The Wandering Mind
We’ve all experienced moments of the wandering mind. We’re supposed to be focused on work, school, the person in front of us, but some how our thoughts drift off to something else. If you’re a driven person with multiple goals and projects contending for your attention, a wandering mind is especially frustrating. You know deep down that you should be further along, more successful, but you’re not. Year after year, others are cranking out project after project while you’re adding more to-dos then to-dones to your lists!
I believe part of this lack of completion maybe a temperament and personality trait, not simple a discipline issue. While some might label a lack of focus laziness, disorganization, or A.D.D., I believe a wandering mind isn’t always a bad thing. Speaking for myself, my wandering mind leads to a deeper capacity to dream, attempting new things, and reaching towards big goals. However, my lack of focus prevents and prolongs my completion and moving forward on many of these things. So as I sit here with a pile of notebooks and to-do projects that I want to be complete this year, my mind wanders to new possibilities and projects. Can you relate?
To refocus my efforts in the morning, I’ve started a reading Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence by Daniel Goleman, again, and I’m encouraged because there is a way to refocus your wandering mind. On page 52, Goleman quotes “‘When you notice your mind wandering,’ a fundamental instruction in meditation advises, ‘bring your mind back to its point of focus.'”
It’s inevitable that our mind will wander and drift off, but the first key to refocus is notice it happening. This is such a simple practice, but not easy. In stead of beating yourself up about not focusing, it’s imperative that you switch your mindset to looking for times your mind wanders.
Goleman says, “catching a wandering mind in the act is elusive; more often than not when we are lost in thought we fail to realize that our mind has wandered in the first place. Noticing that our mind has wandered marks a shit in brain activity; the greater the awareness, the weaker the mind wandering becomes.”
And that is so encouraging as I begin the new year with dozens of unfinished projects from years past – and new ones from last year. It means we don’t have to beat ourselves up about our wandering minds. Instead, every time we notice it, we are refocus our brains back on the previous activity. And that will lead to more completed projects in years to come!
