“Our senses are indeed our doors and windows on this world, in a very real sense [they are] the key to the unlocking of meaning and the wellspring of creativity.”
Jean Houston
First of all: WELCOME to your Weekly Wonders, all our new members! These emails will land in your inbox every Sunday evening, so you can have the prompts fresh at the front of your mind as you go about your week. It really helps when it comes to the regularity and development of your creative thinking ⚡️
Out theme for April has been “Creativity and the Senses” - we've had taste, smell and hearing so far (you can read these in the Membership Area), and today it's all about our SIGHT.
But for those newer members, here's a brief intro to the theme.
By exploring and using all our senses, whether that’s alone or in combination, new parts of our brain ignite. Those little sparks discover dark corners and illuminate what’s there. Creativity is then borne from these adventures!
So this month, we’ve been looking at each of the senses in turn. Taking time to think about each one individually and attempt to isolate them in our experiences, noticing what helps to spark creative thinking within us, and seeing if we can utilise our senses more.
“Creativity is a wild mind, and a disciplined eye.”
I love this quote. Be disciplined with what you see - guiding it and steering it in unusual directions on purpose - but what you take from that is thoughts which should be WILD!
Out of the box thinking, seeing the world with fresh eyes - that’s how you get to the best creative thinking!
Sight is perhaps the sense which we tend to rely on the most. When I suggest a ‘wonder walk’ it is presumed I am talking about what you can see (which I am, but not exclusively, as we’ve found out in past weeks - the other senses are equally impressive when it comes to sparking creative thoughts).
But because sight is the sense we opt for first, it means we have to make more of an effort to use it differently.
So I could say ‘the usual’: “Go and NOTICE your surroundings”. And if you’ve not done this as an exercise yet, I’d definitely encourage you to, and think about this statement while you do:
“Looking is more than seeing; but noticing is more than looking.”
If we have healthy eyes, we can all ‘see’. If we focus on something, that is when we ‘look’. But when we start asking questions of that something, really looking intently at it and being CURIOUS, that is when we are ‘noticing’.
But that seems a bit too ‘basic’ for this email - I feel like you’re more advanced in your wonder journey than that! You’re too special for me to just give you the prompts I give everybody! 😉
So let’s dive deeper into our VISION!
Here goes with this week’s prompts:
Creative Thinking Prompts (w/c 22 April 2024)
Be a tourist! See your ‘usual’ spaces as if you’d never been there before!
Go people watching. Sit somewhere busy - in a cafe next to a busy street, or on a bench at a train station - and instead of ‘head in your phone or laptop’, just watch the people passing by, and ask yourself questions about them!
Visualise a memory, with your eyes closed, and ‘see’ all the details - e.g. a room from your childhood, a person from the past (if it’s not too painful), a favourite place to visit. Travel the path or create a path with your eyes, noticing and ‘seeing’ all the tiny things which make up that whole memory.
Experience the world upside down! Do a cartwheel! Or, just sit on your sofa the wrong way up! Be like a kid. Giggle. See how it changes your view of the space around you! Literally, see the world from a different perspective.
Think about how the visual accumulation of your surroundings makes you feel. In other words, how does your environment affect your creativity? Or how does it affect what you’re doing at the time, be that working or on holiday (or anything in between!). Think about what makes you feel the most creative? A minimal, tidy and neat place? Or something with lots of inspiration, ‘things’ and images etc? We are all different, and our spaces should be too. But be aware that what we have in our ‘visual surroundings’ impacts us creatively.
Don’t see an object - see the space around it. Ask yourself how it takes up the space - is it solid, does it cast a shadow, or is it semi-transparent and light passes through it? How does it affect what’s around it, Does it hide things? Does it make the space feel larger or smaller? If you want, try drawing the object by only drawing the spaces around it! It’s like we’re forcing our eyes to see what we don’t usually see.
So remember:
“Vision is the art of seeing the invisible.”
Jonathan Swift
So this week, challenge your sight - question what you see, and that will automatically contribute to developing your creative thinking skills.
P.S. This ‘chin’ is my daughter's - she did a whole video of different ‘chin characters’. So much fun can be had with a (washable!) set of pens, a chin, and a different perspective! 🤪
“Wonder makes us more creative and more desirous of studying the world around us. It makes us humble, less materialistic, more generous, and better community members… Wonder makes us less stressed and feel like we have more time… Wonder quite simply makes us want to be better, more tolerant people.”(Parker, 2023)
