The Power of Daydreaming

How to Use Your Imagination to Fortify Yourself for the Holidays

Amy Fries — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 17:21:24 +0000

When most people hear the word "creativity," they think it applies solely to the arts or to some visionary endeavor. But creativity can be added to everyday life. And never do we need our powers of creativity more than when we're attending big holiday family occasions, like Thanksgiving. Even when we love and adore all the attendees, a lot of buried issues tend to get stirred up.

We can use our creativity in obvious ways to help us get the most out of the day--from the way we dress, to what food or gfits we bring, to how we choose to respond to any gauntlets thrown. We can also get creative in advance by tapping into our powers of imagination to visualize our response to stressful situations and to help strengthen our overall sense of well being.

Visualization is the process in which you purposely induce mental imagery or a daydream-like scenario in an attempt to bring about a desired outcome or to simply get the feel-good emotions associated with the imagined event. It's a decades-old practice that has earned a certain amount of scorn. Calls to "visualize world peace" have morphed into bumper stickers exhorting people to "visualize whirled peas." Well, you don't need to tackle world peace this holiday season. Just getting through the day with a smile on your face will be a noble accomplishment.

Here are some tips for how you can use your powers of visualization to prepare for any awkward or irritating situations that just might arise.

• Days before the event, watch what your mind is defaulting to. You may find that a lot of old fights or slights are popping into your head at random moments, filling you with bursts of anger and making you defensive even before the day arrives. Watch out for these and gently step away from those thoughts. You literally don't have to go there. It's not happening--you're imagining it. So stop, and conjure up a better image or imagined scenario. One that makes you feel good, not bad.
• Have a set of mental stock images or daydreams ready to go. Rehearse them often in advance. For visualization to work, it's better if you practice often in an attempt to give yourself a kind of "muscle-memory response" to the imagined scenario.
• Anticipate problem scenarios and plan your response--hopefully, a response that cools a situation and doesn't throw gasoline on a fire. Use a daydreaming state to fully imagine a potential situation. Example: Uncle Bob says, "Have you ever published that novel yet?" when he knows damn well that you haven't. Or the well-meaning aunt who asks: "How's the job hunt going?" when obviously you would have shared any good news if you had it. Use these awkward comments as a trigger to bring up your planned calming visualization. Have a pleasant response ready, one that provides a quick answer, yet changes the conversation. Or simply imagine your "happy thought," smile and turn to someone else and start another conversation. I think avoidance is an underrated virtue.
• Wear a necklace or piece of clothing or jewelry that you have invested with the power to ward off evil or just irritating comments. It's a trick, to be sure, but one that I've found useful in the past.
• When all else fails, excuse yourself, lock yourself in the bathroom, take multiple deep breaths, and visualize "whirled peas" or whatever else it is that gets you through the day or night.

I hope your day will be delightful, that you're surrounded by people you love and enjoy, that you're doing exactly what you want, and that you don't really have to use any of these techniques. But a little prevention and planning never hurts.

Here's wishing all of us a Happy Thanksgiving!

For more information, check out Daydreams at Work: Wake Up Your Creative Powers.

Our Capacity for Interruption or . . . How We Get Away with Daydreaming

Amy Fries — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:55:23 +0000

At least the two Northwest Airlines pilots who flew 150 miles past their appointed runway didn't claim "daydreaming" as a distraction. Instead they asserted that they were caught up in doing business on their laptop computers.

Daydreaming is often blamed for such space outs and missed external cues: a shift in a conversation, bread burning in the toaster, or when we're really deep in the middle distance, a road exit. I once "came to" from a daydream and found myself driving over a bridge into another state. Okay, I do live in a tri-state area so I hadn't gone that far, but you get the point.

