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Creativity can positively support you to manage difficult life events, including grief, because creativity improves mental wellbeing and increases your self confidence
Being creative can increase positive emotions, it can reduce depressive symptoms and anxiety, and improve the function of your immune system. Being creative can help express or manage emotions in a positive and productive way.
Creativity can positively alter the way you see the world, if you have the same way of thinking this will reap the same old results and creativity can alter your response to life events.
Flow is the state you get in when you’re completely absorbed in something. When you have worked on a project or been involved in an activity and you completely lost all sense of self and time? That’s flow,
This state reduces anxiety, boosts mood, and even slows your heart rate.
It’s not just being in flow that helps your happiness. Repetitive creative motions like knitting, drawing, or writing help activate flow, and are all tasks that create a result. And when you succeed at creating a result, no matter what it is, your brain is flooded with dopamine, that feel-good chemical that actually helps motivate you. Whether or not you’re aware of your increased happiness, the hit of dopamine you get after being in flow will drive and influence you toward similar behaviour.
The average person has about 60,000 thoughts in a day. A creative act such as crafting can help focus the mind, and has even been compared to meditation due to its calming effects on the brain and body. Even just gardening or sewing releases dopamine, a natural anti-depressant.
Creativity reduces anxiety, depression, and stress… And it can also help you process trauma. Studies have found that writing helps people manage their negative emotions in a productive way, and painting or drawing helps people express trauma or experiences that they find too difficult to put in to words.
Take journaling seriously. Studies show people who write about their experiences daily actually have stronger immune system function. Although experts are still unsure how it works, writing increases your CD4+ lymphocyte count, the key to your immune system.
Listening to music can also rejuvenate function in your immune system.
Studies show that people who play instruments have better connectivity between their left and right brains. The left brain is responsible for the motor functions, while the right brain focuses on melody. When the two hemispheres of your brain communicate with each other, your cognitive function improves.
Everyone is creative, you can become more creative and it’s an incredibly useful tool, a tool which can help you navigate through challenges more effectively and increase the chances of doing more of the things you enjoy.
Sometimes it’s just a mind-set, I can’t, I have no imagination, and it’s not me, are thoughts worth popping to one side and just have a go at exploring.
Make yourself a creative almanac
Monthly creative challenges
Some suggestions include;
1. New recipe / new culture
2. Try a craft – candle – soap – glass fusion – lino printing- pottery – model making – felt making, wood working.
3. Drawing
4. Writing – Journal – letter – your story
5. Paint pour / splash of colour
6. Change the furniture / ornaments around in your home / redecorate a room / declutter
7. Sew something, cross stitch, embroidery, soft toy, clothes, cushions, bunting,
8. Plant something,
9. Make a collage
10. Make a vision board
11. Try photography
12. Mindful colouring
13. Make time to listen to new music – ie Jazz, classical
14. Go somewhere new
15. Create a scrap book
16. Visit museums / galleries / exhibitions / craft fairs – when possible talk to the artists
17. Go to the theatre, pictures, break your routine.
18. Sing – go to a choral performance, go to a concert.
19. Doodle
20. Try a new activity class
21. Go on a scavenger hunt, and work with your find.
22. Learn to play an instrument
23. Make up and tell a story
Enjoy, what have you to loose x