"Today is Thursday, the day of Meaning."
That's the message at the very top of the page. And from there down, almost everything about Amit Sood's website, stressfree.org, is couched in the self-help jargon that scientists instinctively dismiss. So it's especially interesting that Sood is a physician, a professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic, no less. There he recently founded the Global Center for Resiliency and Wellbeing and is now taking to the Internet to teach people how to train their minds for a better life.
One of the core elements of Sood's practice is helping people to "create intentionality." He describes the approach plainly: choosing where you deploy your attention and how you process information. It's unique ground for an M.D. to tread, but increasingly relevant as the connection between mindset and physical health bears out. Sood argues that most of us spend more than half of our mental energy flitting from thought to thought, from app to app; we would ultimately be more productive and resilient, less depressed, and physically healthier, if we were only more deliberate with our cognitive energy. Which is all fine and good, if more easily said than done—though Sood believes it doesn't have to be.
[For more of this story, written by James Hamblin, go to http://www.theatlantic.com/hea...dispositions/384642/]
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