The Life-Empowering Benefits of Turning Your Brain Off
The many benefits of turning your brain off are powerfully real and accessible to all.
Many of us believe in the benefits of turning our brains off a few times a day, but they may not be what we think they are. We believe the brain can benefit from a few breaks during the day, but what are the benefits?
Is it even possible to turn your brain off? How do you turn your brain off? What are the tangible benefits of turning your brain off?
These are some of the questions that will be answered as we explore the benefits of turning your brain off.
Would You Benefit From Turning Your Brain Off?
Most people I know are preoccupied with family, making money, working, and getting ahead. All my life, I found that preoccupation odd but never thought much more about it. I was taught that working hard, being active, and being busy are good things and will always benefit you.
I never fully believed it, but I went with that program anyway. Almost everyone I know saw through my facade and understood my fundamental beliefs.
I always believed in doing what needed to be done at the time, having equal work and rest, and living and letting live. As a result, I never complained about working hard or complained about someone not pulling their weight.
I just did what I had to do and kept it moving. This indifference baffled many people, and I would not react to situations as most people expected.
This led many people to believe I did not work hard and was lazy. I found that odd because I was up and working out in the gym at 5:30 a.m. almost every morning while they slept.
Buy me a coffeeI worked two jobs and was enrolled in school, but I never bothered or complained about how much I was doing. As a result, I always did what needed to be done, and the social norm was to complain or boast about work and the lack of free time.
This social behavior towards work and rest has led to a misunderstanding and abuse of the brain’s physical requirements for optimal health and performance.
Deep down inside, you must know that the constant working full-tilt sleep when-you-are-dead mentality is not suitable for overall health, well-being, and happiness.
The brain needs adequate rest and downtime to serve you at its best. That cannot be disputed; sleep is widely believed to be the best form of rest and recovery for the brain. Is it?
Why is it many people get their best ideas in the shower? Why do many people think clearer while on vacation or away from the office? Why do people experience mental clarity and find many other benefits from meditation?
Is the brain turned off at these times? Would the brain perform even better after being turned off? Can you turn your brain off? How much more could you accomplish utilizing a supercharged brain?
Do you need a brain? (Sorry, I’m just kidding. I could not resist. LOL.)
These Are The Benefits of Turning Your Brain Off
Research shows that meditation, long walks, and mental breaks increase productivity.
Even daydreaming is used as a form of relaxation for the brain. The same chemical and physiological processes that occur when we sleep to restore and rejuvenate the brain can be intentionally triggered instantly many times a day to supercharge your brain.
Sleep is the ultimate shutdown form to replenish the brain, but other forms can produce similar, if not better, results. Sleep is essential to achieving the highest performance levels and forming the stable memories the brain uses for housekeeping during downtime.
Any downtime that causes the mind to wander will whisk us back to that moment. This helps us store and replay information to learn from the past and plan for future decisions.
As a Scientific America article discusses downtime, we should be careful and highlight Marcus Raichle of Washington University in Saint Louis and his colleagues’ work demonstrating that the human brain is a glutton for all available resources.
Believe it or not, the brain DEMANDS 20 percent of all the energy the human body produces at all times and only 5 to 10 percent more energy when under heavy load, peak performance, solving complex problems, or intensive reading.
Wow! The brain is truly a glutton and demands 20% of all available energy when it is mostly dormant. That’s just greedy. LOL.
The brain demands this energy and can perform its excellent daily functions because tasks are allocated to dedicated sections of the brain to share the loads.
Whatever the need, the brain has a specialized section and an app. LOL. This mimics rhythmically turning your brain off to give sections a break.
Raichle found that different scattered brain regions consistently became more or less active depending on the request. The brain worked just as hard responding to simple or complex requests.
The brain handled those requests in different regions to lighten the overall load.
The research found different regions of the brain consistently became more active when that person was at rest and less active when that same person focused on a mental challenge.
Ironically, sections of the brain fire up, come to life and synchronize when people are daydreaming or at wakeful rest. The complex brain activity circuits are the default mode network (DMN).
