Motion Creates

Moving our bodies is a great way to feed our creative spirit.

There is a wonderful article on Brainpickings that discuss wanderlust:

With the hindsight of a decade and a half, Solnit’s book emerges as triply timely today, as we struggle to master that ever more precarious balancing act of living with presence in the age of productivity. She writes:

Thinking is generally thought of as doing nothing in a production-oriented culture, and doing nothing is hard to do. It’s best done by disguising it as doing something, and the something closest to doing nothing is walking. Walking itself is the intentional act closest to the unwilled rhythms of the body, to breathing and the beating of the heart. It strikes a delicate balance between working and idling, being and doing. It is a bodily labor that produces nothing but thoughts, experiences, arrivals.

Read the full article:

http://www.brainpickings.org/2015/06/03/wanderlust-rebecca-solnit-walking/?mc_cid=02fe5a4959&mc_eid=4313242c4a

Read More

Boredom Feeds The Creative Mind

Read an interesting article by Clive Thompson in Wired magazine. In a nutshell, I'm going to paraphrase it here.

If you're "dying of boredom" don't head for your phone, tablet or one of the myriad of mobile devices to play a game of Solitaire or Angry Birds! Boredom fuels your creative mind. We need to lean into these downtimes so we can delve into deeper thoughts.

This might be the reason why I think of my best ideas in the shower. Nothing to do but soap and wash.

A restless mind craves stimulation. When you're not satisfied you tend to seek out ways to engage your mind. What worries psychologists is we are eliminating these 'slow times' by grabbing our mobile device. This shuts down deeper thinking.

I love this: Call boredom useful and productive monotony.

But be aware there is a difference between useful boredom and lethargic boredom. Lethargic boredom is when you can't be bothered. When you feel worn out like a faded dishrag.

So embrace "fructifying boredom" and shut off those pesky devices at least for while.

Read More