Harvard Happiness Experts, Dan Gilbert and Matthew Killingsworth conducted experiments and found,

People spend 46.9 percent of their waking hours thinking about something other than what they’re doing, and this mind-wandering typically makes them unhappy… “Mind-wandering is an excellent predictor of people’s happiness,” Killingsworth says. “In fact, how often our minds leave the present and where they tend to go is a better predictor of our happiness than the activities in which we are engaged.”… Time-lag analyses conducted by the researchers suggested that their subjects’ mind-wandering was generally the cause, not the consequence, of their unhappiness.

Do you have a wandering mind?

Try training your attention on your breath as it moves in and out of your nostrils for one minute.  When your mind wanders, bring it back to your breath at the nostrils.   The more you train your mind to stay present with the breath, the less your mind wanders!

 

An article that I authored on how to manage unhealthy people at work has been published through American Mangement Association, a corporate training and consulting group that provides a variety of educational and management development services to businesses, government agencies and individuals.  Click on the link below to discover tips on how to reduce stress from unhealthy people and take control, especially in the workplace.

http://playbook.amanet.org/maintain-healthy-distance-unhealthy-people/

When there are emotions attached to fears that grip you, your neural pathways spiral, which produces chemicals to match a state and then POW!-anxiety. Blood starts pumping to your limbs, unless you just shut down, and your limbs are engaged for flight or fight.  That’s all well and good if one’s life is actually are being threatened, but when one is trying to go upside down in headstand, or just trying to avoid a gnarly person/situations at work or home, this response does little to provide support or solutions when clear-thinking is needed.  So what to do when one’s life is turned upside down?

1.  Let Go!  Expectations are so easy to disappoint and walk away feeling less than.   Let it go!  You’ll feel better.

2.  Patience.

3.  Align yourself internally.   If you cannot command your ship, with clarity or calmly, then you are relying on plain luck.

4.  Be compassionate and stop punishing yourself.  Positive thinking creates more strategic solutions than negative thinking.    

5.  Steady the course.  If you really want it.  Practice, practice, practice.