# kept doing anyway -- meditation By [cumquat](https://paragraph.com/@cumquat) · 2022-12-02 --- ![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/7cbb2d795a66023f0fa41bf32faf7bb66bfc065da841c0e15c2b6ca302f39c9c.png) It's something I didn't believe in at first, but then understood and kept doing anyway -- meditation. I know what you're thinking when you read that word. I was amazed and amazed, considering that most people seem to think of meditation, meditation, meditation, etc. as the activities of the unworldly. But I suggest you take it seriously, because it can really affect your quality of life and your competitiveness. With a little bit of understanding, you'll know that many top people are using this tool -- Bill Gates, Yuval Helali, to name a few -- and that meditation is a hidden fast track to growth. People who know the secrets have quietly unlocked this hidden track, putting themselves ahead of the curve in some ways, so if you want to get ahead, why not follow me to see the secrets behind this activity and pick up the key to unlock it. What are the biggest differences in abilities between average people and smart people? It's the ability to stay extremely focused for long periods of time. As Liu Weipeng, author of Dark Time, said: Being able to quickly enter the state of concentration and being able to maintain the state of concentration for a long time are the two most important habits for efficient learning. In the eyes of the underachiever, the ability of the high-achiever to concentrate when he or she is fully engaged is very powerful. The average person can only lament his or her lack of such ability, lament his or her constant distraction, and even suspect that his or her brain circuits are different from those of the smart people. This is not the case. We all have the same basic configuration as human beings. No one has a more special brain, but people do have differences in how they use their brains. And that difference is the ability to use "working memory." The human brain looks impressive, but the amount of information that the conscious mind can process is not very large. The average is 7±2 pieces of information, some people have more, some people have less, but all fluctuate around 7 pieces. If you're hearing this for the first time, you might suspect that I'm talking nonsense, but I don't need to explain the science to convince you. If you don't believe me, try memorizing completely unrelated numbers or the names of unfamiliar objects. In the short term, you can usually only remember about seven, more than that. Similarly, in life we can usually only remember six or seven things at once; If you receive a new piece of information when your working memory is saturated, you can only remove an old piece of information. That's why you're thinking about hanging out the washing machine, but when the Courier calls you forget about it because it's been removed from your working memory. For the sake of illustration, I'm going to use 7 as a baseline. Just like there are 7 days in a week, we can imagine that we have 7 little balls in our heads, which represent our mental resources. It is not difficult to imagine that the real advantage of people with good grades is that they can keep the "seven balls" focused on one thing for a long time to ensure high quality and efficient study, while in the brains of people with poor grades, it is likely that one ball is playing background music, one ball is thinking about what to eat for dinner, and one ball is worrying about the upcoming exam... There are probably only three or four balls that are really used for learning. Moreover, the ball that is not learning may interfere with or suppress the ball that is learning, which may result in a 7-3<4 effect, while the ball of a good player may produce a 4+3>7 effect if the ball is coordinated intensively. You can think about how that mental difference adds up over time. Therefore, the ability competition between people is, in the final analysis, the competition of the utilization of mental resources. The more you can develop the brain power of a small ball, the more competitive it will be. Fortunately, the differences are not insurmountable. The seven little balls of the brain can be trained to work together in the right way. This ideal form of training is meditation. During meditation, we simply focus on the breath entirely, that is, we ask seven balls to do something at once, and if one of them "wanders", we gently pull it back. ![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/ca13a5492effe0e431583839fbb2409c7e3547111ceac6247069855aa4c66370.png) By adhering to this practice, you will develop the habit of mindfulness, turn it into an unconscious behavior, and automatically suppress the wandering mind and the wandering mind when you are not meditating. In other words, all seven balls are available to you when you need them. Now, do you know how this seemingly unproductive activity, which has nothing to do with learning, can make a person smart? Scientific studies have shown that the surface area of the cerebral cortex increases and the gray matter thickens as a result of this mindfulness meditation practice, which means that the practice can physically make us smarter, since the surface area of the cerebral cortex and the thickness of the gray matter are factors that influence how smart you are. Learning a variety of skills, such as piano, swimming, gymnastics, etc., increases the density of neurons in the relevant brain areas and improves the communication between brain cells. But when these exercises stop, the neurons begin to decrease. Sit with your eyes closed and focus on your breathing for at least 15 minutes a day... You'll feel the effects. Of course, think of it as a form of brain exercise (which it is), just as we exercise our arm muscles by lifting dumbbells, and you'll get a better idea. It's just that it's not as intuitive as muscle building, so many people don't believe in it and don't want to do it. But with this part under your belt, do you need any more excuses now? Just knowing that meditation can make you smarter, you can give it a try. --- *Originally published on [cumquat](https://paragraph.com/@cumquat/kept-doing-anyway-meditation)*