Mind Habits: The Perfect Computer Game For Students Of The Law Of Attraction
Scientists have developed a computer game that students of the Law of Attraction may find helpful. The Mind Habits game trains players' brains to focus on the positive rather than the negative, and has been proven to reduce stress in trials.
During his research, Professor Mark Baldwin, a specialist in social cognition from McGill University in Montreal, found that our attention tends to be grabbed by social threats. This makes sense from an evolutionary point of view, since being able to quickly identify threats is a key survival skill, but it does mean we're predisposed to focus on the negative rather than the positive, which has an adverse affect on our stress levels and overall mental health.
Baldwin and his team therefore set out to create a computer game to retrain the brain. In one Mind Habits exercise, players are asked to find the single smiling/approving face hidden amongst a crown of fifteen curmudgeons. Baldwin hypothesizes that, "by doing this repeatedly and as quickly as possible, this trains an automatic response of looking for acceptance and ignoring rejection."
Baldwin and his colleagues tested their game on a team of telemarketers, whom they figured had high levels of stress and disapproval (how many times have you slammed the phone down on a telemarketer?). Before the shift they had one group play the game with faces for five minutes, while a control group played a modified version that required them to find a five-petalled flower in a field of seven-petalled flowers. After their shift, the group that was asked to search for the smiling faces was found to have higher levels self-esteem. Furthermore, blood tests showed this group had lowered their level of the stress hormone cortisol by 17% when compared to the control group. "Just 5 minutes of game-play per day had a significant effect," said Balwin in an interview with New Scientist.
If you'd like to retrain your brain, go to the Mind Habits website to play a free demo of the game. You can also download a free trial version from the site, or buy the full version, which features 100 game levels, for just $19.99.
Editor, writer, photographer and conversationalist Nicole Powers believes in working hard and playing hard – preferably simultaneously. When she’s not working hard at having a really, really good time, she tries to make her corner of the world a better, neater place (one stray sock at a time). She strives to live by her personal mantra, you can sleep when you’re dead. She aims to experience as much as she can while she walks on this wonderful earth, and has a passion for sharing the things she’s passionate about. She loves her husband, Al Gore, Michael Moore, Moby, Apple Macs, yoga, modern dance, Vanity Fair, Douglas Adams and John Stewart, hates Wal-Mart, 4X4s, greed and apathy, and thinks Zero 7 make the best music to make love to – which, incidentally, is what we all should be doing instead of waging wars.
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