My nine-year-old skips, jumps, flails his arms, jumps some more, kicks, skip-jumps, stops by to punch me in the leg, and continues. He drifts through the house to the energetic pop rock of his favorite band, Imagine Dragons.
He’s mouthing the words, but his “dancing” takes no cues from the music’s rhythm. He prefers to romp spontaneously.
Many people enjoy life with some dashes of spontaneity, and this freedom is often associated with being young. Meanwhile, rigid thinking is linked to worse mental health (and humans tend to get more mentally inflexible after childhood). You’re not doomed to a grown-up life of no surprises, though. Researchers have recently identified ways to increase spontaneity for well-being—and perhaps even longevity.
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Here’s what they’ve learned about spontaneity and how to cultivate it.
What is spontaneity?
Spontaneity is about loosening your mind and actions. It’s voluntary and off-task, serving no particular purpose—like an out-of-the-blue road trip this summer.
We’re spontaneous when thoughts are free to move about, flexibly shifting across ideas and topics, often wandering to external matters that go beyond self-directed, personal concerns. This type of unconstrained thought is linked to specific neural action at the front of the brain, found Julia Kam, a psychology professor at the University of Calgary in Canada. “It’s a marker of letting your mind go,” Kam says.
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Thoughts that are automatic and stuck, like repetitive worries, compete with spontaneity, says Jessica Andrews-Hanna, a neuroscientist at the University of Arizona. “Habitual thoughts are ingrained in our psyches,” she explains, when brain regions related to emotion and self-focus interact repeatedly. If these constraints can be relaxed, “spontaneity is free to emerge” for a wide range of thoughts and behaviors.
Creativity is related but different. It’s the ability to choose among many spontaneously generated options for some useful purpose, whereas spontaneity “doesn’t need an end-game,” says Tali Marron, a clinical psychologist at Israel’s Shalvata Mental Health Center. It can be its own reward, like an amateur artist throwing paint at a canvas for fun, regardless of what’s produced.
Why are kids little spontaneity machines?
Young people enjoy these intrinsic pursuits naturally. As Picasso said, we are all born artists. The problem is, we grow up.
“Kids are little spontaneity machines,” says Edward Slingerland, a philosophy professor at the University of British Columbia in Canada and author of Trying Not to Try: The Art and Science of Spontaneity. He recalls his daughter at an age when she couldn’t walk a line from points A to B without zig-zagging jumps and somersaults. Kids are also known for experimenting with new personality traits, outfits, and passions that arise seemingly out of nowhere.
Few adults seek a return to this behavior. Walking in a straight line is mostly very useful. So is a stable identity that doesn’t change with the weather. But adults can benefit from understanding why and how the young are so spontaneous.
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One factor is dopamine, a chemical in the brain related to motivation and reward. Sandeep Robert Datta, a neurobiologist at Harvard, monitors the brains of mice while they explore unfamiliar territory. He’s found that dopamine inspires their spontaneous movement just like more predictable movement rewarded by food, and this random behavior is far more common in younger mice. “They generate lots of spontaneous exploratory movements that peak just before adulthood, when mice begin to settle down and act their age,” Datta says.
Dopamine drives human movement, too. “Your behavior any moment is the sum of actions that make you feel good” and more unusual ones that help you “better understand and interact with the world around you,” Datta says. The more we explore an environment, like a city, the better we grasp what’s possible, increasing resourcefulness. In humans as in mice, though, dopamine levels drop as we age—10% each decade.
Another explanation for youthful spontaneity is neuroplasticity. The period of “juvenile exuberance” coincides with the brain being “massively flexible and engaged in ongoing learning,” Datta says. Like dopamine, neuroplasticity declines after a certain point in life. “With the juvenile-to-adult transition, neural circuits get locked to some extent into adult configurations,” says Datta. “Spontaneity can be viewed as a measure of biological aging.”
These changes affect more than movement. Spontaneous thoughts also seem to peak when we’re younger. Studies show that college students and young adults engage in mind wandering up to 50% of the day, Kam says. In older age, it typically declines to about 30%.
That is, unless adults actively strengthen their spontaneity muscles. “Things that keep your brain plastic are probably very important to maintaining spontaneous behavior,” Datta says. The connection between spontaneity and longevity still needs to be tested. But Kam and Andrews-Hanna have found links between freely-moving spontaneous thoughts and having more life satisfaction. And a positive mindset is associated with slower aging.
Follow these steps to enhance spontaneity regardless of age.
Take free-moving, free-thinking breaks
Make time to roam freely. Fantasize and daydream while strolling, losing track of where you’re going. Use GPS to find your way back.
Andrews-Hanna takes such walks, letting her thoughts flow. Kam exercises while avoiding mental to-do lists, television, or anything else productive or distracting. “You can’t focus your mind 24/7,” she says. “I carve out time to let my thoughts wander wherever they want.”
