What Makes Your Neurons Fire?

I took this picture of Charly this week, after Charly had played frisbee at the park for about 30 minutes. Charly LOVES playing frisbee. Charly loves just carrying his frisbee around the park - he once walked 2 miles carrying that red frisbee in his mouth. Charly loves to dream about playing frisbee. Mad Dog and I bought two identical frisbees so we could keep one in each car, so we can at anytime take Charly to the park to play frisbee.

This week I read a great article in the beautiful online magazine Fearless that profiled the author and consultant Pam Slim. I love Pam's work, and I love what she had to say about doing more of the things we love. The way she describes it, we really need to know what makes our neurons fire, so that we can design our lives to do more of those things. In other words (1) figure out what makes our neurons fire, then (2) spend more time doing that, so that (3) our lives will be fuller and happier and more meaningful.

Playing frisbee makes Charly's neurons fire. When Charly plays frisbee, he completely loses himself in the activity, he is completely focused on the frisbee and finding it and bringing it back to me. He will literally play frisbee until he drops from exhaustion. As you can see from the photo, he plays until his tongue hangs out. He plays even though he has a mouth full of grass, and he's tired and thirsty. These things don't matter because he's having pure fun. Frisbee makes his neurons fire.

I think the concept of neurons firing is a great and simple way to think about our life, our passion and our work. Instead of trying to figure out the BIG perfect career, we can start by focusing on the smaller, daily details. We can start by being aware of the day to day activities that make our neurons fire. And sometimes, the neurons don't fire in the office - sometimes they fire at the dog park. Or on the hiking path or the running track or in the kitchen when we are baking. Or making soup.

When our neurons fire, we get excited and we get creative. When we get excited, we get energized and motivated and we pour ourselves into our work.  And our work doesn't feel like work because it feels like play.

When that happens, our emotional excitement is contagious, and our joy spreads, because people want more of what we are doing. They want to know what's making us so happy.

Just the simple state of our excitement, joy, pleasure and contentment is enough to make people want to work with us, to spend more time with us. Our joy can make people want to buy our products or hire us or refer us. I don't mean for this to sound simplistic, but when we are happy, people want to connect with us more. When I played frisbee with Charly at the park this week, I had 3 people come over and ask if their kids could throw the frisbee for Charly. Of course I said yes.

Start by figuring out what makes your neurons fire. Make a list of the times during the past 6 months when your neurons fired, and you felt excited and energized and creative. When did you feel like Charly playing frisbee? Then do more of that and see where that leads you. Be open to whatever shifts. And if playing frisbee is what makes your neurons fire, then go do that. And if you want to call Charly, he'd love to play frisbee with you, anytime.