Feb 16, 2023
A mind is sort of like a balloon. At first it's stiff and impossible to blow up (parents with little kids know what I'm talking about) but with a little extra it stretches and grows, never to return back to its tiny, out-of-the-package, shape. A mind stretched by new ideas, new experiences and new perspectives will never go back to its original dimensions. In this episode I share my experiences about feeling stale and stuck, how stretching my mind with new experiences is the antidote to that, and several easy ways you can keep growing and evolving.
Tamara’s Everyday Innovator style is Risk Taker Experiential. What’s yours?
Sticky Inspiration: A streched mind is forever changed
Lesson & Action: Small actions that stretch your mind can add up to big changes. Get lost, try a new restaurant, talk to a new person, travel, explore, and seek out differing opinions.
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Raw Podcast Transcripts:
Hey. Hey, Everyday Innovators across the globe. Tamara here, your host, creator of the Innovation Quotient Edge Assessment, author of the books. Innovation is Everybody's Business and Think Sideways. I'm a risk taker, experiential, everyday innovator, and a lover of nehi socks. Welcome to the show. Today we are gonna be talking about your brain.
I know. Is there anything sexier than that? No, I don't think so. Actually, the thing specifically that I wanna talk about today is how when you stretch your mind, it never goes back to what it was. In fact, there's this great quote by Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. That says exactly that. It says, A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimens.
Isn't that cool? So think about that for a second in your work and life and about being an everyday innovator. If we wanna keep growing and evolving and having those innovative ideas and being able to communicate innovation in a way that moves us forward, we need to keep growing and stretching our mind.
I think sometimes when we feel stale or stuck, , it's because we haven't stretched ourselves in a while. I know for me personally, that is very, very true. I tend to not do as well when I get stuck in routines and habits without any, anything new or any variables, any surprises coming in. Now, here's the thing with habits, routines, and repetition.
I think they can be really good for you. They make us efficient. I think they give us a sense of security, of knowing. I think without that we have too much uncertainty in our world. So we need a little, a baseline of habits and routines and repetition so that we're not always thinking about how to do the things we know how to do or, or how to schedule our day in a way that's gonna work for us.
We got that covered and that's good, but it can also be. Bad. I think it's what ends up leaving us lacking or is stuck in the mundane or maybe even feeling listless. So we wanna keep stretching and growing our brains like Oliver Wendell Holmes said, so that it doesn't go back to its old dimensions, so that we keep learning and growing and evolving and changing as life around us changes.
I think of it a little bit like a rubber band. Our brains are a little bit like rubber bands. Here's how, so, you know, when you pull a rubber band out, um, to go first use it and it's really stiff and it's got like a certain size to it, but then you stretch it a little bit and you stretch it a little bit, and over time it becomes really loose and it never goes back to that original resistance, that original size or I guess strength.
I don't know what the language is, but you know what I mean. Well, I think our brains are like that too, right? We stretch it and we stretch it like a rubber band, and over time, right, it, it gets stretched out and it never goes back to what it was. Here's another funny analogy that I just thought of. I don't know if this works go with me, but it's like blowing up a balloon.
if you have kids, you know what I'm talking about and how annoying it is. And that first, like you go to blow it up and that first blow, you're like, huh. And it's so tight and the balloon is so small and you're like, this is never gonna work. And then with a little more effort and a little more effort, the, you know, balloon starts to stretch and grow.
And it never goes back to that original, annoying, frustrating size than it was when you pulled it out of the bag. All right, I'm done with analogies now I think. I'm not sure how all those worked, but you get the point. , a mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimension.
So we've gotta keep stretching and we've gotta keep growing. And what I have found, what I think is really exciting about that, is when we stretch our minds, when we make a an intentional effort to grow in one area, it impacts everything else as. So you may grow and evolve in one part of your life, but that's gonna impact everything else.
So maybe you grow and evolve through travel, and that's awesome. But travel, as you know, anyone who's traveled, knows, travel, doesn't just stay with travel, travel goes with you. And in fact, there's another great, great quote that I love that I wanna pull up. I'm full of quotes today by F Scott Fitzgerald.
This is one of my favorites. It says, . It's a funny thing coming home. Nothing changes. Everything looks the same, feels the same, even smells the same. You realize what's changed is you. I think that's so true. I love that quote. Our minds need to stretch and evolve and grow, or we get stuck. We get stale, we get trapped in mundane.
