Re-Packing Your Brain

Bo Mackison is a photographer, and a busy one. She has an art festival coming up in Chicago this weekend, and we were talking about her preparations. Bo was describing her organization habits; she mentioned her one special container that has the electronics to make sales, change, and keep track of sales. She calls this box “the brain.” In a rushed voice she said, “And after all that sorting, I have to re-pack The Brain.”

We both laughed at the image of re-packing your brain, and then we saw the deep wisdom in that simple phrase.

Every time we start a new project, change our business, choose a new perception, we have to “re-pack our brain.” It means opening your head to new ideas, taking out old thoughts, habits and assumptions and taking a good look at them. Maybe you shake those assumptions up, get the wrinkles out, maybe you toss it into a pile to re-use as a dust cloth.

In re-packing your brain, you allow yourself, new ideas, new paths. You make more room to add new thoughts and new perspectives.

And then, when your brain is re-packed, you head out into a new day with a new-found eagerness.

—Quinn McDonald is a writer and creativity coach. She re-packs her brain at least one a season.

Filed under: Coaching, Creativity, In My Life Tagged: change, creativity coaching, re-packing your brain, re-thinking