Generally Thinking

Mental Workout produce Mp3s and mobile phone apps focused around resolving issues and improving mental performance. I’ve been listening to their Positive Psychology product for a week or two now, and thought I’d let you know a little bit about it.

The package contains 12 tracks, each covering a different area of applied positive psychology, all aimed at increasing happiness (which is the title of the package, actually). You’ll be familiar with most of them, of course, having read my comprehensive article on the subject (or perhaps you read the shorter, free pdf; $37.42 value!!!).

The Mental Workout Happiness program is a very polished audio of these techniques, things like gratitude exercises, savouring, forgiveness, and so on. You listen to the track, and the voice guides you along, to train your mind in each particular way.

Now the happiness ones aren’t really my cup of tea, but they are really well made and I’m sure most readers of GT will like them.

But the ones I like are the meditation tracks. Naturally, you’ve read my Buddhist Brain article, so you’re familiar with the different types of meditation and the beneficial effects it can have on the brain (more happiness, more focus, more emotional stability, less financial insecurity, less stress, etc; as you well know).

One of the main things I wanted to practice meditation for is focus; I’m a natural scatterbrain you see. In ‘focused attention meditation’, your goal is to place your attention on one thing (your breathing, an object) to the exclusion of everything else. This trains the attention, and develops your focus.

And I suck at it. I can’t do it for more than 30 seconds without a thought coming into my head (that thought often being “Yes…this is it… I’m doing it! I’m not thinking!…. CRAP!” The audio is essentially a reminder every few minutes, it says things like “if you’re thoughts are wandering, bring them back to the breath.” And it works.

At first I had concerns about this. As I mentioned to Kenji of Full Time Writer, maybe this defeats the purpose of exercises to develop focus? Kind of like a spotter taking the weight of the bar when you’re bench pressing; you don’t get a proper workout.

But then I realised that at some point, you have to say “I suck,” and put the training wheels on. At least you get more time in the focused state. Actually, the second part of the track is more like Open Monitoring Meditation (which you know all about, of course).

The full track list looks like this:

• Mindfulness
• Peaceful Place
• Working with the Mind
• Gratitude
• Compassion
• Forgiveness
• Lovingkindness
• Savoring
• Gratitude Journal
• Working on Negative Beliefs
• Fresh Eyes
• Half Smile
• Guide to Meditation (pdf)

…and costs only $9.99 for the whole set (2.6 hours worth of audio). You can listen to the introduction to the package here: happiness mp3. If you prefer, you can buy some of the individual tracks separately. Most are $1.99, but the mindfulness one mentioned above is $0.99.

If you’re interested in happiness exercises like the above, get the whole package. It’d be a good compliment to my articles, which you’ve already read. If you’re struggling with meditation or want to get started, they have a separate package for that: mindfulness mp3s, which is only $6.99. Or you could just get the one I mention for less than a dollar.

I’m not an affiliate of Mental Workout, I just liked their stuff and thought you would too.  Since you like my articles so much.