Are you unhappy when your mind wanders?

Having a bipolar brain, I am often at its mercy as to what I’m thinking about. I know that I am happiest when I’m fully engrossed in the task at hand. That can happen when I’m washing the dishes or when I’m performing in a play.

I hate it when my mind wanders while I’m reading most of all.

It depends! Currently, I’m visiting family at home and when my mind wanders here, it tends to be no good. And it also depends on how I’m feeling – although, I think I’m generally happier when I’m living in the moment. I had a professor in college who emphasized being mindful, he kinda based an entire semesters worth of classes over it. He was a pretty deep and happy dude.

When I am painting, throwing pots,exercising ,playing outdoors or making love I am in the moment and very happy!
I do daydream too and it is where I get some of my best ideas.I am happy in that place as well:)

In my line of work focus on the task at hand is often a matter of life or death, this ensures that the mind doesn’t wander! I like it, its almost a meditation of sorts because my internal monologue shuts off. Reflex and an auto pilot of sorts seem to take over and all i have to do is stay sharp and oversee my actions.
My mind has plenty of other time to wander, where it does so wildly, and i enjoy every moment of it.

The idea of clearing your mind is nonsense. It is based on a notion that your mind is an impediment to your potential. Total bullshit. Your mind is everything. If you daydream or if your mind wanders, it is no different than trying to be physically active as much as possible because you know it is better for you than sitting on the couch. The only time an active mind would be a problem would be if it was so undisciplined as to put your existence in jeopardy. You would not want to be imagining yourself as a fairy princess while getting shot at. The rest of the time, so what?

There’s a time for wandering and a time for focusing and a time for mindlessness… uh… mindfulness. I’m not certain that you can’t be “present” with your interior thoughts just as much as you can be present with whatever is going on in the outside world at the time.

I don’t think you have to worry about “trying” to focus in yoga. If your mind is wandering off, then that’s what is happening. At some point in your practice, the physicality of what you are doing will make it impossible for your mind to wander. In fact, it’ll make it impossible for you to have a “mind” as you might normally think of it.

I’m not sure why people make such a big deal out of these kinds of practices—meditation, yoga, etc—and how you need to still your mind. It makes people try so hard, and that’s totally counterproductive, in my opinion.

I have learned to trust the process. Dance, music, yoga, music, exercise, music…. They work. Yeah, if you know how to focus, it’s faster, but it really doesn’t matter. The practice does all the work for you. If you practice, it will come. You will be present and it’ll slip onto or into you without you even noticing. So don’t beat yourself up about what your mind is doing. Be gentle.

As it happens, I can become quite unhappy when my mind wanders. I can create fantasies that really do a number on me. I can imagine all kinds of negative things about myself, or that other people think about me. Anyone who was here when I first got here got a big dose of that.

Drugs took care of a lot of that. But learning about mindfulness helped and then there is music. And dance. But especially music. There is nothing like improvising with other people to make me totally present. I have no choice, really.

I wish I could describe the feeling. It seems amazing when I think about it and I’m not in it, but when I’m in it, it’s totally normal. It couldn’t be any other way. For some reason, when I remember it, I picture myself doing certain moves in a certain room, getting ready to do something I couldn’t do. Which is an amazing side effect of being present like that. You can do things you can’t do.

Of course, that’s all a very happy thing. By comparison, normal consciousness is kind of unhappy—or rather, it can grow quite unhappy. If you let it. Then again, it has its own charms, and if you don’t take them too seriously, your fantasies can give you a wealth of…..well…. wealth, I guess.

This question also got me to remember about Moravec’s paradox – the notion that AI can replace hard tasks (ones you must focus on) rather than tasks you don’t think about, tasks you do without focusing on them. Interesting stuff.

Not really. When I daydream I am mostly thinking about the bright future I am trying to create for myself or the concept for my next piece of writing or a scene/exchange between characters for one of my screenplays or an event/interaction in the future I am looking forward too. Those are mostly happy things.

Although, sometimes my mind wanders into over-thinking/over-analyzing something that is bothering me where perhaps I struggle to find closure or just can’t let it go. I tend to drive myself nuts with that sometimes and it can and does sometimes affect my ability to “stay in the moment”, although if there is a lot going on I can generally stay focused on the task(s) at hand.

My mind wanders all the time + it’s not a matter of happiness but rather one of a degree ot neutrality.

@josie XD

@963chris Elaborate, please.

My wandering mind has at times been a problem for me, staying on a task, or even beginning one can be difficult without forced concentration on my part.
I’m not unhappy when my mind wanders. I am often very happy in my own inner world, but it isn’t conducive to productivity for me. I have to try and save my daydreaming for activities where I don’t need to pay attention to what is going on around me.

