looking for ideas

Tags

brain, creative, creative thoughts, dopamine, ideas, thoughts, writing

Writing has been hard lately so as I sit and stare at both the screen and the keyboard I can’t help but wonder where do ideas come from, what makes them and where can I get them?

There seems to be a misconception that there are creative and non-creative people in the world. The one group have this unexplained power to see the world from a slightly different angle and create things that weren’t there before, the others only standing by in awe.  But that is not true, everyone can be creative – if they let themselves.

Although scientists have been trying to figure out how ideas are made inside our brain they haven’t really been able to figure out too much. They know that dopamine is a main contributor to the process and that certain areas of the brain tend to be more active than others, but they also know that being intelligent and being creative are not necessarily linked, so no excuses if you were bad in school.

The chemical dopamine is vital for people to actually get up and do things. Without this neurotransmitter we would all feel hungry, but not do anything about it and possibly starve to death.  But dopamine has been proven to also play a vital role when it comes to learning and remembering things, moving our body and naughty thoughts. This is possibly the reason why opiates (high levels of dopamine) are so highly addictive, not only do they make us feel fantastic but we seem to be able to do things better, faster and have wonderfully creative ideas.

A healthier way to help the flow of dopamine in your brain is listening to music. Not only does our favourite song make us emotional, kick start our memories or inspire us to jump around the living room as if we were a possessed prima ballerina but it also increases the levels of dopamine produced, encouraging our bodies and minds to do and feel things.

Of course there are foods that can help us along too. Sunflower seeds, whole grain and foods high in antioxidants like berries, tomatoes, broccoli and garlic (maybe not all at the same time) are perfect but ripe bananas seem to be the best. And while caffeine can give you a quick push, it doesn’t last long. And again (and I hate having to type this as lazy as I am) exercise seems to help too.

When all of that fails, and you still have no ideas, there is the simple trick of bringing your seven-year-old-self out to play. All children are incredibly creative and like anything else creativity needs practice. What we did so instinctively as kids we forget as adults. We stop picking up sticks and turning them into wands and swords, we don’t linger and watch as a spider spins her web or stand in awe as a butterfly opens up her wings and flies away. As adults a box is a box, not a time-machine or a typewriter or a hat, for a child a box is something of endless possibilities. And don’t be afraid to try something and fail, if it doesn’t work try again, maybe a little different and who knows what you will discover. After all children constantly fail at things but they change the rules and discover new possibilities, never lost for ideas and full of surprises.

So now I have to put on a CD,  eat a banana, do a few jumping jacks and turn my cereal box into shoes so that I can come up with ideas of how to fill my writing quota for the day.

looking for words

dials, knobs, switches and habits

Tags

brain, choices, dials, everyday habits, french toast, habits, knobs, psychology, quotes, switches, thoughts, washing machine, washing mashine

While I was loading my washing machine early this morning I couldn’t help but notice that I never really move the dial. I nearly always use the same setting, never really thinking about I am doing and as I stared at all the different settings from eco over super, wool and dedicates, rinse and spin I couldn’t help but wonder about choices and habits.

A little later I deciding to have a rare treat, because my bread  was a little hard, I made myself french toast for breakfast, and I used the front left hob. There are four perfectly fine working hobs, two front, two back , but I never even consider changing it up, with a flick of switch a turn of a knob I used the same hob I always do.

As my toast turned golden I wondered why it was that we all have our ways of doing things and tend to stick to them no matter what. We tend to drive the same routes, buy the same brands, have the same routines without thinking, just running on autopilot. But why is that?

Most of us don’t realize that it more than 40% of what we do every day isn’t done through conscious thought at all but are actually habits. Every habit is formed through three elements: the cue, (the thing that triggers it), the routine or behavior (the habit itself) and the reward. This is the case in both everyday habits, like brushing your teeth,and bad habits, like those late night snacks.

When we make decisions the thoughts occur in our pre-frontal cortex, the part of the brain that sits right behind our forehead,. But when we form habits, we no longer need to think, we just act automatically,  so it moves into the basal ganglia, which is right in the middle of our skull and the oldest part of our brains.