This is one of the ways in which daydreaming gets such a bad rap. Yet one of the reasons we can get away with daydreaming so frequently and why we can experience its many benefits--creative problem solving, idea generation, conceptualizing--is because the daydreaming mind seems to have a built-in "capacity for interruption," according to researcher and psychologist Dr. Jerome Singer. This mechanism lets us shift from inner to outer worlds with lightning speed as some external event punctures the dream, say a honk of a horn or the desperate pleas of air traffic controllers.

It's as if the brain has made some bargain--the risk of an occasional missed cue (the exit sign) for the extra brain power we get via daydreaming. "It's fascinating that we can pull this off," researcher Malia Mason, PhD, told me when I interviewed her for my book Daydreams at Work: Wake Up Your Creative Powers. "We can manage the external world and daydream at the same time. To do that you have to know what you can get away with. Some part of the brain has to know."

Conversely, the deeper we are in a state of concentration (the pilots working on their laptops) or a state of flow--an artist in the throws of a creation, a scientist in the midst of an experiment, or my husband working on a business proposal--the harder it is to respond reflexively to interruptions. Therefore, it's probably safer to lapse into a daydream while driving than to become heavily focused on a conversation or anything else that makes it hard for us to shift mental gears.

Daydreaming plays another role during the performance of mundane tasks besides letting us investigate multiple goals and ideas. It seems counterintuitive, but daydreaming actually helps keep us awake and reasonably alert. Studies have shown that when subjects have to keep their mind focused on a boring task--say, monitoring a security camera or long-distance driving--they become drowsier faster than when they're allowed to let their minds wander.

You've probably experienced something similar while driving or sitting in on some endless meeting; if you didn't have mental scenarios to engage you, you would have been asleep at the wheel a long time ago. So a little mind wandering is not a bad thing. It's a very human thing--a built-in exit ramp to creativity. While daydreaming, we can explore strange new worlds, seek out new life and new civilizations, and boldly go where no man has gone before--all while commuting to and from work.

How Daydreaming Helps Children Process Information and Explore Ideas

Amy Fries — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 14:53:39 +0000

For the most part, children are natural, prolific, and happy daydreamers, and the process plays an important role in their developing lives. Too often, however, parents and teachers are quick to label daydreaming as a symptom of an Attention Deficit Disorder or the sign of a slacker in the making. A new study finds that "positive-constructive" daydreaming, even when heavy in pattern, is not related to psychological disorders as some have previously thought, but rather is a normal activity that reflects the daydreamer's imaginative tendencies and enjoyment of daydreaming.

There's actually a substantial amount of research connecting daydreaming in children with creativity, healthy social adjustment, and good school performance. A recent New Zealand study has found that imaginary friends benefit children's language skills and may also boost their performance at school. There's also research that says that children who don't get enough down time to daydream or who fill in their down time with too much television produce works that are "tedious and unimaginative."

This ties in with what psychologists Jerome and Dorothy Singer have found in their extensive study of the topic of children and daydreaming--that daydreaming and the acting out of these daydreams in make-believe games serve an important information-processing function. Children are trying to understand complex emotions and events for which they don't have the life experiences, so they fill in the gaps by making up stories that parallel real situations, which to me seems nothing short of brilliant.

In The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell writes about a two-year-old girl who talked to herself extensively before falling asleep as her brain glided into the alpha wave state associated with daydreaming. The parents recorded what they thought were fascinating conversations and turned the transcripts over to linguists. "What they found," writes Gladwell, "was that Emily's conversations with herself were more advanced than her conversations with her parents. . . . She was making up stories, narratives, that explained and organized the things that happened to her. . . . a process that is a critical part of a child's mental development."

This is obviously different from the seven-year-old with schizophrenia who has hundreds of imaginary friends and who was recently featured on The Oprah Show. Hallucinations and delusions are very different from daydreams. People, including children, know that they are daydreaming, fantasizing, or play-acting, and can snap out of it at will or via a distraction from the external world. Those suffering from hallucinations or delusions believe what they are experiencing is real, when obviously it's not.

