Omnidimensional: Lexicon

Happy Lexicon Thursday! Life happens all around us. Seen and unseen. Spiritual and in the flesh and soil. And we experience it all through different perspectives in different seasons of life. Our lives are omnidimensional. Here's a bite of another chapter of my forthcoming book: A Lexicon of Awesome.

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Do your kids have ideas? Like, dozens of ideas? Per day? My kids have a million. Ideas about their future vocation; inventions waiting to come to life; adventures that need to take shape tonight; parties that need to be hopping; games that haven’t been created yet; foods that would taste great if applesauce were involved; ways God could reveal Himself to us on a hike in the forest. An endless multitude of ideas.

As a dad I have the honor of nurturing these lightning strikes. I get to foster space and time and talents, omnidimensional elements of discovery. I get to speak both the gritty reality, “You’re not quite ready for that yet,” all the while saying, “You’ll never be ready if you don’t practice and discover and research and fail and get back up.” Multi-directional love through guidance.

Encourage, yet reign in.

Challenge and invite.

Chisel off the rough edges, then polish the talents and abilities and divine gifts.

Prepare for doomsday while helping build bridges to all those others.

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Keep an eye out for A Lexicon of Awesome: the melancholic's journey to a better world of divine words in the fall of 2020.

Your Curiosity Quotient

Among other things, the Reticular Activating System in our brain filters through our activated senses and is highly receptive to new, novel and curious stimuli. It's what puts us on alert when the sound of a bear crashes through the woods and draws near. Or stirs our stomach with the unexpected aroma of hot blueberry muffins in the morning.

In particular, when our RAS is stress free it's available to seek new sensations. I love that this particular aspect of our biological design arouses our curiosity at all the new sights and sounds and smells around us.

But what does the RAS have to do with being creative? How does the blessing of the RAS impact our creative process?

It unlocks new creative spaces right where we're at.

When creatives are able to move past or even press pause on the fear of failure or the stress of impressing a particular group or any other stress clouding our hearts, minds and souls, well, our curiosity quotient rises exponentially. When we're curious, we're able to receive and engage the fruit of our curiosity. We're receptive to new sounds for new ideas. Colors and smells trigger creative flow. Our mindset shifts to open interest and away from closed confusion.

Remember the movie August Rush? Yeah, I'm pretty sure my wife and I may have been the only ones to see it, but the main character, August, demonstrates the RAS in action, both in stress and in curiosity. It's a great visual.

So what now?

Try finding space to free yourself from your stress for one hour each day this week. Take a walk, pray, ride, have a meal and read a book - whatever creates healthy headspace, do that and write down one new idea each time.

Acknowledge what's stressing you out and create three healthy and productive options for actively addressing each particular stressor.

You can do this! Let's create some space and get curious!

Fascinated

"To this day, I'm fascinated by songwriting," said Jim Adkins of Jimmy Eat World.

The question is, what fascinates you? And how are you engaging it?

No doubt not every leg of the journey, project or job will be utterly fascinating. I'm not sure our minds and hearts could handle being captivated by everything all the time. But that's not the issue for most of us, is it? Most of us stop being curious along the way. We lose childlike fascination with our own projects. We drift away from the supernatural pull that once motivated us. We get lost in the fog of other ideas and slowly release what once held our attention firmly.

Then what do we do? Quit? Move on? Dive in deeper? Refocus?

Q. Do you remember what most fascinated you about writing, forming, shaping, designing etc? Be specific.

Q. Have you really become fascinated with another creative pursuit, or are you simply disillusioned with where your current journey has taken you?

Q. What have you been doing to actively reengage the wonder, curiosity and fascination with your creative work here and now?