-being directly influences our health and long-term outlook. A positive attitude, meditation, and good stress management can contribute significantly.
Positive Attitude
One of the significant factors in achieving one's goals and carrying through with one's endeavors in life is cultivating and maintaining a positive attitude. We found it most helpful to instill a feeling of gratefulness for what we have, focus on our personal growth, stay hungry, and keep learning and improving every day. A book that nails it, it's "Awaken the Giant Within."
Self Improvement & Mental Well-Being (Reading List)
Meditation
Contrary to common belief, meditation is not a religious or esoteric practice but a scientifically well-researched technique to improve the mind and body. It is to the mind what physical exercise is to the body.
Meditation can alleviate depressive symptoms and anxiety, boost working memory and sustained attention, increase empathy and compassion, instill calmness, and reduce stress. It can diminish age-related effects on the brain and reduce cognitive decline. Meditation has been proven to lower blood pressure, increase immunity, accelerate healing processes, and act as an anti-inflammatory due to stress reduction.
The easiest and probably most practical form of meditation is a mindful meditation focusing on one's breath. We suggest doing it every morning after waking up or working out for 15 - 20 minutes. Zenhabits has a short and comprehensive intro to meditation.
How to Meditate Daily (zenhabits.net)
The science behind meditation and why it makes you feel better (io9.com)
Relaxation
Implementing a healthy diet, regular exercise, proper detoxification, a good night's sleep, daily meditation, and a positive attitude significantly reduce negative, destructive stress in our lives. Yoga and binaural beats can help us even further along the way.
Yoga
Not only is yoga an excellent complementary activity to our body weight training to increase and maintain flexibility, but it also profoundly impacts one's mental health. The combination of movement with breathing and the awareness and mindfulness it instills during the practice carries over into everyday life.
Binaural Beats
Binaural beats occur when two sounds with nearly similar frequency are presented one to each ear with stereo headphones. The brain integrates the two signals, producing a sensation of a third sound, the binaural beat. For, if a frequency of 200 Hz is played in one ear and 207 Hz in the other ear, the brain creates a binaural beat of 7 Hz.
Listening to the beats stimulates the corresponding brain waves as beta waves (13-26 Hz) for alert concentration and problem-solving, alpha waves (8-13 Hz) for alert relaxation, theta waves (4-7 Hz) for deep relaxation and increased learning and delta waves (1-3 Hz) for deep sleep.
Binaural beats can be consumed as pure sounds or as music with embedded frequencies to generate the beats.
Binaural Beats You Can Listen To For Free (medium.com)
7.83 Hz by Jack Hertz (bandcamp.com)