Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. I was listening to the Huberman Lab podcast on meditation, and he referenced an interesting 2010 study out of Harvard that I thought was worth sharing.
“A wandering mind is an unhappy mind” by Matt Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert details their study into happiness and day dreaming.
This weekend I’ll be racing in the Gulf Coast Ironman 70.3 event, and I was particularly interested in this study and its interplay with endurance sports.
The Harvard based researchers designed a web app and recruited participants to self report their levels of happiness and what they were thinking about.
Participants were prompted to use the web app at randomly assigned times during their waking hours. They were asked what they were currently doing, how happy they were on a 0-100 sliding scale, and what they were thinking about with four options.
Participants could report thinking about; what they were doing currently, something else positive, something else neutral, or something else negative.
Participants would be surveyed 1-3 times daily until they opted out, which resulted in a significant data set. The researchers made sure to vary their participants across age ranges (18-88), gender, countries, and occupation.
The results showed some interesting insights into the human mind and happiness. What participants were thinking about turned out to be a significantly better predictor of happiness than the activities themselves.
In other words, being present in the moment, thinking about what it is you are currently doing, will likely make you happier than letting your mind wander to something else, even something pleasant.
“multilevel regression revealed that people were less happy when their minds were wandering than when they were not, and this was true during all activities including the least enjoyable. Although people’s minds were more likely to wander to pleasant topics (42.5% of samples) than to unpleasant topics (26.5% of samples) or neutral topics (31% of samples), people were no happier when thinking about pleasant topics than about their current activity, and were considerably unhappier when thinking about neutral topics or unpleasant topics than about their current activity (Fig. 1, bottom). Although negative moods are known to cause mind wandering, time-lag analyses strongly suggested that mind wandering in our sample was generally the cause, and not merely the consequence, of unhappiness.”
“In conclusion, a human mind is a wandering mind, and a wandering mind is an unhappy mind. The ability to think about what is not happening is a cognitive achievement that comes at an emotional cost.”
Enduring anything is as much a mental/emotional battle as it is a physical one. While covering the 1.2 mile swim, 56 mile bike ride, and 13.1 mile half marathon, there will be plenty of time for my mind to wander.
Sometimes that mind wandering is helpful and even desired. There is a unique state of clarity and creativity that becomes available with extended physical exertion and an empty mind that is free to wander.
Other times it is important to center yourself on the task at hand, even if (or especially if), it is unpleasant. I’m reminded of the acid burn scene from fight club.
Edward Norton’s character wants to go to his cave and find his power animal. Brad Pitt’s character slaps him to bring him back to the present moment.
“This is your burning hand, it’s right here. Don’t deal with it like those dead people do, Come On! What you’re feeling is premature enlightenment. This is the greatest moment of your life and your off somewhere missing it.”
“A cognitive achievement with an emotional cost” is an extremely astute observation with some very powerful ramifications. Being able to dissociate from difficulty is a valuable survival mechanism. But being present, feeling that pain and difficulty, is the best way to learn. It is a tightrope walk for sure, but one worth walking.
Thanks for joining me, stay safe and stay sweaty my friends.