I generally find that the more I think, the less happy I am, but it’s always very temporary and does not affect my mood long-term.

Also, when I say ‘generally’, I mean without focus (generally my thinking lacks focus) – thinking not in order to solve a problem or write a story or read a difficult book or study or whatever, but just thinking. This happens a lot. ‘Why am I alive?’ ‘How did my life come to be the way it is?’ ‘What would happen were I to kill myself?’ And things of that nature, generally not asked earnestly enough in my brain-language to even warrant question marks in my brain-language’s punctuation.

The desire for some kind of narrative is definitely one of the forces behind these thoughts. Narratives of origins, narratives of various iterations of the future, narratives of fantasy, etc. I read and write stuff sometimes, and this mode of existence means that I construct the meaning in my life by discovering narrative (as I think a lot of people do). If I can’t establish some kind of chrono-causal relationship between event/ emotion/ sensation A and event/ emotion/ sensation B, then I’m lost.

And so since I’m usually unhappy with whatever my current state of affairs is, the narrative I make up in my head to explain that state is probably pretty often going to be unhappy, too. (It used to be, around the time I left high school, that whenever my mind ‘wandered’ I’d invariably be thinking about what I’d like to fix if I had a time machine. Obviously these are pointless ruminations, as I do not have a time machine, but I can’t help it.)

I shift into “neutral” every chance I get…It’s great to not think.

I love letting my mind wander, especially on long car rides. I find I do some of my best thinking during these times. Whenever I come across some revelation in my life its always in these mind wandering moments when Im not really thinking about anything and then all of a sudden the solution just comes to me. This is also the times when I tend to come up with all my great ideas.

It depends.

At work, I rarely had my mind wonder. Most of my career I worked in retail, and I was talking to people most of the day, so you ave to be focused, or you are being rude.

At times I experience moments of what I call glee, but a girlfriend of mine said that it is commonly referred to as bliss?? Where my mind is pretty much blank, and then I become aware of something beautiful or that I am very greatful for. It feels like time is suspended, the moment stretches out. The things that trigger it for me, are realizing it is a beautiful warm sunny day, or hearing beautiful music, or watching a ballet dancer, and lastly sometimes when I notice I am free of pain.

If something very stressful or dissappointing is going on in my life, I usually do rumenate about it. It is distracting, and not productive when it happens.

This morning I was brushing my teeth, or about to, when the phone rang, and I had to run to the bedroom to answer it, since the phone in the bathroom hasn’t worked since my son let the bathwater overflow. He was going to take a bath, but forgot about it when he passed by the television and saw a commerical for one of those pokeman things, and he had to run out to the store and get one. Not all the stores carry them. The one down the street used to have them, but now it’s a dairy queen. They have pretty good shakes, but when you order a banana shake, they make it with banana ice cream, which makes me mad, because I like them made with vanillia ice cream and real bananas, like they used to make down at fentons. I guess they still do, but I don’t live in Oakland anymore.
What was the question?

@Arbornaut has it right, he does a lot of tree work and chainsaw operating, i do some of that in a very hap hazard and unregulated manner, and i’ve found that if you are not focused, i.e if your mind is drifting down stream or dwelling on negativity, you’re gonna get bitten or worse.

Mindfulness is generally a good habit to cultivate, particularly in demanding, stressful or dangerous situations. It is also a place of refuge.

Nah, it deserves the break every now & then. “Being in the moment” I hate that fucking cliche, just as an interesting aside ;¬}

The central figure in my mind-wandering episodes is usually my little mental representation of myself, “me” in this or that situation. Often it involves revisiting or anticipating a situation of some discomfort: how I handled myself in this or that encounter, some upcoming event that I’m anxious about. It’s like the mental version of the little sore in your mouth that your tongue can’t leave alone.

But even when the subject matter is less fraught with anxiety, it still revolves somehow around that idea of “me” as a character on the stage of the world, and I don’t find that to be a very satisfying point of view. When my attention is fully engaged in an activity, I can leave that personal perspective behind, kind of like busting through the limits of my skin and flowing out into a bigger state of being. This has a satisfying feeling of rightness to it that the thought-world can’t give.

My mind wandering and inner dialogue is 30% optimism, and 70% worry and sadness. I do envy people that seem to be in their own bubble, joking and dancing away lol. All I can think about is my own success and failure, if I’m doing enough with my life, if I can be a more productive part of society, all the way to people dying in countries far away that I’m unaware of and people suffering all over the place while we bask in excess food and water etc.

It just seems difficult to be truly happy while knowing so much bad stuff is going on around you.