Daydreams also have a big social component--allowing children to imagine conversations and events and thus gain both social skills and empathy for others. Researchers have also found that children who can spin an imaginative story around whatever game they're involved in are more likely to play happily and for extended periods of time versus those children who can't seem to engage in extended imaginary play. This latter child may play with blocks--but if he can't weave a narrative to keep him engaged he may soon grow bored and start looking around for something more interesting to do--like knocking down his neighbor's fantasy castle. So in this example, it's not daydreaming per se that appears to lead to the inability to stay engaged but quite possibly the opposite--the inability to invoke and stay engaged in a prolonged imaginary narrative that seems to be the source of the problem.

This is a contentious topic. Attention Deficit Disorders and their symptoms and solutions are complex and open to great debate. I'm simply suggesting that the tendency for children to daydream is natural and has many positive attributes, so we should think twice before having a knee-jerk reaction to a child who is a heavy daydreamer. A tendency to daydream--though it may be one symptom of an Attention Deficit Disorder--does not automatically equal a problem with paying attention when necessary or completing tasks. A child who enjoys daydreaming could well be a budding scientist, writer, artist, or visionary entrepreneur.

It may seem odd or a paradox, but children (and adults) can actually focus on their daydreams, and some of these daydreams may be more inventive and ultimately more useful than the task at hand. So let's not be quick to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Daydreams are a highly creative form of mental engagement and a necessary way for children--lacking real-world experience--to process complex information and emotions.

© Amy Fries
For more information, check out Daydreams at Work: Wake Up Your Creative Powers
Photo credit: istock.com/JuanMonino

Daydreams as a Source of Innovation & Motivation

Amy Fries — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 15:20:10 +0000

Barack Obama certainly had a dream . . . that one day he would be president. I'm sure that in his younger years many people would have mocked him for this audacious dream, but he followed his inner vision and now he's the 44th President of the United States.

The most dynamic and innovative people in any endeavor--business, science, athletics, politics, or the arts--are visionaries. And what exactly is a "vision?" At the end of the day I argue that a "vision" is just an upscale word for "daydream," and "visionary," an upscale word for daydreamer.

When people say they "dream" of being president or a billionaire or an artist or whatever it is they fantasize about--they are daydreaming those goals, literally envisioning them in their mind's eye.

Scientists and science fiction writers often had daydreams about ideas which, at the time, seemed incredibly far-fetched but later became very real life-changing innovations. The Internet, robots, rocketry, test-tube babies, scuba diving are just some of the inventions first conceived in daydreams and written about in science fiction by incredibly creative people who others may have thought of as simply weird or even delusional. In actuality, they were just heavy daydreamers with vivid imaginations and a store of interesting knowledge and experience from which to conceive their creative fantasies.

In fact, Robert Goddard, the father of modern space rocketry, had a very Einsteinesque daydream as a child about a vehicle flying to Mars. This daydream was so important to him that he went on to celebrate the day he had it--October 19th--the rest of his life. Though other scientists, including Wernher von Braun, greatly appreciated and used his advanced ideas, he was often scorned and ridiculed in the U.S. for what many considered his ridiculous "fantasies." Only after his death was he given full credit for his work. Today the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland is named after him. But such is the way for many creative visionaries. They are ahead of their time and scorned by those who do not understand the creative mind or the creative process, daydreaming in particular.

[Note to Tech companies everywhere: When you find a left-brained scientist/engineer who is also a heavy daydreamer, hire him or her immediately. They are the ones who will lead you to breakthrough innovations.]

Daydreams not only help us conceive products, systems, and art, they are also powerful blueprints for our personal lives. When we daydream or fantasize about our future, we are mentally imaging events--that is visualizing and simulating them--long before they happen. They can be and are the most powerful form of motivation any of us will ever know, whether we're daydreaming of a new career or daydreaming of a lifestyle more in keeping with our inner goals. That's why it's so important to become aware of your daydreams and to understand the effect they have on you.

