At the end of this talk,

I'm going to ask you a very important question.

But before I do that

I'm going to give you some good news,

and some bad news.

I'm going to start with the bad news:

and the bad news

is that shit happens.

And you might have had an intuitive understanding of this

or the selling, less known,

is the good news,

which is that each and every one of you

has the power

to control

and change

your experience

of this shit when it happens.

That you can learn and train yourself

to have a better attitude about it.

And today I'm not only going to tell you how,

but I'm also going to show you

neuroscientific evidence

from my laboratory at Yale University

and also from other labs

that suggests that

this kind of training

can help you feel less stressed,

less pain,

and change the way your brain works.

So let's start.

What did I mean when I said 'shit happens'?

What I meant is whether we like it or not,

at some point in life

you will experience some kind of pain.

For example physical pain,

and this can be anything from getting a paper cut

or walking into something with a sharp corner

- which if you are me you do quite frequently -

but also major things.

Sometimes we get into accidents, we break bones, we need surgery,

but is not only that, there is also emotional pain.

And this again can start from minor annoyances,

like when you are stuck in traffic,

when you are late for an important meeting or a flight

or may be when you spill coffee on yourself right before you have to walk on stage.

- That didn't actually happen to me -

- luckily -

But of course there is also more serious forms

like when someone we love leaves us

or passes away.

Either way,

the insight here

is that even if we are incredibly lucky individuals,

even if most things are going our way,

sometimes life deviates from our plan

and things break, and our expectations are violated.

And it's just like that famous Rolling Stones' song:

"You can't always get what you want"

And so the idea that I want to suggest to all of you today

is that whether or not you can get what you want,

your overall experience of life in general

is influenced not only by the events that happen to you,

but also, and perhaps more profoundly,

by how we perceive and how we react to them.

So our response here is really key.

Now William Shakespeare fed this really well in his play 'Hamlet'.

He said: 'For there is nothing either good or bad

but thinking makes it so'.

Viktor Frankl is a Holocoust survivor who wrote a memoir about his experiences.

And he called this 'The last of Human freedoms-

To choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances'.

Now what does that really mean? Let's imagine for a second

that you've just cut yourself petty severely.

No attitude that you will adopt will change the fact that you were cut,

and it probably won't change the fact that you need to go to a hospital.

But the question is: does it ever really help you to feel annoyed about it?

Does it ever really help you to spend the entire way to the hospital being really really upset?

Choosing to have a good attitude can profoundly alter your experience.

And make it better or at least not make it worse.

So how do we do this?

There are many ways to do this.

The first thing to realize

is that you have the power to choose.

And the second is to start practicing the kind of response that you actually like to have.

And there are many kind of responses,

and there are many kind of strategies.

But one that I am going to talk about today

is called Mindfulness.

Now, what is mindfulness?

You can think about it as a technique or as a skill.

You can think about it as a kind of attitude that some people have actually more than others.

But the way we think about it in Psychology

or the operationalization of it,

is as having two components:

a component of attitude

and a component of attention.

Now the component of attention,

is the first one.

And is an attention that is directed to your moment to moment experience.

So in the present moment,

any sensations that you have, any emotions that you have and any thoughts that you have,

you're just paying attention to them.

But you're paying attention to them with a particular kind of attitude

and that is an attitude that is open,

that is curious,

and that has an element of acceptance.

Without judging your experience as good or bad,

may be you can ask yourself: 'Can I be OK with this exactly like it is?'

Now mindful as a concept

comes from a long history in buddhist philosophy

where is part of a much larger set of practices

that all have a similar aim of reducing suffering

and increasing enduring happiness.

And where mindfulness is cultivated

- the state of mindfulness is cultivated -

through the practice of mindfulness meditation.

Now, as some of you might know,

mindful meditation can be practiced in different ways,

and I don't have time to give you a full demonstration,

but I do want to give you a little taste.

And for that I'm going to ask you to trust me for a moment

and close your eyes.

As you close your eyes, I want to direct your attention to the physical sensation of your breath

as it comes in and out of your nostrils

and just notice how it moves spontaneously,

and don't try to change it in any way.

Just pay attention to it.

