How mind wandering can boost your mood and creativity with Moshe Bar

0:02 A listener production. This is Crappita Happy, and I am your host, Cas Doun. I'm a clinical and coaching psychologist and mindfulness meditation teacher and of course author of the Crappita Happy books. In this show, I bring you conversations with interesting, inspiring, intelligent people who are experts in their field and who have something of value to share that will help you feel less crappy and more happy. Mind wandering can get a bit of a bad rap these days. As you all know, I'm a huge fan of mindfulness and using meditation to train ourselves to be more deliberate and focused with how we use our minds. So the idea that deliberately allowing ourselves time to just let our minds wander runs counter to a lot of the messages that we are hearing these days about how much we need to harness our wandering attention. But neuroscientist Mosha bar is determined to show us how mind wandering can actually be really good for us. Scientifically, it's proven to boost our mood, creativity, and problem solving abilities. Masha is a former director of the Cognitive Neuroscience Lab at Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts General hospital. He's an internationally renowned cognitive neuroscientist. He has his PhD in cognitive neuroscience from the University of Southern California, and for his outstanding research and academic achievements, he has received numerous awards and honors.

1:31 So you will be fascinated to hear what Masha has to say about this. If you find your mind wandering from time to time, and let's be real, who doesn't, and particularly if you feel guilty for your scattered attention, he is determined to alleviate you of that guild. Let's get straight into our chat. Mosha, Welcome to the Crappy to Happy Podcast. It's such a pleasure to have you. Thank you for having me, Mosha. I saw that you had written a book called Mind Wondering, and I was so excited because this is a topic that I find really fascinating. I'm a psychologist and I also teach and practice mindfulness and meditation, so you know, there's a lot of stuff about mind wandering, and you know that it's a bad thing. I guess, particularly the way I think of mind wandering is you're trying to focus on something and inevitably your mind's off thinking about what you're going to do for dinner, or what you should have done yesterday, or what you're going to do next week. Is that what your definition is of mind wandering? I think we should just get clear on the definition first.

2:37 Yes, it's one of their Mind modeling is a collection of mental processes that definitely include what you mentioned kind of planning what's ahead, But there are other things that fall under this overarching umbrella of mind wading. So simulations and planning is one, but also worrying and rooming, eating on things is a type of mind wandering. Thinking about the past and maybe projecting to the future is another type of mind wandering. So it's really a collection of processes. Some of them are better than others. But referring to the beginning of what you just said, uh, I realized after the publish published the book and started giving interviews that one mission I had unbeknownst to me was to really give mind modeling a good name, because we're kind of guiltreaten about our not being in the moment and drifting, but nature doesn't let us. Wouldn't let us spend so much time and energy metabolic energy on drifting For about half of our waking hours. I think it's a pretty starting number, uh if it didn't have a real function, a real purpose. So it does. And for us as scientists, we try to distinguish between you no good and bad, just very simplistically good and bad mind holdoring or constructive and less constructive. But I'm jumping ahead.

4:04 Probably yeah, you are jumping ahead because I would love to get into that. I love that you've got to do a pr job for mind wondering again, So Masha, before we get into that, though, can I just ask what how did you get involved in studying this? Like? What what led you to doing research in the area of mind wondering. Well, I'll tell you the serious answer, but before that, I can guess the motivation behind your question, which is, and I tend to see when I talk with others that everyone thinks because I think because of all the guilds that society instill in us, we got in mind. I think it's like a private thing, and each one of us things that they are unique in that sense.

4:48 But it turns out that all of us are drifters and we should just you know, acknowledge that and utilize it to our advantage and be able to distinguish when and how. So I started, it kind of evolved. It's not like I woke up in the morning as I let's study mind wandering it. Really I was studying associative thinking and maybe also creativity back then in the brain and realize that there is a large overlap between what I see in the brain what we my lab sees in the brain with using methods are just functional MRI and a big network that's been discovered maybe two decades ago and made a big splash, and until now it's considered one of the big revolutions, what we call the default mode network. And if you don't mind, I'll expand on it just for a seconds so your listeners can understand when I'm referring to here. So we as a community of neuroscientists tend to think, you know, into a kind of implicitly and probably naively that when we tell our individuals in the studies that our participants to rest in between experimental conditions. Let's say the experiment is about distinguishing what happens in your brain when you look at said faces versus happy faces, and in between showing you happy and said faces, I tell you to rest, and again, naively and not necessarily consciously, we thought that when we tell our individuals to rest, their brain also goes to

