The Good Side of Daydreaming
Do you mind-wander whilst washing the dishes, cleaning your room, or preparing dinner? Do you daydream when relaxing on a sofa on a boring weekend afternoon? Daydreaming has gotten a bad rap since recent studies revealed that it makes people unhappy and unwilling to pursue their goals. According to a 2010 study by the Harvard University, a wandering mind is basically an “unhappy mind”.
There are plenty of reasons why many people are so down with daydreaming. One is that it often represents ’non-doing’ in a society, which in turn emphasises lack of productivity. But actually, daydreaming can be beneficial in many ways. From promoting relaxation to enhancing your memory and lowering your blood pressure – allowing your mind to wander can really uplift the quality of your health and well-being.
Here are the surprising benefits of daydreaming:
It delivers a host of personal rewards. Scott Barry Kaufman of New York University suggests that mind wandering might actually help people to better engage with the pursuits that are most personally meaningful to them. He argued that intelligence is often measured using IQ tests and the like, but then many people are being judged too quickly based on these scores. So he studied what happens to students if they really engaged in something that’s personally meaningful to them. That’s when he introduced his “Theory of Personal Intelligence”, which focuses on intelligence in broader terms, focusing on cognitive engagement and ability as applied to the pursuit of personal goals. He said that daydreaming has a role in personal adaptation. As Kaufman puts it, daydreaming can offer significant personal rewards, which include self- awareness, creative incubation, improvisation and evaluation, memory consolidation, autobiographical planning, goal driven thought, future planning, retrieval of deeply personal memories, reflective consideration of the meaning of events and experiences, simulating the perspective of another person, evaluating the implications of self and others’ emotional reactions, moral reasoning, and reflective compassion.
It promotes creativity. Allowing your imagination to work can bolster your creativity as it helps you organise your thoughts and think of new perspectives. Have you experienced that “aha” moment when you were daydreaming? When you daydream, you allow your mind to think of a bunch of possibilities. Sometimes, the best ideas are created when the mind is freely wandering. In the paper, "Ode to Positive Constructive Daydreaming" which he co-authored with Rebecca L. McMillan, Kauffman wrote "When we see someone daydreaming, we have no idea what’s going on in their head. These functions that all come from within – like imagination and mind-wandering – have been shown to be really important contributors to creativity.”
Other experts agree with this. In 2012, a study published in the Psychological Science, researchers at University of Wisconsin and the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Science found an association between mind-wandering and the “working memory”. Cognitive scientists define working memory as the brain’s ability to retain and recall information in the face of distractions. In an experiment, the researchers found that people who daydreamed more often were better at remembering series of letters when distracted by math problems, than those whose minds were less prone to wandering. This suggests that daydreamers tend to have higher levels of working memory. In 2011, neuroscientists found that the brain areas involved in daydreaming were the same with those associated with creativity and imagination.
It lowers blood pressure. Many people don’t realise this but actually, daydreaming is a form of hypnosis, according to the Anti-Stress Centre in the US. Thus, it also has the ability to put you in a deeply relaxed state which brings a number of health benefits, including reduced blood pressure. So if you are experiencing high levels of stress and anxiety, daydreaming may come to the rescue.
It improves your memory. Daydreaming may actually promote cognitive health, as long as you don’t overdo it. According to Washington University researchers, daydreaming may help people plan and solve problems, and be creative. However, it may also have metabolic consequences. In their study, they found that the parts of the brain that young, healthy people use when daydreaming are the same areas that fail in people with Alzheimer’s disease. Another benefit of mind-wandering to your brain is that it promotes learning consolidation. Like nighttime dreaming, University of British Columbia researchers found that daydreaming may also consolidate learning.
It boosts your well-being. A study which appeared in the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science suggests that daydreaming can help us better build memories and improve our attention spans. Here, the participants who were given time and skills necessary for reflection received higher scores on tests, and experienced lower anxiety levels and higher motivation. What’s more, daydreaming may also help people build empathy. That’s according to a research published in the Psychological Bulletin. In this study, researchers found that students who daydreamed more often had higher levels of empathy than those who daydreamed less. In short, it could make a person more compassionate – a trait that has been linked to happiness.
Does this mean we have to forget about being mindful? Of course not! Mindfulness is well-touted for its amazing health benefits. According to Kauffman, whilst the science of mindfulness teaches us to cultivate awareness of the present moment, we should also allow ourselves to balance the focused mind with the wandering mind.
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