Edited by: Sabrina Russo Gagliardi

My first blog post- ever!! Yay! And a title that fits this post perfectly.

It has taken a while to get here – on this first sentence of the first blog post, of my first blog.

It has taken a while to get it out of my head and into a written word. But I never thought of it as procrastinating, but rather germinating.

And what has gotten me here – daydreaming! Exactly that. Nothing physical or material, nothing that I could touch, smell, or taste, but something in my head. An idea, a desire, a vision, an inner push, a relentless wish to share knowledge that just might help someone out there.

So here I am, at my first blog post, writing it, and then this happens – the post takes me on a ride and turns into a VERY long post. That much information in a single post tires even me out. So I’ve decided to break Daydream So You Can Thrive post into two parts, Part I and Part II.

The Part I is here and is exploring the general aspect of daydreaming, what it is and how it affects us.

The Part II will dive into the energy aspect of daydreaming. An incredibly interesting perspective, especially if you haven’t thought of daydreaming from that angle.

Let’s Start – But First Things First

Ushering your life toward your life’s dreams is just as important as life itself. Dreams provide the pathways on which your life runs. Without the path, you wobble, wander and always go but never arrive.

You are in charge of you, and that makes you in charge of your life, and that makes you the steward of your life’s dream.  

Welcome to a new day. Today is the day to start dreaming again. Let’s examine purpose-fueled dreaming. The kind when you look back, you pat yourself on the back.

The Dreams Of Night Speak To Me of Daydreams

The other night I had a dream of the sky full of stars. The stars were covering the whole sky and I could see them merging with the earth on the horizon.

When I woke up, the image stayed imprinted in my memory. It was vivid and it felt grand, expansive, and it was breathtakingly beautiful.

In my awoken mind, the stars reminded me of people’s dreams – still, up in the sky, shining and visible, but way up.  So incredibly beautiful but not being reached for.  

Here we are in the midst of a global pandemic and we’ve been in one sort of a lockdown or another for about a year now. People are isolated and alone. It is hard to connect to life’s dreams and self-value to bring those dreams into reality.

My attempts to write my first blog post have been quite a few, and they all failed – the posts ended up either too long, or too short, or I felt that they didn’t provide value I aim to give.  You can say the messages my conscious mind has been recording and contemplating to give me were, “Failed,” “Failed,” “Failed!”

And then the sky full of stars showed up in my dream, in the slumber of my conscious thought and “realistic” conclusions. There was no failure there, only the perfect beauty of creation exposed in its full view for me to witness and intrinsically feel part of. It made me remember my life’s dreams, and the value I hold inside and wish to gift, to my life and to others.

What Does Science Say About Daydreams?

The science is still mystified by how daydreams work, but a lot has been uncovered – we know that daydreaming is taking place in the Default Mode Network DMN). DMN is the network of interacting brain regions that is active when a person is not focused on the outside world. In other words, DMN is particularly active when the brain is in a state of wakeful rest.

Jonathan Smallwood and Jonathan W. Schooler’s study found that daydreaming is mainly based on information from memory.

A study conducted by psychologists Matthew A. Killingsworth and Daniel T. Gilbert of Harvard University found that people spend 46.9% of their waking hours mind-wondering. 

Imagine using that time and that power of the mind to your advantage.

Are you Dreaming Actively Or Proactively?

Cambridge dictionary defines a daydream as a series of pleasant thoughts about something you would prefer to be doing or something you would like to achieve in the future.

Because of that, daydreaming seems like it is taking you away from the reality you live in. Thus as something that is a bad thing.   

Have you ever had a teacher tell you to stop daydreaming, or a parent tell you to “stop dreaming and start working,” or a boss tell you to focus, or a spouse tell you to “get your head out of the clouds?” Exactly! We all had at least one, if not multiple, of those.

And yet, to remove daydreaming from your life is like removing a compass from a ship. You might get there navigating the ship’s course in accordance with the stars, but what will you do when the sky is cloudy? Are you going to drift aimlessly on the open sea hoping to stay afloat until the sky clears and you can see the stars again?

Is That All To Daydreaming?

Absolutely not!

Daydreaming is a mental and emotional activity that has a mild meditative effect. It calms the mind and it stirs up positive emotions. It can also enhance creativity and boost the problem solving skills.

When in a stressful situation, daydreaming takes the mind and emotions away from the stress, even if just temporarily. This can help see the situation that is causing the stress from a different angle, thus give a different perspective not just on the situation itself, but on the solution to the situation too.

Besides mental and emotional activity, daydreaming is marked with an energetic activity. The energy of daydreaming can be anywhere in between a very loose, airy energy and a very defined, structured, focused energy. This is discussed in detail in the Part II of Daydream So You Can Thrive post.

But whether in this first part of the article, Part I, or the second one, Part II, we are starting to see that daydreaming influences the neuro-activity in the body.

And as such, can’t be ignored.

But are we right when we address it in a negative way? Thinking that it is negative because it takes us away from the reality?

Let’s examine that in more detail, and from a different perspective, in the next post, Part II of Daydreaming So You Can Thrive.

Conclusion

Daydreaming is an intricate part of your expansion. A daydream is a push from the inside and a pull from the outside that stretches you and moves you even when your mind presents limitations and a “reason” not to go for it.

Just as an acorn planted in a fertile ground germinates and grows unapologetically into a mighty oak tree, your idea germinates in the soil of your daydreaming. If you let it, your daydream’s potentiality can turn into a reality. The reality that is far mightier than the one you live right now.

Here is a little Growth Task Call to Action for you:

Dare to list your daydreams and examine them. Note which ones are those you wish to pursue and which ones are outdated and you are no longer interested in pursuing. If you need help with that, you can download a Daydream Worksheet here.

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