6:20 sleep or goes to rest, so at least much less active. But when people start looking at the brain of rest, of when you're not doing anything demanding, we realize there's massive network that is intense network of cortical regions that is intensely active when we are not supposed to be doing anything. So we started thinking, you know, what is the purpose? Why is the brain so active? And it's very consistent. One of the most consistent findings in neuroscience across individuals, across times, across labs, across continents. We find the same vigorous network of active regions that are active when we're not doing anything. So like when you're stuck in traffic and when you're in the shower. We all know that we're thinking, but we did realize that we're thinking so much. So the idea here is you that there is this notion now that by default the brain is very active and very active in a very consistent network.

7:20 And this network, back to your question, overlap largely with mind. With our findings about associations and predictions in the brain. So then this helped us. It was a clue as because obviously as scientists, once we discovered this network and we got over our initial excitement, our next mission was to understand what is this network doing. Just like your first question, you know, why do we wonder? And what is including in bind wandering? So this, this was the connection of a lot of what we do when we wonder, when we drift, is actually generating predictions, activating association, generating predictions about the future, general in creative ideas or the what we call creative incubation. So what led to me specifically to study mind modeling is exactly that realizing that thinking about the future and thinking creatively utilizes the same network that is active, and we're not doing anything so by difficult, what we do is think creatively and think, you know, and simulate about the future.

8:24 So this I'm glad that you're talking about the default mode network because it's one thing I really wanted to ask you about. So when I first learned about the default mode network, my understanding was that predominantly where our mind goes, it goes to very self referential thinking. We think a lot about ourselves we're all the star in the movie of our own life, and we think about ourselves, and we also focus on you can correct me if I'm wrong here, on problems, finding problems, and also projecting what other people are thinking about us. And to me that explains while we're also neurotic and self create and constantly, you know, stressing about what everybody thinks of us. Obviously, then there's this aspect of the default mode network, like you said, which is to do with making associations and creativity.

9:14 So I'm really curious to understand at least both default mode network functions and when is one operating versus the other, Like, what are the conditions I guess that create either the more creative I would think, positive thinking versus that really obsessive self critical thinking you mentioned Erotik. You mentioned a lot of aspects of mine worrying in one question, So you're right, thinking about the self and thinking about others. I do want to sharpen the definition of thinking about others. It's true that we do think about others and what do they think about us, But we look at the default network as subserving something more profound than that with regard to others, it's called the theory of mind. And the idea of theory of mind is understanding others. So not only what should they think about us, but also what are their intentions? So somebody when I say something to you, so you don't want only to understand the literal meaning of what I just said.

10:16 You want to think about the intentions. Why did he say what he said, and what does it mean? What does it mean about to me? What are his intentions towards me or towards this matter that we are discussing When somebody is approaching you were always trying to understand what is in somebody else's mind. In Buddhism, you know, they talk about I mean, the most noble part is understanding yourself. Understanding others is complex, and we are ridiculously confident in our ability to do so, even though we're really bet at it. But understanding ourselves is even harder. So we think about the self, our presentation of the self, representation of you know, how would we respond to different scenarios, and how would we feel about certain things? Why do we act the way we act, and why do we say the things we say? But also understanding others, So it's less. I mean, it definitely includes also what do others think about us? Do you really like a specific thing I said or did? But it's more about you know, survival and proper communication that we understand, try to understand what is in your mind.

11:28 So that was the part about the self referential thinking and kind of projecting onto other people. But then there's this creative aspect, and I guess what I'm trying to work out is we are the particular conditions that prompt one versus the other type of thinking, type of mind wandering. Excellent questions. So in the book I outlined the circumstances that promote the most creative thinking. And obviously this is a very natural question that you asking that because people and this actually stunned me as somebody who studies creativity to what extent people are thirsty to learn about creativity.

