Spending time working on creative tasks can free your mind. This freedom energizes us to find new possibilities for managing problems / challenges in our daily lives.
This was not obvious to me at all. How can creativity have an impact on my daily life?
A dear friend helped me understand the logic. Our brains are split into two hemispheres. The left is our analytical mind and the right our creative mind. I am generalizing here for simplicity.
I spend the majority of my day thinking, or in my left hemisphere. You may be able to relate; I often cannot stop from getting out of my head. My mind whirls around things I have to do, things that happened which I still carry around, and things that might happen.
All this juggling in my brain creates stress. If I am procrastinating because I have to figure out how to handle a difficult challenge, I will add even more things for my mind to do. My way of avoidance is to pile on more to think about.
Perfect example, I need to do a 30 second pitch at a meeting next week. In 30 seconds I have to describe the benefit of what I do and why I am the person for you. No pressure, right? So what do I do instead of sitting down and focusing on the task at hand? I start other tasks. I moved all my emails to my own domain name. I created and ordered new business cards. I looked for opportunities to acquire additional clients. I piled on.
So when I did sit down to do the work, I was simply exhausted. I could not even see the possibilities. I was at a loss for words.
Then my friend sent me a simple email and said do this! She is a great friend and I greatly appreciate her directness. She told me to buy a coloring book for adults and markers. I prefer to work in pencil, so I immediately did as she stated. Two days later, thanks to Amazon Prime, I received my package. I was skeptical to say the least.
I sat down that night with my 50 color pencils and this very intricate coloring book (see picture above). I looked at the first picture and thought, how am I going to do this, this looks really hard. Then it occurred to me that is the point, not figuring out how to do this logically, rather just do it. I started out very slow with the limiting belief that the colors had to be realistic. As a coach, I immediately recognized how I was limiting my possibilities. So I picked some colors and started to color. After a half hour I realized that I was so focused on the task that I had not one thought of all the things that typically run through my mind. It was actually relaxing. The next night I picked it up again and with greater freedom I released my expectations and started to create.
The very next day, my mind opened up to all the possible ways to describe what I do in 30 seconds. I did not even set out to work on my pitch. Ideas just started flowing into my head. I had actually allowed my left hemisphere to rest. I stopped trying to control my thoughts. I released the stress!
Think about what you can do to spend time in your right hemisphere. What do you do, that you are so focused you lose track of time? Where can you start using creativity in your life? The benefits of trying may surprise you. It certainly surprised me!
If you want to explore a your creativity, I would be happy to offer a free coaching session. Please connect with me via my contact page or my email link.