Curating the Curious

Day 14- Shake That Brain Awake

LeAnna Azzolini Season 2 Episode 83

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Welcome to DAY FOURTEEN of our new 30-day COMMUNITY PROJECT where we make something with our hands every day in order to improve our mental health. We all realize that creativity heals...it's time to put that knowledge into action.

I'm going to publish an episode for you to follow along with several days of each week (I'll take breaks on Fridays and weekends in order to give you time to catch up as needed). These episodes will exist here, marked with the days numbered, in order for you to follow along at any speed that you like. Miss a day? Doesn't matter. Just pick up right where you left off and keep making things. These episodes will give us all some accountability, but if you need more, pair up with a partner. It really does help!

Join our creative community by making something today, whether it's for five minutes or several hours—your brain will thank you. Let's do this thing together and turn all of this sh*t into something beautiful!

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Speaker 1:

In the beginner's mind there are infinite possibilities. In the expert's there are a few. Suzuki. I try to wake up and live every day as if it's my first. Salaika Juwad the real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. Marcel Proust. And finally, when you read children's books, you're given the space to read again as a child, to find your way back back to the time when new discoveries came daily and when the world was colossal before your imagination was trimmed and neatened as if it were an optional extra. Catherine Rundell.

Speaker 1:

These four quotes all have to do with the beginner's mindset, which is a giant part of the reason why I started this podcast and named it Curating the Curious, because having a beginner's mindset is that state of openness and wonder that allows a person to approach life without any biases associated with knowledge and experience. It's that curious mind without ego, that open mind willing to learn, coming from the space of I have questions, give me a few answers. Let me look at them instead of I've already made up my mind. I know it all. That idea of the curious mind without ego is just that it's an idea. I don't think it's attainable to have no ego, but I'm always in search of different ways to get back to a feeling of that. It's a place of possibility. It's a place of opening your mind to what could come next. Just like that first quote said, in the beginner's mind there are infinite amounts of possibilities. They're everywhere You're coming from, this open place, and then the experts. There are a few possibilities. They've got it all solved. When I look back on the days of me being a parent of a young child a really young child I feel like I was at a really high point in my parenting. I was enjoying so much of it. It was just. Every day is a new discovery. Oh, looking at the world through her eyes, seeing her discover things for the first time, getting back to that beginner's mindset every day and feeling this new joy. Or even my first few to several years of photography, when I was just learning and learning learning how to shoot, learning how to edit, learning how to use certain features on the camera or the timer or what have you, and just learning and taking in all this new stuff. I loved being a beginner. Same with college. I loved the learning part, seeping in new information, taking in new ideas that I had never heard of before in my life Diving into the beginner's mindset.

Speaker 1:

I think it has this way of shaking your brain awake. You begin to pay attention to all of the details because you don't know what's coming next, and it brings your senses back to life. So I made the decision today to sign up for this painting class that I've had my eye on for a really long time because I've always wanted to know how to paint, but I have no clue what to do. So it's kind of like watercolors and inks and stuff like that. I signed up, it's like this five-day program, but I'm going to buy the materials, I'm going to take this class and then I'm going to buy the materials, I'm going to take this class and then I'm going to start painting as a complete beginner, no clue what I'm doing. I'm starting from zero because I know that I need this wake up in life.

Speaker 1:

Right now, photography's not going to do it. I love to photograph things sometimes, but there's just stuff tied to photography for me right now. There's stuff tied to my camera, so it's not quite as much of a joy for me, unfortunately. And it's also. I'm not a beginner in that. Yes, I'm a beginner in film and I've been doing film Um, and that's great. But I want to start something completely new where I know nothing and just shake my brain awake and get lost in all the details of the materials and the ideas and the colors and just the the clean slate you know.

Speaker 1:

So I don't have an activity besides making this episode and editing it, because it was enough of a feat for me to count it today. We were gone for a week for our friend's amazing wedding and then we came back with COVID and it has been crazy, which is why it took me so long to catch up with this. But I'm back, I'm doing this episode. That is my activity for the day for the project. I just signed up for the painting class. I'm very tuned in right now with the whole idea of beginner's mindset, and I hope you are too. I'm going to try my very, very hardest not to let this drop again. I'm trying so hard. At least I'm here. Someday it might be December, but someday I will reach 30 days of this and there will be a 30-day project sitting there for all of time for anybody to join in on. So that's my goal. But until tomorrow, hopefully, stay curious.

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