12:09 I once had an event where I interviewed a very creative chef in Israel in our neuroscience center, is a very unique person person and the auditorium was exploding with people. It was never as full. And I told them at the introduction that if the title of the speech of the conversation was how to extend your life in fifteen years we didn't have we would have not had so many people in the crowd. As in that creativity people really want to be able to be able to understand their creativity and how to maximize their creativity. So I think it's you know, it gives me optimism about the human race of how excited we get about the possibility of being more creative. So back to your question, Yes, there are conditions where you can be more creative. So the same I was just teaching this in class yesterday, that there are conditions where creativity is not destiny. Your level of creativity is not fixed. It can change depending on circumstances. And some circumstances that make you more creative include you know, mood. We find surprising different connections between your mood and your level of creativity. So people in a better mood tend to be more creative. So, and this has direct applications to our everyday life. You want your employees to give such you know, to brainstorm and finding a creative solution. You want to be minded of their you know, of their state of mind. You want to make sure that they are in the good mood

13:41 when they enter such brainstorming sessions so that you can maximize the creative sticking in that session. Another aspect is what we call cognitive load. So when you're loaded with that doesn't have to be necessarily ruminations or warris. If you're just loaded with things you have to do or the people that are waiting for me. As I told you before, and if it bothers my mind, it takes away from my one hundred percent resources and leaves me with less for creative thinking. So a freer mind like you and I know from meditation can promote creative thinking just by the mere fact that it empties and it leaves you with more. It empties your mind, it leaves you with more resources for creative thinking. So yes, there are conditions to maximize creativity. And of course you can turn every person to be Leonardo da vincibly, you can turn anybody to be Leonaro da Vinci, but you can be more or less creative. And not only that, it's good to know the circumstances. It helps one and I use it myself also in my everyday life to recognize the state you're in and if I need a creative solution, but I know that I'm in a crappy mood now, and it's not one that will facilitate creative thinking. I'll think to myself, Okay, I'll get back to this problem later when I'm in the right state of mine for the maxima creativity.

15:06 I hope that you're enjoying this conversation and realizing the benefits of positivity in your own life. If you are enjoying the show, please be sure to like and subscribe so that you get notified when you apps drop and head on over to Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen and leave us a rating and review. Getting to the meditation thing, Masha, I know you said in the book that you have participated in long silent meditation retreats. I have to I find them really beneficial, but you mentioned that they can perhaps not beig meditation is not great necessarily for mind wandering. What's the link? I guess what's the association the relationship between mind wandering and meditation.

15:54 Well, it actually there's a multi eventual interaction there, so it's not so mind wandering is in play here and mindfulness, but there's also the perspective you're taking about your experience, So meditation definitely helps you reduce the amount of mind wandering. And we study this as we speak. We study this in the lab. I'll give you one example. There's a method that I really like that's called labeling. You might be familiar with. Where you sit there on a pillow with your eyes closed. Everything is relaxed, and then your thoughts start to attack you. And then you take the first thought and rather than trying to get rid of it actively telling stop stop thinking about whatever. And there are experiments that were made to show that just trying to dismiss a thought makes it more persistent. This is inspired by Dostoevsky's story, and then I studied that was done by Dan Wagner the lay Dan Wagner from Harvard University, where telling people not to think about white beards just makes them think about white bears. More So, labeling is a good technique for avoiding this problem because when a thought shows up, you just label it at in some dimensions.

17:11 For example, you think to yourself, is this a positive, negative, or neutral thought? Is this about to me or about others? Is it internal or external? Is it about the past, future of Just choose any of these dimensions, and it's pretty magical and it's hard for me as a scientists to say this, so we try to study it so it won't be just magical, but rather we'll be able to explain it. The moment you label a thought, most thoughts kind of disappear, and then you're ready for the next thought. And I say most thoughts because obviously you cannot treat traumas like this. Some thoughts are so intrusive and so painful that you can just label them, you know, past, present, future, and they disappear. So some thoughts are more persistent than others, but everyday thoughts that can bother you. If you label them, then gradually have less and less thoughts occupying your mind, and as a result, you're just less occupied. Your mind is less occupied, so you can say it's less mind monitoring, but you could also say you freed your mind to other, more purposeful and meaningful processes. I just creative incubation. So my reservation about meditation, and I should qualify it also to your listeners that I'm very far from being an expert.

