Work Harder, Not Smarter

Buffalo State College
State University of New York
Department of Creative Studies

Work Smarter, not Harder
Environmental Influences That Build the Foundation for Creativity
by Christopher Shively

Submitted in Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements for
EDF 683, Facilitation of Group Problem Solving

Work Smarter, not Harder
Environmental Influences That Build the Foundation for Creativity


What is the use of running if we are not on the right way – German Proverb (Williams, 2002). This proverb summarizes my life at the present time. I am working on my administrative degree, am the instructional technology coordinator in my district, teach an undergraduate and graduate course, coach varsity football, parent two young kids and am trying to be a good husband. I am constantly running between jobs and responsibilities. In my heart, this lifestyle is not right; I am not living the right way.
I work so much because I am the only person earning money in my household. I feel that I am not working smarter I am just working harder. I have ideas swimming in my head that need working out. I am overwhelmed. I know that I have developed some pretty poor habits that contribute to the stress and despair I have been feeling. In Dr. Firestien’s book, Leading on the Creative Edge, creating a healthy lifestyle is one of the 12 components to nurturing a creative mind. The objective of this paper is to document the research I found regarding nutrition, aromatherapy, exercise and Feng Shui and how I am going to use these ideas to build a strong foundation for creating a healthy lifestyle and thus, a creative mind. I want to work smarter, not harder.
As the saying goes, without your health, you have nothing. People under too much stress undergo a measurable change in blood pressure, an increase in adrenaline, perspiration, heartbeat, and an elevation in glucocorticoids, which are potentially destructive hormones (Cunningham, 1997). Stress is happening to me and I need to be able to control it. I have a family history of cancer and I do not want to give in to the notion that I am going to get it too. My mother died at age 48 of cancer and she followed all the “top” procedures of the day. I want to make sure that I take an open-minded approach to my own health. I believe that a positive, pro-active approach to physical and mental health is the key.
Cunningham states that as early as the 1700s, physicians have written about the relationship between stress and cancer (1997). There is not a direct link to stress and cancer in today’s research, but if I can identify methods to handling stress, I can at least assure myself I tried to handle it.
Christine and Edward Ebert, in their book, The Inventive Mind in Science Creative Thinking Activities, identify conceptual blocks to creative thinking which are: information, stereotyping and habits. The conceptual block that contributes most to the whirlwind, which is my present lifestyle, is habit. And upon further review, the first bad habit involves nutrition.
Paul Pritchard in his book, Healing with Whole Foods, states that we of the “Information Age” tend to have mental hyperactivity. Energy from excessive thoughts can race through the head and cause irritability, unhappiness and headaches. Aside from headaches, I have been feeling the other two. Eating the proper foods and eliminating others can promote a calm mind, a mind capable of thinking creatively.
Since my schedule is pretty hectic, I have not eaten as well as I wish too and thus do not have the mental energy I want. I have been looking for fast solutions to getting food and eating at fast food restaurants was at the top of the list. The problem with that solution is the trans-fatty acids that are found in that type of food. “Trans fatty acids found in foods like french fries, margarine, potato chips and anything else with partially hydrogenated oil disrupt communication in your brain” (Franklin Institute, 2004). This communication breakdown in the brain only aggravates the creative thinking process. Instead of solutions to problems “coming to me,” I labor on policies, lessons and ways to stop opposing offenses. The good news is that this is easy to rectify, bypass the above-mentioned restaurants that serve those foods. This will also save money – another contributor to the stress.
There is a common public misconception that all fat in the diet is bad; this is simply not true. In fact oleic acid, a fatty acid found in myelin, the protective sheath that covers communicating neurons, is composed of 30% protein and 70% fat. Monosaturated oleic acid is the main component of olive oil as well as the oils from almonds, pecans, macadamias, peanuts, and avocados. (Franklin Institute, 2004). Although these foods/fats do not calm the mind, they do “clear the snow off the neural highways” so that ideas can flow more efficiently.
