Is it time for a creative adventure?

A number of years ago I had the privilege of interviewing Elkhonon Goldberg. one of the world’s top neuropsychologists, a prolific writer, illustrious advisor to numerous projects and until recently Clinical Professor of Neurology at New York University School of Medicine. I was interviewing him for the Australian Financial Review about age-proofing the brain and staving off dementia, as well as maximising the brain’s capacity for creative thinking. I will always remember his advice for top brain function as you age: ‘Novelty and diversity, and more novelty’.

As I delved deeper into this arena in my working life over the next years, I saw a rising tide of serious research into what has come to be called ‘cognitive reserve’. Basically, this is the ability of your brain to deal with age-related change (or other damage) while still operating at a high level; it develops over your whole lifetime through education, doing complex or challenging activities and also ongoing social and intellectual interests. The reason that there is an increasing interest in cognitive reserve is because it can result in delaying or reducing the symptoms and impact of brain pathology including Alzheimer’s disease. This is a rich, fascinating topic and I’ll be devoting an entire post to it in the not too distant…

One activity I often talk about and have recommended to many people matches both Dr Goldberg’s advice and the research findings on cognitive reserve. I started decades ago (as part of work I was doing in creative thinking) promoting the idea of going on little ‘creative adventures’, excursions you take with your creative side. One of the best ways to kickstart your creativity or keep it in top running order is to do something different – explore a place or a topic or a musical genre you are not familiar with, talk to someone in a different field, read a book outside your usual fare.

Why not set aside some time (ideally) every week, 30 minutes or more if you can, to do something you haven’t done before. Some suggestions follow, but once you get the hang of it, you can easily dream up your own ideas. Not only will this encourage creativity and creative thinking capacity, but it also helps build brain connections that may well assist in keeping your brain in good shape as you age, preserving brain fitness. So it is a win-win, even if you don’t end up becoming the next cool musician, artist or writer.

(Oh, and it’s fun, really fun…) And as I wrote in my recent post on that subject, fun has many researched benefits as we age.

Here are some suggestions to start you off:

1. Take a drive or a walk with no destination…pick a road and go exploring: Just follow a whim, drive home a different way, take a picnic, stop and wander through a suburb or locale you’ve never visited before.. You can do this on public transport, too.
2. Listen to some music from a different culture: Find a genre you’re not familiar with, tune into a new radio stations, swap music ideas with a friend, borrow music from your local library.
3. Do a cooking class: Find a class in a cuisine you don’t normally cook.
4. Have a poetry afternoon tea: Invite your closest friends, and a couple of new ones – ask everyone to bring a copy of their favourite poem (and some cake).
5. Spend a whole day barefoot…whatever you have to do, do it without shoes. Indoors or out, formal or casual, no shoes allowed. If that’s too much, start with an hour.
6. Go to a free public talk. Listings are in metropolitan and local papers, just pick something that sounds interesting but is not your usual fare.
7. Grab a magnifying glass and wander round your garden looking at the plants and flowers and leaves. How does it change your perspective? Are there things you have never noticed before? Maybe you’d like to be an ant in your next life?
8. If you can’t or choose not to leave your house, put on some stirring music (perhaps something you wouldn’t normally pick) and conduct the imaginary orchestra. Easy and fun…
9. Go for a walk, ideally down a new path and notice just one thing – perhaps the colour yellow, or the feel of the breeze or the sound of your feet on the ground.
10. What games, crafts, art or music did you enjoy as a child? Pick one or two solo activities – finger painting, crochet, making a wooden box, banging a xylophone, whatever – and give it a go, just for the experience, no results needed.

Enjoy!