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As indicated earlier, your brain is wired to be reactive. Its number one priority is always your safety – not maintaining calm and happiness. Back when our ancestors were hunted for food, this was an evolutionary advantage that helped them survive. But today, this hair-trigger reactivity, called negativity bias, doesn’t help you much. In fact, it can leave you feeling anxious, agitated, stressed, worried, and negative.
For health and happiness, you want your brain to exist in the responsive mode most of the time. You can only fully experience gratitude, joy, contentment, connectedness, intimacy, and love with a calm brain. You also need a calm brain to learn. Unfortunately, these days many of us spend way too much time with our brains in a stressed reactive mode.
Studies have shown mindfulness to significantly improve a variety of conditions including anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, bipolar disorder, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Mindfulness has also proven successful in preventing relapse of chronic depression and substance abuse