Peter Felsman, assistant professor of social work at Oakland University in Rochester, Mich., introduces people to “sense and savor” walks, guiding them to spontaneously engage in whatever provides pleasure, like watching a bee go from flower to flower. For these walks, psychologists recommend giving “yourself over to the experience as if it were the only thing that existed in the world. When you lose interest…discover something else that is attractive.”
Put yourself in a surprising situation
“You can force neuroplasticity and spontaneity to remain part of your life by getting yourself to do new things,” Slingerland says. “Embrace surprise,” Felsman adds. “Pleasant breaking of routine wakes people up to life.”
Recently, Felsman joined a friend for a sailing outing. He thought it’d be relaxing but, once on the water, they were invited to compete in several hours of competitive racing. The idea made Felsman nervous because this was his first time sailing. But he embraced the novelty of getting to learn how to participate in a sailing crew. “It just sort of happened,” he says. “It was extraordinary.”
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Datta, too, values spontaneous, new experiences. His father has Parkinson’s disease, which is associated with low dopamine levels. “The one thing that makes him better is novelty,” he says. “If I surprise him with a trip to the mall, the beach, or anywhere else, he perks up in a way that I’m not used to.”
Free associate
If you feel stuck with an unsatisfying routine, it may help to try a certain form of free association, in which you describe your inner train of thought out loud, one word at a time, each word associating with the previous one. You might go from cloud to mother to kitchen, depending on your associations. This aids creativity and, just as importantly, it practices silencing our internal critics while boosting spontaneity, says Marron, the Israeli psychologist.
When people’s thoughts move freely, the executive parts of their brain—controlling functions like planning and decision-making, also known as convergent thinking—aren’t as activated, Marron has found. “Their associations are more flexible with less inhibition.” They improve at watching their thoughts diverge, like zigzagging children, without “feeling like half their ideas are spam,” she says.
Asking people to read positive, creative stories could make these associations more original and lively. Free-writing is another activity that encourages “free, flowing forms of thinking,” Andrews-Hanna says.
Some people enjoy being alone with their divergent thoughts more than others. Andrews-Hanna has developed an app called MindWindow that lets users gain insight into their own thinking patterns, including spontaneity.
Take an improv class
Studies in adults show that taking improv classes, another free-association activity, reduces symptoms of depression and anxiety. It also boosts creativity, which is linked to well-being. Felsman’s research in Detroit schools found that kids who participated in an improv class became better at tolerating uncertainty—key to mental health—and less socially anxious.
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The executive parts of the brain are important. Without their control functions, associations would loosen too much, Marron says. But free association can help ensure that top-down, executive forces don’t dominate one’s mental landscape. “The ideal is to find a balance between divergent and convergent thinking, so you can flexibly act in line with your values,” Felsman adds.
Reduce stress
Anxiety is linked to narrower, more ritualized thoughts and behavior. Practicing mindfulness can “break your attachment” to repetitive, negative thinking, Andrews-Hanna says, freeing up mental bandwidth for spontaneity. New research shows that psilocybin can weaken psychological constraints, perhaps by reducing stress and shifting the brain temporarily to a childlike state of neuroplasticity. Ignoring the stressful, digital constraints of smartphones can help, too.
Try not to try
Spontaneity as a virtue has ancient roots. It was seen as essential to enjoying life in 5th century BCE China through the concept of wu-wei, which translates as “no trying,” Slingerman writes in his book. People with wu-wei are successful without striving; they know when to trust their unconscious mind and do what comes naturally. Cultivate it by engaging in something awe-inspiring that syncs you up with the larger, natural order, Slingerman says—in his case, it’s ocean kayaking.
Play without structure
Part of Andrews-Hanna’s regimen for spontaneity involves playing with her kids. “I try to get into their mode of thinking, rather than directing their play,” she says. “It’s very difficult, more natural for a four-year-old. But it helps me connect with them and become more flexible in my thinking.”
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Recently, I started joining my son’s dancing. I imitate him with my own jumping and flailing. When he’s really feeling the music, he shakes his head vigorously, appearing to have, as Wordsworth said of poetry, “a spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.” I shake my head, too, thinking about him sharing his gift of spontaneity.
At first, we collided a few times, but now we expertly dodge each other. Maybe it’s reopening my neural connections—or maybe not. But it’s certainly a welcome divergence from my sedentary routine. The rinse-repeat of daily life is like “hitting the same gumball machine all day,” Datta says. “If that’s all you do, when the machine runs out, you’re screwed.” There’s a fundamental need to continuously try random things. “These movements might seem meaningless, but who knows in the future whether a move you made while dancing will be useful to you.” Even if there’s no point, though, the true benefit may be simply enjoying the spontaneity for its own sake.