This means that we no longer need to go to long though processes and our brain is freed up to do think about other things. In essence this is a great as otherwise we would be overwhelmed with choices every second of the day. And if I just let myself do what I do without having to think about turning knobs and flicking switches I am rewarded with clean washing, yummy food and my mind is free to wander.

Creativity is a habit, and the best creativity is the result of good work habits.

American dancer and choreographer: Twyla Tharp

 

 

taking a break

Tags

brain, brain functions, breaks, health, life stress, mental health issues, mental-health, miscellaneous, random, stress, stress research, well-being, work stress

It’s only been six weeks since the Christmas holidays but I need a break. I find myself yearning for a few lie ins, yearning for time to myself, visions of beaches flitting across my mind and daydreaming of running away and leaving my day-to-day behind.

Luckily for me next week is reading week, breaking up the term into two and giving me a week to catch up on corrections and de-stress for a few days. However I may only be swapping work-stress for leisure -stress as I will be off to Germany for a few days on Friday.

But even though I will be exchanging running from class to class to running from relative to relative and entertaining students to entertaining my one-and-a-half-year old nephew, I am removing myself from my daily routine, distracting myself from my work-life stress.

And while I still will be  daydreaming about a sunny isle and a cocktail with and umbrella in it, I am giving my mind a much needed break from dealing with my every-day stress. Funnily enough this is not only important for our well-being but for how we cope with stress.

Research has shown that our brain functions better when we allow it to relax after work. This is down to something called hormesis, a term used to describe the correlation inducing stress and then allowing an adequate time to relax. In sport this means you workout, put stress on your muscles followed by a period of rest, allowing your muscle to grow and strengthen.

The same thing applies to our brains. Studies have shown that neurons, those tiny building blocks that make up our nervous system, become more resistant if we apply the same idea. Periods of stress followed by periods of rest allow them to strengthen and help them ward of diseases like epilepsy, migraines and even dementia. Interestingly the thing that puts stress on neurons is something we do anyway, to more or less success, THINKING.

But to encourage the hardiness we need we also need to take breaks. Of course the most desired way of doing so is to pack a bag and fly away but since we don’t have enough possibilities to do so we are often left with more  affordable mini-break options. Sleep is one of them, since when we wander off into dreamland our brain can relax and recharge, but even reading a book, watching a film or investing time in our chosen hobby gives  the brain enough distraction from stress and strengths our nervous system. We just need to remember to keep taking those all important breaks.
So with Friday only two sleeps away I will just hold on to my tea-breaks for now and hope that my week long break will be enough to gear me up for the rest of the semester. With the words of the Roman poet Ovid

Take rest; a field that has rested gives a bountiful crop.

work and play

Tags

brain, celebrate, dance, Germany, labour day, may day, maypole, play, rest, stress, Tanz in den Mai, traditions, work

On the first of May Germany celebrates International Workers’ Day, funnily enough by staying home and not working at all. But the much nicer tradition the busy German worker bees observe is “Der Tanz in den Mai” (The Dance into May).

On the eve of May first there are parties everywhere and people dance around bonfires, drink copious amounts of alcohol and welcome the warmer time of year back into the world. This pagan festival is also where the raising and dancing around the maypole comes from. There is also another lovely tradition which allows young virile men to vandalize the woods and neighbourhood gardens, by digging up small birch trees and then planting them outside the window of their beloved.

As this week has been quite busy for me and although I stayed at home on said day it was to work and not play, a proper labour day. And every time I look out my window no lovely little birch-tree reminds me that I am loved, not even a branch telling me I’m liked. Sadly playing has to wait for a while, I even had to move my flight to Hamburg from yesterday to Saturday morning, and work is the what I have to do from morn till night. But as I sit at my desk and pretend to be a grown-up I can’t help my mind from straying and wanting to bunk off.

We all know that it is important to take a break from work and recharge our batteries, but few of us really understand why. The brain is a muscle and like any muscle it needs to work out (think/stress) to get stronger but it also needs rest to be able to grow (sleep/breaks). An interesting study even shows that a brain that is put under periods of stress with adequate times of rest in between seems to be better at fighting off dementia, epilepsy and migraines.

