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Check Out The Latest Study That Links Meditation And Reduced Mistakes

21st December 2021

Health Life

21st December 2021

By Beth Shelper

If there’s one thing for certain, we’re all always on the lookout for tips and tricks when it comes to improving our performance. Whether that performance be gym-based, memory-based, work-based or otherwise, anything to help out is always welcomed, right?

If you agree, the results of this meditation and focus study are going to excite you. What’s more, if you’re one of those people that would forget your head if it wasn’t on your body, this meditation and focus study is one you absolutely need to read about. And aside from our research-backed, natural ingredients filled The Focus Capsules, it turns out there is a pretty interesting meditation method that can help you get on top of things.

Anyway, let’s give you the details.

Meditation and focus: a match made in heaven

Now, this study isn’t just significant due to its findings. Oh no. It’s significant due to its findings and it’s reliability. This study is the biggest of its kind to date.

The findings? Be patient, we’ll get to that. But what we can tell you is that meditation can help you make fewer mistakes. No doubt about it!

Open monitoring meditation and focus study: the low down

The study, entitled ‘'On Variation In Mindfulness Training: A Multimodal Study of Brief Open Monitoring Meditation on Error Monitoring’ (we know, a bit of a mouthful), took place in 2019 and was published in Brain Sciences journal.

Brain Sciences details the methods, hypotheses, and findings of the evaluation, and notes that the study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of something called ‘open monitoring meditation’, which is essentially the practice of meditation that places focus on feelings thoughts and sensations, and its link to our increased ability to recognise errors, and therefore reduce mistakes.

Researchers at The University of Michigan chose to investigate the link due to the rise in popularity of mindfulness and meditation over recent years. Both techniques bring huge relaxation benefits to those that practice them, and so any further benefits that can be found from these techniques are a win-win.

The open monitoring meditation study method

To get to this conclusion, researchers instructed the participants through a twenty-minute open monitoring exercise, which is essentially a type of meditation exercise. During this time, researchers were consistently monitoring the participants’ brain activity.

Brain activity was monitored through something called Electroencephalography… or EEG, for short. This is essentially a test that detects any electrical activity in the brain. From this, researchers were able to spot patterns and trends within the electrical data and deduce their findings. Pretty impressive if you ask us.

This technology is so sophisticated, in fact, that brain activity can be measured at millisecond level using EEG. The researchers used this technology as the EEGs were able to recognise the neural signal that was omitted (and always is omitted) by the brain following an error.

The meditation study findings

The findings of this open monitoring meditation and focus study found that this neural error recognition signal was strengthened in those participants that took part in the meditation, compared to the control group who did not partake in the meditative exercise. Therefore, proving a clear link between the practice of meditation and heightened error recognition.

How to reduce mistakes

Aside from implementing the technique of open monitoring meditation into your life, now we’ve learned that open monitoring meditation is a keyway to reduce the number of errors you make on a day-to-day basis, aside from this technique, what else can we do to enhance our performance?

Well, you’ll be pleased to know that there are a range of things. Some pretty easy, too! In fact, we’re sure that many of you are partaking in these activities every single day.

Here are some of our favourite mistake-reducing techniques:

  • Making thorough to-do lists
  • Getting 8 hours of sleep a night
  • Take regular breaks
  • Eliminate all unnecessary distractions
  • Always, always proof-read your work
  • Don’t be afraid to ask for help
  • Prioritise a work-life balance

Summary

So there we have it. The results are in: open monitoring meditation is not just great for relaxation purposes, but for improving your performance!

All in all, it’s important to note that mistakes are just a part of life. Whatever we do to try and avoid them, sometimes, we just can’t. And that’s okay, that’s just part of being human. Whilst we can implement tricks and techniques such as open monitoring meditation to reduce these mistakes, make sure not to beat yourself up when that time does come around and you find yourself in recovery mode.

We’ve all been there!

References

Michigan State University. (2019, November 11). How meditation can help you make fewer mistakes: Meditating just once proves to make a difference. ScienceDaily. Click here.

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