How do you take time out of your daily routine?
Do you manage to do it daily? Weekly? Monthly? Or once a year on your holiday?
What is it that helps you to detach your mind from your immediate surroundings and dream big?
Going on a walk? Meditating? Listening to music? Being in a new environment?
One of the things that has made a huge difference to me (and I am sure a similar difference to countless people) is travel. Particularly the opportunity to stay longer term in another country- in my case so far Japan (the longest, at 2 years), Romania, Spain and now Germany. The reason why being somewhere long-term matters to me is that, given time, you develop a better understanding of the differences between the culture you are currently experiencing and the one that you left behind. For example, when I first got to Japan, minus a few unusual things, I found a lot of things pretty familiar to England, where I grew up. Given time, however, I realized that while things on the surface might be similar, that actually the underlying reasons and justifications were in some ways quite different. I began to understand that what is ‘normal’ to me is not universally normal.
It is very easy to get into a routine even if your life is pretty exciting. Something can become the ‘new normal’ very quickly. Sometimes doing things as simple as taking a different route home from the station, reading a book that you wouldn’t normally pick up, or striking up a random conversation with a stranger can be enough to free your mind from the strictures of your own normal and give you the courage to start creating some magic again.
Whatever works for you- and it might just be getting out of your office and going for a walk now and again- giving your mind a rest can reap benefits for both your creativity and productivity. You owe it to yourself to find what it is that lets you reset things for yourself and gives you a new perspective.
We are all busy- and we all feel that we can’t afford to take too much time away from the things that are most important to us. But sometimes doing so is the best action we could take.
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