There are people who live in their own world who have a hard time concentrating on the present moment they are living. Their mind wanders to the past, which was always better, or they dream of planning a fairytale future.
There are also people who are unable to pay attention for a long time and focus on the task they are doing because their mind immediately wanders, developing extraordinary theories about happiness. If you are one of those dreamy or clueless people, if your inner world is more important than the current real moment, be careful, because you are accelerating aging.
The scattered mind gets old before
The University of California has presented a study on cellular aging and has concluded that people who tend to wander or mentally move away from the present moment have shorter telomeres, which accelerates aging. And what are telomeres? Well, neither more nor less than fragments of DNA that cover and protect the end of the chromosomes that contain the genetic material. So what the telomeres do is protect that genetic material.
It seems that telomeres are getting shorter with age and that is why we age. But they can also be shortened by other external factors and mental wandering and dispersion is one of them. The conclusion is that if we want to delay cell aging, it is important to pay more attention to the present moment, concentrate more on what we are doing and stop mentally escaping to other, more pleasant worlds.
How to focus on the present
- The difficult thing is to prevent our mind from wandering and improve our ability to concentrate and stay in the present. But there are techniques that can help us. It’s not about stopping being dreamers, but about starting to move to achieve those dreams and turn them into a reality that we can live. The most important thing is to become aware of what we are missing if we let our minds continually wander to past or future worlds.
- To help us focus our attention on what we are doing or experiencing, there are some meditation techniques, such as the so-called “mindfulness” meditation or full attention technique that prevents mental dispersion and favors concentration. It is about stopping to reflect and focus our attention on what we are doing, how we are doing it and why we are doing it, with which we will achieve a global mental image of the activity itself that prevents us from “going” elsewhere.
- In reality, it is a matter of focusing on the activity that is being carried out at the present moment and letting that be what occupies the whole mind. In this way and by asking ourselves the questions of what, how and for what, the mind focuses on the concrete experience and does not need another focus of attention. Anyone can try this meditation technique at home, but if you don’t feel capable of doing it on your own, there are many workshops that teach you how to do it.