Make time not to think. Daydreaming is a natural restorative.
Were you ever told off as a child for daydreaming? You know the ‘sit up and pay attention’ snap back to the classroom instruction from the teacher. So hard to pay attention when there’s a blue sky to gaze at, a dog’s got into the playground, the clock’s nudging towards home time. Actually, anything that isn’t the thing the poor teacher is trying to get you to focus on.
Focusing takes effort. Mind wandering doesn’t. But that’s not to say it isn’t productive.
The immediate payback of mind wandering is that it’s refreshing.
Psychologist Daniel Levitin’s book The Organized Mind describes the brain imaging that’s made it possible for neuroscientists to observe the brain in different states. He describes clearly and beautifully that the mind wandering brain is in a sort of free flow from one thing to another because no single thought is, as he puts it, ‘demanding a response’.
That sounds like a holiday for the brain to me. That’s why we feel rested afterwards if we can allow our minds to free flow and not to ruminate on negative thoughts or pick at problems.
But while our wonderful brains are having a holiday from selection, focus and attention demands their free flowing state rewards us with ideas, insights, even revelations.
“In our mind wandering mode, our thoughts are mostly directed inward to our goals, desires, feelings, plans, and also our relationships with other people – the mind wandering state is active when people are feeling empathy toward one another.”
What particularly interests me in this is that guided day dreaming is part of STOAN Method. It’s about seeing yourself as a whole person and from the whole person perspective getting clarity on what you want – those goals, desires, feelings and plans that Daniel Levetin writes about.
I heard an interview with Susan Cain author of multimillion selling book Quiet – The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking. She described how she decided to leave her job as a corporate lawyer 3 hours after being told she probably wasn’t going to be made a partner in the firm she was working for. Making it to partner had been her focus for years.
She described her feeling of freedom once she let go of her hold on the ambition to become partner. She realised that her dream was to be a writer and how she had completely forgotten about what her dream was until that moment of freedom.
Once she remembered what she wanted she set up her life to write. Seven years later Quiet was published. Regardless of whether she achieved the amazing result of writing a best seller she set her direction to being a writer because she realised that was what she wanted to be.
To realise what we want is a powerful thing.