Sage Bray Varon

 

Were you ever given a hard time for daydreaming? I think many of us did as kids. And, as we got older, we would have probably lost a job or two if we did it at work. So, it’s not something that society encourages.

However, lately I have found that I need to spend a lot of time staring off into space. At first, I thought it was because it kind of procrastination for my novel writing. But, really, a lot of the story building is pure mental work, at least for me. Even stopping to make notes can be disruptive. These daydreaming sessions reminded me that I used to do this when I worked as a full-time artist and I was stumped on a design. Daydreaming or napping usually brought me the answer I needed. Then when I really thought about the most creative times of my life, I do recall doing a lot of daydreaming then too.

Like many of you, I’m sure, I constantly got in trouble in grade school for staring out the window when I was supposed to be paying attention. I had a very hard time controlling it and there was even a point in time that my dad thought something was wrong with me and sent me to a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist concluded that it I just had a very active imagination. Of course, as innocent as it was, it continued to be discouraged.

So, when I got old enough, I would bike to a coffee house and sit there for hours where no one could tell me not to stare off into space. When I got my own car, I would take long drives into the desert just to think. Later, as a responsible adult, there were long periods of time in my life where it just didn’t feel right to waste time staring out a window or taking long drives to nowhere when the family or my business needed me, which was pretty much all the time. So, I slowly but surely lost the habit.

Now I am now realizing that many of my most creative ideas and some of my best brainstorming sessions have come about while I was just staring out a window. It’s very evident when it comes to my novel writing, although, for a while, I would feel like I should, nonetheless, be actually putting words to paper. However, I have, thankfully, come to understand that daydreaming is an essential form of preparation and encouragement for the imagination.

We are a society of doers, which makes it hard to allow ourselves to just stop and “do nothing”. However, I’ve come to believe daydreaming is really an absolute necessity for truly imaginative work and the development of own unique voice. So now I even build time in my day for it.

Although a lot of my daydreaming happens without my planning it, I do value the intentional practice of it, the act of specifically giving oneself permission to do nothing. The more often you do it, the less likely you are to feel that niggling anxiousness or hear that long ago voice of a teacher telling you to stop staring out the window. And becomes easier and easier to do.

If you need further assurances of the value of daydreaming, there is actual scientific evidence of its benefits such as:

• Reducing stress and anxiety through mental relaxation.
• Problem-solving through free association rather than pushing for it or trying to logic something out.
• Getting both the executive problem-solving side of your brain and the creative side of the brain to work together.
• Making your brain more receptive to new information by quieting down.

And do you know what all these things can do for you, collectively? They help increase your capacity for creativity. Daydreaming has to be the purest form of imagination we have, so it makes sense that allowing that to be part of your process would rev up your creative engine, which is primarily powered by imagination.

So, do yourself a favor this week. Let yourself stare out the window or take a long quiet drive to nowhere. Sit in the quiet of your favorite room or outside in your yard and let your mind just wander. Take a bath and don’t even bring a book with you.

Let your mind and imagination breathe while your body relaxes.

 

Daydreaming in Our High-Tech Era

Does sitting quietly and doing nothing kind of make you panic? It’s probably because these days, we’re used to constant input, always with a cell phone or other device near at hand to entertain us should an empty moment present itself. But let me tell you, filling every moment is strangling our creativity. We need to stop looking at those spare moments as something to fill, and see them as something to treasure, as a moment to let the mind wander and freely process.

Try it. If you’re at a doctor’s office, don’t look at your phone. Just stare at the wall or take in the room. If you are meeting someone for lunch and you get there early, look at the people around you, the space you are in, the texture of things beside you, anything but your phone.

It’s probably going to feel weird and you might wonder if people think you’re strange because of the staring at the wall thing or because it looks like you have no friends otherwise, you’d be on your phone with them, right? But really, you’re expressing your uniqueness and your willingness to sit quietly with your thoughts and let your imagination entertain you while it works out a muscle you need for your creative endeavors.

I do think everyone could benefit from putting down those phones and looking around more often, but for creatives I think it’s essential. Inspiration and our own unique voices are not in some small digital box in our hand. It’s in the expansiveness we allow our mind when it has a chance to open up, play, and dream.