Everywhere I go, I see people glued to their phones – almost obsessed.
And you might say, why not?
Phones these days can do everything – take photos, store games and books, keep our calendars . . . even help us chart our happiness.
Yes, I did say chart our happiness.
This app is one that I had first heard of in a Science article.
Matthew Killingsworth, a PhD student in Dr. Dan Gilbert’s psychology lab at Harvard, created a smartphone app that allows you to track how happy you are at various times.
You register on his site and answer some basic questions. After you do that, you’re able to download the app and choose how often you report your feelings and current activities. If your mind isn’t on task, you are asked if you are thinking about something happy, unhappy, or neutral.
At the end, you receive a “happiness report,” which will show your happiness depending on factors like what you are doing and whom you are with.
Killingsworth and his team compiled this information from 2,250 volunteer app users and found that: (1) people are lost in thought nearly as often as they are focused on the present moment and (2) this “non-present” thinking causes them to be unhappy.
Overall, 46.9% of the time the participants’ minds were not on their present tasks and overwhelmingly, these wandering thoughts were unpleasant.
When reporting on the activity, participants were given a choice of 22 general activities, which included working, resting, having sex, etc.
In all but one activity (having sex), participants reported that their minds wandered at least 30% of the time.
That is a lot of unpleasant thoughts swirling around in our heads.
The researchers interpreted their data to suggest that happiness had much less to do with what activity they were engaging in as whether or not their minds were wandering.
One of the reasons this study was so interesting to me is that mindfulness meditation can be so useful in solving this “wandering thoughts” problem.
By staying in the present moment, we are better able to moderate our emotions, to find joy in our lives, and be better practitioners.
Mindfulness can also influence neuroplasticity – and when the brain changes, people’s lives can change.
If you’d like to know more about the latest ways to apply neuroplasticity in your work or in your life, be sure to check out the Practical Brain Science webinar series.
How have you used neuroplasticity in your practice? Please share your comment below.
Your research work is superb!! Keep yourself away from distracted things and be positive.
You can get more guidance and information on
Very good article.
I am amazed at the wisdom of the comments of Hart and Blake. I am looking forward to incorporating mindfulness in my practice. Thanks so much for sharing your experiences especially the concept that anxiety can be transformed into a positive message to lead one to making essential changes.
Of course this reframe will probably be successful. Feelings of anxiety let us know that something is wrong that we can usually right. The relaxed state helped the client to understand and identify the stressor, and recognize that all emotions are our friends and there to be understood and used as a springboard for changing something in our lives which isn’t working for us. This client has the resources to make these changes and can most likely get a position that is a better fit for him at work. Great intervention!
Thanks for these thoughts. I’m in a hotel room in England, watiing for a wedding tomorrow and it’s probably more nerve-wracking for me than the bride or groom! I am a Christian + have had SA for 15yrs and with God’s help am working with it + getting through it. Just some days (like tomorrow) are a bit scary. Thanks for the inspiration. I’ll think if that when I’m talking to strangers tomorrow. God bless.
I have found that learning to meditate and sharing that knowledge with clients will substantially increase the value and benefit of our services; and for ourselves, lead to a life of greater emotional health.
A client of several weeks came in yesterday. Said he had a bad night. Woke up with severe feelings of anxiety. Felt his heart pounding. He was clearly disturbed by the anxiety with which he awoke in the middle of the night.
I listened for a few minutes as he talked about his “anxiety.” He had no idea about why he experienced it. He expressed a serious and out-of-control fear that it would happen again.
He’s separated from his wife at her insistence, but he wants to restore and enhance his marriage. My initial thought was that the anxiety was related to his marriage. That thought seemed to make logical sense. For several months, now, he has strongly felt that eventually his wife might very well file for divorce. He has been “a mess” for the few weeks I have been seeing him; but just last week his wife asked him if he would like to go on a “date,” which they did earlier this week; he believed that it went well. Yet, as he sat before me, he was clearly emotionally and physically disturbed by the anxiety with which he awoke in the middle of the previous night.
I reframed his negative view of anxiety being such a terrible experience, by suggesting that anxiety can be a good thing, leading to great value if he could access a meaning for the anxiety.
I took him through a brief progressive relaxation exercise along with some guided imagery of being in a secure, outdoor garden on a day perfect for his sense of temperature, blue sky with billowing white clouds, with beautiful, colorful flowers with soothing aromas, walkways, benches to sit on, with access to a source of wisdom of his choice, etc.
