Sometimes I really love how my brain works.
Other times, I wish it came with an off switch.
There are moments when I feel like my mind is a whiteboard in a storm—ideas flying onto it from every direction, half-formed, overlapping, impossible to erase. It’s exciting. It’s energizing.
It’s also… a bit overwhelming.
I get inspired easily. Then I start shaping the inspiration into something more tangible. Then I start thinking how to actually make it real. And before I know it, I’m halfway through concepting a physical prototype in my head—when all I really did was take a walk, or have a conversation, or leave my computer at work to “take a break.”
Spoiler: I didn’t take a break.
Not in my head.
A Thought That Didn’t Leave Me Alone
Lately, I’ve been reflecting more—not just on ideas, but on feelings.
I had a moment this week where I caught myself wondering: What are the deeper feelings behind my drive to always build something? To always advance an idea?
Why can’t I just have a passing thought, let it float away, and move on with my day like a “normal” person?
Am I trying to fill a gap in myself?
Am I wired this way because of years of creative work?
Or is this just… who I am?
I don’t have the answers yet. But the questions alone sparked something.
The Difficulty of Recognizing Feelings
Feelings are hard to spot when you’re not looking for them.
Especially in these years of life when everything’s spinning—kids, work, responsibility, ambition, the desire to do things well and still stay sane. You’re constantly moving, constantly doing. There isn’t much time for sitting with emotions. Especially when they’re subtle.
And to make it even more interesting, I’m doing most of this reflection in my second language.
Sometimes I wonder: do I even have the vocabulary to name my feelings in English?
And then I ask the harder question: Do I even have it in Finnish?
Maybe I’ve just layered things for so long that it’s hard to separate what I feel from what I think.
Maybe there’s some fear buried in there—fear of slowing down, fear of not being “enough,” fear of being vulnerable.
Again, no answers. But plenty of sparks.
Positivity Is Also a Feeling
I tend to feel positive most of the time. It’s part of who I am.
But even that—positivity—is still a feeling.
And it deserves just as much recognition and vocabulary as sadness, anger, or fear.
I had a conversation with a good friend recently who asked me, “How can I learn to be more positive like you?”
I stopped, thought about it, and said:
“Positivity is a skill. And like any skill, the more you practice, the more natural it becomes.”
Positivity isn’t about ignoring the hard stuff. It’s about creating space for all of it—while choosing to lean toward hope.
That conversation stayed with me. Not just because of what I said—but because it made me realize how hard it is to teach feelings when we don’t always understand them ourselves.
Especially when you have kids.
The Challenge of Teaching What You’re Still Learning
If you’re a parent, you’ve probably been here:
Your child is having a hard moment. They’re frustrated or overwhelmed or sad. You want to help. You want to say the right thing. But first, you have to figure out what the feeling actually is.
And sometimes, as an adult, that’s just as hard.
How do you teach kids to talk about feelings if you can’t always recognize or name them in yourself?
That hit me hard. And it lit up my brain like a fireworks show.
Enter: Conflict, Communication & Curiosity
Yesterday, I was in a servant leadership training where we talked about conflict resolution using the Nonviolent Communication (NVC) framework.
NVC is a simple but powerful method for communication, consisting of four steps:
- Observation
- Feeling
- Need
- Request
It’s built to support empathic, respectful conversation—without shame, guilt, or blame. And while we used it mainly for navigating difficult workplace moments, what struck me most was the list of feelings that accompanied the model.
There were so many.
So many more than I expected.
I realized: Maybe I don’t know nearly as many feelings as I thought I did.
That in itself was a spark.
Not just for personal reflection—but for idea generation.
When Awareness Becomes a Product Idea
After the training, I couldn’t stop thinking:
What if there was a simple way to help kids (and adults) build emotional vocabulary?
Not just for conflict. But for everyday awareness.
We already play a lot of card games at home. What if there were feelings cards we could pull from a deck? A fun, casual way to open conversations about how we’re feeling—without pressure or judgment?
My brain lit up.
Visual system: top layer = positive/negative
Next layer = emotional families (joy, frustration, fear, etc.)
Final layer = specific words or sensations
I could almost see the prototype forming in my head.
Maybe it’s a physical card set. Maybe it’s a small digital tool.
Maybe it ends up in the LAB someday.
Or maybe it just stays an idea.
And that’s okay too.
The Creativity That Comes From Feeling
It’s strange how emotional awareness itself can become a product development process.
You begin by noticing something.
You reflect on it.
You start shaping it into something tangible.
Then it starts to evolve—maybe into a conversation, maybe into a card game, maybe into a tool.
The structure follows the spark.
And often, it starts not from clarity—but from a feeling you don’t yet understand.
That’s where I am right now.
Letting my feelings become prototypes.
Positivity and Failure Are Not Opposites
During a chat with the trainer (who’s also a teammate of mine), we talked about how many of us carry a deep, quiet fear of failure. Even those of us who say we love learning. Even those who’ve been working in product development for years.
There’s still that tension:
What if I fail? What if I build something that doesn’t work?
But as we talked, another idea surfaced:
What if we held a failure workshop—a space where the goal is to fail? On purpose. To lower the stakes. To normalize the learning. To break the perfectionism loop.
That idea’s not fully formed yet. It needs sparring. But it’s already a spark.
The Irony of Rest
After the training, I told myself I’d take a break.
Leave the computer at work. Let my brain rest.
That lasted about 12 minutes.
Turns out, I don’t need a computer to advance ideas.
My brain does it anyway.
Even when I’m trying to rest, I end up sketching product flows in my mind.
I walked away from work and into a fresh storm of thoughts:
- Can emotional awareness be gamified?
- Can we make feelings more accessible through play?
- Can kids (and adults) build a better internal vocabulary with just a few prompts?
And then came the clearest thought:
I already have cards on the table. Why not just start there?
Maybe This Ends Up in the LAB
Maybe these cards become something real.
Maybe they’re just an experiment I test at home with my kids.
Maybe they never leave the sofa table.
Or maybe they lead somewhere I don’t even expect yet.
That’s the thing about creative ideas—they don’t ask for guarantees.
They ask for attention.
And I’ve learned that attention is sometimes enough.
It All Comes Back to One Thing: Starting
One week ago, I didn’t know what this blog was.
Now I’m writing about emotional layers, positivity, conflict resolution, card games, parenting, and product ideas—all in the same post.
Feels strange.
But it also feels exactly right.
Because the more I write, the more I realize:
This blog isn’t about having answers.
It’s about noticing sparks.
And starting something.
Again.