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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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Less is More
Survival mode with four young children always involves physical chaos. There are always toys strewn around the living room. Much of my time was spent trying to clean up after the mess and even more of my emotional and mental energy was left overwhelmed with what I couldn’t get to that day. My focus was to finish the basics – laundry, dishes and food on the floor- and anything else that got done was a bonus. Part of moving toward a richer, more colorful life requires time. If we have no free time, we can’t have adventures or create art. One way I have freed up more time is to…
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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…