How Do I Stop Daydreaming During Meditation?

Daydreaming is a very common human mental activity. A large-scale study found that people spend 47% of their waking hours daydreaming!

What is daydreaming? When we daydream, our mind is wandering into the past, future, or fantasy. Daydreaming is a way of escaping from the present moment.

When we are daydreaming, we are not in the here and now. We are somewhere else.

If I’m stuck in traffic, would I be daydreaming about being stuck in traffic? No. I’d probably daydream about being home and relaxing on my couch.

In other words, daydreaming is a signal that this moment is not enough. If this moment was enough—if it was good enough, comfortable enough, pleasant enough—why would we want to escape it by daydreaming about something else, another time, another place?

Mindfulness practice is to notice when we drift off into daydreaming.

Can we notice the desire to get away from the present? Can we investigate why we want to escape the present?

Are we willing to return to the present? If so, how do we do it? Just wake up from the dream, and come back to the breath.

References:

Gilbert, D. T., & Killingsworth, M. A. (2010-11-12). A Wandering Mind Is an Unhappy Mind. Science. 330 (6006): 932.