The best race car drivers, driving Ferraris, couldn’t go very fast if they were to find themselves stuck on the Santa Monica Freeway at rush hour on Friday afternoon.
The same principle applies to you. In order to engage the full power of your talent you need some room to operate. But, unlike the traffic jam, you need more than just physical space. To turn your talent loose you also need Brain Space.
The human brain is a complex organ that is built for many functions including protection and creation. To be overly simplistic, when the brain’s fear mechanism is triggered to protect us, it reduces resources (oxygen and glucose) for the parts of our brain that are able to imagine possibilities, see opportunities, understand complex ideas, and make creative decisions.
In Take Charge of Your Talent, we’ve found that being present to your hopes is a great way to engage brain space. Want to test it out for yourself? Try our Take Five exercise.
- Articulate one of your deepest hopes
- Clarify why it is important to you
- Spend 5 minutes daily with your hope front and center (meditate, draw, write, imagine, share, read)
- After one week, check in with yourself. Did you experience more brain space?
To give your brain the space needed to turn your talent loose, stay connected to your deepest hopes.
If you’d like to explore more of the complexity and science associated with these ideas you might enjoy this article from Psychology Today.
Photo credit: Hil