If you're feeling that way, it could simply. that you've got a little too much repetition and a little too much routine in your life and it's time to break free a little bit and get some new experiences. So recently, um, my man and I decided that we were just going to, we were gonna go do like a little mini road trip for 24 hours.
Nothing fancy, nothing big, but we found this super cool container like shipping container. They turned into an Airbnb in Taos, New Mexico, and that's not far from where we live. So we decided to go there for the night. , what a cool new experience. We're being stretched by going to this new contain experience in this place that I hadn't really explored before.
I'd spent a lot of time in Taos before in this container, so that's a whole new way to be in. It's, I gotta tell you, if you go to my Instagram account, you'll see some photos from it. It was so cool. But the other thing that we did, which was so much fun, is we decided to sign up for an. Photography class, so great class, and if I can find the link to it, I'll put it in the show notes.
I, I get nothing for it. I'm not a sponsor. I just, it had a lot of great video lessons. Some of it were technical, some of it weren't more about angles and lighting, and it was just, Super cool. So we decided we would take this class, this iPhone photography class. So we, we got to the air and b, Airbnb and we watched some videos.
Then we went out and took some photos, we watched some more videos. We went out and took more photos, right? And the next day we kind of rinse and repeat. We did the same. And it was so much fun to learn a new thing. Now, are either of us gonna be iPhone photography experts or get paid to be photographers?
No, that's not in our wheelhouse. It's not what we. , but that whole experience of traveling, of staying in this kind of funky little place, this contain shipping container that they turned into a little apartment of taking this iPhone class. It just stretched our minds. It just so much, you can probably hear it in my voice.
I absolutely loved, loved the experience and, but that came back with. and it just, it gave me some new ideas. It gave me some new insights. It gave me a renewed sense of energy because I was growing and I was evolving, and it wasn't even something specific that I took away and thought, oh, I learned this in my iPhone class.
Now I'm gonna apply this over here in my podcast. It wasn't even that specific. It was just the energy and the growth that I felt from doing that translated into everything. It's actually why I love TikTok, and I know, right? I shouldn't be on here talking about go spend hours on social media, wasting your time away.
But you know what? Sometimes when I scroll through TikTok, I find things that I just would've never known about before, that I would've never considered before. And I love it. Now I gotta manage myself. What TikTok, cuz. I could go down a rabbit hole or two on TikTok, but sometimes I just find things that surprise me and delight me and then I take that knowledge and I apply it somewhere else.
So I think there's a lot out there that we can explore and experience to help us continue to, to stretch our minds because a stretched mine is always growing a stretched mine is never. , it's never in the same place. It's never bored because it's always growing and stretching. And in fact, here's where kind of we, let's move into from the sticky inspiration.
That's what all that was. You'll see the little sticky note going out with this podcast due with my drawing on it. But let's move that over to the lesson and the activity. So here's the interesting thing. Um, neuroscience shows that our. Have something called neuroplasticity. And what that means is our brains have the ability to grow and evolve.
So while our brains aren't technically a muscle in this way, it actually acts like one. So the more we exercise it, the more we stretch it, right? The stronger it gets, the less the weaker it gets. . And I think we can correlate that back to what I was saying earlier about, you know, when you stretch your mind, you're not stale, you're not stuck, you're not mundane or listless.
Both cuz your brain's growing and evolving and making new connections and learning new things. And you know, when I'm continually stretching, I am more inspired, I'm more innovative. Everything seems to flow more. when I'm stuck, when I'm not leveraging that neuroplasticity that my brain has, I feel it. Do you feel it?
I definitely feel it. Now, here's the thing, we can't always travel the world, and maybe it's not in our budget or time. Maybe we have kids. Maybe we have a demanding job and we certainly don't wanna spend all our time. Watching other people travel the world on Instagram now, great. You get some great ideas from it, but that's not the only place you wanna do it.
But there's a million ways that you can stretch and grow and evolve without having to leave your backyard or maybe traveling a few steps out. So let's talk about those so that we can continually be those stretched minds, be those everyday innovator. Okay, so number one is get lost. So have you ever noticed when you are in a new city, let's say you've rented a car, you're traveling somewhere, maybe it's for work and you don't know where you are, and your brain goes into create a problem solving mode, it's like, okay, there's that gas station over there, the sun is sitting over there.