The best compliment I received on my book came from my brother who recently and unexpectedly bought a house on Maui. In his e-mail to the family explaining why he made such an audacious move, during a recession no less, he writes: "This is partly Amy's fault since when we were simply in the dreaming stage, her book was delivered and the first chapter I read was the chapter on ‘Dreaming a better life.' We dreamed it and did it."

Kudos to all the daydreamers out there because they are the people who have the vision and drive to make things happen. Yes, you ultimately have to do all the hard work and take every step along the way, but without the "dream" or rather daydream burning in the background, you wouldn't have the fuel to persevere and make it all happen.

"Aha" Moments Caught on Tape

Amy Fries — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 13:49:51 +0000

Research has caught on "tape" the moment of insight that comes to us in a daydreaming state of mind. These are the proverbial "aha," "eureka!" or "light bulb" moments of discovery that come to us whether it's something simple like suddenly remembering the name of an old friend or some truly innovative insight like the key to a new computer program. In these moments of insight, "EEG recordings revealed a distinctive flash of gamma waves emanating from the brain's right hemisphere . . . one-third of a second before a volunteer experienced their conscious moment of insight," writes Robert Lee Hotz in an article on the creative problem-solving attributes of daydreaming in the Wall Street Journal.

What's more, the moment of insight was associated with a change in alpha brain waves in the visual cortex, which also jibes with what researchers know about daydreaming. While daydreaming, the brain enters an alpha wave state, a more relaxed state of mind. This calm and slightly detached state, which is the hallmark of daydreaming, helps to "quiet the noise" so that we can experience the answer or connection.

What's weird is that the moment of insight seems to happen before we're even consciously aware of it, according to the study. That's why the answer seems to come out of nowhere. We say things like an idea struck us "like lightning" or came "from out of the blue," when in reality, while daydreaming, we're accessing stores of knowledge, memory, and experience unavailable to us when locked in the tunnel vision of focus. And thus--the supreme value of the daydreaming state of mind. It allows us to make connections that our more rational mind can't see.

We owe a great debt to psychologists who started the research on daydreaming but it appears that neuroscientists are taking matters to the next level when it comes to understanding the mechanics of daydreaming. Though sometimes, I have to admit, I prefer the mystery of the lightning strike, the idea of the muse alighting on one's shoulder, or simply the sublime magic of the creative moment, which is all so much more romantic and inspiring than the clinical coldness of brain waves, EEGs, and fMRIs.

Whether you are a natural practitioner and admirer of the daydreaming mind or whether you need to be convinced by the cold hard hand of science, the end result is hopefully the same--a greater appreciation of the value of daydreaming and an increased ability to notice the moments of illumination that come to you in this state.

Copyright Amy Fries
Photo credit: istock.com/janrysavy
For more information on daydreaming, visit www.DaydreamsAtWork.com

Wishing and hoping and dreaming . . .

Amy Fries — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 15:00:05 +0000

A former high-school classmate of my daughter is now serving in Iraq. On her Facebook page, she writes that "daydreams and music" are the only two things getting her through the ordeal.

Likewise, in a Today Show segment about wounded soldiers returning from Iraq, one soldier talked about his participation in a filmmaking program in which disabled veterans were being taught how to write, shoot, and edit films. In describing the renewed hope he gained from this program, the young vet said: "I daydream a lot about things I'm going to do now. The same daydreams you have when you're twenty years old--I have those daydreams again."

We daydream for a variety of reasons, and one reason is they give us hope and help get us through the rough and boring patches of life. This isn't a small thing. All of us face our challenging days, and without the capacity to envision a brighter future or new goals, life would be bleak indeed.

In that way, daydreams may be a bellwether of how positive we're feeling about the future and how resilient we can be in the face of life's difficulties. While the relationship between daydreams and depression isn't entirely clear, there are some theories that depression is marked by a lack of daydreaming--in other words, when depressed, we lose our ability to daydream in ways that boost us when feeling low or amuse us when tired or bored. Could it be that when the world goes flat and gray that our daydreams have ceased to work their magic and the world looks one-dimensional, without possibilities, without hope?

