It doesn't take much searching to find some of the more commonly known benefits of meditation and becoming deeply connected on a spiritual level. But for those of you who are not familiar, meditation can help with a wide range of mental and physical health issues and is great for forming a deeper connection with yourself, those close to you and humanity in general.

I know I am not going into specifics and this covers quite a broad range of subjects, but the vast potential of being spiritually healthy is huge and a whole article could be written on each of those benefits, so I shall leave specifics for today. What I am trying to cover in this article are the lesser known benefits of being spiritually healthy. You might call them the unsung perks of connecting with your divine purpose.

"Originals are nonconformists. People who not only have new ideas, but take action to champion them. They're people who stand out and speak up. Originals drive creativity and change in the world. They're the people you want to bet on. And they look nothing like I expected,"explained organizational psychologist Adam Grant in a recent TED talk.

"I want to show you three things I've learned about recognizing originals and becoming a little bit more like them," he said.

Creative and innovative people don't put off work until the last possible minute, Grant noted — nor do they rush to complete their work as soon as they receive an assignment. In other words, original thinkers usually fall somewhere between procrastination and 'precrastination.' In fact, many Originals are "quick to start" but "slow to finish" projects.

When you have major changes going on in your life, or you're just frustrated about where you are, it's easy to get trapped in a cycle of depression, bad moods and frustration. I know, I've been there ... and when I'm not careful, I still get there more than I want to.

But when I've had a particularly hard time, I hit these moments where I'm in a foul mood, or I'm just feeling paralyzed, and I'm just stuck. Sometimes I just stew in that and stay there, but sometimes I actually get intelligent and pull my way out of it.

I'm going to outline the framework that I've been using successfully to really get myself resourceful and motivated (and in a better mood) when I'm feeling stuck. Hopefully it will help you, too, and if you do I truly hope you'll share it with others.

First Up: Using A Framework To Escape From Paralyzing Situations

When we feel bad, it's hard to "feel good" again. You can't just wish yourself better, and when you're in a stuck place, you don't generally have the mental energy to pull out. Willpower doesn't help, and "positive thinking" sure as hell doesn't help. But falling back on a framework of steps does help, because we humans function well when we have a set of steps to follow.

The reason for this is that steps take the emotion out of our situation and give us direction to simply act. Duck and Cover. Stop, Drop, and Roll. When you know with certainty what to do next, you're in a much stronger position to take action, even when you're panicking. (And it doesn't have to be words, either - just think of Lamaze breathing, which expectant mothers practice well ahead of time so they can slip back into it during the stress of labor.)

Sometimes scientific studies reaffirm things we already knew based on good ol' common sense. You can look at those studies and be all, "Ugh, lol, duh, #wasteofmoney," or you can say, "Wow, huh, I guess maybe now we can try to get to the root of all these human experiences we take for granted."

This is one of those studies.

Published Tuesday in Nature Communications, the experiment found that having a 50 percent chance of receiving a painful electric shock was actually more stressful than having a 100 percent chance of receiving one.

There are three primary mental disorders. Insanity (psychosis) is a thinking disorder and has been recognized since ancient times; insanity rarely causes a problem for anyone but the afflicted person and immediate family and associates. Insane school shootings are mercifully infrequent. Mood disorders (depression, bi-polar) were only clinically described in the late 19th century by Dr. Henry Maudsley, and again, mood disorders rarely cause a problem for anyone but those who suffer from the affliction and immediate family and associates.

The last of the major mental disorders, psychopathy, was clinically described only in 1941 by Dr. Hervey Cleckley. Psychopathy is complex and counterintuitive, and understanding has been very slow, even though some psychologists credit (debit?) psychopaths with starting WWII and with creating the 2008 worldwide financial meltdown, in addition to the many serial murder cases that attract wide attention. The Western understanding of psychopathic mental disorders is only now beginning to attract serious attention by the general public and that would seem to be entirely appropriate given the high associated costs of psychopathic behaviors.

Largely unrecognized is that there was an active but clandestine psychopathy study group operating behind the Iron Curtain during the Cold War. The apparent last survivor of this group died in 2007, and it is an amazing story.

Dr. Andrew Łobaczewski was a Polish psychologist in the mental health field during the Cold War, working particularly with psychopathy. Dr. Łobaczewski was in the last class of psychology students before the Soviets imposed Pavlovian concepts on psychological studies within Poland. Dr. Łobaczewski labored under very trying circumstances, facing ideological resistance, censorship, official repression, and prison. A group of like-minded mental health workers behind the Iron Curtain produced a body of knowledge similar to and in some cases more comprehensive than that of Western psychologists, particularly the works of Dr. Hervey Cleckley in the USA as updated by Dr. Robert Hare in Canada. Dr. Łobaczewski's group found it necessary to maintain anonymity, and some members of the group were unknown to others while keeping up a correspondence through a chain of personal contacts. At least one member of the group died under mysterious circumstances.

Laptops and organizer apps make pen and paper seem antique, but handwriting appears to focus classroom attention and boost learning in a way that typing notes on a keyboard does not, new studies suggest.

Students who took handwritten notes generally outperformed students who typed their notes via computer, researchers at Princeton University and the University of California at Los Angeles found. Compared with those who type their notes, people who write them out in longhand appear to learn better, retain information longer, and more readily grasp new ideas, according to experiments by other researchers who also compared note-taking techniques.

"The written notes capture my thinking better than typing," said educational psychologist Kenneth Kiewra at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, who studies differences in how we take notes and organize information.

Ever since ancient scribes first took reed pen to papyrus, taking notes has been a catalyst for the alchemy of learning, by turning what we hear and see into a reliable record for later study and recollection. Indeed, something about writing things down excites the brain, brain imaging studies show. "Note-taking is a pretty dynamic process," said cognitive psychologist Michael Friedman at Harvard University who studies note-taking systems. "You are transforming what you hear in your mind."

It's been interesting to watch this series unfold this week. Though I knew it would be controversial, I wasn't sure what to expect and how much interest there would actually be in the topic.

As it happened, the posts received massive amounts of traffic. And while there was definitely vocal opposition to the arguments I laid out, these were fewer in number than I expected. This may be partly chalked up to the fact that AoM's readership tends to skew more traditional and religious (even though we actively welcome men from all backgrounds) - guys who are likely more interested in this topic than the general population. But I also have to think that there are tons of men - conservative and liberal alike — that aren't completely happy with the role of porn in their lives, for whatever reason. I've long felt that there are a bunch of things in our culture towards which the media relentlessly presents a viewpoint that supposedly everyone shares, and people don't feel comfortable publicly admitting that it just isn't working that way in their own personal lives. I think the idea of porn use as harmless and casual is one of those things.

At any rate, if you're reading this post, you or someone you know is trying to quit porn and are looking for some help in doing so. Here's the good news: in the vast majority of cases, you don't need expensive rehabs or retreats to rid your life of porn. As I mentioned yesterday, in reading a boatload of books and countless blog and forum postings on "porn addiction recovery," I discovered that most of the advice given is the exact same advice therapists and cognitive psychologists offer to someone who's trying to change a bad habit as innocuous as swearing or fingernail biting. Sure, there are a few differences, but overall, quitting porn is just like quitting pretty much any other bad habit.

Today, a Democracy Now! special with the Canadian physician and bestselling author, Dr. Gabor Maté. From disease to addiction, parenting to attention deficit disorder, Maté's work focuses on the centrality of early childhood experiences to the development of the brain, and how those experiences can impact everything from behavioral patterns to physical and mental illness. While the relationship between emotional stress and disease, and mental and physical health more broadly, is often considered controversial within medical orthodoxy, Maté argues too many doctors seem to have forgotten what was once a commonplace assumption, that emotions are deeply implicated in both the development of illness, addictions and disorders, and in their healing.

Validation means to express understanding and acceptance of another person's internal experience, whatever that might be. Validation does not mean you agree or approve. Validation builds relationships and helps ease upset feelings. Knowing that you are understood and that your emotions and thoughts are accepted by others is powerful. Validation is like relationship glue.

Self-validation is accepting your own internal experience, your thoughts and feelings. Self-validation doesn't mean that you believe your thoughts or think your feelings are justified. There are many times that you will have thoughts that surprise you or that don't reflect your values or what you know is true. You will also have feelings that you know aren't justfied. If you fight the thoughts and feelings, or judge yourself for having them, then you increase your emotional upset. You'll also miss out on important information about who you are as a person.

Validating your thoughts and emotions will help you calm yourself and manage your emotions more effectively. Validating yourself will help you accept and better understand yourself, which leads to a stronger identity and better skills at managing intense emotions. Self-validation helps you find wisdom.

Teenagers with serious alcohol and other drug problems have a low regard for others. At least, if you are going by the high rates of driving under the influence and having unprotected sex with a history of sexually transmitted disease, research shows.

The findings also showed that these adolescents are less apt to volunteer their time helping others, an activity that she has been shown to help adult alcoholics stay sober.

Developmental psychologist Maria Pagano, PhD, of Case Western Reserve University, had a major challenge in designing this study.