Widening your world

by Celeste Lindell of Average Jane

Today I had the good fortune to see a presentation on brainstorming by Sam Harrison as part of a creativity symposium at work. He shared all kinds of valuable tips about encouraging the creative process, but one section resonated for me as particularly applicable in midlife.

He asked us three questions with a similar theme:

  • How are you widening your world in your discipline?
  • What are you doing to learn more about people older or younger than you?
  • What are you doing to widen your world in terms of the arts?

The idea was to take a couple of minutes and answer them with some examples.

I did pretty well with the first one. I widen my world within my discipline of social media by constantly reading what other people in my field have to say online. I also make a special point of meeting as many of those people face-to-face as I can.

When it comes to learning more about younger and older people, I have the older people covered pretty well in my family and through volunteer work. The younger people I interact with start with my niece and nephew, and include people younger than I am in my social groups and at work.

I initially thought fell down on the arts a bit, but then I realized that I’m keeping up with the latest hard rock bands pretty well. I also find a lot of new graphic artists and designers via blogs. I guess I’m doing an okay job of it, but there’s always room for improvement.

Midlife can easily be a time when we start narrowing our world. We begin to get secure in what we like and dislike and who we are and are not. It can be tempting to cover those discoveries with a coat of shellac and put them up on permanent display.

The challenge is to continue to learn new things, meet new people and discover new ways to think and feel.

So how are you widening your world?

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  • http://www.womenbloom.com/blog/ Allison

    Eggscellent questions. Hmmm, I was just thinking about this tonight. I’m feeling a bit stifled these days on the personal side of things and was pondering as I walked the dog how I could perk things up. I realized as I was thinking of things like going to some Spanish meet ups to practice and meet some new people that a little voice in my head was whispering how much trouble that would be. QUELLE HORREUR!! I’m gettin old and stuffy! ACKKK!

    I shall use these as a guideline to silence those pesky things.

  • http://stonyriverfarm.blogspot.com Susan

    You’re right (eek) it IS almost too easy to let the world shrink down to a smaller and smaller comfort zone. I was always trying to pull my mother out of her cocoon, and now can see myself heading the same way.

    But, I did recently start keeping a daily journal (a long-promised resolution never kept) by challenging myself to write some kind of -poem- about the day that had passed. I chose that because I just don’t get poetry, especially the modern stuff, though I’m surrounded by poet friends and am trying to learn to like it, and to do it.

    Hmm. Ok, tomorrow morningn I’ll try something else new for me, and see what happens. Like clean the house. (EEK again!)

    Thanks for a great post!

  • http://phhhst.blogspot.com/ phhhst

    Good question! Hmm. I’d say teaching high school keeps me abreast of what’s going on with teens – not to mention the two of my own who continually try to run our home. Second, my bookclub, which has mostly middle aged women, but with a very wide perspective base. Third – going online this year.

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