M editation A lternatives For People Who Don’t Like to Medi tate Meditation is lauded for its health benefits and is often suggested as an effective way to clear the mind, organize thoughts, and reduce stress. Realistically, however, it’s not for everyone. In fact, some people don’t experience any benefits at all from meditating. In a recent study published in New Scientist about the effectiveness of meditation, researchers confirmed that some people do not benefit from meditation and that about 8% of people who try meditation experience an “unwanted effect,” such as an increase in anxiety.
If you’re not interested in meditation, or it just doesn’t work for you, here are some alternative ways to clear your mind and reduce stress.
Get serious about physical activity. Aerobic exercises — like walking, jogging, running, cycling, and swimming — are great for clearing your mind and getting your body moving. Really, any exercise that gets the heart pumping and increases your respiratory rate will do. Research supports that aerobic exercise is a great alternative to meditation that yields many of the same benefits. Exercising outdoors or in nature — especially in new places — enhances these benefits. Because your surroundings are going to be unfamiliar, your mind is more focused, which can help if you’re searching for clarity. Stay mentally engaged. Many people achieve clarity, focus, and stress reduction through simple but engaging tasks, such as immersing themselves in an adult coloring book, doing brain teasers, or assembling LEGO sets, which proves they can be effective
therapeutic tools or alternatives to meditation. The LEGO Company has actually been developing more products for adults with this sort of research in mind.
But why LEGO products specifically? In addition to being objects you touch and push together, LEGO products come with clear, step-by-step instructions, which make them easy to put together and allow you to focus more on the task at hand. Even if you don’t complete the piece in one sitting, working on a project a few minutes a day can be a beneficial way to find a little clarity.
M eet Z achary C ole Law Clerk and Performance Analyst (Art ist )
Before entering law school, Zachary Cole, one of our amazing law clerks at the Manely Firm, first entered college intent on achieving an engineering degree. However, as he neared the end of his college years, Zachary switched over to a more liberal arts focus in preparation for his new passion, law school. The legal field is something he was very interested in, even throughout middle and high school. Zachary was drawn to the idea that anything can be true in this field because legal issues are not usually cut and dried definitively one way. Usually, facts and rules are involved in such a way as to make an argument either way. As he began to research these nuances more, that interest pulled Zachary toward the law field. This led Zachary to discover two other passions in the law field: “First, specifically with clerking, there’s all the research and delving into what the law actually says in a situation,” he says. “There are quite a few arguments to be found there. When an attorney asks me to research how certain rules apply, I try to find a lot of cases that suggest one thing and then another which suggests something
else. I try to contrast those cases and differentiate them, then try to apply them to our fact pattern.”
Zachary continues, “Second, I have another job at the firm as a performance analyst. I gather all the data on the firm’s successes, attempts, and what can be improved. It’s not only fun to play with these numbers, but there’s also quite a lot of subjectivity with it, too. You would think the numbers are very objective, but they’re really not. How you constrain the data can give you a totally different result. Of course, I always try to make it as accurate as possible, but even in this, there are a lot of arguments to be made.” One of Zachary’s favorite activities is analyzing data and numbers in the sports world. “I’m big into sports numbers,” he explains. “So, taking data from previous seasons and trying to use that to predict trends and outcomes in future seasons — it’s kind of like the history of sports but based on data.” Although the sporting season this year is a little uncertain, Zachary will continue to follow several sports teams in baseball, basketball, and football, including his two favorite teams, the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets and the University of Florida Gators.
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