I rewired my brain in six weeks

I took a &#x27;mindfulness&#x27; course a couple of years back, and the biggest benefit for me was learning to be grateful. It sounds riduclous typing it out but there it is.<p>Practicing gratitude daily, e.g. giving myself reasons to be thankful for my lot in life is 1) really easy to do, and 2) takes about 5 minutes.<p>The rest of it felt like new-age hippy trash, if I&#x27;m completely honest.

I can&#x27;t help but feel that obsessively mindful people always seem to have some deeper underlying issues that they need to cope with. I know a guy who for years went into all kind of new-age seminars, practised mindfulness constantly and then in a moment he told me about his traumatic event that has plagued him since childhood.<p>All the mindfullness was practised because deep down he felt at unease. Don&#x27;t get me wrong, it is good to be observant and mindfull, but it is unnatural to be it all the time.<p>Our minds also need daydreaming, dull phases, excitement, the whole package.

<i>&gt; A final note of caution – it is important to acknowledge that any brain changes we had seen could also be random. The brain is constantly changing anyway.</i><p>Well, at least they&#x27;re honest about that :)

I had brain trauma. No amount of new-age brain rewiring bullshit will unfuck me. This is &#x2F;r&#x2F;thankimcured material, not HN.

I think it&#x27;s really sad that despite all of the evidence that meditation is good for you, people still treat it as some kind of pseudo-science hippie non-sense.<p>It makes sense why people would think that since this started as a religious exercise (and also because to this day there are still lots of people who connect the two in their practice), but you can simply not do that. I treat it simply as an exercise to make my brain calm down from stress and anxiety and it has been extremely helpful for me.

Here&#x27;s a timely article. I&#x27;ve been meditating regularly for a little bit now (not that long), in a mindfulness&#x2F;insight (&quot;vipasana&quot; maybe?) style. I had a spill on my bike today and got some obnoxious road rash, took some fall trauma, and had to wfh; nothing I couldn&#x27;t dress at home, but enough that my arm has been pussing and stinging and I&#x27;ve had to cover it all up in gauze for a lot of the day. It&#x27;s &quot;known&quot; among medidators that focusing the attention on pain can cause its displeasure (&quot;suffering&quot;) to decrease. Sure enough, I spent a bit of time focusing my meditation on the pain and it caused me less displeasure. I mean, of course I&#x27;m also cleaning the road rash, airing it, and then covering it up and using all the tools modern medicine gives us, but it&#x27;s a cherry on top to be able to be able to decrease the displeasure from the pain. Cool stuff! Now to work up to being able to hold this state at will...

Just the simple practice of regularly inquiring where your focus is has helped me a lot. Helps to detect when you&#x27;re too tired from work and when you&#x27;re not really relaxing in your downtime.

tldr on this?