Country Mouse Takes a Vacation

I remember the summer my dad's cousins came to visit us from rural Wisconsin. I was about 5 years old. It was their 25th wedding anniversary, and their big plans were to spend the weekend in the "Big City" of Minneapolis and then drive "Up North" to the beautiful shores of Lake Superior. It was like something straight out of Garrison Keillor's "A Prairie Home Companion."

After their weekend in the city, however, they decided it was enough. They skipped the rest of the trip, and went back home. Even as a young child at the time, I remember thinking "What?!" It made no sense to me. I have thought about it many times over the years. I could never grasp why they would want to return to their small town instead of seeing a new part of the world, even if it is just one state over.

But, I learned something recently that has helped me to put it in a new perspective. It's called the "Openness to Experience" trait. It is a personality trait identified and studied by psychologists. People who score high on this trait enjoy new experiences, new ideas, novelty, diversity, and travel.

This would be me.

I have spent significant amounts of time in Africa and Europe. I never order the same thing at a restaurant. Actually I prefer not to go to the same restaurant more than once unless it really deserves it. I will purposefully walk a different way to the grocery store just to go down a street I have never gone down before. You get the idea. I recognize that I am an extremist of the "Openness to Experience" trait.

People on the opposite side of this trait like things that are familiar, dependable, and safe. They are the people who go to the same restaurant and order the same thing, and preferably sit at the same table and have the same waitress. They like to be surrounded by things that they recognize, and prefer that you not try to change them, thank you very much.

This would be my dad's cousins.

It turns out that knowing where someone falls on the "Openness to Experience" trait can actually tell you a lot about them. It predicts what books they like to read, what foods they like to eat, and what political views they hold.*

The majority of people fall somewhere in the middle of the "Openness" continuum. We all find comfort in familiar things, but also like the excitement of trying new things. But, my dad's cousins and I are on opposite extremes. And over the years, when my parents told them of the places I was living and studying, they had a similar reaction as I had to their abandoned anniversary plans: "What?!"

For years we have stood on opposite ends, just staring at each other with awe and wonder.

We're like the City Mouse and the Country Mouse in the classic fable. And when they left Minneapolis nearly 3 decades ago, it was just as Aesop had written. They left the city mice to return home where they could live in peace.

(* For more information, see Jonathan Haidt's TED talk regarding the importance of recognizing the Openness to Experience trait.)

Zoom Zoom

As a sensitive and emotional person, often very small things have a disproportionately large effect on me. Something my husband says can spiral into a black hole of self-doubt. If the slightest thing doesn't go according to plan, I have been known to flip out and call the whole thing a failure.

It feels like my mind is a camera. For me, it is very easy to zoom way in and focus on one particular thing. And my reactions (or over reactions) are caused by the fact that I can't see anything outside the frame. Finding a way to zoom out is far more difficult because it means you have to expand your perspective.

It is much easier to just take the whole camera and point it at something else. We all have distraction techniques, right? Watching television, a certain game on your smart phone, spending hours on Pinterest, or even grabbing a bag of chips or a glass of wine. These are all ways to escape our minds. Everyone uses different escapes, but we all have them. And there is nothing wrong with escaping occasionally.

But, when we are done escaping, we always come back to the same situation we were escaping from. Nothing has changed. The more challenging and more rewarding technique to learn is to zoom out. Putting your situation in a different perspective can often show you new possibilities you hadn't seen before. It opens your mind to creative solutions that were previously blocked out. Do you know how to activate your zoom?

Because of the way our bodies and our minds work, there are a couple of things that are common for everyone. First, do something physical. For me, I like to go for a long walk and get as far out into the open as I can. It could be another form of exercise, yoga, stretching, singing, at least stand up off the couch or your chair. Whatever you do, be sure to breathe deeply. This sets off a whole series of things in our bodies that help to get our minds "unstuck." Notice this is the opposite of what we do to escape or zone out. Secondly, connect to something or someone outside yourself. Give your mind something new to contemplate. Literally try to zoom your mind out and think about something bigger than yourself, people in a different place experiencing different things than you.

This takes practice, but when you do look back at your own situation, which is still in the frame, it often looks and feels a lot different.

(NOTE: Can you spot the person in the lower right corner of the picture?)

Sleepless in Switzerland

There are a lot of things that keep us up at night. Children are notorious for interrupting a good night's sleep. From those challenging early weeks when sleep merely taunts you between feedings, to nights sitting up with sick kids or snuggling up with a child who sneaks into your room and says, "I'm scared."

In fact, I think mothers sleep differently than other people. I know the slightest sound or call of a child will wake me instantly while my husband continues to snore away next to me. Of course, I don't hear his alarm clock go off in the morning. It's like our subconscious knows the delegation of responsibilities.

Some people are kept up at night worrying about problems, or from being sick or in pain. I recently tore my MCL sledding in the mountains. Being horizontal was the worst, and every time I shifted positions at night, my knee would fall painfully out of alignment, wake me with a jolt and make it difficult to get comfortable again. At the same time, I had two sick children and we had just put our youngest in his first "big boy bed." Needless to say, I haven't had a really good night's sleep in a while.

I am the first person to defend the importance of sleep. It is a terrible feeling to be stuck in wakefulness when all you want to do is doze off but you can't. Those kinds of sleepless nights can feel endless.

But something else has kept me awake recently as well -- creativity. It is a completely different experience to be awake because your mind has so many new ideas. I didn't want to fall back to sleep for fear of forgetting the inspiration. I felt like a comedian or artist who keeps a pad of paper by the side of their bed (or a smart phone in my case) to write down the jokes or visions that come to them in the middle of the night. Only after recording them could I relax my mind again and drift off.

It is like a literal and figurative Awakening.

When something causes your mind to go into overdrive, or when you have an original idea, don't push it aside so that your can roll over and go back to sleep. Acknowledge it and follow it, as it is sure to lead you toward your dreams.