Studies show a "wandering mind" is less happy - even if it's "happy thoughts"...

originally posted by: leolady
a reply to: arpgme

Sounds like mind control to me !

Lets see... I'm thinking of the beach right now. The ocean breeze and a light wind blowing on my face. Lazy lounging at the pool. Waking in the am and actually having time to watch the sunrise. Ahhhhhh peaceful serenity.

I feel pretty happy and relaxed right now.


leolady

A moment of perfection visualised.

Though im sure if you were actually there, the wind would blow sand in your eyes, the sweat would drip suncream into them making them sting, the sand would be too hot to walk on, the beer would go warm too quickly, the pool would be full of screaming kids, just don't think about the pee in the pool, sunrise would probably be cloudy and youd have a hangover from the night before.

a reply to: gosseyn

Thanks a lot for that quote, it made want to read the whole book.
I always admired Eckhart Tolle but never really connected with his personality. Yet the book seems very readable, so I am on it already, online.
All the best.

a reply to: ProleUK

LOL, You may be right, however I choose to think positively about this place... always.



leolady

I wander...

How we would have writers, if we didn't have wandering minds. Or the "Einstein's" and "Edison's" and "Tesla's" if they hadn't had wondering minds.

Without our wandering minds, I'm afraid we would be like robots only focusing on the task at hand we have been given. No stepping out of line.

leolady

originally posted by: leolady


I wander...

How we would have writers, if we didn't have wandering minds. Or the "Einstein's" and "Edison's" and "Tesla's" if they hadn't had wondering minds.

Without our wandering minds, I'm afraid we would be like robots only focusing on the task at hand we have been given. No stepping out of line.

leolady

The difference is that you're not a slave to your thoughts. If there's no awareness then it is easy to become like a passenger in a train of thoughts that you don't control, ruminating the bad things again and again. But if there is awareness, then you can choose to ignore those thoughts and let them pass just like you watch clouds passing by, there is no identification.

a reply to: leolady

Sounds like mind control to me !

If it's mind control, then It's mind self control, because the researchers are not forcing you to do anything. It's your mind and you can practice concentration, focus, self-control or not.

a reply to: arpgme

No the researchers aren't forcing anyone to think anything, that is correct.

However, I wonder what made them want to do this research project about wandering minds and its effect on over all happiness.

The concept of the experiment its self is what makes me think of mind control. It says to me, lets tell people that if their mind wanders they will be less happy. That way they focus more on the task at hand like we want them to.

That is what I'm getting at. I wonder how they conducted the experiment that came to this conclusion ?

According to the material, its only a 10 % difference that was discovered in this experiment. That's not enough for me to conclude that people are less happy if their mind wanders. Think about all the unknowns involved in this experiment.

When people were mind-wandering, they reported feeling happy only 56% of the time. Meanwhile, when they were focused on the present moment, they reported feeling happy 66% of the time.

I think peoples minds are a coping mechanism to get through life's events whether they are good or bad. It is a way for someone to work through an obstacle they are going through. To contemplate it and roll it around in their head so they can decide how to proceed.



leolady

a reply to: leolady

What is what I'm getting at. I wonder how they conducted the experiment that came to this conclusion ?

From what I understand, it was an app people had. It would ask at random times of the day, "What are you doing?", "How happy are you?", "Were you mind wandering?", and that is how they got the statistics.

I think this video speaks more on the research:




A newer article from a website that makes many references to the research of happiness in the present moment (unrelated to the video above):

Why Attention May Be The Key To Happiness - The Week

a reply to: gosseyn

Yes I agree with you. We can choose our thoughts so we should work on them and choose to think wisely.

Hanging onto negative thoughts is not good. We should have an even mixture of our types of thoughts to have a healthy mind overall. We definitely should not focus only on the bad things.

When our mind wanders it could be about good memories and when we think of the bad memories hopefully we are learning from them. Then we should also be thinking about how we can improve situations or creating inventions in our minds. An even mixture of all kinds of thoughts.

