We need more lounging, lounging and staring ahead – you may be familiar with that advice. It is recommended by all brain scientists and I am all for it.
Because it promotes creativity, relaxes the brain and is something we can all do without having to go through a complicated course – everyone can daydream and it is healthy. But lately it’s been getting harder and harder for me.
Because as soon as I ‘let go’ of my brain, bad thoughts, gloom and I sit and worry. My brain has never been such a party song – it was actually always quite a whiner – but since the corona crisis it has completely become a graveyard.
I wrote before that you can hardly work with your brain. That’s because it’s programmed in such a way that every little distraction will pull you out of your concentration altogether. That was once useful in prehistoric times. That as soon as a saber-toothed tiger appeared on the horizon, you could immediately shoot into flight mode.
But in the modern age of open-plan offices, home offices, hassles and things, every falling paperclip or roommate who brings up head lice will distract you and have to start all over again.
And then there is that internal voice of your brain that makes you gloomy. That warns and scares you. That keeps you awake in the middle of the night. If you let your brain run its course, you won’t be able to enjoy life anymore. When life is a party, your brain is the undertaker.
That’s right, says Stefan van der Stigchel when I call him about it. The negative voice of your brain is notorious and scientific research shows that everyone has it, from young to old. Van der Stigchel calls it “the talking, critical colleague in your head”.
Van der Stigchel knows such things. He is a professor of cognitive psychology at the University of Utrecht and says that all experts recommend daydreaming because it gives your brain peace of mind – “I recommend that too!” – but that no one says that it makes you gloomier. “The word ‘daydreaming’ sounds very nice,” he says, “but it isn’t. In that regard, I find the English word for it,’mind wander‘, better chosen.”
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We don’t know why our brain is so negative. Maybe it has a function, says Van der Stigchel. If your brain was a party, you might not be thinking about a new job, a new car, or whether you should leave your wife. Negative thoughts, on the other hand, keep our brain hungry. But at the same time it makes sense that we try to escape that negative daydreaming as much as possible.
Van der Stigchel tells of a scientific experiment in which people who were left alone in a room with an electric shock device started shocking themselves after only twelve (!) minutes – just so as not to have to listen to their own thoughts all the time.
That’s also the reason that as soon as we take a break, pick up our phone, make a sudoku, start calling, and scroll through our ‘socials’ – all so that we don’t have to be alone with that critical colleague in our head. At the same time, there is a risk that we give our brain too little rest and become exhausted. A diabolical dilemma.
So you tell me what to do: daydream and get gloomy with a relaxed brain, or get overwrought with a happy brain?
Van der Stigchel advises to keep daydreaming, but to distance yourself a bit from ‘the internal chat box’. He does himself. “Then I think ‘Ah, there he is again, leave him for a while, it’s part of it.'”
You can also drink it up or take psychedelics – great ways to boost your brain’s positivity – but less smart in the long run.
A friend of mine forces himself to look at the bright sides of his brain. “Then I realize that I usually have a great time with that brain. It thinks for a while, associates freely, makes jokes, and invents the most beautiful things to escape reality or the doom of decay. And the memories reside in the brain.”
You can also ignore your brain and follow your gut instead. A dear colleague always does that, he emails. He sees his brain „as a kind of Erik Scherder. I always zap them away with his talk”. “You sleep better and doubt less. The disadvantage is, if you ignore your brain, that the chance of dismissal increases slightly, but at the same time you also have a higher salary, a higher position and no regrets because you don’t think about it anyway!”
In the sci-fi movie The Matrix, says Stefan van der Stigchel, the creator of the apparent reality presented to mankind is asked why he did not make it a beautiful, rosy world. Answer: “No one believed that.” I also found a nice image to hold on to.
But I’d love to hear it if you have any other ideas.
How was your week? Tips for Japke-d. Bouma via @Japked on twitterr.
A version of this article also appeared in NRC in the morning of December 22, 2021
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