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You are here: Home / Positive Psychology / Letting Your Mind Wander: The Effects Of Fantasizing And Visualizing

Letting Your Mind Wander: The Effects Of Fantasizing And Visualizing

August 29, 2013 by Mikey D 12 Comments

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Since returning from Israel almost two months ago, I’ve found myself slipping into daydream an awful lot.

My mind will wander from whatever it is I’m doing to a scene of beaches along the Mediterranean, a crater in the Negev, or a bar in Tel Aviv.

I have a love/hate relationship with daydreaming. On the one hand, letting my mind wander allows me to be more creative, to imagine good times in the future, and to remember good times of the past. On the other hand, too much daydreaming can make me disconnected from reality.

In fact, mind-wandering is a major cause of unhappiness, and is incredibly common. People spend 47% of their time thinking about things other than what they are currently doing. And it turns out that these people are less happy when they let their mind wander, no matter what they were doing. This is a fascinating study, and I highly recommend you read about in more detail.

That being said, it would be premature to dismiss mind-wandering, daydreaming, and/or visualization entirely. There is ample evidence from sports to show that mental practice or visualization can improve physical performance or motor skills in players1. Positive fantasies are also useful when you want to explore your possible future selves without being tied to the hardships of reality.

So what are we to do? How can the rational-minded among us use this information best to improve our lives and keep ourselves happy?

Let’s take a look at the research out there comparing healthy visualization with unhealthy fantasizing.

 

Healthy Visualization Vs. Unhealthy Fantasizing

Focusing on the present moment is generally your best bet. But for those times when you are mentally somewhere else, there is a fine line between self-improvement and escapism.

In this section, we will investigate the factors that determine whether your mind wandering is helpful or harmful.

Conscious vs. Unconscious

The first, and possibly most important distinction is whether you are fantasizing intentionally or without intention.

If you want to be able to let your mind wander and have it still be a healthy pastime, you must be doing it consciously. In other words, you are in control.

When you make the process of fantasizing conscious, you speed up the analytic brain, allowing you to gain insight from your fantasies2. On the other hand, if you just slip into daydream unaware, you will have trouble deriving any benefit from it.

Clearly, having strong mental control is important if you want to take advantage of what visualization techniques have to offer.

Motive Specific Fantasizing

Your fantasies are an important window into your mind. They can aid in your self-understanding and help you establish goals while providing motivation to strive for them.

We can divide motivations into implicit (unconscious) motives and self-attributed motives (“I really care about ___”). Our implicit motives tend to be aroused when we enjoy partaking in an activity for its own sake, and self-attributed motives are aroused when there is a social incentive involved3.

Having goals that are congruent with your implicit motivations tends to make you happier. It takes a certain degree of self-knowledge to set congruent goals, so it is not easy. But, by focusing on the right incentives in your fantasies, you can make it more likely that your implicit motivations will match your goals4.

An example might help here. Let’s say you fantasize about being in great shape. Focus on how good it feels to exercise and eat right, rather than how good you might look to other people. If this fantasy still feels good, chances are your implicit motivation matches your goal, and you will be propelled towards it. If not, you should reevaluate your goal.

Fantasy vs. Expectation

When thinking about the future, we must distinguish between fantasies and expectations. When you fantasize about something, you may have a positive or negative expectation with regards to whether it will come to pass in real life.

Since your fantasies can be positive or negative as well, there are four possible combinations of fantasy and expectation, each with different effects.

In a sample of obese women on a weight loss program, those with optimistic expectations but negative fantasies tended to lose the most weight. In contrast, those with pessimistic expectations but positive fantasies did the worst5.

In general, positive expectations leads to increased motivation and investment, and is more likely to lead to goal success. Conversely, positive fantasies encourage people to enjoy their “desired future” now, leading to a loss of motivation and investment6.

Some of you might be surprised by the finding that positive fantasizing can be a bad thing; I know I was. But it does make a lot of sense when you think about it.

If you imagine already having what it is you want, your brain can “fall for it” and induce a relaxation response instead of an energizing one. After all, you’ve already succeeded! Experimentally induced positive fantasies led to an energy reduction compared to fantasies questioning the desired future, negative fantasies, and neutral fantasies. Visualizing more pressing needs led to an even greater energy reduction than less pressing needs7.

In other words, be careful about indulging in positive fantasy. In order to make progress in your life and goals, you may need to sacrifice the comfortable illusion you’ve built up and spend more time in the real world.

