What's Inside:

• 😌 Mind Wandering
• 💭 Quote of the Week
• A message for my readers 💛

When the mind wanders, there is a flow of connections among disparate ideas and thoughts, and a lack of barriers between senses and concepts. This state can lead to great creativity and solutions to problems that seemed unsolvable.

Did you know Albert Einstein used to play the violin when contemplating a difficult scientific or mathematical problem? Playing the violin would induce the mind-wandering mode, which would get his creative juices flowing, often leading to the solution of the problem.

Even the periodic table was invented through mind wandering. Our mind wanders when we dream and that’s exactly what happened to Dmitri Mendeleev when he fell asleep at his desk struggling to solve the table of elements, which he solved in his sleep.

In his book ‘Thinking Fast and Slow’ Daniel Kahneman speaks about how often he would go for walks to let his mind wander. He even states that many of the ideas in his book came to him during his daily walks, the times when he wasn’t working on the book.

I’m telling you this because it shows that even the greatest minds in history took part in mind wandering. I think whether you are a creator or not, it is important for all of us to let our minds wander.

If you think about it, most of our lives these days are spent in tunnel vision. There is rarely a time where nothing takes the focus of the mind’s eye. Very rarely do we zoom out and ease the focus to just, be.

Staying in laser-sharp focus is good when the task requires it, but to be like that all the time is problematic. If I have a minor problem in life, but I’m fixated on that issue, then I will only see negative. If however, I zoom out and look at the big picture, the problem seems very insignificant all of sudden.

As a photographer, I spend a lot of time altering the zoom and the subject in focus. Your view of life is very similar to photography in this way - what you see is very dependent on the lens, the zoom and the point of focus.

In order to zoom out and ease your focus, you need to take part in relaxing activities. Part of your day needs to be given to focusing on nothing. In eastern philosophy, they call this mindfulness, where the mind is allowed to wander. You can call it whatever you want, but you most definitely should make room for it in your day. Here’s how I incorporate it into mine.

I keep 1 hour a day as a minimum to do nothing.

This hour is my protected time where I am free to think and do whatever I feel like doing. It’s in this hour that creativity usually strikes. It’s like all the workers in the different areas of my brain go on a lunch break and chat to one another, exchanging ideas and experiences. This is where I make connections between anything and everything.

Take this blog post for example. It’s a combination of photography, reading, medicine (neurology) and mindfulness. Also a confession, I started writing this post on July 18th 2020. For the last 18 months, I have revisited this page randomly at times when a new idea has struck. Today for some reason everything lined up in my head so I finished it off, but that is all a result of mind wandering.

Mind Wandering Analogy

Think of your brain as a giant village. Each house in the village is a thought, idea or concept. Connecting these ideas (houses) are lots of roads (neurons). During the mind-wandering state, there is no traffic, all roads are open between all houses. This supports a more fluid and nonlinear mode of thinking.

During a typical day when we’re focused on a set task, only specific areas of the brain are activated. Sometimes you need to reach an idea or a memory that is located elsewhere. If you’ve ever had a word on the tip of your tongue you will find that the harder you try to remember it the more difficult it becomes, but as soon as you let go of that focus it comes to you. That’s mind wandering at work. By easing up you let the flow continue freely.

Try: Doing an activity that doesn’t require intense focus. Let your mind rest and flow wherever it needs to. Make this a regular habit in your time away from work and your mental health will thank you for it. Just like the physical body needs rest after a tough workout, the mind also needs to be taken care of. Mind-wandering can help you achieve that.

💭 Quote of the Week:

Bringing this back in 2022.

A message to my readers:

This is my last blog post of 2021 so I just wanted to say a massive thank you to everyone who tunes in weekly and has been doing so all year, I appreciate you 💛

I often go back to my first blog post and re-read why I started this in the first place. I look back now at everything I’ve written and seeing it all come together brings me joy, but that joy wouldn’t be near as much if I wasn’t able to share my writing with others.

I write for my own benefit and I share for the benefit of others, so I hope my blog has been of benefit to you 😊

Wishing you all a happy holiday season 😊❄️

No Med Diaries or Insights this week - I’m just enjoying family and you should too! See you next year ✌🏾