Month: August 2024

FINDING CREATIVITY

FINDING CREATIVITY

Having everything done on my to-do list and my feet resting flat on the floor is becoming the trick to ushering in the expansion of my creativity. I’m whittling stuff off my to-do list. I’m simultaneously realizing I don’t need to keep taking expensive college courses that interfere with my life. I’m focusing more on my children and anything that truly piques my interest.

Nursing school was fine. I did it! I got my RN. Truthfully, nursing isn’t something I think I can be good at as a profession. There’s just too many demands at the same time. You’re never done. People fall and you have to catch their bodies. I’ve worked with nurses who are still undergoing physical therapy themselves due to catching falling patients. Working in a nursing home taught me that. I only did it because my Grandmother chided me for pursuing an Esthetician license saying “Do something real! Do something that’s actually useful!” So, I took on nursing. Now, I have both a nursing (RN) degree and an Esthetician license. Since graduating in December of 2014, I’ve only had a couple nursing jobs and a few volunteering positions.

I’ve SLOWLY and recently released the grips my ego has over me. My ego seems to want more college education–to go further! My EGO wants me to forge a path ahead and grab ambition and accomplishment and knowledge and squeeze their products into a pitcher as one squeezes lemons for the delicious result of lemonade. Like everyone else, I seek the same applause from effortful pursuits. There is another desire I’m finding… to see creativity unfold.

But…I’m realizing if it’s not for the sake of creativity itself, it is just a vain attempt to build a greater self-empire. The ego wants to behold itself and showcase all of what it’s done.

No longer. I want to exemplify creativity and seek creative pursuits in all their forms for the sake of creativity itself. Not for money, or recognition or fleeting applause and approval but simply for learning and recreation. Creativity is fun. It satisfies itself. It needs nothing more.

Creativity is about finding the interconnectedness between two things. It asks, how can we look at something from a BIG picture or a SMALL picture? Creativity is a curious endeavor and requires that we look at things through various angles. FOR INSTANCE, LAST NIGHT I HAD A SUDDEN EUREKA MOMENT. A volcano is like an acne pimple or lesion. There is swelling, inflammation and heat that starts to roil beneath the surface. The volcano lifts the surrounding terrain in a cone shaped form as does the acne pimple on the skin. Both the pimple and volcano explode out onto surfaces. For the pimple it is the skin and for the volcano it is the surrounding terrain. The damage done below the surface of the skin can cause an acne scar in the formation of a crater as the skin starts to settle. In the same way, as the volcano settles, the terrain can form a caldera or crater.

This is how creativity can start emerging. In the example above I started to look at two things as though they may be connected. When you do this you start to recognize intriguing relationships between disparate phenomena! And it just keeps going from here. It can get very exciting and addicting and you’ll start pursuing creativity for its own sake.

How can you find creativity in your life? What I’m realizing is that YOU NEED BLOCKS OF UNINTERRUPTED TIME. No tuned-out periods of phone scrolling, no children screaming in the distance and no interruptions from surrounding clutter. Clutter can be a huge distraction because it signals to the brain that you HAVE SOMETHING ELSE THAT NEEDS TO BE DONE. Even if you try, it’s still there, it’s visual phenomena. It’s saying, “shuffle your attention over here from time to time”. Getting rid of stuff and cleaning your workspace will have a dramatic effect on your ability to engage in deeper creativity and approach the psychological experience called “Flow”. I’ve had flow several times and it’s one of the better gifts of human experience.

Thus, you need time plus an environment to start making creativity happen. It’s hard to get started but once you start rolling you start going. It’s really just an openness to possibility. It’s seeing every moment in a novel way. It’s asking, can I reframe this moment to make it better? You can adjust a tilted picture frame by moving it ever so slightly. In the same way, you can adjust your current reality by tilting it a bit and making it appear more novel. Take a moment to realize you can notice different things and then you take a different approach. Try zooming out with your focus and then zooming way back in. It’s all this adjustment and provides new insight and perspectives.

Also, don’t forget the power of sleep! I’m always way more likely to both think creativity and have more motivation to be creative when I get adequate sleep. When I’m well-rested, I have better resilience for my own failures or when people reject me or give me the cold shoulder. I have higher tolerance for so much more! When pursuing creative ambitions, you really need lots of tolerance because it’s a struggle to get going with creative pursuits and a struggle to KEEP GOING. You can have all the ideas in the world but its easy to flounder and stop.

Sometimes you do need moments of blandness and boredom to eventually get to more profound levels of creativity. It’s like your brain needs the contrast. I find that the most scintillating insights arrive when I’m doing very mundane tasks like moving about putting things away. My brain is slightly disengaged but yet there must be subconscious processes that are still occurring. I’ve discovered that very intense bursts of cardiovascular exercise seem to prepare me both mentally and physically for that calm that comes before the creative storm. I also feel good for exercising and exerting a form of self-discipline.