Note: If you are feeling anxiety, a positive fantasy will induce a relaxation response and decrease it. They can still be useful!

 

How To Use Visualization Techniques Properly

If positive fantasies are really so risky, a highly significant self-help technique might be rendered worse than useless.

For many situations, this does mean that you shouldn’t indulge in fantasy. But that doesn’t mean fantasy or visualization techniques are always a bad thing. There is a right way to use them, which we will explore in more detail now.

First, let’s define proper visualization as the process of recreating all the images, sounds, and feelings in your mind surrounding an activity in order to practice in a perfect environment.

As you can see from this definition, proper visualization technique involves more than just letting your mind wander. There is an art to it, which we will go over now.

Treat Visualization As Though It Were A Rehearsal

Ultimately, visualization techniques are about practice.

You must therefore treat them as such. This mindset of visualization as practice will help you do it properly.

One of the most important things about practice or rehearsal is that it is scheduled. If you have something that you want to visualize, pick specific times to do it. For example, you can spend ten minutes on visualization before bed every other night, or at whatever intervals you want. Try making it a part of your morning routine.

And, because it is practice, you must take it seriously. It shouldn’t be half-assed. It takes work to recreate the images, sounds, and feelings of the situation you want to visualize, and you must be willing to put that work into it.

Relax Into Your Visualization

You can’t have an effective visualization session while you are feeling tense. You must be able to get yourself into a relaxed state before you begin, otherwise you won’t be able to do it properly.

Of course, if you wanted to visualize a situation in which you were tense, you can do that. But you must be able to relax yourself before you begin, otherwise it will be challenging to recreate the environment in your mind, because your focus will be elsewhere.

A few minutes of meditation is a great way to relax before a visualization session. But more than that, meditation also makes your mind-wandering thoughts less “sticky”. In other words, people who meditate can return their mind to whatever they were focusing on more quickly after a distracting thought pops up.

The ability to return your mind to your focus is incredibly important during visualization, because you will often find your mind wandering from the details of your visualized environment. This makes your practice less effective.

So not only should you relax before your visualization session, but you should meditate in general in order to improve the efficacy of your sessions in the future.

How To Recreate The Environment

While it would be impossible to perfectly recreate the appropriate environment to mentally practice in, you can do a pretty good job if you follow the right process.

Remember to include as many senses as you can; sights, sounds, smells, and physical sensations should be possible in most cases, and if you can add in taste, good for you.

When you begin creating the environment for your visualization, start by not including yourself. Imagine the scenery, including primarily sights and sounds first. When you have that in mind, move to a third person view, including yourself in the environment. Once you have established your place in this “world”, move on to a first person view.

From there, you can begin visualizing whatever it is you want to practice.

Include Realistic Obstacles

Finally, make sure you include realistic obstacles in your visualization. If you make it easy for yourself, your practice will be useless.

For example, if you are trying to visualize yourself cooking a healthy meal, imagine that you are missing an ingredient and you need to improvise. What would you do?

By including obstacles, you can stimulate creative solutions to whatever problems you might face in trying to accomplish your goals.

 

Conclusion

Allowing your mind to focus on something other than the present moment has both risks and possible rewards. When you allow your mind to wander arbitrarily, it often leads to unhappiness.

On the other hand, using visualization techniques properly can be a useful form of practicing certain things.

How often do you think you let your mind wander? How does it make you feel?

 

Footnotes:

1. http://baywood.metapress.com/app/home/contribution.asp?referrer=parent&backto=issue,1,5;journal,85,123;linkingpublicationresults,1:300311,1&displayreferrers=false#referrers

2. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07351690701856922#.UhTxRNKsiSp

3. http://lab4.psico.unimib.it/nettuno/forum/free_download/mcclelland_89_355.pdf

4. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-6494.2009.00591.x/abstract;jsessionid=CFD2EB0CFB9F7D67A459A622DB12CB32.d03t04?deniedAccessCustomisedMessage=&userIsAuthenticated=false

5. http://www.psych.nyu.edu/oettingen/OETTINGEN1991WEIGHT.PDF

6. http://www.europhd.eu/html/_onda02/07/PDF/9th%20Lab%20Meeting%20Scientific%20Material/Oettingen/Oe.%20%26%20May.,%202002,%20JPSP.pdf

7. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002210311100031X

photo by: Svenstorm

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Filed Under: Positive Psychology

Comments

  1. Stacy Bell says:
    October 7, 2014 at 7:26 pm

    It has taken several weeks of insomnia, anxiety and loss of focus to realize I have developed an obsession. The thoughts are there 24 hours a day, probably even while I’m asleep. The obsessive symptoms include daydreaming about real past events and fantasies. After reading this article, I believe I can remove the unhealthy kinds of fantasizing and harness the positive power of more mindful fantasizing. Thanks.

