There’s more to life than checking your Facebook, watching TV, and sleeping in. Unleash your creativity while you challenge yourself into personal growth.

I can’t tell you what you should do. I can only share what has worked for me. So click on the hot-linked words that are highlighted to see examples. Click the main topic word for in depth perspective.

Music
Learn an instrument, join a band or civic orchestra, or just go out to a jazz club once in a while! Join the church choir if you can sing.  For me learning an instrument was about whole life balance.  Learn an instrument, even if you play poorly – just have fun.  The idea is to challenge yourself.  Want a dose of honesty?  You’ll get that if you learn an instrument as an adult.  You will never be great.   Go ahead, watch my video and see how I struggle.  You will, however have fun as you progress, and you might even be good.  My greatest joy was playing duets with my kids.

Art
Take up painting, enter some drawing classes or painting classes, go to the art museum. Art includes cinema, so make some videos, write a screenplay. Take some classes in classic cinema. Start a YouTube Channel. Art includes photography. Digital cameras are incredible now, and very inexpensive for a high quality camera. Take some photography classes. Build up a portfolio of pictures.

First Snowfall

Science
Enjoy nature, and then make a study. You can press leaves and learn to identify trees. You can simply go hiking and start to photograph birds, and learn to identify them. Learn the animal tracks. Buy a microscope and take digital pictures though it. Learn what’s in pond water, and in your own saliva!

Sunflower pollen grains through a microscope

Literature
Read the classics that you skipped in high school. Most of them are free now, on-line for download to your smart-phone or Kindle or Nook book thing or i-whatever. Read this stuff instead of the pop books. You won’t be able to brag that you’ve read the latest book everyone is reading. Then start writing. Write your own e-book, and self publish it. You can actually make money at that. You earn more per book by selling to your following than you would as an author of a hard cover book that doesn’t sell very well. And you learn how to write in the process. Want to learn how to do this? Do what I did, and get Lisa Tener’s Quick Start to Kick-Start Your Book. It tells you how to get your book off the ground.

Nature
You don’t need to climb mountains to enjoy the outdoors (‘though have at it if you’re so inclined!). Camping, hiking, backpacking are all fabulous to challenge yourself in many ways. Besides providing the basic opportunity to commune with nature, you have the chance to take spectacular pictures and learn about the the world in a very hands on way.

Can you tell the difference between a Brown bear and a Grizzly bear? Sign up for my newsletter, and I’ll e-mail you a free E-book on Yellowstone- loaded with color pictures — and the two most important bear recognition and safety pages you will ever need.

The Appalachian Trail

Let me know if you start something new and creative in your life by posting a comment below!

Good luck,
Mike