Free Your Mind for Creativity

(mouse clicking) Headspace Studios. (soft music) Hi, it's Andy here and welcome to Radio Headspace and to Thursday morning. So I don't know if you are engaged at the moment in learning any particular kind of skill. I know a lot of people this year especially, I feel like more and more people are taking up hobbies, taking up new activities in the absence of being able to do a lot of the things that we were able to do pre pandemic, that during this time, a lot of people have taking up new things. I was chatting to a friend of mine who has been learning to play the piano and he started off just by learning with his son. And you know, over time he became more interested in it and he's been doing it over the last sort of nine months or so. He was doing it quite routinely, and he was, I think he was enjoying it actually. And then he said he kind of hit a bit of a plateau where, I don't know, maybe he lost interest, maybe he just didn't feel so motivated, so inspired. And he was talking to a musician who said, look, right now, you're too focused on the technical aspect of it. You're kind of in learning mode, in skill mode. You're trying to focus on getting better. When you hit these plateaus like this, it's actually really important to let go of that and to focus more on the creative, sort of focus more on the flow, maybe even just play for yourself, not trying to play someone else's tune, someone else's music. Just play your own music, make it up as you go along. And in doing that, in tapping into that sort of creative side of things, it allows us to, yeah, sort of move past those plateaus. And of course we'll have to come back to the technical bit at some point but it allows us to continue on and kind of talk about that from a training the mind point of view. You know, it's really important to have reliable, authentic sort of knowledge and instructions and guidance and everything else. And there's a time and a place for listening to that, to reading books and studying it and everything else. But there comes a time as well where you kind of have to let go of that stuff as well so that you can actually sit and experience it and allow the mind to express itself in all of its many different ways as many unique ways that won't necessarily always fit that tight box of instructions. So when you sit in your meditation, assuming that you do meditate, I know not everyone who listens to Radio Headspace meditates, but I think it's really important to always have in mind that framework of instruction, of technique, but always allowing the mind to express itself freely. There's a creative kind of element to that....