How do you use daydreaming to help you get through life's rough patches? Do you have any favorite recurring themes or images that you find either comforting or inspiring?

For more information, check out my book Daydreams at Work: Wake Up Your Creative Powers.

Photo credit: istock.com/Panorios

How Music Feeds and Steers Your Imagination

Amy Fries — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 14:39:45 +0000

Some people have auditory daydreams, in other words, instead of primarily visualizing a scene or creation, they hear the "sounds of music." Both Mozart and Tchaikovsky wrote about how they would "hear" compositions as they took long walks or rides in the countryside.

Even for those of us who are more visual in our imaginings, music remains one of the most powerful daydream launchers. In fact, it's so powerful, I sometimes avoid listening to it at certain times because I know it has the power to send my thoughts in a very particular direction. Think about it. When you hear a driving, rebellious, in-your-face rock song, don't you immediately vault to either a scene or an emotion that corresponds to the mood of the music? Perhaps the old classic "Born to Be Wild" comes on the radio and you're suddenly zooming down the highway on an escape-your-life road trip. Or you hear the opening chords of "Amazing Grace" and you're swept up in visions of loss and sorrow.

I know a number of writers who listen to music while they write, but they're very particular about what they select. For example, one friend prefers classical; another, the familiar echoes of classic rock, the kind of music that's so ingrained in your psyche you just slip right into it. In both cases, the music helps them enter their creative worlds. Once they're completely in the flow of writing, the music is relegated to the background and they don't even notice it anymore. In that way, music functions as a gentle ramp that helps glide them into their zone.

In other cases, music is more like a rocket launcher of creativity. Motivational speaker Melissa Borghorst was particularly struck by the suddenness and clarity of the insights she had while listening to Taylor Swift's song "White Horse" while on a long-distance drive. She had been struggling with a particular teen workshop, and then out of the blue, while listening to "White Horse," she realized that she needed to create a song for the event. "I don't know the first thing about writing songs," she said, "but suddenly song lyrics started popping in my head. It was like fireworks going off. . . . By the end of the drive, I had written two songs, started a children's book, and left about twenty messages for myself."

Music not only affects your creative musings but also your energy levels. Think of music and exercise: lots of people, including my daughters, have to listen to upbeat, fast-paced music to keep them going in their workouts. This definitely works for me as well, but because I'm conscious of how music affects my imagination and not just my physical energy, I don't always like to use it when I workout because I prefer to use those times to let my daydreams go off in whatever direction they want to. If I was listening to a particular song, my daydreams would tend to follow in whatever direction the music sent me. In other words, if the music was melancholy, I might become morose. If it's rebellious rock, then I'm off on a rock-and-roll fantasy. That's all well and good when I'm just looking for diversion and entertainment, but when I'm brainstorming a project, I want my mind to brainstorm on that and not necessarily go to Asbury Park or wherever Bruce Springsteen's songs might take me at any given moment. But that's just me--someone else may get completely original visions listening to even well-worn songs.

Many people tap into music both to inspire their imagination and boost their energy levels. In my book Daydreams at Work: Wake Up Your Creative Powers, I talk about the case of a pro football player who listened to hard-driving rock before a game not just for the typical energy jolt it produced but because the music prompted him to fantasize about being a bad-ass rock star and that gave him the confidence, courage, and crazy arrogance required to stomp the opposition. Likewise, Lance Armstrong frequently tweets about the music he's listening to pre-race to help him get psyched up and after the race to help him calm down. Recently he posted the following: "Relaxing in the room, listening to the Stones. I love my life but wouldn't mind being Mick Jagger for a day. Know what I mean?" Sure--the power, the glory, the "world is my oyster," kind of life, which Lance probably already has, but which shows that even celebs daydream about the lives of other celebs and use music and music-plus-daydreams to alter energy levels.

