If as a child you were scolded for having your head “thinking about nonsense all day long”, or you tend to wander and become distracted at many moments of your daily life, you should know that mental drift is extremely beneficial in many ways.
Mental drift encompasses those mental processes that occupy approximately half (47%) of waking hours: includes simulations, planning or creative thinking, but also worries, obsessions and ruminating thoughts.
Neuroscientist Moshe Bar, who worked as an associate professor at Harvard University and Massachusetts General Hospital, wrote about this in his latest book. In his recent work, entitled Rambling. Virtues of mental drift, It tells how behind this apparent neurosis, which can sometimes fuel anxiety and depression, there is also hidden great potential.
How to ‘Hack’ Your Nervous System: 9 Ways to Stimulate the Vagus Nerve to Shut Off Anxiety and Stress
The book explores the multifaceted phenomenon of the wandering mind and presents the new research behind it: drawing on decades of research, he explains the benefits and potential costs of mind wandering in the broader context of psychology, neuroscience, psychiatry, and philosophy.
According to this neuroscientist, Wandering serves to improve self-awareness and relationships with others; increase the ability to concentrate; stimulate creativity by examining the past and future; or free the mind and achieve a better mood.
In an interview for Infosalusthe expert highlights that the Mind wandering can also “be broad, associative, and rapid, and we have shown that such open-ended mind wandering is highly beneficial for improving mood.”
The specialist clarifies that It is still not known what the source of each of our thoughts is.: these can arise from an external stimulus, an idea, a memory, an emotion or a goal, for example. “Sometimes they are the result of unconscious processes,” he points out in his statements to the media.
Besides, your efforts are of little use: The mind, elastic as gum, travels when it wants. “The mind is beyond our voluntary control.” Or as he concludes in his statements to Infosalus“the mind has a mind of its own.” Boredom, exciting plans, or creative problem solving can trigger brain drift.
The conclusion is that Daydreaming helps both survival and well-being: To make good decisions you need to draw out hypothetical mental situations based on past experiences, while creative incubation of ideas helps you understand others.
Of course, in pathological cases, mind wandering is not good, especially if it turns into rumination, positive worries, cyclical or ruminative thoughts. It is also not good when you want to appreciate the present moment.
Although mind wandering is an automatic process that you cannot control at will, you can free yourself from the societal guilt surrounding it, and use mindfulness techniques to focus on the present moment.
Learn how we work at .
Tags: Trending, Science