Dabbling at Life's Offerings

Upsize Your Life by Dabbling at Life’s Offerings

Some adults, in support of forcing their children to stick with an activity, argue that they wish their parents had pushed them to learn an instrument, for instance, and others will say that they are grateful that their parents forced them.

Sometimes, you don’t know if you’ll like something until you give it a try. If it doesn’t “turn out”, at least you know what it was like. I teach piano and cello and about a quarter of my students over the years didn’t really enjoy playing these instruments. Some never touched them outside of the lessons.

Am I for letting them quit? Yes. If they’ve given it a good try and have practiced enough to get past the rudimentary skills and still don’t enjoy doing it, then STOP for heaven’s sake! But they wouldn’t have known about the instruments and the necessary work at all if they hadn’t tried.

Some people dabble at acting while working at a daytime job. Others take writing courses and develop blogs. I teach adults who really enjoy time at the instruments and with me during the lessons. Recently, a lady stopped lessons, feeling very guilty about doing so. She had taken piano for four years and had gotten far enough to play some pieces and, more importantly, try out new pieces on her own. She doesn’t need lessons forever.

It used to be that having a lot of varied interests meant that you are flighty.

Not anymore, according to the founders of Dabble, a Chicago-based startup that offers one-time courses allowing participants to try something new. "In the past, those who dabbled were thought of as scatterbrained, [they] can’t focus," says Erin Hopmann, co-founder and CEO of Dabble, a Chicago-based company that offers one-time courses in everything from pasta making to calligraphy and glassblowing, says dabbling in different interests can stimulate the creative juices, expand your network, and aid in the pursuit of better balance. "Today, it’s seen as beneficial to be knowledgeable in a number of areas." The idea came after Hopmann and fellow co-founder Jessica Lybeck, both lifelong learners, wanted to tap into their interests without a huge time or monetary commitment. "People get caught in the rut of the 9 to 5," Hopmann says. "They don’t want to wait until retirement to enjoy life."

Dabbling is a willingness to be a student, a non-expert, we are observant and develop more understanding for other viewpoints. We re-experience pushing through a challenge, honing and polishing until a slight luster glows through.

Here are some ways dabbling, even for a few hours, can benefit your work:

1) Dabbling can get your creative juices flowing. By getting new information and experience something different, you are more able to think outside the box when you generate ideas. You can experiment with new ways of doing something, which jars unused portions of the brain into use.

2) It makes life even more interesting. When you’re trying something new, you often dive into an area that makes you uncomfortable, which is also a bit hard on your old ego. Dabbling is a willingness to be a student, a non-expert again. Being unsure is unsettling, that’s true. Certainty is nice but ‘same old, same old’ is also boring. Expose yourself to new ideas for a creative stretch. If you are someone who’s spent their entire career in business, you may benefit from taking an art class, where you may connect with other artists and expand your thinking and visual skills through interaction with them. A seemingly narrow topic can open the door to a broad and deep array of interests and explorations.

3) We become observant and develop more understanding for other viewpoints. We could become more tolerant with and attuned to ‘beginners’ in our workplaces. Potential dabblers should take a one-day course in an area outside their comfort zone to get the most out of their experience.

4) Dabbling is cross-training for the brain. Pursuing interests in a variety of subjects stretches the mind and pushes the imagination, causing us to be more creative. Dabbling is simply a way of gathering new information and experimenting with new ways of doing something. It causes you to think differently about everything else that you do, a process which can lead to incredible innovation. The best way to discover something is to take an existing concept in one discipline and apply it to another.

5) We build a stronger brain. Dabbling in diverse interests strengthens neural connections in the brain. Your brain is a muscle, so just as your abdominals get stronger with the more crunches you do, the more you exercise your brain, the better it will perform.

 What have you "always wanted to try"? Just Do It!