What’s going through your mind right now?
Maybe a list of groceries — remember the cilantro, check if the watermelons are good, grab a baguette. Perhaps the song “Baby Shark” is stuck in your head after your toddler has played it on repeat. Or maybe it’s that itchy tag tickling your neck. How can you tear it off without ruining your outfit?
As Northeastern University psychology professor Laura Dudley put it, “we’re all here in this moment, but we’re not always here in our minds because our thoughts are taking us into the past.” Getting stuck playing out future scenarios is also common, she added.
Dudley calls it “time-traveling” — and not the fun kind.
Thoughts bookend the day — you wake up with to-do lists, unwritten emails and future conversations running through your mind and drift off to sleep replaying everything you should have done differently. Meanwhile, there’s a whole day going by in between — and it’s easy to miss it.
That’s where mindfulness —- the practice of paying attention to the present moment — comes in.
Read more at Northeastern Global News
Photo by Matthew Modoono/Northeastern University
