THE JACKS IN THE DECK OF CARE ENCOURAGE YOU TO SHAKE UP YOUR ROUTINE BY ENGAGING IN NOVEL EXPERIENCES AND LEARNING NEW THINGS.

Throughout the pandemic, many people began to struggle to keep track of time as the days and weeks bled into each other. This is because our brains don’t keep track of our memories using chronological time but instead anchor to memorable moments as a method of indexing the order of our lives. Novel and milestone experiences make time seem longer to us by providing these markers, while monotony quite literally makes time seem shorter because there are no encoded time markers. Monotony creates boredom, which can lead us to losing track of time and going through the motions for long stretches. To avoid this, we need to engage our curiosity.

Enjoying novel experiences and learning new things help us to stave off boredom by stimulating new areas of our brain. They act as mental exercise, building neural pathways, improving cognitive performance, and even warding off dementia. They can spark feelings of joy, which helps with fostering happiness and warding off depression. They help to expand our openness to new experiences, which improves the complexity of our emotions, our general happiness, our creativity, our resilience against stress and worry, and our empathy. They can add practical value to your life (new skills), help to process emotions (like artistic exploration), and improve your social network.

While routine is important as a foundation for a healthy life, breaking up that routine is critical for our overall well-being. Each of the Jacks provides one way to spark your curiosity by exploring something new. They are by no means exhaustive, though.

Jack of Clubs - Seeing New Places

The Jack of Clubs encourages you to see new places - from checking out a local park to exploring ancient ruins. Travel, small and large, helps us to relax and destress, and also creates positive emotions from experiencing something new. Traveling further from home can also help you to understand different cultures, fostering expanded empathy, building greater respect for other ways of life, and creating a stronger foundation for creativity. In addition, leaving your home may make you appreciate it even more by creating a sense of longing or spark ideas for how to improve it by helping you to understand what you’re missing.

Jack of Spades - Learning New Skills

The Jack of Spades encourages you to learn something new - from a YouTube tutorial on knife skills to taking a massive open online course on Coursera. Lifelong learning helps to keep the brain “fit” by stimulating new neural pathways, keeping our brain active in ways it isn’t normally. It can be extremely practical - like picking up a skill that makes our day life more efficient or enjoyable - or can help to build a career - such as picking up a sought-after ability or certification. Exploring new skills also gives us the opportunity to learn what we love and where we excel, helping us to discover our core values and gifts.

Jack of Diamonds - Acting on our Creativity

The Jack of Diamonds encourages you to engage in a new art or craft, like painting, gardening, welding, or knitting. Engaging creatively helps to reduce stress, create a sense of accomplishment, improve fine motor skills, fortify your health, and explore your emotions. When done in a group setting or with a network, it also offers a powerful way to expand your social network, creating new connections based on some kind of shared interest. Like with the Jack of Spades, it also gives an opportunity to identify what we love and where we excel, which can help us to find ways to fill our lives with purpose.

Jack of Hearts - Being Vulnerable

The Jack of Hearts encourages you to be vulnerable with other people - opening up to another person in a way you generally don’t. This could be sharing a passion or a project that you’re working on, sharing stories about your past that you generally keep to yourself, or expressing emotions that you may be bottling up. The goal is to engage in a way that is uncomfortable or even scary so that you can see what happens and how you feel.

You may find pride over something in your life that you had been suppressing, and see that those areas of your life really come out and blossom when expressed. You may deepen your connections with a second person by finding a connection that is otherwise kept secret. You may increase your sense of worth by exposing yourself more fully to a second person, or find that your emotions are less intense when shared out loud. By engaging in ways that are unusual for you, you create novel learning experiences that you can grow from. Stay kind and curious, though, because vulnerability can be hard.

Final Thoughts

The cards are meant to be bite-sized activities. You may prefer to take on a longer-term project, like starting a business, learning a new language, writing a book, planning a once-in-a-lifetime vacation, or going back to school. Find ways to break up your routine that spark joy, inspiration, and creative energy for you.