Take note of how music affects you:

What kind of daydreams does a particular piece of music launch?
Do you tune music in to help you get in a creative zone? Or do you tune it out so it doesn't distract you?
Does music help you be more creative or does it take you places you'd rather not go when working on a particular project?
Next time you're feeling low on energy or creatively blocked, try experimenting with different music and see where it leads you.

Cathartic and Do-Over Daydreams

Amy Fries — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 17:48:14 +0000

We've all had the experience when we've been in an argument with someone and then mentally rehash the conversation in a daydream, fine-tuning and improving our performance. In the fantasized version, we undoubtedly make the perfect comeback remark or score the debate-winning point. In these kinds of daydreams we're analyzing conversations, giving ourselves an ego boost in the face of a stressful event, and planning how we might better deal with a similar situation in the future.

These kinds of cathartic "do-over" daydreams help us blow off steam and deal with difficult emotions like shame, guilt, frustration, and anger. Such fantasies let us imagine a different outcome and process information that would otherwise be almost too much to take in. This past April, upon the second anniversary of the Virginia Tech Massacre--that sad, terrible day--I was struck by a Washington Post article about English professor Lucinda Roy, who had the misfortune of being the killer's tutor in the months leading up to the slaughter. Roy has since written a memoir of her experience, No Right to Remain Silent, and of her attempts to get him to counseling and failing in that effort.

Of course, she is endlessly haunted by the tragedy and tries to work it out in her daydreams: "At times, she daydreams she is on the Drillfield on April 16, runs into [the murderer] and persuades him to go with her. Perhaps he would kill just her. That would be better, she thinks. ‘Then it would be a tiny tragedy,'" reports the Post.

This is such a human experience, to play out different options in the mind's eye, even impossible options or options we would never choose in real life.

Sometimes these cathartic daydreams give us the do-over hope of performing better if granted a second chance while helping us process guilt and remorse. Other times, cathartic daydreams take a vengeful turn. And who among us can say they've never had a vengeance-is-mine inspired fantasy? The mystery writer Sue Grafton, for example, said in a Washington Post interview that she started writing murder mysteries to exorcise her hostility toward her ex-husband while in the midst of a nasty custody dispute. She got the ultimate two-for-one--venting her difficult emotions via daydreams and then using the vivid fantasies as inspiration for her fiction writing.

Of course, some people cross the line and make their hostile fantasies come true in ways we wish they wouldn't--think of the notorious Columbine killers who reportedly indulged in violent fantasies long before the act. Fortunately for most of us, these dark daydreams remain safely in our minds, allowing us to deal with and expel intense emotions. In fact, truly hostile daydreams only make up about 2% of our daydream material, according to psychologist Eric Klinger. If they tend to resonate more, it's because we're wired to remember those things that create a strong emotional reaction.

For more on daydreaming, check out my book Daydreams at Work: Wake Up Your Creative Powers or visit my website www.DaydreamsAtWork.com.

Photo credit: istock.com/Paul Kline

Are Your Daydreams Stuck in a Rut?

Amy Fries — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 18:52:37 +0000

Daydreaming and fantasizing are great ways to explore options, escape the routines of daily life, and find outlets for intense emotion. But sometimes even your daydreams can get stuck in a rut.

One reason for that is--everything you expose yourself to in life has the potential to kick off related daydreams as daydreams are sparked by prompts from the external world. Movies, TV, music, the news, advertisements, books . . . all are fodder for fantasy, which in turn can influence consciously and subconsciously the choices you make in life. In other words, if you're following Michael Jackson coverage 24/7 or watching re-runs of "Real World: Cancun" every night, you may find yourself having tragic celebrity daydreams or fantasies inspired by grade Z reality TV.

