Whole School Wellbeing Program

Mindfulness is a great way to foster positive feelings and also allow space for creativity. Below are some photos from Maria Pennington’s Year 7 Italian class enjoying the benefits of meditation – spoken in Italian!! Very soothing…

I had an interesting conversation with several of my classes last week about boredom; my misconception was that teens rarely get bored due to having access to lots of stimulation online; whether that be watching TikTok, social media platforms, YouTube clips, gaming and more. To my complete surprise most students said that these things get boring too…so my next question to them was, what do you do when you’re bored?

For myself, I often find myself turning to my phone and have recently been making a conscious choice to ‘switch off’, instead creating space for mindfulness or quiet contemplation. The below article raises some interesting ideas about boredom and it’s links to personal wellbeing. 

 Instead of Pulling Out Your Phone, Let Your Mind Wander

When we're waiting, we often have the urge to distract ourselves—but a new study finds we’d enjoy doing nothing but think.

If you commute on a bus or train, you’ve probably noticed that most people spend the ride looking at their mobile phones. No doubt, they assume doing nothing but sit there would be boring, so they prefer distracting themselves. This squares with past research showing people will do almost anything to avoid boredom—even administer electric shocks to themselves.

But results from new research suggest we should rethink that choice. We are probably underestimating how enjoyable and interesting it is to do nothing but pay attention to wherever our thoughts take us…..researchers found that the participants in their experiments were not good at predicting how much they’d enjoy doing nothing but think. Even in a dark room with no stimulation, they ended up being more engaged and interested than they’d anticipated. 'People don’t appreciate the real value of waiting/thinking,' says researcher Kou Murayama of the Motivation Science Lab at the University of Tübingen in Germany and coauthor of the study. 'Once they engage in it, though, they appreciate it.'

Why would this be? Spontaneous thinking often involves mind-wandering, daydreaming, thinking about the future, or recollecting memories, all of which can have upsides. For example, daydreaming and mind-wandering have been found to improve our mood, creativity, goal-setting, and job performance (especially during a repetitive task). And thinking about the past in a nostalgic (rather than ruminative) way can make us happier and more resilient to stress.

Overall, says Murayama, the results suggest we rethink whipping out our cell phones every time we are waiting or bored. Instead, we might benefit from having a moment to think freely about whatever catches our fancy—and enjoy ourselves just as much.

'If you find yourself checking mobile phones when there is nothing to do, try to take a moment to entertain yourself with thinking,' advises Murayama. 'You may have new refreshing experiences that you did not expect.'

By JILL SUTTIE | 23 August 2022
Greater Good in Education magazine

So next time you find yourself stuck in a queue, on a bus or just looking to pass time for five minutes while you wait for someone to arrive…consider leaving the phone in your pocket and take a moment to look around and let your mind wander. You might enjoy it more than you think, happy day-dreaming!

Aundraêa Stevens
Convenor of the MHWB Committee