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Getting Out of My Head and Recharging
In the book, Breathing Under Water, Fr. Richard Rohr states that most people spend too much time in our head space and need to connect more with our heart space. The head space encompasses our logical brain where we think and plan. The other aspect of being human is to be connected with the heart space. He says “the heart space is often opened by ‘right brain’ activities such as music, art, dance, nature, fasting, poetry games, life-affirming sexuality, and, of course, the art of relationships itself.” The book discusses that many people are only in their head space but rarely in touch with the heart space. This disconnect can…
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Book Review – Barbara Sher’s Refuse to Choose
Barbara Sher is a well-known speaker and author on personal growth topics. I don’t know how I missed her because I love reading self help books, but she is a classic author in the field. The title of this book captivated me – Refuse to Choose – Use all of your passions, interests and hobbies to create the life and career of your dreams. I have always wanted to major in everything and have a ton of hobbies and interests, so it sounded right up my alley. Barbara calls the target audience of her book “scanners” which which she defines as a person wired to be interested in a wide…
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A Model of the Creative Life
When I started running a few years ago, I did it for myself, but it has had a side benefit of making my kids interested in trying fitness too. They see me go for a run or a bike ride and they want to come too. They are all under 10 years old and three out of four have already run a 5k race, which wasn’t something I could do when I was younger. My youngest daughter wanted her own set of hand weights because she likes to do yoga and strength work on the mat with me. You often hear about how it’s important to model healthy eating and…
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Creative romps and deep dives
I have recently moved into the sewing phase of my quarantine life. I have noticed most of the things I do to add joy and fun to my life are sensory experiences and are hands-on creative activities. I like the feel of yarn in my fingers and the scraping of paint on canvas. It helps me get out of my head and into my body and the present moment. Sometimes I need to remember to push myself to do something creative instead of wasting time on my phone, but I’m always excited to get started on my current artistic experience. I also like to write for creative expression, but it…
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Where do I find the time?
Prioritizing creative living As a mom of four kids, time is in short supply. Where do I find the time to do art or sew or write? The first step for me was admitting how much time I wasted during the day on my phone. Most phones have a time tracking feature for different apps. It can tell you in a second where you are spending your digital hours. As I mentioned in a previous post, my drug of choice is Facebook. I realized that Facebook was sucking too much of my time and not adding color to my life. I used my Android phone’s Digital Wellness features to put…
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Chasing flow
I work as an interpreter between American Sign Language and English. When I am working, my mind and body are fully engaged. My mental chatter falls away and I become fully immersed in the challenge of working between two languages. My head gets “in the zone” and it’s one of the reasons my job is so rewarding. Psychology researcher Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls these immersive experiences “flow states.” He describes a flow state as a time of intense concentration involving both your mind and body. During these work periods, people feel an appropriate amount of challenge and they feel like the way they experience time is altered. These states of flow…
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What about amateur creatives?
In the old days, if you wanted to hear music, you needed your very accomplished daughter to play the pianoforte for the room. If you wanted a pretty bowl, you needed to buy one from a local artisan. People told stories around the fire. For most of human history, the amateur artist or artisan neighbor made and played a huge percentage of the art, music and stories that we consumed. In modern times, we have access to perfect music at the touch of a button. Fancy cameras live in our pocket and we can always take an exact image of things we’d like to capture. We can see high quality…
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Rediscovering Creativity
When I was living in black and white, all my hobbies were pushed to the sidelines. As a young adult, I used to quilt and sew. I liked crafting and painting when I was a child. As a new mom, I taught myself to crochet, but by baby #4 I wasn’t even doing that. Survival mode meant stripping down life to the very essentials of baby care and self care. I needed to take some time to actively bring some fun back into my life, and for me, the spice of life is creativity. My bare bones life wasn’t killing me, but it was very dry. Rediscovering my creative side…