Out of this meditation experience, he confirmed that the anxiety, indeed, was not about his marriage. In fact, he had a sense of the anxiety being related to his job. He commented: “I think I just need to change jobs.” (He was employed as an architectural engineer.) However, he was firm in concluding that he liked the kind of work he was doing, but that he was anxious about failing to complete an assigned project at the expected level of quality and in the required time frame. Additional encouragement for him to let his mind evaluate the situation helped him conclude that he believed himself fully competent to complete the project at the level expected and that his supervisor was actually unconcerned about a deadline date for completion.
He noted that the present company for which he is working is a great deal larger than the one he had recently left for the current job. The previous company was much smaller, and he felt closer to his supervisor and management .
In sum: 1) the thought of anxiety being a positive experience and 2) especially the experience of using meditation, made a significant difference in the scheduled counseling session. The session resulted in his basic conclusion: It’s not that I need to change the kind of work I do; I need to change the kind of company for which I work to feel happier on the job. He concluded that he should begin a job-search for an environment in which he could use his expert skills, experience and knowledge, but also would be in a more personal work situation.
He left the session stating that he felt much better, had never thought of anxiety being a positive experience, and was surprised at the results of the meditation session, but that he was hoping the severe anxiety experience in the middle of the night will not recur. We’ll see. I do not expect it to recur, at least at the same intensity.
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Good information. I now realize that this is just another way to keep us away from ourselves rather than being in the present.
I use apps to help people use mindfulness all the time. There are apps useful for adults and children. The children take to it because technology is so embedded, they don’t realize they are employing a practice thousands of years old. There’s even an app that measures sleep and wakes you at the optimum time so you aren’t groggy in the morning, helpful for teens who have difficulty getting up in the morning (all of them)! Loving your series!
This is a great idea. It seems like all the young people use cell phones, so to have a tool to encourage them to reflect on their emotional state and come back to the present moment is wonderful.
This is very heartening information. I teach mindfulness to nearly all of my clients and struggle with how to engage them in the practice in a meaningful way. This information may be a key for some who have not yet bought into the practice. I have a Dialectical Behavioral Therapy component to my practice where clients are encouraged to practice the Distress Tolerance skills mindfully, rating their tolerance of the distress in their lives on a 1-100 scale both before and after practicing the skill. This new piece of information may be an additional support for this practice. Thank you for all the work you do here. It is so helpful for working with clients in the real world.
Diane,
It’s promising to see that text messaging has the potential to be a part of the solution. Reminders, we all need them. Busy world, busy minds…
A prominent researcher in Positive Psychology, Sonya Lubomirsky, Ph.D., released a “happiness app” via another company a year or so ago.
I oversee a large program in several states around the country to improve services for youth and young adults (14-26) with serious mental health conditions. We are also using cell phones but in a little different way. We are using text messaging to send affirming messages. In preliminary stages, we are getting feedback from the young adults that these messages are very helpful to them and make them feel connected and positive. Just though I’d share!
THANK-YOU for sending this today. Perhaps the person who will not, cannot, feels unable to attempt self-help between sessions will be encouraged knowing the results of this revealing study. I will share this information with just such a person this very evening. I pray it may just help turn a corner.
It makes perfect sense that when we are not “present” or in the “now” our minds wander to negative images or thoughts. (Unless we have chosen to practice being Mindful of our thinking processes and practice to take the best and release the rest). In the past there was research that it takes 10 positives to make up for 1 negative. However, if we discharge energy attached to any image, it is less likely to stick in our minds. This is where Choice comes in.
Teaching about how we become fused with the “languaging” of our minds is very powerful and an aspect of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy which uses Mindfulness exercises in session to practice understanding the fact that thoughts are thoughts and feelings are feelings. Images, thoughts, or feelings are neither good nor bad – they just are. It is the type of energetic charge associated to the image – through language – that can cause perturbations in our own energy fields.
For years my motto has been “Isness is my Business.” Learning to accept what IS affords each individual unit of consciousness the psychological flexibility to Accept the Present and chose to take steps towards what is Valued. Of course, it takes a little time to explore, what is it that I value and want to move towards in my life? If I know my values then I can ask the question: Does this choice move me towards my values or away from my values?
Happiness is a choice. This App sounds interesting and I would like to find out more about it. Many of the Veterans with whom I work are using the PTSD coach which was developed by an effort between the VA’s National Center for PTSD and the DoD’s (Department of Defense) National Center for Tele-health and Technology. This app and more information can be found at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs’ website. There tag line is “Technology to Make People Healthy.”