August 2023: Where the Mind Goes
'Our life is shaped by our mind': how can we choose where we focus and respond skilfully to feelings and thoughts?
I experience you
More intimately, and more constantly
Than any other.
You create within: soundtracks, scenes, stories, voice.
I choose to captain your scatterlings.
the DMN
Psychologists describe the activity of the brain when not focused on a task as the ‘default mode network’ (DMN). When standing at a bus stop, lying in bed, wandering on a walk, we experience the DMN release flows of thought.
Our mind might fill with imagination, including memory or music, or ‘talk’ about a current problem, desire or something unresolved. The DMN may constantly focus upon something that depresses us but which we cannot resolve: ‘rumination’ is a pattern of thought and feeling that repeats and we find difficult to escape.
A foundational skill is the ability to choose where the mind focuses. It enables us to be emotionally happier, healthier and become wiser. It requires the capacity to be aware, like an observer, noticing what is happening in the mind.
Meditation develops this capacity, and in two ways. Meditation tends to be ‘hijacked’ by the DMN, as everyone who tries meditation immediately discovers! Rather than seeing this as ‘failure’, by noticing the ‘interrupting’ thought-stream we become a better observer of the mind.
The noticing is important, but without entering its flow. By choosing to return to meditation we teach the DMN to ‘default’ to awareness. So, over-time, meditation strengthens us, in everyday life, to notice and to easily return to noticing.
Meditation develops awareness and our agency to decide where to focus our mind and how to use it.
take 5 …
Don’t meditate, just try to spend 3 minutes not thinking. Eyes open.
Have a piece of paper to hand, and whenever a thought crosses your mind, briefly note what the thought is about, then return to not thinking.
Afterwards: look at your list.
Where did the DMN want to go? Is this a typical pattern?
Did you get caught up in thought-streams?
What emotions are associated with these thoughts? Identify any that make you anxious or depressed? (B4B offers more about this). Or give you positive energy?
Could you choose to associate conscious gratitude with any of these thoughts?
… and an experiment!
It is not easy to change the DMN and develop greater mental agency, but this is a pathway. Meditate daily. Practice mindfulness regularly. Whenever the DMN becomes active notice where it is going. Notice the emotions associated with particular flows.
Develop greater awareness of body, thoughts and feelings, and what is around in the present moment. Add appreciation whenever possible.
quotes …
To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance ~ Oscar Wilde
Only in quietness do we possess our own minds and discover the resources of the inner life ~ Helen Keller
A man may own a ship, but unless he is captain of a crew he goes where the ship goes ~ Josephine Tey
ps
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Roddy