The Puzzle of Creative Flow

The Puzzle of Creative Flow: Unlock Solutions & Recharge Your Brain!

Are you searching for a breakthrough in your life or business? On this insightful Living Lucky® Podcast episode, Jason and Jana Banana reveal the unexpected power of puzzles and creative flow to transform your mindset and unlock solutions in every area of your life!

Discover powerful "nuggets of wisdom" for your personal development and self-help journey:

• Access Your Inner Genius: Learn how engaging in creative activities, like Jana's puzzle ceiling project or Jason's scuba meditation, shifts your brain into a quiet, receptive state where solutions spontaneously emerge.
• The "Well of Awareness": Understand how quieting external noise allows you to tap into a profound internal "well of awareness" – a place where answers to financial, relationship, or business challenges become clear.
• Perspective is Power: Just like finding a missing puzzle piece after a break, discover how stepping away from life's challenges provides fresh perspective, making the previously invisible, obvious. (Think Wayne Dyer's wisdom!)
• Recharge Your Mental Light Bulb: Realize that creative activities are NOT luxuries. They are essential tools that recharge your mental capacity, enhance your positive thinking, and combat mental fatigue.
• Dopamine Hits & No Rejection: Experience the unique benefit of puzzling: consistent "dopamine hits" from successful connections without the crushing disappointment of failure, fostering a resilient mindset.

This episode talks about creative engagements being a vital component of holistic well-being and problem-solving. It's about finding your personal gateway to meditation, connection, and self-discovery.

Ready to transform your thinking and unlock your innate problem-solving abilities? Your solutions are waiting to be discovered! 

Benefits of puzzles for your brain. Accessing creative flow state. Recharging mental energy with creative activities. Meditation through art and puzzles. How to improve focus and clarity. Why creative activities are essential. Overcoming mental blocks with puzzles. How can puzzles help solve life problems? What is creative flow and how do I access it? Do creative activities improve brain function? Why is it good to take breaks from challenges? How does meditation help with problem

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Believe that God is working through you, for you, and always conspiring in your favor.

*Previously Recorded

Chapters

• 0:00 Creating a Life You Crave
• 0:39 The Puzzle Ceiling Project
• 1:28 How Puzzling Changes the Brain
• 4:21 Puzzles as Meditation and Co-Creation
• 9:02 Art Recharges Your Mental Light Bulb
• 12:42 Final Thoughts on Living Lucky

Transcript

Jana Shelfer: 0:00

Are you ready to create a life you crave? Let's spin that doom loop of negativity into an upward success cycle and start Living Lucky®. Good morning, I'm Jana, I'm Jason and we are Living Lucky®. You are too. Puzzles, puzzles, puzzles.

Jana Shelfer: 0:21

I'm so puzzled. If you've been following us, you know that I had a period of my life where I was doing lots of puzzles.

Jason Shelfer: 0:30

Lots of puzzles. A puzzle a week.

Jana Shelfer: 0:32

To the point where I decided to take my puzzles and I am now making a puzzle ceiling.

Jason Shelfer: 0:39

Yeah, which is an undertaking in itself.

Jana Shelfer: 0:42

This is a 10-year project because there's not only hundreds and hundreds of hours into putting the puzzles together, but then now there's I've glued all the puzzles and now I'm putting them on a backing and we're trying to arrange them so that they, which is basically another puzzle.

Jason Shelfer: 1:01

In itself Like a Tetris style puzzle putting them onto the ceiling.

Jana Shelfer: 1:05

It's like a puzzle of the puzzles, yes, and I've also talked many times about all of the lessons that I have learned from puzzles. However, just in the last week, since I've gotten this project back out and I'm like I'm going to tackle it this time, I've realized that my brain acts differently when I am puzzling.

Jason Shelfer: 1:28

Yeah, when you have some art project in front of you that you're actively engaged in and the puzzles seem to be like your little zone of genius.

Jana Shelfer: 1:40

I mean, I come up with solutions, not even about the puzzles. I'll be doing puzzles and all of a sudden I'll be like, oh, that's my new trip run. Yeah, I come up with solutions on the ski course. I come up with solutions in my financial arena.

Jason Shelfer: 1:58

In our marriage.

Jana Shelfer: 1:59

I come up with solutions for our business.

Jana Shelfer: 2:01

I'm like, oh, we should do this. Oh, we should do this for our business. I'm like, oh, we should do this. Oh, we should do this. It's almost like I tap into a part of my brain that is so quiet. It's almost going into your genie bottle.

Jason Shelfer: 2:15

Yeah, I would say it's a part of your brain that's so quiet and creative.