But what is adequate rest? The right amount of sleep is really important, however a vacation for more than a week helps the brain forget about the daily stress and relax even better. But a good distraction like an engaging book, an entertaining film or a challenging hobby can give our brains the rest we need to be able to let our minds deal with work. Even as little as five minutes away from the desk, doing something completely different, helps the brain refocus and see new ways of doing things, mini-vacations to de-stress if you will. That is why those daily coffee-breaks are so all important, not just for all the smokers out there but for everyone.

As I am under time-pressure and my deadline is looming I can’t afford to kick-back and take time to sit and read for hours and escape into the fictional world of books, or flit down to the cinema and watch a film and flying off to Germany is more of a family visit than a much needed Holiday. Even my sleep time has been reduced down to the maximum minimum. But I do litter my day with spontaneous breaks in which I dance to music in my living room, read a short magazine article while drinking a cup of tea or make a quick moany phone-call to a friend to vent.

So back to work I go, hi-ho, and play will have to wait for another day, or at least till my desire for tea drives me to the kettle or a good song on the CD makes it impossible for my feet to stay still.

original thought

Tags

antioxidants, ‘The Uninspired Chronicles’, blog, brain, children, creative, exercise, food, health, ideas, random, science, thoughts, writing

For the first time since I started this blog I have no idea what to write about. As I sit and stare at both the screen and the keyboard I can’t help but wonder where do ideas come from, what makes them and where can I get them?

There seems to be a misconception that there are creative and non-creative people in the world. The one group have this unexplained power to see the world from a slightly different angle and create things that weren’t there before, the others only standing by in awe.  But that is not true, everyone can be creative if they let themselves.

Although scientists have been trying to figure out how ideas are made inside our brain they haven’t really been able to figure out too much. They know that dopamine is a main contributor to the process and that certain areas of the brain tend to be more active than others, but they also know that being intelligent and being creative are not necessarily linked, so no excuses if you were bad in school.

The chemical dopamine is vital for people to actually get up and do things. Without this neurotransmitter we would all feel hungry, but not do anything about it and possibly starve to death.  But Dopamine has been proven to also play a vital role when it comes to learning and remembering things, moving our body and naughty thoughts. This is possibly the reason why opiates (high levels of dopamine) are so highly addictive, not only do they make us feel fantastic but we seem to be able to do things better, faster and have wonderfully creative ideas.

A healthier way to help the flow of dopamine in your brain is listening to music. Not only does our favourite song make us emotional, kick start our memories or inspire us to jump around the living room as if we were a possessed prima ballerina but it also increases the levels of dopamine produced, encouraging our bodies and minds to do and feel things.

Of course there are foods that can help us along too. Sunflower seeds, whole grain and foods high in antioxidants like berries, tomatoes, broccoli and garlic (maybe not all at the same time) are perfect but ripe bananas seem to be the best. Caffeine can give us a quick push but it doesn’t last long. And again (and I hate having to type this as lazy as I am) exercise seems to help too.

When all of that fails, and you still have no ideas, there is the simple trick of bringing your seven-year-old-self out to play. All children are incredibly creative and like anything else creativity needs practice. What we did so instinctively as kids we forget as adults. We stop picking up sticks and turning them into wands and swords, we don’t linger and watch as a spider spins her web or stand in awe as a butterfly opens up her wings and flies away. As adults a box is a box, not a time-machine or a typewriter or a hat, for a child a box is something of endless possibilities. And don’t be afraid to try something and fail, if it doesn’t work try again, maybe a little different and who knows what you will discover. After all children constantly fail at things but they change the rules and discover new possibilities, never lost for ideas and full of surprises.

So now I have to put on a CD,  eat a banana, do a few jumping jacks and turn my cereal box into shoes so that I can come up with ideas of how to fill my day.

To read more on how others try and inspire themselves check out  ‘The Uninspired Chronicles’

Music makes us happy

It takes a long time to become young

Lives of the brain