{"id":187,"date":"2010-11-12T18:45:40","date_gmt":"2010-11-12T18:45:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/anastasiacheetham.ca\/experiment-of-one\/?p=187"},"modified":"2010-11-12T18:45:40","modified_gmt":"2010-11-12T18:45:40","slug":"focus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/anastasiacheetham.ca\/experiment-of-one\/?p=187","title":{"rendered":"Focus"},"content":{"rendered":"

I just read an interesting article on the CBC website<\/a> about research into the relationship between a wandering mind and happiness. Their conclusion \u2013 that a wandering mind causes unhappiness \u2013 is not entirely a surprise, but I wonder about their categorization of “unhappiness.”<\/p>\n

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s book “Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience<\/a>” talks about how we are happiest when we are fully focused on a task we enjoy. Personally, I’ve encountered this: When I’m deeply focused on a challenging problem at work, or when I’m working on a fun project at home, I do the work eagerly and afterward I come away feeling great: upbeat, energized.\"\"<\/p>\n

And I can certainly believe that the corollary would hold: When we are not <\/em>fully focused on a task we enjoy, we would not feel that “flow,” that energy, that happiness. But actual un<\/em>happiness? Caused<\/em> by a wandering mind? “Lack of happiness” maybe… I wonder if they’re reading a wee bit too much into the correlation.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, the article has re-inspired me to work on improving my focus (which has been sorely lacking of late). I definitely believe that meditation can help with that<\/a>, and I’d love to work meditation into my daily schedule. Of course, I’m already trying to work yoga and weight-training into my daily schedule. Maybe I’ll redouble my efforts to use the yoga as active meditation \u2013 try to fully focus on the yoga itself, and bring my mind back to my practice if it wanders.<\/p>\n

So, how’s your<\/em> focus?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I just read an interesting article on the CBC website about research into the relationship between a wandering mind and happiness. Their conclusion \u2013 that a wandering mind causes unhappiness \u2013 is not entirely a surprise, but I wonder about … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/anastasiacheetham.ca\/experiment-of-one\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/anastasiacheetham.ca\/experiment-of-one\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/anastasiacheetham.ca\/experiment-of-one\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/anastasiacheetham.ca\/experiment-of-one\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/anastasiacheetham.ca\/experiment-of-one\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=187"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/anastasiacheetham.ca\/experiment-of-one\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":192,"href":"http:\/\/anastasiacheetham.ca\/experiment-of-one\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187\/revisions\/192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/anastasiacheetham.ca\/experiment-of-one\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/anastasiacheetham.ca\/experiment-of-one\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/anastasiacheetham.ca\/experiment-of-one\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}