A quote from designer Jac Vanek made me stop and think this week. She said, "You are the books you read, the films you watch, the music you listen to, the people you meet, the dreams you have, the conversations you engage in. You are what you take from these. You are the sound of the ocean, the breath of fresh air, the brightest light and the darkest corner. You are a collective of every experience you have had in your life. You are every single day. So drown yourself in a sea of knowledge and existence. Let the words run through your veins and let the colours fill your mind."

We are empty cups filled by experience. And we can choose to fill our cup in so many ways. Research shows that when you imagine experiencing something by reading about it your body reacts as if you are actually in that situation. We hear about elite athletes picturing a win and how scans show that their body acts like they are in a competition. By reading we can visit places we have never been, meet people we have never met and learn things we never knew before.

This is where creativity comes from. Connecting the dots from many different angles. This is how we create and discover and blaze a trail.

Author Haruki Murakami said, “If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.” The same can be said about living like everyone else is living. So read something different. Go outside of your comfort zone. Watch a film on a topic you know nothing about. Strike up a conversation with someone in a completely different field. Visit a place you have never been to. Then quiet your mind and let your new thoughts create fresh ideas and original ways of thinking.

May we all be drowned in a sea of knowledge and existence. What a beautiful way to live.

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