Don’t lose your mind in the daily rat race
SWITCHING OFF HELPS IN THE AGE OF INFORMATION OVERLOAD
You are getting in the car when you suddenly feel that you forgot to lock the main door of your flat. You run back only to find that you did lock it.
A colleague asks: “How are you?” and walks off without bothering to hear your reply.
You are in the office when a thought strikes you: ‘Did I unplug the iron?’ You can’t rush back and spend the rest of the day praying that a fire doesn’t erupt at home.
Do any of the above situations sound familiar?
It turns out that ‘mindlessness’ happens to virtually everyone nowadays. It’s like our brain plays tricks on us. Sometimes we just can’t seem to remember. Worse, when we are engaged in a task, we’re not ‘really there’, meaning we are not mentally present.
In a way, it’s the body’s coping mechanism in a hectic, hyper-connected world, Bina Mathews, a master neuro-linguistic programming coach and hypnotherapist, told Gulf News. “We are juggling so much every day, in addition to being plugged into the online world 24/7. So we slip into neutral gear, as it were, and coast through everything on autopilot.”
She added: “When we operate in a mindless way, we’re choosing not to take in all available information. So, we go through the day reacting to internal thoughts and feelings and external events, rather than responding.”
Reenu Sahore, a certified life and NLP coach, and mindfulness teacher, agrees.
When we work on autopilot most of the time, our mind — or consciousness — fails to appreciate life, she said.
“Living this way, we often fail to notice the beauty of life or hear what our bodies are telling us. We all too often become stuck in mechanical, conditioned ways of thinking and living that may be harmful to ourselves and the people around us,” Sahore said.
“When in autopilot, we tend to get lost in the ‘doing’ mode. We find ourselves constantly striving, struggling and getting stuff done, instead of really living our life, forcing us to be vulnerable to anxiety, stress, depression and reactivity. Research shows, in fact, that the more our minds wander, the less happy we are.”
Finding the right balance
While many of us need to re-learn mindfulness and practice it daily, Mathews said having occasional mindlessness can also be a good thing.
“Conscious mindlessness is also a necessary part of our lives. Being able to balance mindfulness and mindlessness means being aware of the benefits of both and practising them appropriately.
“Mindfulness requires much cognitive processing power, for all the things we need to do in daily life,” Mathews said.
Having mental shortcuts, or spurts in mindless thinking, is also necessary at times to avoid ‘overload’. “Contrary to our instincts, unconscious thinking processes are better at handling and analysing large amounts of complex data, so believing that mindful analysis is always preferable may lead you to make less effective choices. So, mindlessness is good and necessary at times.”
So, to strike a balance between the two, if you’re constantly mindless, try relearning mindfulness.
Simple exercises
Begin with simple exercises. Gradually build up as you go along and experience its many benefits, such as reducing depression and pain, accelerating cognition, increasing creativity, and de-biasing the mind, among others.
Both coaches advise residents to do mindfulness meditations with professional guidance. Paying attention to life pays off in the long run.
“All of us are part of this mad rush. In the race to achieve, we keep going mindlessly. [But] when we are aware of what we do, we’re directly experiencing with our senses, and thus we are mindful. There is growing research that when we train our brain to be mindful, we’re remodelling the physical structure of our brain,” Sahore said.