Clear Out the Mental Cobwebs
With a Creative Refresh
A long winter can stagnate the mind as much as the muscles. Refresh your brain with these creative exercises.
Spring flowers, spring showers, spring cleaning. Spring is a time of renewal. It’s an opportunity to stretch your limbs, clear your space and shake off the doldrums of winter for good (or at least another year). But as much as we focus on refreshing our spaces and bodies for the new season, we don’t spend nearly enough time refreshing our minds, and creative exercises are a great way to do that.
Read on for a few ideas to give your grey matter a jumpstart this spring.
Go for a photowalk
You probably think you know your neighborhood pretty well, but that’s because you usually explore it while doing the same routine activities. Walk the dog. Go to work. Grab groceries. But what if you gave yourself a new reason to be out in your area? What new things might you see?
Before heading out, come up with five photo challenges. For example, "a picture of a friend," "something that made you gasp" or "capture a strong emotion." Get as wild as you want, then head out with the Galaxy S21 and don’t come back until you have a photo that satisfies each of your prompts.
Create for a community
Creating for the sake of creating forces you to be present and in the moment to better mine what’s on your mind. But your discipline can wane when you’re not getting feedback from others.
There are multiple benefits of creating for an audience. Feedback helps us see things from a different angle. A community can gently encourage you to stick to deadlines. Viewing others' work can lead you to make new connections between ideas. Join a weekly writing group, or download PENUP from Google Play or the Samsung Galaxy Store to join a massive online creative community, and let the inspiration begin.
Embrace boredom
Much of our creativity comes from moments when the brain isn’t actively occupied and can focus on tertiary information you’ve picked up throughout the day. When we’re not concentrating on something specific, our mental energy can be reassigned to sorting, processing and making sense of the odds and ends still bouncing around in our minds we were too busy to focus on previously. If you’ve ever felt like you have your best ideas in the shower, now you know why. Schedule daily down time to let your brain wander.
Hone a hobby
Allowing your mind to focus on nothing is good, but focusing your mind on something entirely new can stimulate it to work in different ways. Forcing yourself to think creatively in a way you normally don’t can spark new ideas.
For example, if you write all the time, doodling helps you imagine what things look like, instead of feel like. If you’re a photographer, sculpting forces you to think about a subject three-dimensionally. If you’re looking for a visual hobby, the Galaxy Tab S7 is a great tool for digital colouring books and a good place to start.
Get it out of your head
Sometimes creativity is as simple as taking what’s in your head and putting it on paper. Mindful journaling or daily doodling can force you to reconsider an idea as you transfer it from your brain to the reality of the page. Do it without any expectations or goals beyond freeing up room in your brain for other new thoughts and ideas, and you may be shocked at what you come up with.
Set aside 15 to 20 minutes every morning to doodle or write some daily pages. The S Pen on the Galaxy S21 Ultra or Galaxy Tab S7 offers the precision and depth of control you expect from ink or pencil in digital form.
Renew, refresh and rediscover your mental zen
Pick up the tools you need to start a creativity practice, and get your mental spring cleaning started right.
Galaxy Tab S8 | S8+ | S8 Ultra
Galaxy S22 Ultra
S Pen
