Daydreaming Eight Benefits
Daydreaming has a connotation of the dreamy child looking out of the school window, this is a dated view as research from neuropsychologists show daydreaming can help us achieve. Of course simply daydreaming without action will bring little results but a big dream which is followed to completion has to start somewhere. Here lets look at the positive influences of daydreaming by breaking down the benefits.
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| Daydreaming on Hayling Island Beach |
- Daydreaming keeps you motivated
Passion, belief and dreams are the most motivating reason people take a leap of faith to start something new. Envisioning the new business, career or life gain if they make a change.
Do What You Love is often quoted as the driving force to changing your life with books such as Freedom seeker, which encourages and develops your outlook to achieve more and shows how others are reaching their goals. Focused on the positive when you see yourself living the inspired life this motivates others to help and support you too.
- Giving your mind a break
Daydreaming is a normal state of mind and the periods where we focus are punctuations. Apparently 47% of your time awake the mind is wandering as found in the study by Harvard Psychologists Daniel Gilbert and Matthew A. Killingsworth found. Imagine if we could use that to help with challenges and help us over come fear.
When your mind wanders it can become more agile and fit, If you try before a daydream to loosely think of a project, situation or subject then let your unconscious mind ponder to creatively invent possibilities. Daydreaming can be constructive for discovering creative solutions, giving us bigger dreams and ideas without barriers.
- Preparing your mind
If you can image scenarios and how we would feel and react these can help us prepare. If you spend time thinking about a situation or an event then this can help focus on positive opportunities and minimise uncertainty. Spending time just to have a moment to consider on coming situations can greatly help the outcome or allow you to be ready if the result isn’t favourable.
- Calm moments of clarity and insight
I am working hard on a problem, I have creative block are both common terms but after the study by Harvard psychologists Daniel Gilbert and Matthew A. Killingsworth it appears that having a break helps to form connections between information. Processing in the background as we take on unchallenging mental tasks, such as tea making, hanging out the washing, having a shower or taking a walk.
As you relax on everyday tasks your mind can find the resource to daydream. As the study discovered spending time after first being given a task leads to more insightful responses to the task than focus and concentration do. So give yourself a real break as it could unlock the answers.
- Energy and power back
If you have a good daydream moment you can feel rested, focused and energised after the session. Putting a solution to a task or a big dream into positive next steps can boast energy levels. This in return can give a sense of achievement to the daydreamer and powerful lift to reaching the desired goal.
- Overcoming problems
As daydreaming has been negatively associated with ideas that we do it to dream of escaping our daily lives and almost comically winning the lottery. In reality the benefits of daydreaming are just being discovered as escaping the everyday as the busiest generation this does offer a unique space, a place I like to call the in-between. A restful place where relaxing can let the heart and mind entwine. I believe if your mind can freely wander you will find the solutions to challenges and obstacles.
- Less Fear on making decisions
A wandering mind can have less fear than if we focus on our dreams, if we let our mind freely take off, then it offers a unique view to the unconscious possibilities if we removed negative feelings of what in a big dream could be possible.
Leaving the negative inner voice before a daydream helps for positive uplifting big dreams which in the conscious mind might not be possible. A lot of celebrities including JK Rowling credit their best ideas to daydreaming, as information travels through a different part of your brain which can make you more creative.
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| Let Your Mind Fly Free - Kelly Rideout |
- Inner peace as we connect
When I listen to my inner self and feel I am moving in the right direction then I sense being connected to myself and my journey through life. When I get to busy and am no longer listening then I can waste time as I go off course. I believe having quiet ‘daydream moments’ helps me when I am designing and when I am writing. It focuses and allows me to open up my creative side when in busy periods I can feel stifled and unconnected to my journey. By 'journey' I mean it could be a small dream to plant a vegetable patch or being on the board at a top Fortune 100 company. Wherever you care heading and you desire to go, daydreaming can help you.
Daydreaming is a natural process and it is learning to harness it for a positive outcome, this isn’t going to sleep but staying alert to capture our mind wonderings. Giving your mind a chance to wonder and see obstacles or situations in a new light can help in all different parts of life.
Letting the mind drift off to daydreams can be a positive uplifting activity and using the unconscious to help us solve tasks or fulfil our dreams is a talent that like any other needs developing.
Virginia Woolf, in her novel “To The Lighthouse,” eloquently describes this form of thinking as it unfolds inside the mind of a character named Lily:
Certainly she was losing consciousness of outer things. And as she lost consciousness of outer things … her mind kept throwing up from its depths, scenes, and names, and sayings, and memories and ideas, like a fountain spurting.
Has a daydream started something great for you or solved any problem which previously you couldn’t see a resolution? Leave a comment as it would be great to hear your experiences with daydreaming.