That's why it's good to try to trace the source of your daydreams and see if they're really helping you move in a direction you want or are they just junk food for your brain? Don't get me wrong--escapist fantasies are fun and have serious stress relief value, so whatever you do, don't feel guilty about them. But if you find that your daydreams aren't inspiring or are just re-runs of material you've outgrown, you might want to try prompting more creative mind wanderings. In that case, here are my top seven suggestions:

Improve the quality of your movie/TV/reading/web-surfing choices. More provocative topics will have you thinking more creatively.
Try something new--listen to new music, visit an art gallery, go to a comedy club.
Travel--even if it's just a local half-day trip. If you can't get away, read about someplace you want to visit or try out the food or music. The mere anticipation of travel can really fire your imagination.
If you want to be more creative in your job, make an effort to meet new people in your field--subscribe to industry-related publications, go to conferences and trade shows, join organizations. These, in turn, will help spin-off your own creative musings.
Exercise. Studies show that you daydream more while moving and that the creativity burst lasts for up to two hours after you've stopped.
Try a fantasy camp--the choices are endless. There's even a gladiator fantasy camp in Italy. Or volunteer in some field you've always dreamed about. These new encounters will prompt a fresh round of reveries.
Be wary of scary movies and 24/7 news of the endless ills in the world--both will spark "negative" daydreams. Such daydreams have a planning element to them, i.e., "What would I do if someone broke into my house?" But if they go on too long and don't get you anywhere, it's time to break the pattern and start envisioning better things.

For more on daydreaming, check out my book Daydreams at Work: Wake Up Your Creative Powers or visit my www.DaydreamsAtWork.com website.

The Great Paradox: Daydreaming vs. Mindfulness

Amy Fries — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 14:56:39 +0000

To daydream or not to daydream . . . and why do we have to make that choice? Yet we get conflicting messages on this all the time. In the abstract, we tend to admire traits such as creativity and imagination, yet we're constantly told to focus, to live in the present moment and not think about the future or the past, to be mindful only of what is and not what could be. According to a Buddhist philosophy: "The one way to man's peace, fulfillment and release lay through the calm control of his own mind and senses . . . the realization that life's meaning lay in the here-and-now and not in some remote realm or celestial state far beyond one's present existence."

I wonder, given the human propensity to daydream, if this goal is possible for most of us. Some go to great lengths to free themselves from the turmoil of their minds. Zen monks and nuns isolate themselves in monasteries and convents and devote themselves to meditation and prayer. Practitioners of extreme sports such as rock climbing hang from cliffs by their fingertips because it forces them to live in the moment, to finally be free of the barrage of thoughts and scenarios playing out in their head.

But can we do it all the time? And would we want to? Think of slavery--under the "focus only on the present moment" directive, slaves would be locked in their slave tasks instead of dreaming of escape.

Are we denying some aspect of our humanity by trying to banish our daydreaming natures? We wouldn't have art, invention, philosophy, progress, or spirituality without it. The ability to imagine is the key to invention, problem solving, and discovery. That's why some scientists are trying to teach computers how to daydream, to make them more humanlike and more dynamic, something able to move beyond the limitations of task and the present.

I am not anti-focus, anti-present moment, or anti-meditating by any means. I'm a happy practitioner of all of the above. It's wonderful and fulfilling to calm the mind, to open your eyes to the present, to reap the results of focused action, or to be swept up in the flow of concentration. I'm "just sayin'" that we don't have to pit one state of mind against the other--idolizing the present, focused mind while demonizing the mind's capacity to take off on imaginative forays. If we can't achieve a perfect balance, we can at least accept a certain dichotomy. To paraphrase that old folk song--there is a time to be present and a time to conceptualize, a time to be still and a time to create, a time to be productive and a time to be dreamy. One refreshes and invigorates the other.

When we understand how our minds work, we can have the best of both worlds. Maybe that is the "calm control" that Eastern philosophers speak of--becoming aware of our various and very human states of mind, and instead of fighting them, learning to understand them and use them to our advantage.

For more on daydreaming, check out my book Daydreams at Work: Wake Up Your Creative Powers or visit my www.DaydreamsAtWork.com website.

photo credit: istock.com/risamay