- Do you have trouble calming your mind when you try to fall asleep?
- Do you have trouble focusing, organizing, or managing your time?
- Are you impulsive?
- Are you easily distracted?
- Do you start an important task, but can’t seem to finish it?
Many of us experience the loss of our train-of-thought, it happens a lot more than you may realize. If you really pay attention to your thoughts, you may be surprised at just how much time you spend in conversations with other people….in your head, slipping off to other areas of thought, off task, or simply daydreaming, or worrying about something like remembering to lock the door.
When this happens along with all the other thoughts streaming through, how do you have any time, energy, or focus to do any actual work? Think about it.
Restless mind distracts us from being in the moment, from focusing on the task at hand (task-related thoughts) like doing our jobs. We have difficulty organizing and managing our time, are easily distracted, sometimes become agitated, and sometimes the symptoms present physically.]
One in four Canadians describe themselves as being highly-stressed in their day-to-day lives, and 62% of respondents identified work as their main source of stress1. In the United Kingdom, 40% of all work- illness is attributed to Workplace stress. In addition, 69% of employees in the United States indicated that work is a significant source of stress2. Clearly, stress is a global issue with adverse implications for the individual, organizations, and society.
While workplace stress is one of the causes of a restless mind, it isn’t the only one. According to the Neuroenergetics Theory of attention (NeT), this lack of control is often due to fatigue of the relevant processing units (neurons) in the brain caused by insufficient resupply of the neuron’s preferred fuel, lactate, from nearby astrocytes (a star-shaped glial cell of the central nervous system in control of the blood-brain barrier and blood flow to the brain). And yes, this is a huge simplification of what happens!
Home life, driving, even hanging out with friends can suffer because of restless (wandering) mind.
Have you ever arrived somewhere and not remembered how you got there? It’s the right place, but how you drove there is a mystery?
Walked from one room to another and not remember why?
Have trouble following a recipe?
Can’t find your keys?
Even though the brain comprises only 2% of the body’s weight, it utilizes 25% of total glucose production for perception, attention, and response generation3.
At times like this, our thoughts wander to other things and we no longer react to the control of task-relevant stimuli…but rather give in to the interruption of task-focus by task-unrelated thought (TUT).
Simply put, if we are tired or the neurons do not get enough fuel, our thoughts are more easily hi-jacked by other thoughts, tasks, fears, or daydreaming. Sometimes the mind wanders because these thoughts require less fuel or lactate. Also, the parts of the mind housing these other thoughts reside in other parts of the brain where fuel may be more plentiful.
A restless mind is also related to other disorders.
If your mind is running wild with thoughts or fears, how in the world do you ever get to sleep (Sleep Disorders)?
How do you remember where your keys are (Memory)?
How do you finish that paper or presentation you keep starting and stopping and really need to finish (Trouble focusing)?
Feeling angry or falling into depression because of any of the above (Depression)?
Our minds are amazing when they work properly
Oh, the things we can accomplish with just a little nudge!
- Change your circumstances
- Increase your creativity
- By increasing creativity, you improve your memory
- Increase your intellectual satisfaction
- Learn more effectively
- Blow your productivity off the charts
“If the spirit yields to the body, it becomes corrupt; but if the body yields to the spirit it becomes pure and holy.” — Brigham Young
It’s very important that you take time to examine and measure where you are from where you’ve been. When you do this, there are a host of psychological benefits. How do you get from one place to the other?
There are a few things to try for temporary relief (key word here is temporary):
- Journal – write down all the things you need to do, want to do, worry about
- Take an honest break – go outside, catch some rays, breath in nature, check out the beauty surrounding you all the time but never notice (leave the phone inside!)
- Just breathe – sit quietly where you won’t be disturbed, close your eyes, watch your breath as you breathe deeply. If your mind starts to wander, just gently pull your attention back to your breath (no blaming or shaming, it is already in the past) just focus on that wonderful slow breath in and slow breath outh
Everything will calm down, focus will improve, and you can get back to that task, at least for a little while. But, if you want real relief, relief from restless mind, inability to sleep, depression, and all the other related problems there is a natural phenomenon that can take away your fears and fill you up with peace and happiness, and calm that restless mind? It is real, and it is called The Trivedi Effect®.
The Trivedi Effect® connects you to that spirit. When you allow the spirit to lead, your whole life changes for the better. You mind calms, you sleep better, your focus improves, you reconnect to your creativity at a higher level, and your memory improves along with your productivity.
This is real, I experienced it myself and along with many others…. And, it is backed up by science.
Then, if you sufficiently transform yourself, you won’t be able to stop yourself from helping others positively transform as well. This is called the ripple effect.
1Crompton, S., & Crompton, S. (2011). What’s stressing the stressed? Main sources of stress among workers. Canadian Social Trends, 43–51.
2Shonin, E., Van Gordon, W., Dunn, T. J., Singh, N. N., & Griffiths, M. D. (2014). Meditation Awareness Training (MAT) for Work-related Wellbeing and Job Performance: A Randomised Controlled Trial. International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction, 12(6), 806–823. http://doi.org/10.1007/s11469-014-9513-2
3Zhang D., Raichle M. E. (2010). Disease and the brain’s dark energy. Nat. Rev. Neurol. 6, 15–28 10.1038/nrneurol.2009.198 [PubMed] [CrossRef]
Thank you to guide us to a great solution for depression, the Trivedi Effect!