Mind wandering is a lack of attention and engaging in task unrelated thoughts. A wandering mind is an unhappy mind because mental absence during the activity inhibits the ability to perform at the best of one’s capability. Mind wandering, however, is not a negative trait always. There are situations or even careers where mind-wandering can be a positive skill.
For example, if your work requires creativity and brain storming, mind wandering is productive for you. Also, if you are dreadfully stressed about something that you can’t change, mind wandering to happy thoughts help you to distract your mind. From the How Can I Improve My Memory Power.
Mindfulness comes to rescue for people who are prone to mind wandering and suffering from decreased performance in professional, daily and student life. Mindfulness practices and exercises basically improve one’s focus, attention span, and working memory. Mindfulness exercises involve spending 15-30 minutes daily in a variety of meditation activities like sitting in a straight posture while focusing on your breathing, breathing exercise, nature walks, etc.
Though simple in nature, mindfulness helps to improve your emotional stability and reduces stress which in turn results in better mental focus and better ability to keep pieces of information in mind. Over the years mindfulness has been recognized as a powerful tool for psychological benefits and a form of alternative medicine and no more considered a new age fad. From the How Can I Improve My Memory Power.
Mindful meditation is unique in its nature because it does not expects us not does it want us to be different from what we are. It is about becoming ourselves while watching every moment. It is about being aware of our present state and being fully in the present moment. Being present in the moment gives us the ultimate power to understand what is happening and thus cultivates the ability to change whatever is not desired in this experience.
Similarly, if the experience is pleasant, mindfulness allows us to be unconditionally happy about it without following the train of thoughts leading to what might happen next and so on. From the How Can I Improve My Memory Power.
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Research has shown that even small mindful meditation sessions help improve the working memory capacity that was previously considered as fixed or natural gift. Mrazek, Schooler, and colleagues set up a research work for investigating the effects of mindful meditation for college students. They assigned 48 students to either a nutrition class or a mindfulness class. These groups met for 45 minutes eight times and were attended and taught by professionals in their respective field.
The students in mindfulness group were taught mindfulness exercises and also required to integrate mindfulness into their daily life activities. The results showed that the students in mindfulness group showed improved working memory and this resulted in better GRE scores. Basically mindfulness reduced mind wandering that worked in favor of better working memory, focus and reading comprehension.
Conclusion, therefore, is that small mindful meditation results in favor of professionals and students as their cognitive abilities improve.
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