Jana Shelfer: 2:20

It's quiet and there's only answers in this area of your brain. That's big.

Jason Shelfer: 2:23

So you just answers in this area of your brain. Oh, that's big. So you just have to learn how to access it, I wonder. So I believe that part of the brain is always going. It's just we have it's filled with all this noise from outside and also noise from other things that we're making noise with other things that we're making noise with.

Jana Shelfer: 2:47

No, I have also met people who say if they need to come up with any answer in their life, if they take a shower for some reason standing under the shower, hitting their water or hitting their head, and just being in the shower, you kind of forget about what you're trying to solve.

Jason Shelfer: 3:02

It's drowning out everything else. Like that was me. Remember when I got my scuba gear and went to the bottom of the pool? Yes, like you would come home from work and I'm like where's my husband? I got off at work at like six. Jana would get off at seven, 30 and then drive home. So I would. She sometimes would come home and I would be at the bottom of the pool in my scuba gear listening to the air go in and out of my regulator and every now and then I would see like a little bubble pop up and I'm like

Jason Shelfer: 3:24

okay, he must be there, and that was kind of me not doing art but kind of listening to that rhythmic air go back and forth, yes, and quieting the noise it's getting into a different state.

Jana Shelfer: 3:41

And when you get there for me it's been art I can get there. Sometimes it's a different place, but I get there. For me it's been art, I can get there it's a different place but, I, get there during music. I get there when I paint or do journaling in my art room. I get there when I sew but puzzles. This past week has really brought to my attention how it changes me physiologically.

Jason Shelfer: 4:04

Yeah, I love your access to this meditative type quietening of the brain and also the creativity and the listening to the brain or to your inner self in puzzling or art.

Jana Shelfer: 4:19

Yes.

Jason Shelfer: 4:20

Because we use it as a verb puzzling and arting.

Jana Shelfer: 4:24

Somebody arting in the well.

Jason Shelfer: 4:26

Yeah, that was me I arted today. Because for me, being at the bottom of the pool, it was just kind of like a letting go and it wasn't like there wasn't a lot of thinking. It was releasing and this arty new version of when I'm doing puzzles with you and watching you create while creating, like create outside of the creation that you're creating in the puzzle. Yes, he's talking about the ceiling.

Jason Shelfer: 4:55

Yes, well, and even in your ski run, or in our business or in our relationship, like all these solutions that are coming to you through this new way of thinking or new quietening and letting the answers come.

Jana Shelfer: 5:09

Yes.

Jason Shelfer: 5:11

Has opened me up to recognizing that that is a like when you get your brain in this creative process. Yes, there's so much availability.

Jana Shelfer: 5:23

No, I know that a lot of people rediscovered puzzles during the pandemic. I literally have been saying and I did puzzles way before the pandemic. I've done puzzles my whole life, in fact, whenever I'm with family, really the only way for me to completely I don't want to say which is a way of quietening the noise in the family.

Jana Shelfer: 5:48

In order for me to completely show up in a nice and wholesome way, I need something to quiet my thoughts, the chatter in my brain and puzzles. If I can do a puzzle with my family, I could spend weeks with them, weeks, maybe months, and we have, yes, if we sit around and just do a puzzle, but if we're sitting there trying to make small talk or trying to judge each other's lives.

Jason Shelfer: 6:11

I would venture to bet that jigsaw puzzles saved some marriages during the pandemic.

Jana Shelfer: 6:18

Okay, so that's what I was getting at is. I know that a lot of people rediscovered puzzles over the pandemic, but then they have put them back in the closet right and now they're back to their busy lives. I have been puzzling this past week and I literally have thought to myself maybe I should take some of my artwork and put them into my own brand of puzzles, Because for me, puzzling has been. It is a form of meditation. It is a form of meditation. It is a form of connecting to something higher. It is almost a form of prayer for me, and I would say that about every artistic project that I have in my life. They all happen to something slightly, but they tap into this well of my best self.

Jason Shelfer: 7:11

Yeah, it's almost like a well of awareness, wow.

Jana Shelfer: 7:17

That's hard for me to say. Say that A well of awareness.

Jason Shelfer: 7:21

It's this act of kind of letting go of what's happening around you.

Jana Shelfer: 7:28

And yet To very much be in the moment.

Jason Shelfer: 7:31

Yes, be in the moment, allow what's happening, be a part of it, and then allow whatever needs to come in to come in.

Jana Shelfer: 7:39

It is a co-creation and I know that sounds crazy, but it is. It's a co-creation. And then I get a little shot of dopamine. Every time I find that little piece, I'm like, oh, that's what I was looking for Boom.

