Hey there, it's Michael. Welcome to Whole Again, A show about helping us embrace life with mindfulness and resilience through the wisdom of cons. Sugi, I'm glad you're here on Fridays. I love sharing a shorter episode with you, a bit of a mindset shift to help you pedal forward, as I would say. With more mindfulness and resilience as we try to navigate today's uncertainty with a bit more grace.
And today, I'd love to share the whole concept of mind wandering with you. But before we dive in, let's take a nice, full, generous breath in wherever you happen to be. Nice, full breath in.
And now a releasing breath out. Allowing your body to soften, relax a bit, and now we can dive into the wandering mind. We'll start here with a bit of a fun fact. You can use this at cocktail parties during the holidays to impress people with all your wisdom about the brain. But did you know that our brain naturally wanders 47% of the time?
Yep, that's right. We are sort of like Doug and up chasing a whole bunch of squirrels. So when people talk about mindfulness and meditation, I do this and other meditation teachers do it as well. We talk about how a practice can benefit us in terms of focusing better and paying attention on purpose. Two things that.
I think we can all agree, we can use more of during the uncertainty of today. That said, and here's the mindset shift, a little mind wandering can do us a lot of good. And there's one guy who has been doing decades of research on mind wandering. His name is Jonathan Schooler. He's a psychologist out of the meta lab.
I don't think it's tied to meta as in Facebook and Instagram. It's out of uc, the University of California at Santa Barbara, and he sees mind wandering as the default mode of the brain. He's not talking about distraction, but rather how it can be a source of creativity, of insight, and even meaning. Think about your own life.
How many times have you stepped into the shower? You're not listening to anything and a great idea. Bubbles up or when you're out for a walk or maybe even folding laundry. When we have these moments where we might label it once as boredom, some great ideas can appear so contrary to how mindfulness and meditation are often spoken about on the internet as a way to gain more focus, which can definitely help us do that.
Mind wandering can also be a really amazing mindfulness practice because when life is loud, and I don't need to tell you that life is pretty loud. There are so many things trying to grab at our attention when it's fast, when it's full. Sometimes the most radical thing you can do is to simply allow your mind to roam.
A space, and I often think about mindfulness as creating space without a goal, without a to-do list, without judgment, especially, and simply be curious as to what might bubble up. So as you head into the weekend, I'll encourage you to create some space and allow your mind to wander. You might be in your house or apartment.
You could be on a nice stroll in nature without being on your phone or listening to anything. Allow your mind to wander, and you can consider each thought as a cloud in the sky. Simply watch your thoughts or those clouds travel across the horizon, and who knows what might happen. You might come up with a brilliant idea that will create a wonderful ripple effect.
So instead of as you might have done so in the past, label those thought clouds as distractions. You can now see them as discoveries. As you know, I'm a big believer in small steps done consistently over time. So you may wish to try this with simply five minutes. If you wish to go longer, you can go longer.
But this small act, letting your mind wander on purpose, it creates space. And I believe that most of us could benefit from a bit more spaciousness. Our minds are so full today. They're so noisy. So creating this space can be one of the best things we can do for ourselves. It can strengthen our ability to reflect and reframe, imagine, and reconnect with ourselves, reconnect with our creativity that can so easily be drowned out with all the noise that happens day in and day out.
Mindfulness has never been about making our minds go blank. Instead, it can help us create some space to see where our wandering mind might travel. So again, I'll encourage you to play with this over the weekend and let me know what you experience
as always. Thank you for being here and being part of our community. Before you go, let's take another healthy breath in this full breath in breathing up, noticing your lungs expanding, and then release the breath as you get ready for your next moment. And if you haven't yet signed up for the free messages I send out throughout the week.
You can do so by simply texting whole again to 8 6 6 6 1 2. 4 6 0 4 and I'll set you up.
And if you wish to further enhance your digital health, I'll invite you to take my smartphone wellness check and you can access it through the link in the show notes. Or you can visit my website, which is Michael O'Brien shift.com, and it's absolutely free, and it'll help you scroll less and live more.
And of course, I hope you'll join us here on whole again every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and discover how to heal, grow, and become more resilient and celebrate our scars as golden symbols of strength and resilience. Until then, remember, you can always come back to your breath. You've got this and we've got you.
