Daydreaming - Set Free the Power of the Mind
Published by Tracey Burchard under daydream, dream, mental, mind, power of the mind on Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Do you remember when you were a kid, sitting in school and just daydreaming away? Probably looking out the window at the playground with your imagination running wild. You were off on some adventure riding a horse through a grassy field, or maybe dreaming about the day when you'd get your first kiss...
And then - the teacher calls on you. The adrenaline floods into your body, your heartbeat races and you realize that you have no idea what's going on around you. You've got that "deer in the headlights" look as you apologize to the teacher and listen to her lecture you about what a loser you are with your head in the clouds. You'd better start paying attention or you'll amount to nothing in this world.
The message most of us got as kids (and we're passing the message along to our kids...) is that daydreaming is bad, wrong, a waste of time, and if we do it we won't be successful. So we pretty much stopped doing it. At least we tried.
Daydreaming is a normal process, humans can only focus for a certain amount of time, then the brain automatically shifts into the daydream mode. When we try to shut down our ability to daydream, we lose the ability to visualize which has a distinct impact on our creativity. Daydreaming is a normal part of being human, it's an enhanced state of creativity where we are able to tap into the more complex regions of our brains. Absolute brilliance has come out of daydreams, in fact, Thomas Edison found the answer to many problems in his daydreams. Mark Twain and Edgar Allan Poe wrote stories based on their daydreams. The chemist Friedrich Kekule daydreamed of two serpents biting each other's tail, and forming a ring. He jolted awake, and saw the answer to how a benzene molecule is structured. It's a ring!
Some high-tech companies actually give their employees time during the day to daydream, and have seen a boost in the creativity and innovation.
Maybe daydreaming is not appropriate in the classroom during lecture, but to classify the act as wrong and unfruitful, and to make people feel bad or guilty for daydreaming is simply an indication of how little we really know and maybe of the "boxed in" thinking in our public school system and even in our workforce.
So, do yourself a favor, take a little catnap and let your do what it will.
And then - the teacher calls on you. The adrenaline floods into your body, your heartbeat races and you realize that you have no idea what's going on around you. You've got that "deer in the headlights" look as you apologize to the teacher and listen to her lecture you about what a loser you are with your head in the clouds. You'd better start paying attention or you'll amount to nothing in this world.
The message most of us got as kids (and we're passing the message along to our kids...) is that daydreaming is bad, wrong, a waste of time, and if we do it we won't be successful. So we pretty much stopped doing it. At least we tried.
Daydreaming is a normal process, humans can only focus for a certain amount of time, then the brain automatically shifts into the daydream mode. When we try to shut down our ability to daydream, we lose the ability to visualize which has a distinct impact on our creativity. Daydreaming is a normal part of being human, it's an enhanced state of creativity where we are able to tap into the more complex regions of our brains. Absolute brilliance has come out of daydreams, in fact, Thomas Edison found the answer to many problems in his daydreams. Mark Twain and Edgar Allan Poe wrote stories based on their daydreams. The chemist Friedrich Kekule daydreamed of two serpents biting each other's tail, and forming a ring. He jolted awake, and saw the answer to how a benzene molecule is structured. It's a ring!
Some high-tech companies actually give their employees time during the day to daydream, and have seen a boost in the creativity and innovation.
Maybe daydreaming is not appropriate in the classroom during lecture, but to classify the act as wrong and unfruitful, and to make people feel bad or guilty for daydreaming is simply an indication of how little we really know and maybe of the "boxed in" thinking in our public school system and even in our workforce.
So, do yourself a favor, take a little catnap and let your do what it will.
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