Secondly, with this obsessive stream of thoughts running through our minds, our attention is compulsively drawn toward those thoughts. Instead of being present in our current moments, our minds are diverted to past events or future concerns. If we make a conscious decision to simply sit and relax and be present, very soon we will observe this compulsive activity of the mind. Within moments, our attention will turn to plans, memories, fears, or desires. We quickly realize our minds have much more control over our attention than we do.
This strikes at the root of our problem. We have little conscious control of our attention. If we are to establish any free will in our lives, we need to be able to direct our attention where we would like it to go, rather than have our unruly mind dictate what we think about.
A clear example of this is worry. We may be aware of a potential future concern that creates worry. Intellectually, we can understand that worrying about this problem won’t affect its outcome, and we might realize there is nothing to worry about at this time. Yet, despite our conscious decision to not worry, we find the mind continues to bring our attention to the potential problem and create worry. We can tell the mind there is nothing to worry about, and the mind will answer, “Oh, yes there is!”
If we take a moment to observe the mind, its obsessive and compulsive nature is apparent. A consequence of it dragging us from one thought to another—whether a past event, future concern, or mere distraction—is we are not even present for most of our daily activities. Do any of these statements sound familiar?
“Have you seen my car keys? I don’t know where they are.”
“I just had that piece of paper a moment ago, and now I can’t find it.”
“Where did I put my glasses?”
“What did I come in here for?” (after walking into a room)
And, one of my personal favorites:
“What were we just talking about?”
We believe we forgot where we put our car keys, what we did with the paper, or what we are talking about. While this may be true on some level, the more accurate explanation is that our minds were somewhere else when we put down the keys or that piece of paper, and we were not even listening to our own conversation. Our attention was pulled away by our obsessive-compulsive minds. Even when we consciously decide to do some task during the day, we may forget all about it as our minds get caught up in other thoughts and activities.
Many studies have shown that simply having a distracted mind negatively affects our well-being. A Harvard study, published in the journal Science, conducted by Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert, found that almost half of the time people’s minds were wandering, and their thoughts were not related to what they were doing. It also found that people were happiest when their thoughts and actions were aligned. Their level of well-being, though impacted, actually had less to do with what they were doing or thinking about and more to do with their mental presence, matching their thoughts with their actions.3
According to this study and many others, mind-wandering (thinking about things that distract us from what we are doing), whether it involves pleasant or unpleasant thoughts, leads to less happiness than being attentive to what we are doing, even if it is just raking the yard. Mind-wandering should not be confused with consciously and intentionally allowing one’s mind to rest or daydream. Mind-wandering is a research term that is the opposite of presence of mind. Just having presence of mind increases our level of happiness.
In addition to being distracted, the mind rarely sees the world accurately. Based on our conditioning, biases, attention level, and current emotional and physical states, the mind projects distorted qualities, characteristics, and judgments onto the people, places, and events in our lives. Ultimately, this is the main cause of our mental and emotional suffering, and our inability to cultivate genuine happiness. The untamed mind, influenced by our emotional and mental biases, prevents us from seeing things clearly and making healthy choices based on reality.
Most of the time, the mind is quite delusional. By delusional, I don’t mean the psychotic-level loss of contact with reality described in certain forms of serious mental illness or psychiatric disturbance. In this context, delusional refers to phenomena that are much more common to our everyday experience.
One of my favorite examples of everyday delusion is the idea of the annoying person. We all know someone who is annoying, right? In truth, there is no such thing as an annoying person. However, the mind can quickly point to the people we find annoying and label them “annoying people.” As soon as we see one of these people, we can experience intense feelings and become annoyed. The person doesn’t even have to say or do a thing.
Now, if this person actually was annoying, wouldn’t everyone find him annoying all the time? Yet, the same person we find annoying, others find interesting. In fact, for some entirely unexplainable reason, someone might even want to marry this person! When we look at people like this more accurately, we find they are not intrinsically annoying; rather, we are annoyed by something they say or do.
If we look even deeper, we often find we are not really annoyed at all; we are merely experiencing the feelings of being annoyed, which are temporary. The feeling of being annoyed will leave, and we will still be here. The people we think of as annoying do and say things all day long that we would not find annoying. They are probably not annoying when they walk their kids to school, take out the trash, cook a meal, pay their bills, help their parents, or just sit at home watching TV. In fact, during most of their day, we would not find them annoying.
The true cause of our irritation is not the other person; it is our judgment and perception of that person. Being annoyed is a mental experience, and the cause of a mental experience is the mind. The delusion is the belief that the other person is truly annoying and he or she is the actual cause of our feeling annoyed. If we take a moment to reflect, we can recall times when we were feeling great and people we normally found annoying didn’t bother us at all. We can also recall times when we were tired or irritable, and even our best friends annoyed us.
The belief that our happiness or sadness comes from other people or events is one of the most pervasive everyday delusions. Our happiness or sadness actually comes from how we perceive and respond to those people and events. Let’s look at two ways of relating and responding when our car won’t start:
1. Delusional and reactive: We think our car should always start and not be subject to breaking down. We may become angry, upset, or panicked, quickly calling to mind our bad luck and asking, “Why me?” The mind presents us with how terrible this is, possibly looking for who is to blame—maybe our mechanic, our partner, or the car manufacturer. We ruminate on how inconvenient this is, how much money this could cost, and what a bad day this has turned out to be. Eventually, we do make an alternative plan to get where we’re going and have the car fixed. However, we may carry our frustration and perceived bad luck throughout our day, sharing it with our friends.
2. Realistic and responsive: Understanding it is natural that cars sometimes don’t start (there is a whole industry based on the reality that cars break down: the automotive repair industry), after a moment of surprise, we accept and assess the situation, and move into solution mode. We get a jump-start or other needed help if available, or we make an alternate plan to get where we are going. We then make a plan to get the car fixed. Instead of asking, “Why me?” and thinking of our bad luck, we have the perspective that this is just an everyday event, and we might even be grateful we have a car and a place to go when so many others do not. Instead of letting this ruin our day, it reminds us of the resources and opportunities we have.
In both of these scenarios, the event is the same, but the outcome and the amount of suffering are very different because of the perspective and attitude we brought to the situation. It is a common practice—and a complete misunderstanding—to blame our mental and emotional suffering on other people, events, or things when the true source is our own mind.