Therese Kravetz

Free Your Voice: Live and Learn Beyond Anxiety


  • Home
  • About Thérèse
  • Book
  • Speaking
  • Young Living Oils
  • Latest Books
  • Blog
  • Contact

To Putter Is to Play Is to Create

July 24, 2017

Many years ago, I had two roommates in a row house in Cambridge, MA. One of them used to joke she needed time during her weekend to “putter.” She used to joke that puttering was a lost art. She lost track of time when she puttered, she uncovered new ways to organize her room, the kitchen or she would stumble upon a new invention in her cooking.

What can we find, discover, learn when we putter and play without a goal?

I recently saw a dance instructor who taught himself to dance. He simply tapped into something that he knew innately and began to move. He seemed to learn from the inside out.

He danced with a partner at the end of his talk and his partner had trained formally for 8 years. I couldn’t keep my eyes off the dance.

Is it possible that the rest of our brain—the 90% we don’t use—is meant for this?

What can we learn and be and discover when we putter and play?

To me, puttering is getting out of linear. Linear is your to-do list, the time, the clock, other people’s agendas.

But when you putter, you tap into timelessness. Stress, worry are in the past and future.

What brings you out of time? Do it. Do some every day.

For me here is a list of activities which take me out of time into timelessness:

  1. Trees. Sitting in them, walking among them.
  2. Animals. Playing with my dogs, petting a cat, watching my birds.
  3. Water. A bath, a jacuzzi, a lake, a pool.
  4. Sometimes free writing. Just writing without an agenda to see where it leads me.
  5. Often times I will get this timeless feeling writing poetry
  6. Playing tennis
  7. Meting a good friend and spending time with them where it is so enjoyable, time melts and fades away.
  8. Sleep! Of course, but had to mention it.
  9. An excellent movie. Hard to find but when it happens, time stops while we are immersed in the story. For some, this works well to read, but not for me. Reading is a little more stressful for me because of my own eyes and eyesight. I am more kinesthetic, aural.
  10. Puttering. we’ve come full circle. But puttering is really mindfulness at anything you do.

Let me know if and how you putter!

Related posts:

Mind over Matter
Write It Down! Part II
What Is Your La-La Land?
Share with your friends!Share on Facebook
Facebook
Tweet about this on Twitter
Twitter
Share on LinkedIn
Linkedin
Pin on Pinterest
Pinterest
Share on StumbleUpon
StumbleUpon
Email this to someone
email
Buffer this page
Buffer
Share on Tumblr
Tumblr
Share on Reddit
Reddit
Digg this
Digg
Print this page
Print


Leave a Comment

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Follow Me

  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter

Book Available Now!

Book Available Now!

Get past anxiety so you can learn, speak, or create. In this book, I share my own journey from anxiety to living a more creative life and the techniques I learned along the way for myself and for my students.

...Click Here to Read More

Archives

Categories

Copyright © 2023 · Daily Dish Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in

Copyright 2016-2020 Thérèse Kravetz
site design by designer blogs