18:24 I'm excited, an enthusiastic beginner, and I'm by no mean an expert in meditation of Buddhism. But I do like to drive to derive some insights from what I experienced. The first had so one thing I learned and I talked about this. I elaborate on this in the book is that with all the respect to being mindful and being in the present, there are a few things that I kind of make me believe and make me tell people that I don't think mindfulness is stayed for twenty four to seven to be the two reasons. One of them is that if we're really living in the in the present, just in the present, one hundred percent, the moment we get out of the house will be will get run over by a bus, because you do have to think about the past and you do have to project it for the future. If our mind is proactive, it constantly takes our experience and projected to the future. Right, so just before talking with you, we've never met, I never had this conversation with this specific podcast, but I could take my experience from other interviews and other podcasts and project and be more ready than the first time.

19:36 So we always take the past, so we cannot nobody can claim that there one hundred percent living in the present. That's one thing. The second thing is that I realized that by being mindful, I'm really becoming a witness to my experiences. So I kind of I'm mindful of all the elements around me. I'm mindful of the conversation and as we said before, the intentions of the person I'm talking to. Or here we are having a nice conversation and I'm sitting in my kitchen and you're sitting in your studio in your office, and we have this laptop, and there are things around me, and you're smiling, and maybe you like what I say. And no, kind of I'm mindful of all the elements, but as a result, I'm not immersed in the actual experience myself. So there's a third stay that I'm talking about, which is the immersion.

20:28 I actually start the book we're talking about immersion. I know. I started with an example, a provocative example from the world of BDSM, just to attract the readers, But it's really something that transcends to all walks of life where you really want to be immersed in it. So I'll give you an example. Maybe it's an extreme example, but being in a roller coaster, you're not being mindful and saying to your saying, oh, we're moving fast. Look at this handle and look at this screaming people. You are screaming yourself. You are in the experience and as I like to say, say, you don't want to be the dancer. You want to be the dance. So it's a little poetic, but that's the idea really that So mindfulness makes you mind that of all the elements of the experience, but it takes away, at least in my mind, from your personal subjective immersed experience itself. So mindfulness is great, it's a great gift.

21:22 But we need to realize when is a certain state good for us and when we prefer it to be in a different state. Totally, I would agree. I want to talk to you about the immersion that you're talking about. When you talk about being fully immersed in a situation like you mentioned the roller coaster, is that the equivalent of, for example, the flow state that Mahichi sent me. High has written about and talked about that being fully absorbed. Yeah, yeah, I. Do elaborate on the comparison to some extent in the book, and it's different, but it's in the same genre, I would say. I mean, he was talking more about achieving goals and about level of challenge and a level of challenge that needs to be maintained. I'm talking more about enjoyment of your experience. It doesn't only have to be a enjoyment, but being able to distinguish these different states being mindful, being observer, or being immersed is really helpful because you know, when you're lying on a dentist chair and a dentist's office and they're doing a root canal, I don't want to be in the present, and I don't want to be immersed. I want to be somewhere else.

22:33 I want to be wondering and fantasizing that I'm on some deserted island having fun. So there is a time and place for each state to be, and we should not feel guilty that we are not in the present or only in the present, because you know, we just want to minimize the friction between the demands of the situation and the state we're it. I think that's the benefit of mindfulness, really, isn't it. It's being recognizing in the moment where your mind is so that you can choose to direct it somewhere else. Not that we have to be observing everything all the time, but just to be able to register as quickly as possible when we're going down that unhelpful path. Okay, you talk about Mosha that when we're in that immersion state, that the DMN, the default mode network, is not so active.