Now you can open your eyes

and I know you only did this for a few seconds,

but if you did this for longer

what you'd probably notice is that as you try to meditate

and as you try to notice your breath,

whether you like it or not,

your mind will wander.

Now your mind will wander uncontrollably because is what minds do:

they wander.

And what you'll notice is that it will wander to some familiar places.

Sometimes memories will come up,

of things that you did earlier or things you wish you had done.

Many of us start planning,

I know that I always have a running to-do list in my head.

People often find themselves judging the fact that their minds have wandered

and judging their own experience.

May be you even get distracted to the e-mails you want to send later.

Either way,

is exactly those moments when you wake and find yourself mind-wandering,

they are the perfect opportunity to practice minfulness,

noticing and accepting the fact that your mind wanders.

And is exactly the place where you can practice and develop the skill of mindfulness

so that you can later transfer it and apply it to everyday events,

which are uncontrollable and sometimes unpleasant.

And before I move on,

I want to make a little disclaimer.

I'm not a buddhist evangelist.

First and foremost because this practice of mindfulness

has been imported into psychological and medical treatments in the West

over 30 years ago where it's been investigated systematically.

But I want to say also,

that the important disclaimer is that I myself

meditate and have been meditating for quite some time.

This is actually me in Costa Rica a few years ago.

But I actually started meditating 10 years ago

and I started meditating because my heart was broken.

I lived with someone sometime and we had to part ways

and I definitely judge it as 'bad',

and I felt like that I didn't have that freedom Viktor Frankl was talking about

to choose my response.

And so I started practicing.

And what I found after a while is that it did to mind what going to the gym does to my body,

it makes it both more stronger and more flexible.

And with time I learned to have better responses not only about the break up itself,

but, about other things including for example my fear of public speaking

which you can see is much better now.

It also help me deal with other things like physical injuries,

even cancer and surgery.

And so I stand here today

feeling like a much better person

for this practice.

Not perfectly calm by any means but much more calmer than I would be otherwise.

But of course the scientist they have to tell you that I may not be representative.

I am what we call and 'n of 1'.

Just one of me, many of you: your experiences might be different.

But luckily science is on my side:

there are now close to 100 studies

that have investigated the effect of meditation.

And there are likely much more representative of what may happen to you if you start meditating.

And these studies have consistently shown

that meditation is associated with improvement of a variety of psychological and physiological functions

including stress, anxiety, cognitive function including attention, depression, addiction or drug use,

and even chronic pain.

More recently there is also evidence for biological markers that improve

like blood pressure, stress markers like cortisol

that is a hormone that is associated with stress,

and even markers of cellular health.

But importantly,

individuals who learn how to meditate

often report an increase in overall well-being.

They are happier.

Now you may ask at this point

'how is it what seems like a fairly simple practice

has such a profound effect on people's lives?

Well, the answer to that is that it changes our brain.

Now we've know that for sometime

that every moment our brain makes new connections.

The neurons in our brain - the cells in our brain -

make some connections and break other ones.

Strengthen some connections and weakens other ones.

And we call this 'Experience-Based Neuroplasticity'.

And the idea here is that the brain is not made of plastic, like a bucket,

but rather, that like plastic it can be molded into different shapes.

And so the question of course here is 'how does mindful meditation change your brain?'

So we wanted to specifically test whether

it changes the brain experience of stress.

And along with my coleagues at Yale University we recruted a group of cigarrettte smokers

and we randomized them to either receive mindful's training

doing 8 sessions over a month,

or the leading treatment for smoking cessation

And then we measured their smoking.

First we discovered that everybody smoked less in the end

so not only was the leading treatment good,

but also mindful's training was good for smoking cessation.

But more importantly we measured their brain activity during stress.

And how did we do that?

We used funcional magnetic resonance imaging, which is one of the leading ways to look at brain activity

and we also stressed people out

while they were in the scanner

by asking them to recolect

the most intensive negative memories in their lives

and to imagine them vividly.

And people told stories like

the day that their son was in an accident,

the day that their brother was shot...

so really emotionally evocative stuff.

And of course what we expected or what we were wondering

is whether training in meditation

reduces the brain response to stress.

And what did we find?