Gifted and always on: how intense enjoyment brings you rest

Author Nathalie Maes shows us how you can experience intense enjoyment as a gifted person, and how this can be both calming and inspiring. If you find it hard to find rest, intense enjoyment can definitely help. She has also written a book about giftedness, focusing mainly on education and positive thinking.

Guest blog by author Nathalie Maes

You probably recognize how your thoughts can fill up completely and your brain never really stops. So how do you make sure you can still unwind for a while?

If you’re gifted, you feel more deeply connected to your surroundings. You simply feel far more stimuli running through your body than others do. And maybe, like me, you’re not a great sleeper, or you recognize that you have trouble falling asleep?

That’s because you can’t manage to switch off your thoughts. You keep mulling over everyday things, such as a deadline you have to meet the next day, or something you need to propose or present sometime next week. You experience internal pressure that turns into intense stress.

This heightened sensitivity to stimuli was described by the Polish psychologist Kazimierz Dąbrowski. He spoke of overexcitabilities: stronger excitability on an intellectual, emotional, sensory, imaginational and psychomotor level.

Intense enjoyment

That’s why I like to emphasize this: whatever helps you find rest is extremely important. How can we turn that intense stress into intense enjoyment? The answer is actually fairly simple. You have to dare to take time for yourself and allow yourself to relax.

Enjoyment is also something you can practice. Psychologists Fred Bryant and Joseph Veroff call this savoring: consciously paying attention to a pleasant experience so that you enjoy it longer and more deeply (Bryant & Veroff, 2007).

You might say this isn’t that easy. And I’d certainly agree with you. But allow me to inspire you. Everyone needs to relax from time to time.

For example, watching a film, reading a book, discovering a new hobby, listening to music, or something else entirely? We’re all different, after all. But what most of us probably have in common is that we enjoy listening to music now and then.

How relaxation can bring rest

Let’s continue with music as an example. Did you know that music can help you experience emotions?

This is also scientifically supported. A Dutch research team led by Martina de Witte combined dozens of studies and found that music reduces both physical stress (heart rate, blood pressure, stress hormones) and perceived stress (restlessness, nervousness) (de Witte et al., 2020; UvA, 2020). Finnish researchers Saarikallio and Erkkilä (2007) also described how people use music to regulate their mood: to chase away unwanted thoughts and to release pent-up feelings.

Perhaps you think mainly in images? Music can help you call up certain images so you can better make sense of everything. How do you best approach that disagreement or that problem? Music then becomes the soundtrack for coming up with the solution.

Or maybe you occasionally need to withdraw for a moment, and then music via the radio, YouTube or Spotify can be the perfect distraction. Meanwhile you can go through your inbox or do something else. Maybe you even play the whole music video in your head.

A source of inspiration

Music can help you in your thinking process, but also in a process of working through things. I have a lot of personal experience with this. When you relax, you’re simply better able to reflect on things you feel haven’t been thought through properly yet. That brings us to the inspiration part of this blog.

Research confirms that a relaxed brain is more creative. In an experiment by Baird et al. (2012), participants solved a creative task better after doing a simple task that allowed their minds to wander. A demanding task, ordinary rest, or no break did not produce that improvement.

Maybe, like me, you enjoy being creative and are interested in the music industry? It might inspire you to compose music, write songs, or learn to play an instrument, so that you enjoy it and find inner peace that way. That will then be the ideal moment to return to that earlier task or whatever source of stress.

And maybe you’ll have to dare to promote yourself a little. Because creations always deserve to be heard and seen. In my book Mindset, I show how you don’t have to avoid challenges. Whatever you want to undertake, you’ll always encounter obstacles along the way. I’d like to show you how positive thinking can always help you and how you can stay motivated.

The power of music

So you see, music can really help you experience emotions. I personally find it an ideal example. But of course, for you it might be something completely different.

So be sure to find out what brings you mental rest, and build in breaks along the way. And above all, realize this: you simply live more intensely than others, and that’s completely okay. It’s part of who you are, and that is exactly what makes it so beautiful.

Nathalie Maes works creatively across various sectors. As someone with lived experience of giftedness, she wrote the book Mindset: Waarom positief denken belangrijk is bij hoogbegaafdheid (Mindset: Why Positive Thinking Matters for Giftedness).

Gifted and always on: how intense enjoyment brings you rest

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