The English writer G.K. Chesterton once said of his rational detective, Father Brown, “In that instant, he lost his head. His head was most valuable when he had lost it. In such moments he put two and two together and made four million.”
You might be thinking that this is just a quote from literature which is trying to portray a particular situation romantically, but it is something that holds scientific truth to it. In fact, recent studies are showing that mind wandering and so to say “losing your head” might be much more beneficial and necessary for breakthroughs than previously anticipated.
You’ve probably even experienced the phenomenon yourself. You think endlessly, tiring your mind to find a solution to a problem which is bothering you. You look at it from all logical perspectives but still can’t seem to find the answer. Frustrated you let your mind loose and just when you are enraged and angry, it hits you, the solution which your mind was keeping away from you suddenly becomes available. Well, as counter-intuitive as it might seem, stressing your brain to concentrate and focus on a single problem might hinder finding a solution for it.
Lead study author and principal investigator of the Cognitive Neuroscience of Thought Laboratory at UBC Dr. Kalina Christoff states: “Mind-wandering in the sense of the mind moving freely from one idea to another has huge benefits in terms of arriving at new ideas. It’s by virtue of free movement that we generate new ideas, and that’s where creativity lies.”
So, when we force our minds to fixate on a single idea, we are doing it an injustice. Letting it jump back and forth might be precisely what it needs to build some connections and arrive at a required answer. Additionally, once you “lose your head” you are in a certain sense already accepting your defeat and have taken the pressure off a specific situation. Once your big emotions and pressure are no longer playing a role in your thinking process, it is easier for the mind to focus all its attention on the primary object of your thoughts.
Therefore, the next time you feel frustration overcoming you, don’t hold it back. Scream into the air and rage about it. Let your mind do its tricks to reboot and lead you to the ideas which you are trying so desperately to think of. After all, as they say, our minds work in mysterious ways.
For more information read:
https://www.livescience.com/19128-wandering-mind-working-memory.html
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