For example a typical mind wander for me on any given day while I am at work:

I may be pushing through a big stack of paperwork on my desk and while I am busy working, I will be thinking about my schedule for the rest of the day. Making a list in my head of what else I still need to accomplish or how I can make an improvement to a process that seems tedious and cumbersome. At the same time I may be thinking about what I am going to be doing later tonight, checking off the list of things I gota get done after work. Or I may be thinking about my kids and remembering something I need to do for them. I may have a good memory pop in about their giggles when they ask me to tickle torture them. At the same time I am listening to music and having loads of memories and feelings invade my mind on top of everything I am already thinking about. One song alone could bring about many memories I have stored of things I was doing while last listening to the same piece of music or a special moment I relate to a particular song. & I could go on and on about all the other things my mind is processing at any given moment.

Gosh, rehashing what my mind does on a normal day makes me sit and wander in amazement, just how powerful our minds can be. Just look at all that data/information/memories that I'm rolling around in my noggin all at one time.

leolady

Everyone must be unhappy. I don't know anyone who's mind doesn't wander.

a reply to: StoutBroux

There is a difference between something (mindwandering) making you "less happy" and "unhappy".

Less happy and unhappy are not the same.

Since mind wanderning is more common when doing non-demanding tasks--or otherwise repetitive?--it stands to reason maybe we should start by enriching peoples environments and putting them into more demanding roles. Or in the workplace we can try moving them to different positions, so they're always learning and having to stay focused.

Conveyer belt work is an excellent example. At first it's hard and you have to pay strict attention to it. But after a few weeks you can do it on autopilot. That's when teh mind wandering starts to happen. So my reasoning is if we want to stop the mind wandernig then we need to move that person to a new position, or at least have the supervisor regularly check on people and let them know who's boss. "Don't forget you're paid, so you stay alert and focused on your job, or you'll not have a job tomorrow!" The whole idea is to get them into that state where they feel like they're in a intense situation. You want them to feel like they can't daydream.

I want to give an example of something bad which happened when my mind wandered once. I was coming home from basketball practice and still thinking about it. It's like my mind hadn't left the court yet. An instant later my car was on the shoulder of the road. My instincts must have kicked in because I immediately came to. I swerved left and very nearly left the road on the opposite side--lucky for me I didn't because it was a steep dropoff, but I swerved right again and then swerved left one more time to come to a stop in the opposite lane facing the opposite direction!

I'll give an example of recent mind wandernig while driving. I sometimes will imagine what it'd be like if the breaks failed or I got into an accident. Yes, I do this while I'm driving! Sometimes I'll be so riveted by the scene in my mind I'll lose concentration on the actual road. I've never had an accident so far, but everytime it happens I'm like "Wow, I lost concentration."

Let me ask this: What if my mind imagines my car losing the breaks or me getting into an accident to remind me how dangerous it is? But this happens when I'm driving!!! A better time would be wiser?

Do we periodically have to be reminded of things like that to stay alert? I know in my case it's hard to stay focused on something dull. Especially when driving, there're times when I'm veerrrryyyy relaxed. Like relaxed enough I can distantly hear music and the first hints of sleep.

But really what's there to focus on when you're doing something dull? Driving requires focus, but once you get used to it, you can drive half-asleep. I know that's ridiculous, but many people do that. It's probably dumb and lots of accidents are due to it. But it's well within most people's capacity. There're people who drive while alert who drive worse. I'm not advocating driving while asleep, but driving encourages it sometimes.

Want to report what I found on the wiki, here:
en.wikipedia.org - Mind wandering...

Happiness

Matthew Killingsworth invented an iPhone app that captured user’s feelings in real time. The tool alerts the user at random times and asks: "How are you feeling right now?" and "What are you doing right now?"[50] Killingsworth and Gilbert's analysis suggested that mind-wandering was much more typical in daily activities than in laboratory settings. They also describe that people were less happy when their minds were wandering than when they were otherwise occupied. This effect was somewhat counteracted by people's tendency to mind-wander to happy topics, but unhappy mind-wandering was more likely to be rated as more unpleasant than other activities. The authors note that unhappy moods can also cause mind-wandering, but the time-lags between mind-wandering and mood suggests that mind-wandering itself can also lead to negative moods.[50] Furthermore research suggests that regardless of working memory capacity, participants participating in mind wandering experiments report more mind wandering when bored, stressed, unhappy.