The 3-Minute Creative Reset I Use When My Brain Won't Stop

A flash expression practice for taming whatever is rattling around in your head

Welcome to our creative play practice series — micro moments of creativity that fit into the margins of busy lives. This week's practice: Flash Expressions. Join our creative crew doing it together all week on the NoomaLooma app — grab your FREE spot here →

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There’s a particular kind of stuck I know well.

It’s not writer’s block or burnout exactly. It’s more like... everything is happening at once inside my head and I am in wet cement. My neurospicy brain in full spiral mode. An anxious loop I keep running laps around. A feeling I can’t name but also can’t put down.

Or sometimes it’s smaller than that. It’s 8:30am and my daughter just left for school and I’ve already made breakfast, lunch, packed a snack, untangled a conflict, come up with a playful enticement to get her dressed, given three pep talks (two to her, one to myself), and now like a flip of a switch I’m supposed to pivot to work? Like I didn’t just do an invisible triathlon before most people have finished their coffee?

In these moments where I need to process, reset, pull myself out of the wet cement, I do a Flash Expression. It’s my go-to creative reset for the spirals, big and small.

Here’s what it is:

I grab a small piece of paper and a pen. I set a mental timer for a 3ish minutes. And I get whatever is rattling around in my head and heart out and onto the page. Not to make something beautiful. Not to process it completely. Just to move it from inside to outside, where it has less power over me.

The goal is to express in a flash without pressure, only curiosity. The flash expressions take different forms on different days.

Sometimes it’s a quick brain dump of words, no filter — whatever is true right now. Spiraling. Snacky. Tender. Behind. Trying. That’s it. Done.

Sometimes it’s drawing what my feelings feel like and naming them. Like anxiety feeling like tangled electrical cords in my chest.

Sometimes it’s a note from the version of me who has a little more perspective to the version of me who is currently spiraling. Hey. You’re doing a lot a LOT. You’re allowed to feel a way about it. One thing at a time and keep going sweet pea.

After I do a flash expression, the feelings chill out and feel more temporary. They stop running the show.

Why it works:

Your brain calms down the moment you put language, image, or mark to what’s inside. Naming a feeling activates the prefrontal cortex and dials down the amygdala (“Name it to tame it” as my therapist says). You’re not suppressing it. You’re metabolizing it. Three to five minutes is genuinely all it takes to shift your state.

I wrote about this in my book The Playful Way. And it’s why I built NoomaLooma — because microdosing creativity is the difference from me being a frenzied cartoon of a woman with spiral eyes and actually putting one foot in front of the other on the days when everything is a lot.

This week I want to practice with you!

Starting today, June 1st, I’m running a 5-Day Flash Expressions Challenge on the NoomaLooma app. Each day, a new prompt. Each one takes 5 minutes or less. You don’t need to be artistic. You don’t need to be in a good headspace. You can come as you are.

Day 1 is Brain Dump — five words, right now, no thinking. Just dump what’s up there. Write them, doodle them, make them big or small or chaotic. Get them out.

Come do it with me.

👉 Join the Flash Expressions Challenge on NoomaLooma — it’s free, it’s 5 minutes a day, and I genuinely think it might be the best part of your week.

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Drop your flash expression in the comments. What 5 words describe you in this moment? I’ll go first: Buzzing. Over-caffeinated. Alive. Excited. Motivated.

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