Is Frequent Mind-Wandering Affecting My Happiness?

"Did I lock the door?" "Maybe I should get tickets for that event." "I wonder if I said the wrong thing." For many of us, the soundtrack of our minds is a constant running monologue of what's next, what's happened, what we’re worried about, or what's on our to-do list.

In the opening of his book, The Miracle of Mindfulness, author and spiritual leader Thich Nhat Hanh talks about cleaning the dishes. He says if we are washing the dishes but thinking about the cup of tea we plan to enjoy afterwards, we are "not alive during the time we are washing the dishes." He says that when we do move on to drinking the tea, we will then be thinking of what's next on our to-do list, our mind instantly leaving the present.

Not only the subject of philosophical traditions, mind-wandering and its effect on our happiness has been the topic of many academic studies. In one of the largest studies, researchers at Harvard, psychologists Matthew A. Killingworth and Daniel T. Gilbert found that people spend 46.9 percent of their time thinking about something other than what they are doing. The study, which collected data from 2,250 participants via an iPhone App, demonstrated that people are less happy when their minds wander.

However, before you fret too much about the constant chatter in your head, consider a later study that concluded mind wandering can lead to more creativity. Participants, which included professional writers and physicists, reported that one-fifth of their most significant ideas were formed during mind wandering unrelated to tasks. "When our minds are allowed to wander, we tend to be more creative, as the brain cannot stop solving problems," says Arnaud Delorme, Ph.D., a research scientist at the University of California, San Diego, who studies mind wandering and meditation. He says, "This may give us an evolutionary advantage compared to other species, allowing us to find creative solutions to challenging situations."

So, we don’t have to wrestle our brains into quiet. Instead, we can begin to get curious about our internal dialogue. Is this a time where I’m enjoying daydreaming, or does the constant chatter in my head feel exhausting? If it’s the first, maybe take a note of the ideas floating through your mind. If it’s the latter, consider gentle ways to move into stillness. One way to do this is to allow the energy in our heads to slowly travel down into our bodies. Attend to the feeling of your feet on the ground or begin to open the chest with a deep breath or light stretching. Imagine that mental energy as a color that transforms as it travels downwards. Let me know how it goes.