It’s something I’ve believed for years.  If you allow your mind to wander or your thoughts to dwell on something for too long, eventually you’re going to think yourself into trouble.  If left to wander, the human mind will create something for it to think about, and that’s usually something bad.  Finally, my unscientific belief based on my own wandering, unoccupied brain has some scientific backing, as Harvard University researchers have released a study determining that allowing your mind to wander can lead to unhappiness.

“A human mind is a wandering mind, and a wandering mind is an unhappy mind,” said Harvard University psychologists Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert in the journal Science.  “The ability to think about what is not happening is a cognitive achievement that comes at an emotional cost.”  The study involved 2250 people using an iPhone app that contacted participants at “random intervals to ask how happy they were, what they were currently doing, and whether they were thinking about their current activity or something else that was pleasant, neutral or unpleasant.”

According to the research, people spend nearly half their time lost in their own thoughts.  The study further said “only 4.6 per cent of a person’s happiness in a given moment was attributable to the specific activity he or she was doing, whereas a person’s mind-wandering status accounted for about 10.8 per cent of his or her happiness.”  The happiest thoughts to be lost in were related to sex, exercising, or having a conversation.  The greatest rates of unhappiness were tied to using a home computer, resting, or working.

Tags: Harvard University, wandering mind, happiness survey, a wandering mind is an unhappy mind, unhappiness and wandering thoughts, thinking, unusual medical news, emotions, unusual brain research, Matthew Killingsworth,   Daniel Gilbert, thoughts and happiness, focus, Science

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