    Reply
    • Mikey D says:
      October 9, 2014 at 7:14 pm

      Thanks for sharing, Stacy. I wish you the best of luck with this!

      Reply
  2. shafaq says:
    March 3, 2015 at 3:21 am

    hi i’m shafaq , i fantasies all day about movies , dramas , is it harmful?

    Reply
    • Mikey D says:
      March 3, 2015 at 6:51 am

      Hi Shafaq. Do you think it’s harmful? Is it getting in the way of the rest of your life?

      Reply
  3. Tiernan says:
    May 17, 2015 at 11:53 pm

    Hi my name is Tiernan, i daydream all the time. I dont know if it has effected me or not. I usually daydream about my books and how life could be for me if stuff were real. I daydream about this stuff when I am usually bored. Do you think this is bad for me?

    Reply
    • Mikey D says:
      May 19, 2015 at 6:38 pm

      Thanks for the comment, Tiernan. That’s really hard to say – daydreaming in and of itself certainly isn’t bad. It just depends on how much it is interfering with the rest of your life. I’ve written more about this here: http://feelhappiness.com/escapism-leave-fantasy-world-live-reality/

      Reply
  4. Beatha says:
    January 11, 2016 at 8:50 pm

    Hi daydreaming have really put a negative impact on my life. I feel unhappy looking back at my pass. But I don’t how to stop and feel embarrassed to tell anyone about it. I feel it’s something I have to fix myself . Am I wrong for thinking I’m really the only One who can fix it? After all it’s my own problem.

    Reply
    • Mikey D says:
      January 12, 2016 at 6:35 am

      Thanks for the comment Beatha. You are the only one who can fix it, but that doesn’t mean other people can’t help. I don’t know how serious your situation is, but there are always therapists/counselor types who can help in more serious situations. This may or may not be relevant to your situation, but I wrote sort of a follow up here: http://feelhappiness.com/escapism-leave-fantasy-world-live-reality/

      Reply
  5. Matt says:
    January 8, 2017 at 6:27 pm

    Hi Mikey,

    I have just come across your blog and a few of your posts have hit home unlike any blog I’ve seen before.

    I do fantasize, and I have a lot over the past decade. I can trace it back to when I left school in 2003. I was quite the happy go lucky chap at school with quite a lot of friends. But by 2004 things had changed. I was around 17 and had started to lose contact with my friends over the past year and had fallen into the loneliness trap. I was happy to play soccer computer games than meeting up with them. Another issue was my lack of work and lack of success with further education. I had quit Sixth Form after around a month and quit my first job working at a grocery store after just one shift. It was a sign of things to come.

    And then the fantasies started. So around 2004 I started watching at TV show called 8 Simple Rules and started to fancy one of the female characters. I found myself not just enjoying the episodes but coming up with visual fantasy scenarios where I would be one of the male co-stars who is in one of the episodes and we start to go out. It was bizarre, yet I delved so deep into it as I had nothing else going on in my real life. My friends had all gone, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life which meant starting to stagnate my real life while my fantasy world was starting to really take shape.

    Over the next few years my fantasies continued to grow. One month I’d be an actor in a famous Australian Soap, then in a British one, then a model, then a normal person who just has all of his old friends and is off out watching a Soccer Tournament with all of them.

    One of the big things that had started to make these fantasies so intense was the Internet. I got the internet in January 2006 and from that month on it allowed me to color my fantasies like never before. I could use google maps to see what house my fantasy self lived in, look on clothing websites to see what my fantasy wardrobe was, and on and on. I had so much time on my hands I was doing the most bizarre things just to make my fantasy life more enjoyable.

    So around 2008 I had gotten sick of the rut I found myself in and decided to do something about it. I joined an evening Creative Drama class and loved it. I mean, I was shit and forgot my four lines during the main performance but I loved it. I stopped for two/three years for some reason which I cant even tell you why but it was a great chance to get out there and do something in the real world.