Pritchard claims that certain grains can be eaten that provide energy, endurance, calm the mind, and reduce blood pressure. Buckwheat can be used to reduce blood pressure and oats (which contain phosphorus required for brain and nerve formation) and wheat calm the nervous mind. He says that magnesium, lost in the milling process of grains, allows calcium to function properly in the tissues of the heart and nerves and restrains the “anxiety peptide, a complex of amino acids in the brain which appear to contribute to anxiety” (Pritchard, 2002). It is best to buy whole grain breads or flour.
Other foods that can contribute to the relief of anxiety and promote a calm mind are: cucumbers, celery and lettuce. Each has silicon in them, which improves calcium metabolism and strengthens nerve and heart tissue. Mulberries, lemons, dill and basil can all be used for their calming effects (Pritchard, 2002).
Having this information at my disposal is one thing, but putting these ideas into practice is going to be difficult. Typically, my day begins with a cup of coffee (not the best solution), my wireless laptop and designing lessons, evaluating lessons, working on my administration classes, reading the news online or paying the bills. I do this at 5:00 AM every day. I work for two hours, take a shower and head out the door without breakfast and sometimes without lunch. This is where a habit needs to change so that I can actually begin to create a healthy lifestyle. This is the hardest part of the paper to write because I am going to write what to do even though my mind is rebelling; but my heart is pushing forward. Theo Williams, in her book Creative Utopia, 12 Ways to Realize Total Creativity, tells her readers to unplug from the electronic world for a little while each day. Since “plugging in” first thing in the morning begins the chaos, I am going to stop that. I am going to eat breakfast, go to the gym, practice yoga or go for a walk and then head to my electronic workplace. I will need to think creatively on how to manage all the demands on my electronic time, though. Creativity is stimulated by play- and play requires energy (Eiffert, 1999), so eat – exercise and think!
Exercise comes in many flavors. As a former college football player and present day football coach, I am well aware of weight lifting and running as forms of exercise, but these can be excessive. There are reports that state that epinephrine (adrenaline) and cortisol (a hormone that increases blood pressure), were elevated from excessive exercise (Eiffert, 1999). The trick is to find exercise that is beneficial to the whole body, not just the muscles and in my case; I am looking for exercises that also stimulate creative thought.
We all have two hemispheres in our brain, the left, which specializes in linear, or logical, thinking and the right, which is our non-logical, pattern-making side of the brain and which is heavily involved in the creative process. The right hemisphere must be stimulated in the first stages of the creative process (Eiffert, 1999). The practice of Yoga enables one to reap the benefits of bilateral development and better communication across the hemispheres through a series of asanas, or poses, called sun salutations. Sun salutations are just a sample of the hundreds of asanas available. Other examples of exercise that facilitate the release of thoughts within the body are: dancing, swimming, roller-skating, walking, and martial arts.
Hatha Yoga, a yoga style that emphasizes physical postures, has been practices in the United States for many years. The one physiological aspect of hatha yoga, which has been scientifically investigated, is the changes that take place during diaphragmatic breathing. Diaphragmatic breathing elicits a greater parasympathetic response from the body, thus relaxing the mind (Seaward, 1999). Eiffert says to put oneself in a state of relaxation because the most creative individuals are those that are the most relaxed (1999).
Yoga in the morning and in the evening is a terrific solution to exercising that promotes the whole body, but what about relaxation techniques to relax the mind at work. School is the place where most of my stress occurs; yet, I can’t simply get out my yoga mat and start doing asanas. However, I can control my breathing. As I mentioned earlier, diaphragmatic breathing has a profound affect on relaxing the mind. Since we all must breathe, one can practice this art in any office, gym or practice field.
The premise of this paper has been one of creating an environment that fosters creativity. Nutrition and exercise are two vital and somewhat obvious topics to address. The last two concepts are less mainstream and might even be questionable by the parochial among us. These last two ideas are aromatherapy and Feng Shui. I decided to practice these two ideas as I composed the last portion of this paper. I lit a mint smelling candle to eliminate mental fatigue and unclear thinking and used a few ideas related to Feng Shui on my instructional web site.
Every semester there are students in my graduate and undergraduate courses that take my online class, about teaching with technology, who really struggle with the format. Typically, these are students who are thirty-five and older. These students do not normally use a computer for anything but they are anxious to take this course because they can accomplish the tasks of the course in their slippers and pajamas. Typically, these students have a difficult time copying and pasting information, saving files, manipulating tabs using the Firefox web browser, they print out everything, and would rather use the US Post Office rather than use email. They really should not be taking my courses, but they do. Normally, everyone succeeds but more than a few tears are shed.