I’m eager to discover more synchronicities and possibilities with anything that I interact with. When you discover more and learn more you can see more connections that can lead to novel inventions, ideas or ways of doing things. I don’t have a formalized, set structure for discovering creativity but I’m deeply curious if perhaps there is a method that I will soon discover! I’m working on this!

I took my 6 Year Old Son’s ADHD Medication

I took my 6 Year Old Son’s ADHD Medication

Recently I tried a little of my son’s ADHD medication (methylphenidate/Ritalin). I’ve been curious for a while about its effects–so I decided to live a bit on the edge. I’m a risk taker when it comes to almost anything with the exception of my ego. I love to try new things. I love to gain new experiences. I’ve plunged myself into way too many hobbies of late. It’s no wonder that I may have some attentional or jumpy-around tendencies myself. I have a hard time finishing any task that requires many steps, or I find myself procrastinating or just not forging the mental stamina to continue. I embark upon many tasks at the beginning of the day, I whip up all the motivation I can, but the follow-through just kicks me down. Additionally, my mood is often not at its peak. I can sometimes feel what depression or despondency must feel like. I was eager to see if taking some of my son’s medication would have any impact on my mood, motivation, or even my mental stamina.

What I discovered was nothing short of brilliant. I felt AMAZING. Once I could feel the activation of the medicine, I suddenly enjoyed what I was doing. Sitting down and helping my 4-year-old learn to read is typically a very boring hard to endure slog. On this day, it was like a sudden epiphany for my mind. My exact thoughts were “Oh, I kind of enjoy this task! I feel like I’m in the moment and I’m accomplishing something that is useful for my son!” Needless to say, we made it through 5 books. I just was able to stay on task and didn’t tire from it.

That’s really what I noticed–the ability to NOT TIRE OUT. To NOT MOVE ON. The focus makes it so that you can complete more boring, mundane, step by step tasks or even attempt more arduous or challenging tasks. The brain really needs a particular cocktail of neurotransmitters to deal with the day-to-day drudgeries. I didn’t realize what I was lacking–or how much more focused I could actually be. Do some people have the privilege of functioning like this regularly? If so, I’m so jealous! What a treat to stay focused and have that accompanying sense of satisfaction.

According to my son’s pediatrician, everyone’s brain can actually benefit from methylphenidate (though it’s typically reserved for those with a true ADHD diagnosis). Recent studies reveal that this medicine can probably help anyone, even adults, and it does not cause addiction because it is short-acting. It helps while it’s in the body and then starts to fade within a few hours. It helps my son tremendously especially while he’s learning something. He can hold his gaze on any learning material longer than without it. And if he holds his attention on some bit of knowledge or information for longer, he stands a FAR BETTER CHANCE OF LEARNING AND RETENTION.

That day I was able to trim 3 different bushes (topiary style!) and stay on task with every other item on my to-do list. I felt a sustained energy and contentment for whatever it was I was doing. I was reminded of the brevity of life and how one of the values I have crystalized for myself is my POTENTIAL. Am I doing everything in my power to achieve my potential? Am I making efforts each day? Could regularly or occasionally taking this medication help improve my mental function and output? I’m left to deliberate about my options and if I will talk to my doctor about getting a methylphenidate prescription myself for occasional use.

If you are the type that just tires out from the long-list of day-to day life or “mentally checks out” you also might benefit from an ADHD evaluation or (potentially) a prescription from your doctor. I think that brain function is absolutely critical for overall health and good, everyday life experiences. It’s hard to enjoy life when you can’t stay on task or accomplish anything big or bigger. We all are dreamers and can see things that we would like or that need to get done. Our brain can easily conjure up grandiose images of what we would like to accomplish or all the possible creations we would like to make. The wherewithal, stamina and sense of satisfaction on each step of the way is where the difficulty lies. This is what I discovered by recently embracing my curiosity and trying my son’s medicine.

ATTENTION AND SHORT FORM SOCIAL MEDIA THOUGHTS

ATTENTION AND SHORT FORM SOCIAL MEDIA THOUGHTS

I get so much joy and mental balance from avoiding social media. 20 years ago I loved how I would explore with my mind, how much longer I could endure being absorbed and immersed in a single activity. My mental faculties could withstand long hours reading or listening to the ideas of, say, Patricia Churchland vs. David Chalmers and their philosophical underpinnings. Now, reality seems to be diminished to short, very simplistic videos that we all happen to scroll by, very, very quickly as if to inhale as many of these in the shortest few seconds as possible.

Look around at any bus stop, coffee shop, check-out line or even a family sitting together at a restaurant. Are they reading blogs? Are they scouring long sections of text or lengthy news articles? NO. They are most-often in a mindless bout of scrolling. But it doesn’t stop there. Does it? It just keeps going and going. It doesn’t ever stop. Sometimes when they’re driving, they’ll take a moment or two to look at the road or their surroundings, but back to their phone they go. And humans keep clicking into their social media account throughout the day to imbibe more and more of these little useless trinkets of someone’s life. And there’s part of you that’s thinking either: Dang I’m wasting my life looking at your dull snippets of media, or, I wish I could be the one making engaging content and generating $$$ on it too!

