The Four Pillars of Well-Being

Years ago, I noticed that when I became engrossed in my goal setting state of mind (almost a meditative state of mind) I would, at times, begin to feel very calm and at peace with the world. I focused even more with a pen in hand, writing goals and steps down, and I would feel even more euphoric. I didn’t understand why, I just knew it felt good. In fact, it felt fantastic!

Of course, it was a wonderful triumph to reach or exceed the goals I had set down, but why did the process of thinking about my future goals or writing them down give me such a mental boost, one even more euphoric than the actual accomplishment of my goal?

There is a brilliant scientist who thinks he knows the answer and, in my mind, he has proven it. This University of Wisconsin professor, Richard Davidson, was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine in 2006. He established the four pillars of mental well-being: awareness, connection, insight, and purpose. I think my goal writing does all of that.

Davidson was actually asked by the Dalai Lama to study the possible connection between the meditative state of mind of some of the Buddhist Monks and their emotional and mental lives. So, he hooked up 128 electrodes to the head of a French monk, Mattieu Ricard. When Ricard began to meditate, Davidson recorded an immediate increase in gamma activity, those brainwaves associated with higher functions like cognition and memory. Later, they studied more monks as well as a control group of college students and found that the monks produced gamma brainswaves that were thirty times stronger than the students brainwaves.

But what does all this mean? Simply put, this, along with other research, unveils the real possibility that the brain, like the rest of the body, can be altered intentionally. Just as we build muscle through exercise, we can build our brain through mental exercises.

Davidson actually found that meditation results in a redistribution of gray matter in the brain as well as a decline in the loss of gray matter. A person’s physical health can also be affected by his or her mental state. According to Davidson, it might also be used to modify emotional response like depression.

I think all of this research and the conclusions Davidson came to can be very helpful for all of us as we focus on adding more awareness, connection, insight, and purpose to our lives. We can work on this and, as a result, use our brains to do so much more.