MINDFULNESS CURES THE WANDERING MIND

There is an old saying, which I think has the status of a metaphysical or spiritual law – ‘As within, so without.’ There is another old saying, an Oriental maxim, which states, ‘What you think upon grows.’ More and more medical and scientific research is demonstrating the truth of those and other old but wise sayings.

A 2010 Harvard University research study, reported in the 12 November 2010 issue of Science, suggests that people's minds ‘wander’ almost half the time resulting in ... unhappiness. Yes, the researchers found that a wandering mind is usually an unhappy mind.

‘The volunteers' minds were on something other than their current activity 46.9% of the time. And those whose minds were elsewhere were decidedly unhappy.’

The researchers estimate that only 4.6% of a person's degree of happiness was due to the activity they were engaged in, but 10.8% of their happiness could be attributed to whether or not their mind was wandering.

The researchers interpret these findings to mean that people who ‘live in the moment’ – that is, live mindfully from one moment to the next – are happier than those who don't. In other words, those most focused on the present are the happiest. ‘Mind-wandering is an excellent predictor of people's happiness,’ said the researchers.

An earlier study reported in the 9 January 2007 issue of Science found that mind wandering is linked to activation of network of brain cells called the default mode network (DMN), which is active not when we’re doing high-level processing, but when we’re drifting about in ‘self-referential’ (that is, mindless) thoughts.

As I have often said in these blogs and in other writings of mine, mindfulness is not about silencing or stopping thoughts but rather developing a new and altogether different ‘relationship’ with your thoughts. Instead of grasping, chasing after, or clinging to thoughts, you simply observe. That means, among things, that you not identify with any thoughts as they arise ... and they will! If you identify with any thought, you give it power and intensity. You know that to be true from past experience.

As soon as you recognise that your mind is restless or wandering, ‘note’ that fact. Then you can simply observe the mind as it ‘plays itself out,’ so to speak. By simply accepting the restless or wandering mind as it is, without expecting thoughts to stop (let alone trying to stop them – heaven forbid!), and practising observation and choiceless awareness, the thoughts will slow down. They may even stop altogether.

Choose to be happy! Be mindful.

Resources:

Killingsworth, M A, and Gilbert, D T. ‘A Wandering Mind is an Unhappy Mind’, Science, 330: 6006, 12 November 2010: 932. DOI:10.1126/science.1192439.

Mason, M F, et al. ‘Wandering Minds: The Default Network and Stimulus-Independent Thought’, Science, 315: 5810, 9 January 2007: 393-395. DOI:10.1126/science.1131295.

RELATED POSTS

MINDFULNESS HELPS STOP YOUR MIND FROM WANDERING

MINDFULNESS AND OBSESSIONAL THOUGHTS

BRUCE LEE ON MINDFULNESS

MINDFULNESS BROADENS YOUR HORIZONS

The practice of Mindfulness Meditation requires no belief commitments, but it certainly can broaden one’s horizons by affording insight into ourselves and the world around us. Over time, we start to break loose from tired, worn-out, narrow, constricted and confined thought forms which have held us back, often for decades. Not only do our thoughts change, but so does the grey matter of our brains by means of which we think our thoughts.

Dr Jon Kabat-Zinn (pictured below), Professor of Medicine Emeritus and the founding director of the Stress Reduction Clinic and Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care and Society at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, and the celebrated author of numerous seminal best-selling books and audio books on Mindfulness and Mindfulness Meditation including Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness and Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life, has written:

“Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally … When we commit ourselves to paying attention in an open way, without falling prey to our own likes and dislikes, opinions and prejudices, projections and expectations, new possibilities open up and we have a chance to free ourselves from the straitjacket of unconsciousness.”

Dr Ellen Langer (pictured below), a professor in the Psychology Department at Harvard University, and the author of many books including Mindfulness, The Power of Mindful Learning, On Becoming An Artist, and Counterclockwise, has carried out over 30 years of research into “mindfulness” and its opposite … “mindlessness”. Professor Langer describes the “mindless” person - that is, the person who fails to act mindfully in their daily lives - as being “trapped by categories”, engaging in “automatic behaviour”, and “acting from a single perspective”. Langer writes, “The mindless individual is committed to one predetermined use of … information, and other possible uses or applications are not explored.”

“Mindlessness” manifests itself in various all-too-familiar ways … reacting emotionally and automatically to triggers, labelling and prejudging people, inability to think outside the square, predetermining matters, acting on and never questioning false, unstated, unconscious assumptions and presumptions, and so forth. On the other hand, a mindful person - someone who has applied meditation to their entire daily life - is open-minded, nonjudgmental, ever curious and alert, looking for and actually noticing new things, creative and innovative. A mindful person, being self-aware, knows. A “mindless” person believes and accepts on faith what others have told them is true whether the subject-matter is religion or whatever.

There is an old saying which is often heard in Twelve Step recovery groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous, “If nothing changes, nothing changes.” When people and organizations suffer from mindlessness, their mindsets and thought forms are fixed and rigid with the result that … so are they … and so are their experiences of external phenomena.

Break free from the past! There are no chains that bind you … and no fetters … except those you have created for yourself. Dr Norman Vincent Peale (pictured below), who, with the Freudian psychiarist Dr Smiley Blanton (who trained under the master Sigmund Freud himself), founded in 1937 the first service in the world combining religion and psychiatry for the sake of mental health (which is now known as the Blanton-Peale Institute), once wrote, “There is a spiritual giant within you which is always struggling to burst its way out of the prison you have made for it.” So, come alive! Be awake!