Friend, I am excited that you have joined us today! We are going to be talking about a fun topic, and I have some cool research that I read about that I’m super excited to share with you!

A friend of ours was actually an executive corporate trainer for a Fortune 500 legal firm for many years. He traveled all over the world training the top executives, and we actually had him do a similar training with the youth at our church to what he had done with a number of the executives. I sat in on that, and one of the things he talked about is how there are different things we can do to get our brain working at optimum productivity, and there are things on the opposite side that we can do to shut our brain down and cause us to be unproductive and uncreative.

So he was just talking about different things that help with that as well as the things that hinder that, and that leads me to what we’re talking about today. How do we help our brain to be functioning at optimum level–optimum creativity–so that we are replenished and really able to give 100% in the things that we’re doing?

Obviously, there are numerous things that we can do to help our brain, but one of the big things we can do is napping. I remember when I was growing up, my mom actually had a business in our home, and she would take little breaks between the customers that she was serving to come upstairs once every afternoon, usually around one or two o’clock, and she would lay down on our couch to take a 10-to-15-minute nap, depending on how long it was until her next client was there. And I remember her saying, “I’m going to take my power nap now,” and she would wake up from that nap rested and replenished and ready to go for the rest of her day.

That is something that we can all learn from. In fact, I think the Spanish culture is known for that. So our Spanish friends are probably saying, “woohoo, go with that one!” And there is research actually to back this up.

I was reading this week about some awesome research done at MIT. It was about a device that they created called a Dormio device, and it involves a glove that they have people put on their hand that measures the person’s muscle tone, skin conductance, and their heart rate. So they split the participants into four groups.

The first group was asked to nap for 45 minutes while wearing this Dormio device, and they were told to dream about a tree. Then the device would wake them up when it noticed that they were going to the next phase of sleep and asked them to record what their dream was about. And so the person would record that, and then they were told to go back to sleep and dream about a tree again.

Now the second group of people were asked to take a 45-minute nap, and they had the device on to measure their sleep stages, but they were just told to observe their thoughts as much as they could. They weren’t told to dream about a tree or anything specific.

The third group was told to stay awake for 45 minutes and to think about trees, and then the fourth group was told to stay awake and just to observe their thoughts.

After 45 minutes, all the participants were asked to perform three tasks that measured their creativity. Now interestingly, the first task, it was on storytelling, and group 1 (the group who had napped and were told to dream about trees) received the highest rankings in their creativity of storytelling. Group 2 (the group who had napped but were not told to dream about trees) were all ranked second in the panel. Then the other two groups that had not napped ranked last for their creativity. So with all three tasks combined that all the people were asked to do, those who napped and were told to dream about trees performed 43% more creatively than those who just napped, and they performed 78% more creatively than those who didn’t nap at all.

So what should we take away from this? Go take a nap! Naps are good for us. I realize your days might be very busy, and it might be hard to get a nap in, especially depending on your workplace, but you know, it’s even effective when you get home from work to just take a 10 or 15 minute nap just to recover your energy before entering into your family time. I think that sometimes we feel guilty about taking naps or we think naps are for kids. But you know what? Naps are for everybody.

They are good for your creativity. MIT proved it scientifically. So my friend, you have got one simple thing to do for replenishment this week, and that is to go take a nap. Even if it’s just 10 or 15 minutes, it will help you tell yourself to dream about something restful like ocean waves or mountains or something you enjoy while you’re asleep. I had never thought about doing that telling myself to actually dream about something restful before I go to sleep.

But it’s really a great idea because your brain is always on, and even as you’re sleeping it can rest and replenish for you. So tell yourself before you go to sleep to dream about something restful, and then when you do, I am confident that you will feel better and have more creativity. Until next time, may your week be replenishing and your joy tank be full!