The content and communication for these two courses is completely online, although I do encourage communication with my students via the phone, when they need to talk to someone. I use MyTeacherPages.com, a web service to host my lessons. Students do a lot of reading and constructing their own learning with the tutorials I develop and link to and I try very hard to make the format, or layout of the web page, easy to navigate.
According to Stephen Eiffert, in his book, Cross-train Your Brain: A Mental Fitness Program for Maximizing Creativity and Achieving Success, “by the time adults are 40, most are expressing less than two percent of the measurable creativity they demonstrated as young children.,” Since the anxious folks are typically in their thirties and forties, I am not surprised when they say, please just tell me when to click and when to move my mouse. This is pretty hard to do online. The most common complaint: “I feel so stressed out.” Before I continue, I would like to say that this feeling happens to 2 - 3 people per semester, this is not the vast majority.
I used to think that their lack of computer skills was the main problem, and it still might be, but now I am re-thinking that premise and am going to control the layout of the web site, so far the only thing I can think of that I can change, other than teaching on campus. So, I went and looked at my web page and felt that it needed a change to eliminate student stress.
Research has shown that highly effective people often function best in a totally relaxed state and Norman Vincent Peale, author of the Power of Positive Thinking, said that a relaxed person is a powerful person (Eiffert, 1999). As I reflected on my student’s comments from previous semesters, most troubled students said that they were stressed out, so I asked myself, what could I do to create less stress for my students. I decided to read Nancilee Wydra’s book, Feng Shui The Book of Cures, and discovered that certain colors and clutter can create disturbances in the psyche but these same attributes can also improve the psyche as well. Wydra says “Feng Shui identifies conditions in a living space that affect us in either positive or negative ways. A web page is not a “living space”, but it is a place and maybe the art of Feng Shui can help me help my students. So, my goal was to design a learning experience that calms the mind, sparks creative thought and teaches at a high level.
When a person who practices Feng Shui fundamentals looks at a living room full of clutter, their advice to the owner is to remove or organize the clutter. I decided to study my web site format and when I did, I noticed that there was a great deal of information on the home page. It looked distracting and cluttered, so my first step was to move sections of my web site that do not apply to my students directly, I moved them out of view; the “out of sight, out of mind principle”.
Colors are also important features of Feng Shui. An African Safari scene was the background of my web site with bright orange and black colors. I decided to change the background colors to green and white and changed the text and links to purple and pink. According to Wydra (1993), purple will elevate self-esteem, green will promote calmness and pink will relieve stressful situations.
Stephen Eiffert mentions the reticular activating system, or RAS in his book. He says the RAS stimulates our emotional, fight-or-flight limbic brain when we are excited and our more logical and creative cerebral cortex when we relax. If students are experiencing a feeling of being overwhelmed, perhaps by the amount of information or colors on my site previous to my changes, it is not surprising that they told me they were stressed. By eliminating the clutter of information and using calming, rejuvenating colors, I hope the stressed can relax and use the cerebral cortex.


Works Cited

Cunningham, J. B. (1997). The stress management sourcebook. Chicago, IL: Contemporary Books.

Ebert, C. S., & Ebert, E.S. II (1998). The inventive mind in science creative thinking activities. Englewood, Co: Teacher Ideas Press.

Eiffert, S. D. (1999). Cross-train your brain: A mental fitness program for maximizing creativity and achieving success. New York, NY: AMACON Books.

Institute, Franklin (2004). The human brain - Fats. Retrieved October 12, 2006, from The Human Brain Web site: http://www.fi.edu/brain/fats.htm#fatsbuild

Pitchford, P. (2002). Healing with whole foods. Berkely, CA: North Atlantic Books.

Seaward, B. L. (1999). Managing stress : Principles and strategies for health and wellbeing. Boston, MA: Jones & Bartlett Publishers, Inc.

Williams, T. S. (2002). Creative utopia 12 ways to realize total creativity. Cincinnati, OH: HOW Design Books.

Wydra, N. (1993). Feng shui The book of cures. Lincolnwood, IL: Contemporary Books.