Reimagine Your Sweet Spot
Happy New Year!
I hope this post provides you with some insightful take-aways. It’s a work in progress and will definitely regerminate and produce a family of blog-lets down the road.
Sweet Spot
The way my brain works, I see things as a cluster rather than in an orderly linear sequence. I think this is why visual images are so much easier for me than writing. I’ve been noodling on the most magical, totally amazing sweet spot where neuroscience, mindfulness, maturity and creative process meet. I’m curious about the relationships among these and how they intersect.
Sound like a geeky snoozefest? Think again or rather rethink. (LOL, I warned you!)
The Resonate Prefix “Re”
I’ve been playing around with the prefix “Re,” if you haven’t noticed. There are just such great words that relate to neuroplasticity, creativity, mindfulness and renewal.
“Re” is defined as “a prefix with the meaning again, back or it indicates repetition.”
I’ve been gravitating towards rebirth words like renew and regrow. Here’s a little GIF I made of my top ten New Year’s Re words. No brainer really. As a 53-year-old myself, supporting folks also in their “third quarter,” these Re words help rejuvenate our passion and purpose and remind us that it’s OK to Re, to return and reframe.
Of course, I would be remiss if I didn’t talk about repetition, which is how we acquire new brain wiring (new habits), and thereby learn new creative processes and deepen our mindfulness practice.
*If this heading is baffling, I’m riffing off a famous line in the 1967 classic The Graduate, where Ben (played by a young Dustin Hoffman) gets a one-word lesson on the future, “plastics.”
I’ve got one word for you Ben, “Neuroplasticity”*
With the growing knowledge of how the brain functions, we now know that our brains have the capacity for growth, ie neuroplasticity. Simply put, neuroplasticity is our brain’s capacity to grow new neural synapses and develop new pathways at any stage of life. Yes, any stage of life.
How to Create New Habits
I have been reading a lot of New Year’s blogs about new habits and resolutions. I came across this amazing insight: Don’t try to break old habits. What? Why? Because those old neuro pathways will not go away or dissolve. Rather, create new habits, because you can create new neuro pathways which can override the old ones! Mind blowing, yes? (See Resources list for reference.)
So how can I apply findings to creativity and mindfulness in Art + Well programs like the 14-Day New Year Jumpstart?
Your Brain’s “Zombie Agents” (AKA Muscle Memory)
We often talk about building a “muscle memory,” in sports and music where you practice that same tennis swing or piano fingering a million times until you don’t have to think about it, your body just does it. “Zombie Agents” are the same thing and often refer to those actions you aren’t conscious of at all, like having no memory of the drive to work. (The term “muscle memory” is a misnomer though. The memory is housed in your brain, not your muscle tissue!)
Again-and-Again
Repetition seems to be key. I only designed 7 Jumpstart exercises so folks would “rinse and repeat” on the off days. And while the program is only 14 days, I tried to design fun, easy access exercises that people will want to keep doing to reinforce.
So if you keep doodling, sketching, pattern making or similar, through repetition, your creative habits will become second-nature muscle memories!
When your brain is in muscle-memory mode, (rather than planning a meeting, writing a report, etc,) your subconscious has space to come to the forefront. This is when creativity and insights pop up! There are lots of great neuroscience studies about this. Dr. Charles Lim has been working for over a decade with jazz musicians, freestyle rappers, and most recently, improv actors. Collaborator Allen R. Braun surmised:
“... we see … a relaxation of ‘executive functions’ [thinking, organizing, planning] to allow more natural de-focused attention [muscle memory] and uncensored processes to occur that might be the hallmark of creativity ...”
The “ReDesign Your Pattern” Jumpstart
In the “ReDesign Your Pattern” Jumpstart (Jumpstart #3) that was part of my 14-Day Jumpstart at the beginning of this year, I wanted to playfully synthesize all the things we’ve been talking about in this blog and perhaps spark deep personal meaning and insight.
Through the exercise, you are given agency to pull apart the lines that make up the letters “Re,” (see pic) and then to redesign new patterns, first as practice “scales,” and then with greater creativity and individuality.
I hope this post supports your reboot!
Click here if you’d like to be informed of my next challenge.
Creatively yours,
Suzanne
Suzanne Wright
Founder, Art Well 4 Life