could your wandering mind be making you unhappy yes says dr. dan Siegel and not only that it could be affecting your health here Dan shares the one state of mind that promotes happiness and how it can be corrupted by wandering thoughts presence actually leads to happiness and so when they do a path analysis of the correlation of you being happy and you being present they were able to determine that it's very clear it isn't just that you're happy so you're present it's that you're present and that makes you happy and the opposite of presence then
is something called line wandering which we really want to distinguish from intentionally let's say resting by a lake or you know if you go to Martha's Vineyard like you just did you know resting by the ocean and saying I'm gonna let my mind wander and just relax that's not called in the research terms mind wandering because you've intentionally let your mind be creatively coming up with new combinations that you don't control that's not called mind wandering but we should come up with a different name for that let's call that mind freeing or some guy that
but whether your mind wandering you know thinking about things that distract you from what you're doing that are negative or even if your mind wandering is onto positive things both of those lead to unhappiness and are associated with lower levels of telomerase so it's a really amazing finding just in the last couple of years to explore what it means to be present and because that's a mind you know process that is it's your subjective experience in consciousness of having attention stream energy and information flow into awareness that's what presence is surrounding me thinking about what
happened last week or worrying about what I'm going to do tomorrow instead I stayed present and I'm thinking about you and I'm thinking about this helicopter flying over where I am doing hoping everyone can hear us and I stayed present with that what what happens so I'm still knowing I'm here I'm still aware of the helicopter it's getting distant so I'm relaxing I'm aware of my physiology all that would count as presence if I were talking to you and in my mind I'd be going god I've gotta go shopping you know I've got to make
dinner my wife just took off you know and she won't be here tonight so I'll probably have to just cook for myself what am i you know if I started doing the Hat which I'm not doing I'm doing it as an example that would be mind wandering even if I said oh what a great movie I'm gonna go to tonight you know I wouldn't be aware of what's happening as it's happening which is probably the simplest way of defining being present now mindfulness is not a synonymous with presence and exploring the difference between those two
would be an interesting exercise and probably educational and useful from a clinical point of view and how you apply this in your everyday life but anyway that's the idea of presence as one component of mindfulness as Dan mentioned presence is only one component of mindfulness mindfulness is a powerful practice that can help clients boost resilience optimize learning and improve self-regulation so now I'd like to hear from you how have you use mindfulness practices in new your work with clients please leave a comment below and thanks for watching