The DMN is one of many different resting-state networks the brain can access. Researchers have found networks for vision, hearing, movement, attention, and memory in the past few years.
However, the DMN remains the best studied and perhaps the most important among them.
This suggests the brain is equipped to take advantage of every momentary lapse in attention to allow the resting state networks to take over.
The brain can fire up the DMN instantly when circuits that consciously direct attention go dormant for a fraction of a second. This study shows that the transaction can happen when we close our eyes or even when we blink.
Researchers are unsure what happens now, but one could imagine it to be a form of rest and memory consolidation for continuous maintenance, storage, and learning.
This is why vacations benefit people so much. Vacations revitalize the body and the mind.
When you change your environment (Places, people, food), your brain is forced to use regions that may have been less active and the rest of the areas that may have been more active.
Similar to the daydreaming effect mentioned earlier.
Unfortunately, research shows these benefits fade within 2 to 4 weeks of returning to your routine. We all would benefit from many short vacations spread out throughout the year.
Learn To Turn Your Brain Off and Enjoy The Benefits
Alright! This is the fun part. There is nothing special for you to do to turn your brain off and enjoy the benefits of a supercharged brain. The natural mechanisms are already in place and waiting for you to get out of greatness.
Just sit back, relax, and allow the beauty that is your brain to enhance and supercharge your life.
Mary Helen Immordino-Yang of the University of Southern California and her co-authors argue that the brain never sleeps. Downtime is when the brain is anything but idle.
Downtime allows the brain to regroup and take stock of recent events.
The brain is complex at work, requiring reevaluating, understanding, and rewriting the day’s events to find solutions to help create a better you.
You have experienced this on a conscious level regularly. Experiment with other possible outcomes whenever you replay conversations and events in your head.
The times when you daydream and say, “I should have said this,” or “I should have done that” happen when your brain is doing its regular housekeeping during downtime.
We craft hypothetical situations and role-play to better react to similar situations if they should arise.
We replay memories back into our minds, practicing for different responses and outcomes, and then work through pain points in our lives to prepare for the next time we encounter them.
Sometimes, we even fantasize about situations like firing our boss or asking our favorite celebrity out on a date. This is the brain’s housekeeping when we believe we are at rest.
These are moments of introspection and are some ways we form a sense of self, which is essentially our story, the sense of identity we continually tell ourselves we are.
To consistently reap the benefits of turning your brain off:
- Only perform a particular task for 1, 2, and no more than 4 hours, then do a different task.
- Constantly explore your creative side during the day. Sing, write, draw, daydream, skip, play, and be silly. Certain sections of your brain will reward you for your attention and stimulation.
- Periodically change your daily routine. Throw in a curveball or a monkey wrench into the mix, and don’t forget to add some spice now and then.
- Don’t be afraid to take lengthy breaks often. Your work or personal life will not be negatively affected. Research shows you will be rewarded handsomely with superpowers. LOL.
Conclusion
Well, there you have it. The brain is a beast and a glutton for your energy resources.
The brain benefits from downtime, rest, and sleep but does not need them as much as you would think. It has an ingenious workaround to replenish itself and ensure survival.
There are benefits to turning your brain off, but the brain would fake sleep and continue working its magic behind your back. The brain is a workaholic, and you can do nothing about it.
The brain is unique, but I admire the hand slightly more (Click Here To Find Out Why). Don’t forget the brain demands 20% of the body’s energy to show up for work and up to 10% more at peak times.
It is a bit of a spoiled Primadonna LOL.
All joking aside, the brain is a fantastic part of the Human body, and we have only scratched the surface of learning its secrets.
Someone once said, “Variety is the spice of life,” I believe it to be true.
It’s not a mistake; the brain is designed to work better when you live freely and add variety to your life. The brain frowned upon doing anything for 8 hours straight.
The brain loves when you sing, dance, and act silly. I used that time to rest sections of the brain to handle the mundane task.
Most importantly, the brain loves it when you daydream, fantasize, and role-play. It uses this content to enhance learning and problem-solving.
Living a productive, happy, and fun-filled life is all you need to enjoy the many benefits of turning your brain off.
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