{"id":9547,"date":"2012-11-08T04:00:58","date_gmt":"2012-11-08T12:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress-367309-1145696.cloudwaysapps.com\/?p=9547"},"modified":"2012-11-08T04:00:58","modified_gmt":"2012-11-08T12:00:58","slug":"happiness-stay-in-the-moment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/feelgoodstyle.com\/articles\/happiness-stay-in-the-moment\/","title":{"rendered":"Happiness — Stay in the Moment"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/h2>\n

TED Talks with Matt Killingsworth<\/h2>\n

Don\u2019t you love TED Talks<\/a>?\u00a0 Amazingly insightful people sharing their ideas on a variety of topics in a concise 10 or 20 minute talk.\u00a0 Awesome!<\/p>\n

Matt Killingsworth <\/a>has one on the ever popular topic of happiness.\u00a0 Specifically, our level of happiness in correlation with mind wandering.\u00a0 Sounds random, I know.\u00a0 Ok, substitute the words \u201cmind wandering\u201d for the word \u201cawareness\u201d.\u00a0 That sounds more familiar, right?<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

While mind wandering and lack of awareness are the same thing, we definitely hear and see more on the subject of awareness.\u00a0 Deepak Chopra <\/a>is one of my favorite authors.\u00a0 He has written upward of 50 books, on a diverse selection of subjects, and the crux of it all boils down to awareness.\u00a0 The more in the moment you are, the healthier, less stressed, productive, connected, and (yes) happier you are.<\/p>\n

Living in the moment can do all that?\u00a0 Sounds pretty simple, but we all know how impossibly difficult it can be.\u00a0 While Deepak offers lots of wisdom and information on achieving this state of mind (50 some books-worth\u2026c\u2019mon), most of us still struggle to attain that sense of being in the moment.<\/p>\n

Doubt that lack of awareness can bring unhappiness?\u00a0 Let\u2019s take a closer look at Matt\u2019s research.\u00a0 He started Track Your Happiness.org <\/a>in order to see just how much mind wandering has to do with happiness, or lack of.\u00a0 You can sign up to participate in this program which tracks your happiness\/mind wandering levels by using your iPhone.\u00a0 Answer some statistical questions, report by text or email how you feel and what you are up to (how often is up to you), and the report tells you how happy you are depending on several factors, like what you are doing, who you are doing it with, time of day\u2026<\/p>\n

During these reports participants are asked whether or not their mind is wandering.\u00a0 If they are fully engaged in what they are doing, the answer is No.\u00a0 If they are thinking about something other than what they are doing, the answer would be a Yes, followed by whether the stuff they are thinking about is pleasant, neutral, or bad.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s interesting is that Matt found that even for those who consider their distraction pleasant, they still feel less happy than when completely in the moment.\u00a0 Those whose thoughts are neutral generally feel a little less happy than the pleasant mind wanderers, and (as you\u2019d suspect) those thinking bad thoughts are the most unhappy.<\/p>\n

As a matter of fact, this study found that most of us are distracted around 47% of the time.\u00a0 That is a lot, considering we are working, driving, and making decisions for the majority of our day.<\/p>\n

So, we get that awareness is key to happiness.\u00a0 Now how do we make that happen?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Breathing <\/a>is a key component in awareness.\u00a0 Tap into your breathing.\u00a0 Don\u2019t try to control it, just pay attention to it.\u00a0 It is always<\/em> what you are doing right now.\u00a0 When your mind wanders, gently bring your attention back to your breath.\u00a0 I can tell you, as a professional mind wanderer, practice goes a long way to incorporating this into your daily living.<\/p>\n

A great meditation\/exercise to try is the good ol\u2019 So hum<\/a>.\u00a0 So hum has been around a long time, and for good reason.\u00a0 It really does help to get you focused, grounded, and calm.\u00a0\u00a0 Give it a try.<\/p>\n

Do you feel that you live in the moment most of the time?\u00a0 Or does your mind tend to wander?<\/p>\n

[Image by 2Vermin Inc at Flickr.com, Creative Commons license]<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Want to get happy? Stop that mind from wandering and your happy quotient will go way up… More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":66,"featured_media":9549,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false},"categories":[661],"tags":[6810,2302,5665,9012,6811,6812,6813,5631],"apple_news_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/feelgoodstyle.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/HappyWoman2Vermin_Inc.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/feelgoodstyle.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9547"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/feelgoodstyle.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/feelgoodstyle.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/feelgoodstyle.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/66"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/feelgoodstyle.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9547"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/feelgoodstyle.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9547\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/feelgoodstyle.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/feelgoodstyle.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/feelgoodstyle.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/feelgoodstyle.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}