Wednesday, December 18, 2013

Mind Wandering

Mind Wandering
Consider that you are sitting in a large room around a dining table. In the room there are a handful of happy people. There are also a few familiar faces that you have not seen in a while. They are possibly your friends and relatives. The room is ornate with candles and balloons and the table is adorned with gifts, refreshments and a nice birthday cake. Everyone is happily clapping and singing birthday carols. You are their center of attention. But there is something wrong about the whole event. That is that you are not quite there. 

Numerous situations like this can be recollected. In an important meeting when you are supposed to pay attention to the minutes, you are mentally in your office. While you are bathing in the washroom, you are thinking about the badminton court. And while driving your car, you are cribbing in your mind about that comment your boss punningly made at your attire last week.

If you are suffering from a problem like this that wherever you are present physically, your mind has flown away to somewhere else, then you are suffering from mind wandering. Mind wandering can be a desirable quality on one hand and it can be quite dangerous behavior on the other.

Of course if you can naturally stretch your imagination about matters meriting some significance in times when you had otherwise been sitting idle, you can possibly use those moments to solve some important problems. Consider about the ample time you may have while you are traveling in a bus to get to work. If your mind wanders during the journey to the technical caveats of your work, you may as well find a solution to your professional issues. 

However, mind wandering can cost you a substantial price too. For instance, think about those cribbing thoughts you may have had about the sarcasm of your boss at your dress. Had you extended that thought train a little bit further and developed an argument, it may not only have become a cause for loosing your job, it could have been life threatening too if you had lurched your car on the road as a result of that mental aggression.

Research suggests that the posterior cingulate cortex of our brains is responsible for this type of behavior. Research also suggests that with continued meditation this region of the brain can become rich in gray matter density. An attribute that is responsible for lesser mind wandering. Research also suggests that there is an inverse correlation between mindfulness meditation and mind wandering. Do you wonder where you can find good recipes for developing mindfulness? Consider sufismdhikr and meditation as cures.



Creative Commons License
Psyops by PsyopsPrime is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at http://www.psyops.tk/.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.psyops.tk/.

No comments: