The Importance of Exercise on the Mind

Exercise is the best way to enhance your body and mind.  Its effects on the brain will leave you happier, more relaxed, and more focused.  Although some find it difficult to develop an exercising habit, it will only benefit in the long run.  As a runner, I understand exercises impact first hand.  Some forms of exercise you can easily implement on your everyday life include, running, going to the gym, or running.

Improving Your Mind

Implementing more exercise  into your daily life will increase your happiness significantly.  Through personal experience, every time I complete an intense workout, it fills me with a sense of pride.  I am able to tell myself “I really did that”, and that motivation helps me through all of my workouts.   Its some sort of paradox where every time I am struggling through exercise I tell myself that I will feel good after; the process repeats.

Exercising enables you to clear your mind.   In a world filled with countless distractions everyone needs time to themselves.

In Stillness Is the Key by Ryan Holiday

“All of humanity’s problems,” Blaise Pascal said in 1654, “stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”

In this case, sitting quietly in a room alone is exercising.  Your only focus is the workout out hand, getting better.  You are working for yourself,  strengthening your mindset through the pain.  For some people, their time at the gym is their only time for themselves.  Personally, I use my running as meditation, pushing myself through each individual set.  Although my body is physically moving, my mind is in sitting quietly in a room.  Exercise is key to keeping you focused on yourself.

Impact on the Brain

Scientifically, exercise will release chemicals in your brain that will increase happiness and decrease depression hormones.  High stress levels lead to depression, through loss of serotonin and other happiness hormone.  Lack of these chemicals leads to the wearing away of certain nerves in the brain;  exercise reverses these effects.  As the brain works out, new connections form and produce more happiness chemicals.  The brain is just another muscle, growing and becoming stronger over time.

As stated by John Ratey, in Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain:

“It turns out that moving our muscles produces proteins that travel through the bloodstream and into the brain, where they play pivotal roles in the mechanisms of our highest thought processes.”

These proteins work to regenerate the nerves lost through high stress levels.  People working out through depression, will physiologically feel happier.  Exercising is the natural way to cure your downhearted thoughts.

Conclusion

Exercise is the best way to improve your life significantly.   It will help you achieve a mental stillness to keep you distressed in our busy lives. The effects on our biological chemicals reverse depression symptoms.  I think exercise provides benefits unobtainable any other way.