Jason Shelfer: 7:51

You know that's funny that you mentioned that, because we do get a. I think it's a huge dose of dopamine every time you find that little piece. And then we also I don't feel like we get this huge rejection factor when we don't find a piece, because we expect that a lot of the pieces aren't going to fit.

Jana Shelfer: 8:11

What's so crazy is if I go through a period where I haven't found much, Just walk away. If I literally just do a lap around the kitchen island, I come back and I'm like, oh, there it is.

Jason Shelfer: 8:22

And that teaches us.

Jana Shelfer: 8:23

Once I find one, I usually find two or three more right away. There's like this, um, almost a confidence level that starts building well, and it's a new way of looking at it.

Jason Shelfer: 8:36

Yeah, so we get so, and that's like life, and I think puzzles teach us so much about life, because if we just walk away from whatever we're facing for a moment, yes, we will come back. We will a have a moment. We will come back, we will have a have a new perspective, we'll be able to see things a little bit differently and then we may see a different path. We may see how something works that we didn't see how it worked earlier, cause we got so zoned in on things that weren't working or how they weren't fitting, and it goes back to Wayne Dyer when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.

Jana Shelfer: 9:07

Yep, and I kid you not, that is what anything artistic does for me. It puts me in my right hemisphere of my brain. It allows me to maybe quiet the thoughts and just be, just do, just feel. Yeah, just feel.

Jason Shelfer: 9:29

Just experience.

Jana Shelfer: 9:30

And once you start realizing, okay, wait, in this quiet place, I can literally tune my attention into a different frequency and I can get a whole different result. Yeah, I just wanted to share this because, like I said, we had put my puzzles away for just I don't know, a couple months said we had put my puzzles away for just I don't know a while and I was like I'm gonna get this out and I'm gonna, I'm gonna actually finish this project and in the meantime, maybe I'll do a couple more puzzles.

Jason Shelfer: 10:01

In fact, the delivery guy came showed up with a three by five box, three foot by five by box.

Jana Shelfer: 10:08

And there were 10 puzzles in there and jason was like, oh my gosh, what are we gonna do with 10 puzzles that's gonna to take us another 10 years. I'm like no it's not.

Jason Shelfer: 10:16

It's not.

Jana Shelfer: 10:17

We're going to do it intentionally for a couple, a couple months, this many minutes or hours a day or a week, and I'm going to finish this puzzle ceiling that I've been dreaming about and talking about, and in the process of doing that, other aspects of my life have been rising.

Jason Shelfer: 10:35

Elevated yes.

Jana Shelfer: 10:37

So I just wanted to share this little hack, because it's not even a hack. I know so many people think the first budget cuts we need to make are in the art programs, or the first thing we need to cut out of our life when we're short on time is doing things we enjoy.

Jason Shelfer: 10:56

Fun, yeah. So we get so caught up in the work of doing that we let go of the art the fun the enjoyment, the feelings that we're trying to get from the work, the if, then yes, if I accomplish this, then I'll have those feelings. Yes, and if we just sprinkle that through, then we get to get there quicker and have all of it along the way.

Jana Shelfer: 11:24

I know this sounds crazy, but if your brain is a light bulb, you know we go through life, we go through work and it's almost like our light bulb sometimes starts to dim a little or has like little little.

Jana Shelfer: 11:39

You know energy spurts where it goes dead for a little bit. Right For me and I know a lot of other people are like this as well if I do something artistic and I'm counting puzzling as an artistic, meditative activity for me, it allows me to maybe charge that light bulb or charge that electricity in my brain, put a little spark, put a little glow in it. Yeah, and it just starts shining brighter and brighter.

Jason Shelfer: 12:10

And things start to change.

Jana Shelfer: 12:12

And I just wanted to share that today because it has been very evident, since we put my puzzles away for a while and then now we're getting them back out. It's just there's been a not only mental change, emotional change, but a physical change, I would say.

Jason Shelfer: 12:28

Yeah, it's a visible, tangible and noticeable difference.

Jana Shelfer: 12:32

I'm losing 10 pounds. No, right, you want to lose weight.

Jana Shelfer: 12:36

Start puzzling, start puzzling.

Jana Shelfer: 12:37

No, I'm just kidding on that one, although that's happening too.

Jana Shelfer: 12:41

Thanks for joining us.

Jason Shelfer: 12:42

Keep Living Lucky®.

Jana Shelfer: 12:43

Bye-bye. If the idea of Living Lucky® appeals to you, visit us at www. LivingLucky. com.