Take a visual walk for mindful observation

From the moment we wake up in the morning, to the good night’s sleep at the end of the day, our conscious self comes in contact with virtually unlimited information. We filter that plethora of information to the amount that will be required for us to achieve the objectives we have for the day. This tailored information is most important to us according to the priorities we have set in our lives for the day or for the hour. Our mind is like a sieve which allows the information having a meaning to us to pass through. That information is digested, analyzed and assimilated for a purposeful outcome.

To be mindful is to be attentive to the experiences in the present moment with more or less no specific agenda than just being present. The information which seems to be unimportant is not filtered. How does it feel to understand such information? Let’s take a mindful visual walk for half an hour and feel it ourselves.

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How to make phone conversations memorable?

*Ringing*
*Picks up*

Hey
-Hey, what’s up?
Mmmm, I did something I am not proud of.
-OMG! What did you do now?!

TF!

TF!

Nothing intense, but I liked their 43 weeks old Instagram picture
-Wow! Can you just not be that extra every time?

Wow. Really?

Wow. Really?

Alright, I am not going to go deeper into this. But, you see, having verbal conversations is one of the channels we use to express ourselves in our lives. This audio dynamic between us and our friends, family, co-workers or even pets creates a whole lot of expressions guided by our emotions. Feelings associated with conversations are instantaneous. Our body language is controlled by the different ways in which we feel and express during an audio call. They depend on the current topic getting discussed. As soon as we hang up the call, we resume our realism with whatever we were doing.

We think about it for a minute and gradually forget because life goes on. However, since conversations are such a raw way of expression, we thought about how can we make them more memorable.

And it doesn’t require much effort!

Here is a question, Have you consciously thought about why you want to walk, or move your hands or scribble on paper when you are on a phone call? Well, we realized that maybe because of visual inanimation (or static-ness) between me and the person on the other side when both of us are on an audio call, we strive hard to express in the best way we can! Also, there is no visual feedback. That provides us an opportunity to IMAGINE. They say that a picture is worth a thousand words, so why not visualize our phone conversations to make them more meaningful? And, what would be a better way than to doodle our conversations?

It doesn’t matter if you draw during or after the conversation. The central point is that you get to capture the emotional journey of your phone calls. Here’s how you can doodle your conversations effectively to make them memorable. You just have to be present during the call. We have created a list for you to follow to give a different dimension to your phone conversations. You just need a pen and paper.

Step 1. Listen carefully to understand.

Conversations are more about listening than speaking. You are not talking in person on a call, therefore, all the content, important or not, is getting transferred through variations in pitch, volume, and audible expressions like the use of certain words or references. Listen to them carefully and understand how the person on the other side is experiencing it.

Don’t forget to be mindfully present during the call. Either doodle the person as the center of the story or you can start with things and words you are hearing constantly. Consciously experience the other person’s emotions. Doodle them using faces, objects, or let your imagination go wild. It doesn’t have to be “nice”.

2. The listener- How are you feeling?

This is the easier part. You know what you are feeling when you are on the call. This time, pay good attention and try to draw them on the paper.

While such an exercise is going to make your conversations more fun and memorable, it may also tell you about yourself when you take a look at the doodles later. A visual revelation of your emotions may give you a deeper insight into how you want your future conversations to be.

How am I feeling?” Draw the answer.

3. The journey of the conversation- Visualise.

Where is it going? How did we end up talking about this? The journey of a conversation on a phone call is quite funny. They may start with “I did something I am not proud of” and end with the plans to raid Katy Perry concert in November. Imagine yourself taking visual notes to this conversation. If it were to become a movie? … *crickets*

Imagine giving form to your conversation. Is it circular (discussing the same topic again and again) or is it linear, comical (the clarity of thoughts, events) or is it not going anywhere (amoebic maybe)? — The idea is to capture the conversation, no matter how bizarre and probably laugh about it later while admiring the relationship between you and the person on the other side.

Or maybe questioning it. 😂

4. Reflect to re-visualize your audio, finishing.

Finally, when you and your seemingly unrelated, diverging, “Oh I forgot to tell you” intersections on the journey of the phone call ends with a “Goodnight”. Time has come to relive your conversations.

If you realize, your doodles have given a visual dimension to your phone calls. There is an experience associated with them which can be put on paper and literally can be seen later. Doodling your calls is no doubt an informative, fun activity which also gives you a visual insight into your relationships, both with the people on the other side of the call and yourself in a better and real way.

Be it your parents, spouse, children, friends or co-workers, visual experience to your audio conversations attributes organized emotional explanations to them. Your outcome can be abstract as well, it’s okay! Pet your subconscious mind for that.

5. Leverage the power of conversations and doodling

Doodling is an intrinsic creative attribute in human beings. We are doing it since we learned how to hold a crayon. We may not realize it, but we did it in our maths class in grade school, sometimes while we are thinking deeply about something or during phone calls in the form of scribbling on paper. In fact, doodling is like your hand-writing, it may be good or bad, but it’s yours.

Leverage this power of doodle conversations to make any kind of conversation which involves any kind of talking between you and any person, in your future more meaningful.

Your intrinsic creativity can make anything possible. So next time when are on a phone, feel the energy to moving in your body, just doodle!


the end

Written By: Rahul Sharma

©2020 Doodle Kit Project

Bring your imagination into the real world

An amazing thing about us as humans is that we are intrinsically wired to experience the world around and the world within, through our own individual perspective and surprisingly become aware of it. You are aware of your expectations from this text and have already formed a sense of learning about “imagination” and how we can bring it to “reality”. We constantly ask ourselves questions. The availability of millions of books and the Internet can answer almost every question we face today. But, sometimes we are exposed to certain situations, circumstances or transient events in life that allows us to diverge a little and ask: “what could be?”.

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We would predict their creative abilities by assessing their hand structures, its architecture and curves. Doodling is an art which amalgamates the deft capabilities of the hand with the curiosities of the mind.

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