Chop wood, carry water

[clevermanka]

mckitterick sent me a link for an article on aging research, and after reading it, I noticed a link to another article that mentioned something about wandering minds, something I've had problems with lately--an oddity for me since I'm usually a be-here-now sort of girl.

People spend 46.9 percent of their waking hours thinking about something other than what they’re doing, and this mind-wandering typically makes them unhappy. So says a study that used an iPhone Web app to gather 250,000 data points on subjects’ thoughts, feelings, and actions as they went about their lives.

The research, by psychologists Matthew A. Killingsworth and Daniel T. Gilbert of Harvard University, is described this week in the journal Science.

“A human mind is a wandering mind, and a wandering mind is an unhappy mind,” Killingsworth and Gilbert write.

I would rather phrase that in a positive manner by saying a focused mind is a happy mind.

Time to regain some mental organization and structure in my mental and physical life. Restarting an exercise program will help. So will being a diligent about my eating habits. Specifically, paying attention to if I'm really hungry, and then paying attention to what I'm eating. I need to stop grabbing a handful of almonds on the way out the door because I might get hungry while I'm out running errands. I mean, really. I'm going to starve if I miss a meal? Hardly.

Focus focus focus.

And there I have an excellent topic for a visual journey entry. Putting in a couple hours of meditation and working-while-thinking on this topic will help significantly in putting the concept back into practice.

Comments

[tessagratton.livejournal.com]

THOUGH, my favorite thing about yoga with Gopi was how it quieted my mind. It can get loud and busy in here. So that was really nice exercise. *miss Gopi*

[clevermanka.livejournal.com]

I miss Gopi, too. I'll start going again once I don't have to worry about scary winter roads in the dark.