The wandering mind it is a transitory state that, when it is excessive or occurs in situations that require attention, can become harmful and cause unhappiness.
How many times have we found ourselves doing one thing and thinking of another?
There are daily actions that we have so automated that we do not pay attention to what we are doing. And not only that, in addition, we do not pay attention to the type of thoughts that we generate.
Wandering or letting the mind wander is a characteristic of the human mind that does not necessarily benefit us. Find out more about mental wandering and how it affects us in this article.
Learning to be present and to be more aware allows us to be freer. In this video, Enric Corbera explains to us, through practical examples, what it means to become aware, what it implies and why do it.
Wisdom is a facet that we can all develop. In this conference, Enric Corbera explains how developing the competence of self-awareness brings us closer to wisdom and offers us more capacity to promote our balance and health.
What is the wandering mind?
Mind wandering, colloquially called “automatic pilot,” is the experience of having miscellaneous non-task thoughts what we are doing This disengagement from the present moment, sometimes voluntary and sometimes unconscious, is a mental state opposite to the .
It occurs in situations where vigilance is low because we are doing something that does not require our attention, when we are distracted or scattered, and when we daydream.
For example, driving under favorable conditions is an almost automatic activity that requires minimal use of the brain area that is activated when we are immersed in a task that requires our attention.
Thus, when we are driving we can think about other things and, sometimes, we even forget how we got to our destinationbecause we had our minds elsewhere.
Mental wandering is a characteristic feature of the human mind. It is a transitory state that can promote mental processes that favor creativity, however when it is excessive or occurs in situations that require attention, it can be harmful.
In addition, this type of diffuse and fleeting thought stands between the specific situation we are experiencing and our internal state, for which reason distances us from ourselves and our experiences.
The wandering mind and happiness
Experiment on the relationship between the wandering mind and happiness
Researchers from Harvard University, Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert, asked themselves a question as a starting point for a : “What are the big ?” and the main hypothesis was that “Happiness has a lot to do with the content of our everyday experiences”.
For this they designed a for iPhone for the purpose of monitor people’s happiness and thoughts in real time.
Aim
The goal was to know what they were doing, who they were with, and everyone else factors that could be related to changes in happiness. More than 650,000 reports were collected from more than 15,000 people from more than 80 countries.
The study group was very diverse, ranging in age from 18 to 80 years, with very different levels of education and income, and with very different family situations.
Process
The people who collaborated in the received signals at random times throughout the day and they were asked what they felt just before receiving the signal.
Upon receiving the signal each person should answer three questions:
– How do you feel, on a scale that goes from very bad to very good?
– What are you doing? (from a list of 22 activities),
– Are you thinking about anything other than what you are doing now?
This last question could be answered “I am focused on my task” either “I’m thinking of something else” and whether the subject of those thoughts was pleasant, neutral, or unpleasant. Whatever the category of this last response was included in what is known as mind wandering or wandering mind
Two fundamental aspects can be deduced from this approach:
First, The importance of detecting if we are focused on action that we are doing
And the second, even more important, what is the nature of the thoughts we have while doing one thing and thinking about another.
Results
Broadly speaking, the results reflected that 47% of the time people are thinking about something other than what they are doing.
From the correlation of data obtained Killingsworth and Gilbert concluded that “Mind wandering produces feelings of unhappiness”.
It seems that when the mind wanders, we are often thinking about unpleasant things that make us feel less happy. Even if people think about something neutral, they have been found to be less happy than when their mind is paying attention to what it is doing at the moment.
It can be stated that probably a wandering mind is a causeand not only a consequence, of unhappiness.
“The ability to think about what is not happening is a cognitive achievement that comes at an emotional cost.”
Matthew Killingsworth.
BioneuroemotionⓇ and wandering thoughts
At Bioneuroemoción we know that each one of us we are an observer, . When we are focused on the present, as neutral observers, we do not decide with our thoughts, we simply witness what happens. That is, we do not position ourselves.
it is the first step towards the state of Understanding. The state of Understanding is a knowledge. It is not knowledge, it cannot be expressed in words, because it is a way of seeing and experiencing what surrounds us..
Being present, recognizing ourselves as observers of a process and not identifying with it, is the state that turns life experience into an experience of harmony.
We also know that it is important to be aware of the nature of our mental wanderings because everyone and no thought is more powerful than another. We transmit our thoughts to all our cells and they become the expression and resonance of our emotional state.
The proposes us to be attentive to the type of energy that we generate with our thoughts, providing us with tools to increase our self-awareness and therefore our happiness.
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