Tag: thinking

BETTER WAY TO THINK ABOUT HAVING “TOO MANY INTERESTS”

My problem is that I have too many interests. I can’t quite figure out what I like more: woodworking, painting, writing and making blog posts, making reels after doing my creations/projects, self-help and motivation, roller-skating, sewing, gardening and landscape design…philosophy and learning about consciousness.

Then, there are the things I enjoy slightly less but I love the results when I do them: cleaning the house, cooking, nutrition, exercising and fitness, learning to play the piano, reading books, skincare and esthetics, learning and education and working towards my bachelor’s degree in nursing and teaching my 3 children things.

In the past (2011) I would make youtube videos–some would go VIRAL. It was an incredible opportunity in the early days of Youtube before the platform was saturated with creator accounts. Now the best and brightest are at the top of Youtube. I don’t stand a chance now. I’ve come to accept it and I rarely invest in this hobby anymore.

A lot of people struggle with having TOO MANY INTERESTS. But I think we should consider the positive side of this struggle. This means that at least we’re not sinking into boredom and nihilism. We’re probably less likely to be on the path towards addiction. This means we’re actively using our brains and still trying things out. We’re finding different ways to engage our conscious experience by seeking out interests and hobbies. We want to work with the world, not stagnate and diffuse our potential.

More and more studies reveal that actively learning and finding hobbies in MIDDLE AGE will help prevent cognitive decline. When you’re not passively consuming the world around you–but actively working with it and even butting your head against it–trying to find ways to make it work, solve a problem, figure out a new strategy and come up with something new, you’re thinking more.

This original thinking that comes with having tons of interests will do wonders for your sense of confidence. It will literally BUILD TRUST IN YOURSELF. You tried some of your ideas and integrated them into your hobbies in the past and gained some knowledge. Some of the things you did worked. You may have solved a woodworking or artistic issue in a more unorthodox way. You start to trust how you go about the process more–HOW YOUR OWN BRAIN GOES ABOUT THE PROCESS MORE.

As you gain confidence in your own style for doing things you are fueled to do more. Nobody died or got hurt. People may have admonished “That’s not the way to do that” or “This is how I do it.” But everyone thinks their way is much better, have you noticed?

Perhaps you applied lateral or non-linear thinking to help figure out something in the past. This approach often feels better than following the step-by-step directions from a brochure or a youtube video.

So, in essence, having tons of interests develops lots of new and unique connections. These inspire more tangential thinking. More ideas can mix together in your mind so you come up with even more and better ideas. Remember, unrelated ideas can be integrated and may lead to even more surprises or potential solutions. You will feel and be more inspired and you will be pushing down the tendency to escape into addictions.

Having a surplus of hobbies, passions and interests may feel overwhelming. You may feel like you can’t go very deep into any of them. The tradeoff is you’ll have more crossover of unique ideas. You may even come up with an invention or business idea. If you naturally possess this tendency, don’t beat yourself up! You’ve figured out a way to beat boredom without screens and scrolling. It’s always better to have a surfeit of hobbies than zero hobbies with a proclivity towards addiction.

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!