    So from 2004 to 2008 not a lot happened and to be honest from 2008 to 2011 not a lot happened either. I really struggled to deal with how things had ended up. I barely worked, barely saw friends. I didn’t do anything.

    Then I got a job in May 2011, a good one but within a few months my anxiety that had developed over the years really hit home and a left, fell apart. It was at that point when things finally started to change with my real life. I went to see a Councillor for the first time. I started Drama Classes again and I also started to learn to drive. These three things were a perfect tonic to where I was at that point.

    I had also started doing some Voluntary admin work to beef up a pretty terrible CV. Don’t get me wrong, I was still living within many fantasy worlds and they didn’t seem to be going away but at least I was doing something in the real world.

    2012 was the year It really changed. By July 12′ I had gotten into a role working part time for a sports and events center. I would work weekends to start with which was a real basic introduction to work and gave me the chance to earn money and get a bit of a routine going. Two days turned into three and then by the start of 2014 turned into a full time role. The members of staff were all amazing and I think the fact that they were great coupled with the fact that it was 10 minutes down the road also helped.

    2013 was when my life truly changed. I entered into my first relationship which was the most incredible thing. We met on match.com and that Summer was amazing. All those thing I had fantasied about I was actually doing. Going out on dates, getting drunk, meeting new people. Having things to talk about. It was my Indian Summer.

    But the fantasies were still there even while all this was going on. I was still an Actor living in Los Angeles. I was still a Boxer with an undefeated record. I was still in the greatest soccer player in my football clubs history. I would go out and live in the real world but the minute I came home I would be straight online and immersed within my fantasies. They were still intoxicating to me.

    We moved abroad in 2014 for a year but returned due to personal issues and homesickness.

    The past year and a half has really been tough. I’ve struggled to get back into work again. I have walked out of countless roles and not taken up to 10 job offers mainly due to anxiety and mainly down to laziness. Whereas prior to 2012 I only had my parents to give me ticking off for walking out of a job I now had my Girlfriend. This mean’t argument after argument. Ultimately I couldn’t get away from the fantasy. They have always been far too exciting and intoxicating to anything I’ve done in the real world and the good/interesting things I have done like move away have only been fleeting successes that I have kind of sabotaged myself.

    I have spent hours online over the past year. A typical day consists of around 12 hours online, pissing about generally doing nothing. Browsing various forums and youtube. Seeing whats going on with the world. Living in the safety of my various fantasy worlds at home while my Girlfriend slaves away at her job. It’s all gotten rather embarrassing really.

    So this brings me to right now. Jan 8th 2017. I am starting a new job tomorrow, a good one but already the dread has set in. The belief that I could mess this up and self sabotage again is kicking in and I really cant bare the thought of messing up one more time. I need this to work. I need this year to be a whole lot better than the last one.

    I actually dont know why I’ve posted this but my god was it good to get it out on paper.

    Anyway, thanks for some good advice Mikey.

    Matt

    Reply
    • Mikey D says:
      January 10, 2017 at 3:42 pm

      Thank you for your story, Matt! I hope your first couple days of work are going well. Good luck getting everything under control! It can be tough for real life to compete with fantasy worlds, but I think a decent job could go a long way, and my own experience confirms that a girlfriend can be very helpful too 🙂

      Reply
      • Matt says:
        January 10, 2017 at 4:02 pm

        Thanks for the reply Mikey.

        The first shift was so hard. I felt like quitting again last night but some tough words from my mother and my girlfriend made me feel like I had no other choice or else I wouldn’t have a life anymore. I needed to stick with it and I did. I got up this morning and went. I took a deep breath and thought ‘whats the worst that can happen?’

        I’ve got to take each day as it comes.

        Reply
    • Laura says:
      March 4, 2017 at 2:42 pm

      Thank you for sharing…really thank you.. I suddenly don’t feel alone. Your life is mine in a nutshell. I’ve been married for 8 years and have a 6 year old. 2 other people live in our house also and somehow I feel so alone…I live in my own perfect world because its easier..in the middle of the woods with a beautiful house.. I own the bar just up the road….I’m rich idk where I got the money but I am and I gave my mother and my sick grandmother their own houses on the land..my old friends are with me and work on the property and at the bar…most the time I’m providing and helping everyone….the only benefit I have in my day dreams is the house ,property and happiness…I give most the money away or spend it on something I know that person could really use…I just want it to be real. Anyway thank you for this post… It really helped me

      Reply

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