That means that's west and the highway numbers are going up, so that means I'm going in the right direction. Right? Our brains actually kick into kind of a more creative problem solving gear, getting lost. is like a lot of little new experiences in your brain. So take a new path to work. Um, walk the dog in a different direction and see new things and notice new things in your neighborhood that you didn't notice before.
Go in a different direction. Getting lost actually helps us stretch and grow. The other thing we can do is try a new restaurant or a new recipe. . I totally get stuck in ruts when it comes to restaurants because you know what? I find my favorites and then I just keep going to them. So a little tradition isn't bad, but venture out every now and again.
Try a new restaurant, try a new dish at the restaurant you love. Try a new recipe. Anything that gets us, again, stretching our brains and experiencing new things. Do a little close in travel. , do an Airbnb for a night somewhere else. Go to a hotel down the street, go take a road trip, whatever it is. But there's a lot of places in where most of us live.
I'd say I actually, I'd venture to say all of us have little mini road trips that we could do that would be really energizing and inspiring, even if it's just for one night. Learn a new skill, learning a new skill. It can be really powerful in stretching the brain and never going back. And here's the thing, you gotta learn the new skill for the experience of the learning, not because you're gonna become an expert at it.
So my two right now are, as the one I mentioned, iPhone photography. I happen to love taking pictures, so there's a little bit pardon of me that wants to be good at that, but I'm loving the experience of trying it out, of going out and taking photos and seeing what worked and what didn't work. It's so much fun to put that skill into motion.
And then the second one I've picked up is mixed media art. You know, where you use like paint, but also you cut out things from pictures and put 'em together. It's just like a lot of different materials. I'm not good . I'm not gonna pretend that I'm mildly good, but I love the experience of it and it makes my brain work in a totally different way.
I mean, most of the time. I'm talking or I'm writing, I'm not creating in that way. So this stretches me in whole different ways I hadn't experienced before. So find a skill, find something that you can do. You can pull up stuff on YouTube, on Pinterest, on TikTok. I mean, there is, there is no shortage. of things for you to learn for how to, so just type in how to be a bird watcher, right?
Um, how to make cheese, how to create a mixed media art, how to learn iPhone, photography, um, how to make coffee. I mean, everything is out there, but that learning, that new skill, if I could say, do one thing right now, it would be that because you don't need a lot of time, you don't even need money. Most of the time you don't even need new materials, but it'll stretch, stretch your brain in a whole different.
The other thing you know that you could do too is, I was just thinking about this, is you could ask questions you've never asked. So you know, I'm a big believer in questions and is answers out. So how about instead ask different questions. If you ask different questions, you'll get different thinking, different conversations, different ideas, and you'll be stretched by that.
One of my favorite things to do is to talk to people I know about their opinions or things that they. , let me back up and explain this one. I find often that we have people in our lives that we think we know well or that are continual parts of our lives, but we've never actually spent the time to ask them a lot of questions and dig under the surface of who they are.
We just kind of wait for them to tell us, and oftentimes people don't, and I find my brain is so stretched by. instead of even responding to people, just asking questions of who they are, what they love, why they believe, what they believe, and I don't have to agree or disagree. It's not even about that.
It's just listening to someone with a different opinion or perspective or experience. Share it from their view. Your mind is stretched. You can't help it. It's such a powerful thing to do. So this is something you could do with your spouse, with your kids. With colleagues that you work with all the time, with aunts and uncles, with, um, your clients.
I mean, anyone in your life you can do this with. , but that'll stretch your brain talking to someone you know about something different. And if you wanna stretch, you really wanna stretch, talk to somebody different that you don't know, you can do that as well. So there's a lot of different ways that you can stretch and grow your brain and be that rubber band that just expands and expands.
And I think it's really magical actually, because it is an instant relief to boredom, to the drudgery, to the mundane. It's just getting out there. Gathering new experiences because as Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr said, A mind that is stretched by new experience can never go back to its old dimensions. I think that's pretty powerful.
It is so easy to be an Everyday Innovator and to see those opportunities and find the solutions that make your life easier and better to put those things out there that really work and get you moving forward. when you are constantly stretching and growing. So avoid getting stuck in the rut. Be that mind that is forever stretching and never going back with that.
Tamara out.