23:33 So what's nice about this emergen state is that not only that you wander less, more generally, you just thinkless. Think about your most recent roller coaster experience or any experience there. With this level of intensity, there's no room for you to be drifting. You can't be on a roller coaster as a metaphor or anything else as intense and be thinking, Oh, I need to move the laundry from the machine to the to the dryer. Right, there's no room for this. You're just you're all taken by the experience. So you're wandering. Your your defaultment network, which is the platform for mind wandering, is being shut off because all your neurons now are immersed. Well, this is not a formal way to say it, but all your capacity now is taken by the present experience. And what's great about such experiences is that you don't need to be trended in mindfulness. The experience is so show that it pulls you in. And if we could learn from this and project it to more everyday experiences like eating blueberries that I like and mention in the book, imagine that we can have a blueberry eating a blueberry experience be comparable to a roller coaster or this VIDSM example I gave there. The idea here is unally that uh in the our entire life can be as con as immersive and we don't have to wait for this extreme

25:04 examples to be immersed. But yes, one of the characteristics of this state of immersion is not thinking or thinking much less. You definitely don't narrate your experience, and you definitely don't wander to kind of errands that you need to take care of after. When you talk about being able to bring that fully immersed state to any everyday experience, is there a way that we can intentionally do that. I feel like just by default we're talking about the default mode, we just tend to be somewhere else. We live in this constant state of dissatisfaction. That's what the whole Buddhist thing is, right, It's like this that our default is to generally be noticing what's wrong. It's a bit cold in this room.

25:54 I'm not sure I like that person sitting next to me. You know, that's where our mind goes. How do we get into that fully immersed pleasant state. Yeah, so again asking a multifaceted question. I like it, so it's it. Let me just try to cover all the basis that you open here. So one of them is that I agree with everything you said until you start talking about the suffering or the complaints we have. Mind money can also be good. I was like, you know, it's great. I'm enjoying this conversation. Afterwards, I'm going for a run on the beach. Life is good. So mind mother is perfectly fine. I can be in a different state of mind. I can be in a different mood and be offended by the body order of the person meditating next to me, or by my demanding stomach that wants lunch already. And of course we all have these fluctuations, and there's no good or bad as long as it's not chronic and it's not pathological. Then you know, sometimes we're like this, I'm more grumpy, and sometimes we're more content.

27:00 I'm more happy with this. Yes, I agree with your intuition. It's not really as artificial as Okay, let's be immersed now, It's really not It's like saying let's be happy now. It's really not something that you can someone like that. But by understanding the conditions that help you maximize the chances like I outline the book and not like I. It's not like I have a magic prescription for this. I do elaborate on this in the book. But at the same time, there is an extent of a personal journey here and personal fitness of what makes you be immersed. So I know that if my kids are taken care of and I know where everybody is and they're busy and happy and well fed, and they have shelter, and now I can be immersed in my own experience, then I'm like, no, this is for me in one condition where where it kind of promotes or increases the like you of an immersive experience. I don't think we can walk around and I agree with you walk around life and say okay, let's be more immersed. Let's be more immersed.

28:00 But by distinguishing learning more about these different states you can be in, you can just I know it sounds a cliche that being aware is already most of the solution. But even when I'm not mindful, even though even when I'm wandering, I know I can catch myself in a certain state and ask myself for a second, is this the state I want to be in? Because and I do encourage all my friends and readers to engage in mind modering as much as possible. So I don't think many friends of mine are very happy that I gave them permission to stay in bed and stay you know, stare at the ceiling for extra fifteen minutes, because this is really where all the creative juices are are coming from.

28:41 So if you're in a good streak of wondering, there's no reason for you to feel guilty and to stop that. So being you know, recognizing the state you're in and just asking yourself. And it doesn't happen on a moment to moment basis, and I think it's good that it doesn't. You don't want to be monitoring your state from moment to moment. But okas like, is this really Why am I ruminating over this thing? Why am I obsessing about these thoughts? Is it okay for me to just like I find myself always wanting to be busy am I avoiding certain thoughts? Maybe I want to be engaged in these thoughts or these thoughts are great? Why should I stop them now? Right? So, understanding those precious states and being able to recognize when you're in when you're in, which one of them is already already, can go a long way towards improving your your fitness, you know, the fitness of your mind with the situation. But I wish we could all treat life like one big roller coaster dry ride and be completely immersed. It's not going to work like this, So it's good that our mind is dynamic.

