Don”t think about white bears.
Often, when people hear that they can”t resist thinking about white bears. Our minds are unruly like that.
Scientists estimate that our minds spin out 50-70,000 thoughts per day. They range from the sublime to the preposterous.
Sometimes, I amuse myself by repeating my thoughts out loud for a minute or two. “I better do that grading,” or “This tea is not very good. I won”t buy it again.” This is the white noise of daily living.
But this noise isn”t always so innocent. Sometimes our inner thoughts generate worry or self-criticism. Those thoughts, when unchecked, dilute joy and destroy confidence.
Even when thoughts are more neutral, we can spend an enormous amount of time tangled in speculations and pointless musings. Have you ever eaten a perfectly wonderful lunch while mulling over a recent conflict or completing homework and barely tasted the meal?
Jamie Derrick
Our culture increasingly loves multi-tasking, but there may be some benefit to the simplicity of sticking to one task at a time.
In a recent Harvard study, thousands of subjects replied to randomly timed texts asking about activity, focus and mood. This study confirmed epic levels of mind wandering. Subjects were thinking about something other than what they were doing about half of the time. Some even reported mind wandering during highly pleasurable activities, like sex. In addition, subjects were half as happy when their minds were off task as opposed to when focused.
Mindfulness teaches the fine art of savoring as a solution to this. Let”s go back to that perfectly wonderful lunch for a minute. Savoring involves bringing attention to the five senses as we do things – in this case, eating. Savoring is engagement with the sensual nature of activity. It brings notice to things like the smell of a fresh brewed latte, the color of fresh vegetables and the texture of pickles.
This is mindful because we intentionally keep our awareness right on our present experiences. Keeping our minds on task is particularly easy when we bring attention to our sensate experiences since they are innately interesting, and this puts us in the present moment because our bodies can only have senses in the present tense. Meditation teachers makes use of this fact and commonly support present moment focus using the sensation of breathing as a starting place for mindfulness meditation.
Savoring the sense experience will keep your mind on task and likely increase happiness. Focus on what you are doing and double the fun. What”s more is that the focus on sensual experience will stall the white noise of a wandering mind. A mind occupied with the experience of the senses can”t spin out the usual train of off-topic noise, worry and rumination. So, if you ever find your busy mind tormenting you, focus intently and deliberately on the sensation of your body or breath and your mind will start to untangle.
Jamie Derrick is a professor at the University of Idaho.