Decades ago, so many of us would spend hours on Wikipedia or listening to long, dense lectures. While I still do this when I have the time, the incentive structure of modern society has changed. The hyper focused way of using the internet has passed…or maybe we’ve entered a new era.

Now, with the constant access of our phones and the onslaught of short-form social media content platforms, we are MENTALLY SCATTERED. We are all spending WAY TOO MUCH TIME on short-form internet content. This is the issue I want to address and keep on addressing here on my blog and even just to myself because I think that it’s going to be the Black Swan of our time. We may not realize it now but at some point, we will look back and see the stark changes to humanity and to the evolution of humanity itself.

If I were to sum up what’s happening it would be like this: We are all constantly “CHECKING”. It’s become an automatic behavior like breathing. There are so many possible options to scroll by and it’s like our brain doesn’t want to “get behind” or be “out of the loop”. So, we keep doing it. Or perhaps our brain just gets bored more easily. Every-day non-screen activities have become such drudgery to the mind. It’s not that we are afraid of being alone but that we need to be stimulated from the boredom. Our brain, like our body, wants escape and relaxation–not challenge, struggle or exercise. It’s wants any easy click and an easy find. We discover ourselves scrolling through short-form media content like videos or memes or very inane short posts.

As for me, I want to get back to attention–to being ABLE TO ATTEND. I want to pay attention for a long period of time. I want to be able to zoom into focus immediately on a long article and allow the complexity to pique my brain while I envision fresh perspectives that instigate action. I want to LISTEN TO (not watch) lengthy videos with novel discussion or interviews regarding the universe, AI, human intelligence, physics, philosophy, health and longevity, anti-aging, creativity, productivity, time management and anything to do with self-help. I am fascinated by all of these topics and want to keep exploring them and writing about them. I establish deeper learning and memory retrieval after writing what I read, research or delve into. In a way, humans are a lot like AI. The more we explore new data sets the more we develop a basic intuitive grasp of things. Then, we keep iterating until we kind of figure it out.

I still want to be online. But…. I want to utilize the internet and recent cutting edge AI technologies so that my own creativity can emerge. Creativity is just a novel assortment of various pieces or ideas that already exist. There is really so much potential out there! New technologies will have most prominence in the hands of those who use them to blend with their own creative outputs.

WRITING TO DO LISTS IS MAGIC

WRITING TO DO LISTS IS MAGIC

What I have learned is that writing a to-do list WORKS! This has become my secret way of translating things…projects, ideas, etc. into forward action.

When I WAKE UP EARLY and write my to-do list on a sheet of paper and then place it right on the top of my counter, I am face to face with it. I am far more likely to attempt any one of these to-to tasks than if I didn’t write the to-do-list.

The psychological sciences have discovered why writing a to-do list is so helpful. One of the reasons is that writing is the act of GETTING THE MIND ON BOARD. That is, when you write something, your brain is inevitably reflecting on that piece of data. Your inner thoughts are transcribed into material reality. Thinking is the first step. When you write you’re thinking about what you write. When a thought is written down, it is directing the brain towards that thing. It’s the beginning of motivation and motivation creates action.

With a to-do-list, there is great reward in crossing off the completed tasks with a BIG BLACK MARKER. I can hear the squeaky sound of the black marker. I notice the thick, inky feeling as it glides over a task on my to-do list and BLOTS it out in full and final punishment.

The reward is also the knowledge that I’m making progress; that I’m being productive.

The number of list items that I’ve attempted (and completed) from simply writing them down is ASTOUNDING. It’s as if the brain realizes, “Hey if I write this stuff down, I better at least do some of it.“

Now that I know this method of WRITING A NEW LIST DOWN EVERY SINGLE MORNING on a sheet of paper and placing that paper right on the top of the counter so that I can read it, I’m wondering if I could make other thoughts happen. You know, manifest into reality? I believe that this and more is possible. What you think is power. Continually engaging your mind in your daily activities by thinking about those activities and writing them down will push you toward them. Think about it, it certainly won’t push you away from them.

Often, I refrain from writing challenging (to me at least) things on my to-do list because I’m afraid to try them or they seem to take TOO MANY STEPS TO COMPLETE. Sometimes the steps involve personal embarrassment or being uncomfortable or even an ego bruising! I tell myself “I won’t write this down because I won’t try it anyway.” Well lately I’ve come to realize that writing the difficult things down DOES INDEED spur me to take a few steps towards the goal or item on my list. Even just a couple steps is better than no steps.

So yes, writing ANYTHING DOWN is MAGIC to your goals. It’s really the first step because you have decided to actively reflect and think about it and turn it from inside your mind onto a piece of paper. That’s it!

I want to go even further here in my goals and pursuits. I want to do actions that spur the creation of new ideas and inventions. Not for the sake of ego and selfish goals but for the sake of learning and finding ways to help humanity. Will I start with writing? Yes, that’s where I will start. Taking the time to write about anything and everything related to my goals, wishes or ideas will be the first step.