Here are 8 short and sweet exercises you can finish in 64 minutes
Reflect, create, and enjoy!
Welcome to Fahri’s Mental Restaurant:)
I will now serve you eight courses of tasty dishes. These dishes will be mental dishes of course:)
Oh no. This is awkward.
What I mean is, I will serve you 8 short and sweet dishes (i.e. mental exercises).
These range from creating future adventures for your life to recounting your past experiences.
In total, you can finish them in about one hour or so.
Do not put too much time and effort into these exercises. Make it practical. Grab a notebook and a pencil. Do not think too hard. Start brainstorming and writing right away. Try to achieve momentum. You can use a timer of 8 minutes for each exercise. In that case, you will finish our taster menu in 64 minutes. This menu will help you exercise your creative and reflective muscles.
Of course, you are very welcome to spend more time in our mental institute or creative establishment. If you want to savor an exercise or go deeper, be our guest.
Enjoy. Bon Appétit.
Exercise 1: Come up with 8 scenarios to spice up your life
How can you increase elements of color, novelty, creativity, and improvisation in your life? In this exercise, you will be thinking of 8 ways to increase fun, excitement, and adventure in your life. These can be:
-Side projects that will excite you -Activities you look forward to -New hobbies -Ways of contributing to the lives of others -Writing something new -Traveling with your friends
For each scenario, write, doodle, and visualize your ideas. You can make a list of small actions and ideas to put it into life.
Exercise 2: Design Eight Fresh Activities Away From Devices and Screens
Imagine that you will not have any access to the Internet, TV, mobile phone, or any media this upcoming Sunday. You will need to find alternative activities that will revitalize you or excite you. How can you find joy and interest in activities that are away from your devices and screens?
In this exercise, you will be thinking of 8 alternative activities that are still fascinating or refreshing for you. These can be writing in your diary, reading a fiction book, gardening, DIY work, knitting, drawing, painting, solving puzzles, playing board games, swimming, hiking, having a picnic, doing yoga, etc. Try to include a diverse range of ideas. Also, include at least 1 activity that you have never tried before.
Exercise 3: Dream of Eight Things Only You Can Bring to the World
What are the things that only you can bring to the world? In this exercise, you will be thinking of 8 projects to help you create your body of work over the long term.
These projects can be creating a new business, product, or service; creating your own blog or podcast, establishing your own YouTube channel, creating artwork, creating your own Kickstarter or Patreon page, investing in your social media assets, writing a book etc. Write down, doodle, and visualize your ideas. Make a list of small actions to bring them closer to reality.
Exercise 4: Find Eight Things That Define Your Personal Brand
What are the top 8 things that define your personal brand? How can you summarise “Brand You”? What are the unique things you can bring to the table?
In this exercise, you will be thinking of 8 things that define you or make you special. These can be your unique strengths and skills, your knowledge and expertise, your passions, interests or curiosities; the superpowers that you do with little effort; your values; your unique background and history; things that make you special; your career trajectory; things that set you apart from the competition; your unique value proposition; your personality and character; your dreams or hopes; what others think or talk about you; and your online presence and social media profiles.
Please choose 8 of these and explain them further. For each one, feel free to write, doodle, and visualize your ideas. You can also make a list of small actions to develop them further.
Exercise 5: Recount Eight Instances Where You Overcame Challenges
In this exercise, you will recount eight stories of challenges and hardships that you have gone through in your life. What are the top 8 challenges that you resolved? What was the situation? Why was it difficult? How did you overcome challenges? How did you learn and grow as a result? These hardships might be career problems, problems about your studies or educational journey, family problems you had to go through, failures you have endured, money problems or debt, having to stay away from beloved ones or your family members, arguments or communication problems, breaking up with someone, losing your job, dealing with mental health issues, moving into a new house, losing your wallet or keys, dealing with a toxic person, having an accident or an injury, undergoing an operation, etc.
Please choose 8 of these (or other hardships) and explain how you handled them. Recount how you learned or developed yourself as a result.
Exercise 6: Write about Eight Things That Recently Got You Excited
In this exercise, you will recount eight different occasions or experiences that happened recently and provided you joy, energy, and excitement.
What are these top 8 positive experiences that you have had recently?
Perhaps you laughed or you were inspired. Perhaps you learned something new. Perhaps you felt joy from doing simple things such as listening to music and dancing.
When did you last feel positive? Try to remember 8 recent occasions where you felt inspired, energized, or fascinated.
Perhaps you experienced some of these:
- connecting with a friend you have not communicated with for a long time;
- watching a mind-expanding movie;
- listening to a podcast that gave you new ideas and inspiration;
- seeing a provocative artwork that has provided you a new way of thinking;
- reading a book that enlarged your perspective;
- solving a difficult problem; practicing your creativity;
- attending a course or a seminar that fascinated you;
- writing a story or an essay that felt really good; or
- learning something novel, surprising, or fascinating.
Please choose 8 of these (or others) and recount the experience. Remember how you have felt and think about how you can increase similar experiences in your life.
Exercise 7: Design Eight Adventures You Would Love to Experience
You will think about eight initiatives, projects, or adventures you would like to experience. What are these top 8 lifetime adventures you would love to go for? Try to think of 8 different adventures you would like to experience in your life.
Here are some examples: Traveling from Portugal to Vietnam by train; writing and publishing your own book; establishing your own company; learning a language abroad; performing in theatre; taking a hot air balloon ride; Visiting the seven wonders of the world; inventing something new, useful, and original; designing and teaching your own course; presenting your own TED talk; creating/designing your own game or universe; running a marathon; and developing your own show for Netflix. Please choose 8 of these adventures (or others).
Exercise 8: Think of Eight Ways Your Life Could Go Wrong
In this exercise, you will think about eight potential negative scenarios about your life. Let’s assume that you have reached the end of your life and you feel that you have failed: What happened? What went wrong? What mistakes have you done? How did you fail?
You will use the inversion principle to find out the ways that you could fail in achieving your goals in your life. The idea is to identify potential challenges, setbacks, risks, and failures lying ahead of you — so that you can develop plans to avoid these undesirable scenarios.
Inversion is a mental model that helps you to attach a problem with a fresh angle: Instead of blindly chasing success, you are going to focus on preventing failures in your life.
Being clear about the things that you want to avoid will help you to declutter your life: What are the things that you want to get rid of or discard, or avoid? Mental clarity on these issues will help you maintain control and focus on the core principles of your life.
For example, how can you destroy your finances? If you think about the possible responses to this question, it will be soon clear where potential financial pitfalls and mistakes are (for example, not keeping a budget, accumulating debt, using credit cards, impulse buying, unchecked shopping habits, eating outside, buying luxuries…).
So, inversion helps you to view life situations from a fresh angle. You start with the opposite to clarify what you want to avoid or discard.
So, what are these top 8 negative scenarios that you want to avoid in your life? Here are potential examples: Not chasing your life and career dreams; losing your health; losing your job and/or income; losing your mental health and wellbeing; losing your investments; losing your friends; not going after your big goals in your life; not spending enough time with your family; not learning or creating enough; not updating your skills or knowledge; not having enough adventures, leading a boring life; being stuck in a rut; giving up on your dreams, passions, or interests. Please choose 8 of these scenarios (or come up with others). For each one, you can also think about how you can avoid or prevent this scenario.
I hope you enjoyed doing these exercises.
I tricked you (evil laughs!) This establishment is actually Fahri’s Creative Gym.
You have done lots of mental push-ups. You have exercised and strengthened your creative muscles.
I hope to see you again in our creative gym:)
Sincerely;
Fahri