29:44 It can feed different conditions. As you were talking, Mosha, I was thinking of Rick Hands And actually I don't know if he's a scientist as well, is he not? And yeah, your friends, So he wrote the book Hardwarre and Happiness, and I think his intention with that book was to help people to we can't manufacture immersion, but how to prolong those pleasant experiences and almost why are your brain to go to more of the joy and to really savor the pleasant when you do catch yourself having those those experiences. Yeah, maybe we're not such good friends because I didn't know about this book, but they should look it up.

30:24 We used to be postdocs together and I have a lot of respect to this research. I didn't know about this book. So my last question is in the back of the book, and I would recommend that people do gone by it if this is of interest. You've got a section called from the Lab to Everyday Life, which is you know how we can apply this knowledge, this idea that mind wandering is not all bad and use it to our benefits. So before you go, are they just a couple of tips you can share with listeners about how they can harness the benefits of mind wandering. Yeah. It's funny because when the editor asked me to add such an as, I felt repelled. As a scientist. You know, it's a it's a bad word to do anything applicable. It's like but and I didn't want it.

31:08 Sounds like prescriptions. But in retrospect, I'm very happy I see the response of people, and I think it's a it's a useful appendix, if I might say so manyself. So the idea there is I to talk it's to some extent on the fact that mind wandering, and we didn't mention here this in the conversation that it's something that happens automatic and in a way has a mind of itself. We can't decide to mind wander, and we can't decide to stop what mind wandering while we're at it. Of course, in between wanderings you can decide, okay, I'm going to do the dishes now, or go go into a call a friend, and then you stop. But otherwise, when you're in it, it's something that is automatic and it's beyond our conscious control, and you can truly tell yourself, okay, let's mind wander now about this issue. Because by the nature of drifting, it kind of it goes anywhere it wants.

31:59 So you can decide that you're now going to sit down and mind wander about a certain issue, but very quickly you wonder to other places. And it's also good because if you could instruct your wandering, you will be creative because you tell it where to go. There's no there's no room for surprises, right, there's no room for originality. So for example, we talked about my run too many times, so before I go out, I can say to myself, what occupies my mind right now? Because I know I'm going to be wondering while I run or while I walk outside. So if the last thing I did before going out the door was paying the bills or answering some annoying emails, I know this would be on my mind.

32:40 So maybe I should just read a page of a book that I like, or think about the problem that I do want, and just maximize the chances that when I go wandering it will actually find its way to these most recent but interesting things. This is one aspect to kind of be able to control these things. And I do like or I like to see the usefulness of our findings about creativity, realizing that a creative mind is a happy mind, but it's a reciprocal connection. Also, a happy mind is more creative. So I'm not talking about overall life happiness, but just being in a good mood, not happy, but being in a better mood makes you more likely to be creative. So these things can be taken into account of our workplace and our home and with our friends. So yeah, so there's a long list of things that people are welcome to to try in their own lives.

33:36 And it sounds like mosha. When you go for a run, you go out for a run with the intention you know that you'll be in mind wondering, So you're not plugging an audio book or something else in to fill your mind. You're deliberately allowing that space. Yeah, I'm avoiding news altogether. I don't listen to news. I don't watch it. I mean, I try to minimize things. I don't want it in my mind. Of course, you can't really control it one hundred percent, but you can. No, it's your mind, it's you. It's your privilege to be able to filter what you wanted and what you don't. Of course is we are very far from one hundred percent control over it, but you can maximize the chances.

34:17 Masha, thank you so much for your time today. Enjoy your runck yes. Thank you very much. Guess it's such pleasure talking with you. Masha Bar's book Mind Wondering How it can improve your mood and boost your creativity is available now in all good bookstores. I will put a link to order that in the show notes. If that's interest to you, don't forget. If you enjoyed this episode, and if you enjoyed the show, please do you think about leaving us a five star rating and review. Share the podcast with your friends come over and connect with me on Instagram cast on Underscore XO. I'm also now on TikTok cast on Underscore XO. Or hit me up hello at kastan dot com if there is anybody in particularly you would like me to speak to or topic you love us to cover on the show.

35:01 I cannot wait to catch you in the next episode of Crappy to Happy listener