The Life-Changing Power of Going Upside Down

Here’s a secret that’s going to help you solve the biggest problems in your life: try going upside down.

What do I mean?

Picture this: it’s 9pm on a Monday night, and I could be doing anything.

But instead, I’m in aerial silks class, and I’ve just climbed about ten feet in the air, tied a complicated knot around myself, and am getting ready to flip upside down. It’s my third attempt at this maneuver and the first time the instructor trusted me to attempt it from the top of the silk.

There’s a moment of self-doubt: my fellow students are looking up at me, cheering me on and trying to learn from my success or failure. I’ve been practicing for months and am feeling strong and capable, but I’m still unsure of myself, a beginner at this demanding art form.

I can’t wait for much longer—it’s time to move, and I go for it. Though maybe not the most graceful, eventually, I get into the right position, hanging upside down with my legs extended and my back arched, grabbing the tail of the silk wrapped around my back leg. A rush of happiness comes over me—I actually did it! “Someone take a picture!”

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The more I think about it, the more I’ve realized how genuinely useful it is to practice going upside down in your life—whether literally, like in the story above, or more abstractly as a method of thinking and problem-solving.

Let me give you a few examples.

Fresh out of grad school, Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA)’s M.A. in Graphic Design, I had developed a solid understanding of design craft, but hadn’t yet understood how to connect great craft to great business outcomes. This was a problem, because when you work as a graphic designer, you need to be able to effectively represent to your clients, employers, etc. the impact that your work makes.

How do you cross that bridge between design and business? Well, you need to leave your ego at the door and learn different languages: strategy, finance, sales, marketing, and more.

In other words, you need to turn your knowledge upside down.

When I first started working at Money Management Institute (MMI), I was (and still am) the only designer working at the organization, and I had my work cut out for me. I needed to learn the essentials of the business and advocate for well-considered, effective, high-quality design work to help achieve our mission of connecting professionals to shape the future of investment advice.

At first, I struggled to communicate. The language of formal, academic graphic design simply doesn’t connect with “normal” people! So, eventually, I tried turning the process upside down.

As opposed to the traditional design workflow – strategy, brief, design, implement, repeat – I wondered, what if I go backwards, beginning with understanding why certain processes had been implemented already and how they might be improved?

After all, anything made by a person is already “designed,” even if it doesn’t look like it. Part of my role as a professional designer is to uncover what the real pain points are that are driving a particular process and outcome, and then develop solutions that ease those pains.

I asked lots of questions, listened, wrote everything down, and developed concepts based on my understanding of peoples’ existing problems and priorities. Then, when it came time to tackle larger and more complex projects (like branding the Annual and Summit Conferences), I started with a solid basis of knowledge to inform the strategy and design work. The results speak for themselves—aethestically, functionally, and financially.

It took time and lots of learning, but eventually, I’ve come to enjoy a more design-aware organization with alignment on design’s purpose and how it helps us achieve our mission and financial goals. Our recent rebrand is an excellent illustration of how far things have come in the past three years—I plan to write more about that process sometime soon.

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As I wrote about last week, I’ve recently been learning to draw from life using Betty Edwards’ excellent book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. One of the first exercises in the book asks you to take a reference image (Portrait of Igor Stravinsky, Pablo Picasso) and draw it upside down!

My drawing vs. the book—I messed up the framing/size a little bit, which is itself a drawing skill :)

It’s like magic—turning the picture upside down forces you to stop thinking about what the thing you’re drawing is “supposed” to look like, and instead just focus on angles, shapes, line length, spatial relationships, etc.

By “abstracting” the drawing process in this way, the pressure to get it right disappears. Instead, you just copy what you see. And lo and behold, when you turn it right-side up, it looks just right.

The same concept applies to design work. If you’re trying to tackle a difficult layout, for example, try turning the page upside down. You can even do this in Adobe software by rotating your view. Give it a shot! You might be surprised at what you come up with.

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Last but definitely not least, physically going upside down has many surprising health benefits. Personally, developing the mental fortitude, physical strength, and will to perform inversions in yoga and circus classes has helped me become more confident, stronger, and self-aware.

It’s truly a magical feeling when you hang out upside down for a little while.

To paraphrase B.K.S. Iyengar, I don’t think there’s a single person on earth who can keep their head below their heart for a minute or two and still be angry afterwards.

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One of my teachers Françoise Voranger, a sixth-generation circus performer, has a mission to get the whole world upside down. I guess I’ve also officially become an upside-down evangelist. But don’t just take my word for it—give it a shot and let me know what you think.