how to do it
The “act now” and “gratitude practice” exercises are foundational practices that, with application, will help train your brain to re-engage in the present moment. Wandering minds can produce a host of negative consequences, including disruptions of performance across a broad range of domains: reduced mood, impaired general intellectual functioning, and disruptions in everyday life experiences. Letting our minds wander also allows our cognitive resources to be diverted during nominal tasks to a potentially beneficial wandering state. The beneficial wandering state has been associated with planning, creating future tasks, and facilitating creativity. However, happy thoughts associated with mind wandering tend to happen one-third of the time, while two-thirds of the time thought content is stressful or neutral and puts us in less happy moods. Although we may not be able to entirely
choose when and where our minds wander, mindfulness is a key intervention to help re-engage in the present moment. When you consciously focus your attention on what you are doing or experiencing, blood-flow noticeably increases in your neocortex, the part of the brain associated with attention and goal-oriented behavior. In other words, the neocortex is where you make decisions and take actions. The neocortex deliberately helps focus your attention on a task allowing you to actively engage with the outside world.
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What it is
Most of our lives we are absorbed in doing: going rapidly from one thing to the next, or in multi-tasking, attempting to juggle different things at the same time. We live to check things off our to-do list, then fall into bed exhausted at the end of the day, only to jump up the next morning and hop on the treadmill once again. This way of living is compounded by all the ways in which our lives are driven by the ever-growing expectations we place on ourselves and that others place on us. These expectations are intensified by our increasing dependence on digital technology and its accelerating effects on our lives. Checking out from the present moment, allowing our mind to wander, is the essence of acting on autopilot.
“The feeling that any task is a nuisance will soon disappear if it is done in mindfulness.”
– Thích Nhất Hạnh