Clean something
Clean your room, your kitchen, anything. Bring order to the chaos :)
Need for Beauty
Evidence
Humans can be sensitive to pattern, harmony, and environmental cues associated with safety and resources. This need may motivate attending to nature, art, and design that promote orientation and calm. Investing in beauty improves attention, mood, and restorative experience.
Details about the rewritten claim
Humans naturally respond to beauty – we’re attuned to patterns and harmony in our environment, which historically signaled things like safety or rich resources (for example, a lush, orderly landscape might promise food and shelter). As a result, we have a drive to seek out nature, art, and pleasing design that help us feel oriented and at ease. Psychology research confirms that exposure to beautiful natural settings can restore our ability to concentrate, lift our mood, and reduce stress hormones. In practice, “investing in beauty” – whether by spending time in nature or creating aesthetically pleasing spaces – tends to improve mental focus, promote calmness, and provide a restorative experience for our minds.
Supporting sources
Citations
- 1Canadian Psychological Association – nature exposure improves attention, mood, and stress recoveryhttps://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0013935118303323
- 2study linking exposure to aesthetically pleasing natural environments with cognitive benefits and stress reductionhttps://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797612464121
Strategies
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Go on walk
I know you probably hear it a lot.. but going on a walk really can make a fascinating difference.
Play a video game
There is such a wide diversity of video games out there. Calming exploratory games, puzzle games, combat, story, single or multiplayer, etc. Once I get in touch with the need that is alive in me it’s fun to look for a game or game genre that might tend specifically to that.
Read a poem you like aloud
Try a search online like poets.org. Search a key word related to what you’re experiencing right now. Find a poem you’re relating to and in the privacy of your room or car or closet (wherever you feel comfortable) and read the poem aloud to yourself. Let it gives you words in a time when you have none. Experience the validation that this artist understands also how you might be feeling right now and sees it as valid too.
Trace an object
With your finger, trace the outline of any object slowly.
Open the blinds
Let natural light in and look outside for 30 seconds.
Shadow Line
Rotate a nearby object until its shadow makes a clean line or pleasing shape, then pause to take in the look you created.
Grain Trace
Run a fingertip along a visible line (wood grain, tile grout, fabric seam, etc.) until it ends, and let that completion register.
Window Quarter
Use the window frame to pick one small quadrant of the view and give it a one-line title you like; hold that title for a moment.
Scent Caption
Open a spice, soap, or leaf, take one brief sniff, and write a one-word caption for the scent before closing it.
Add a strategy
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