Six ways creativity is good for your health

May 15, 2018May 15, 2018

I was curious, why did I feel better when I had made time to be creative? When I sat down to actually put pen to paper and write whatever came to mind. When I was creating graphics on the screen, when I was composing a pretty photo. It wasn’t just me who had noticed either. I ran craft workshops in the evenings for a couple of years and people frequently said things like, “I love this – it’s so calming”, “I wouldn’t be creative if you hadn’t made a space” “This should be prescribed by my doctor”

I know that making time to be creative can be a large struggle. We don’t make time for it and sometimes we are even unsure where to begin. It feels like an indulgence or being selfish to take the time. In our pressured, productive world it can feel like a waste of time.

And yet we know and suspect that there is more to creativity than that. When we have spent time being intentionally creative we know that we feel good afterwards. I suspected that it was because that was how we are made. I have the sense that being made in the image of God, we are most like his children when we play and when we create.

Practising regular creativity is a form of self-care that can be a strategy for staying mentally well. It’s not just my opinion, I found some articles that mention the specific ways that creative activities, such as painting, gardening, and creative writing, have long been known to boost happiness and wellbeing.

So how exactly is creativity good for our health? Here are six specific ways:

6 ways creativity is good for your health.

1. Single tasking increases your mental focus

When focused on making something your mind is engaged in that one activity for a prolonged length of time. With the constantly contactable, and connected online world that we scroll through on our screens, our minds suffer from not being able to concentrate on one thing at a time. Rather than making us able to multi-task well it serves to help us do many things badly. Studies have shown that it is better to focus on one thing at a time, it slows the heart beat and eases anxiety.

2. Working with your hands allows your mind to solve problems

Single-tasking also has the benefit of allowing your mind to wander and think on problems that your mind may need to sort through. I’ve known the soothing power of rhythmic stitching or crocheting and being able to do something with your hands can help your mind day-dream or think about things that we may not have made space to do.

3. Can help to decrease illness

Writing, painting and drawing and other creative outlets can give a voice to emotions that we are going through. This helps us to process emotions healthily. Writing about life goals or trauma have both been found to help to decrease illness.

4. Classes or groups may increase the sense of belonging and community

Taking a class to learn new creative skills or joining a group to get creative together, can establish new friendships and the more someone feels part of a group or community, wellbeing increases.

5. Reigniting former passions – increased wellbeing

Rediscovering former creative pursuits that may have lapsed can increase a sense of wellbeing. Taking the time to do something you previously enjoyed can be beneficial and creates a sense of pleasure and fun. Finding the things you are passionate about can give purpose, interest, and meaning to your days.

6. Creative play rewards the brain

Creative play gives a sense of freedom that children enjoy – being creative with no fear of judgement, no comparison, no striving for results all give creativity an essence of fun and freedom that in today’s pressurised world we rarely feel.

Research has shown that free-drawing, doodling, and colouring trigger the brain’s reward centre by increasing blood flow in the prefrontal cortex. Pleasure is gained from being creative – independent from the creative results.

If you would like the “3 steps to fitting in creativity for wellbeing” then click this link for the download.

What is the point of creativity?

May 3, 2018May 31, 2018

What is the point of creativity? Maybe you’ve started out on a creative endeavour. You’ve started to create something you love, and there’s been some momentum. You’ve had some encouragement, you’ve started to dream about where this could go. Bravely you’ve taken steps forward. But then…

All the doubts, the desire for something bigger has taken over. The pressure, the questions, the constant creative circle of create – share – dream – doubt. I know this because I too have been there. Actually, I’m here more often than I am not. I too am in that circle of creating and sharing and I want to encourage you and show up for you and say we are in this together, I am figuring this out too.

In this connected world, there is a lot of noise and challenge for the creative, whilst it’s great; we can share, get feedback, celebrate other’s wins, grow something, connect more widely, it brings with it all the things comparison stirs in us. The beauty of our creativity is that there is so much of it, we are surrounded by people coming fully alive to the creative being they are designed to be and it’s amazing, people are amazing…. and yet…. We look around and then we look at ourselves and pause. I don’t think there is anyone who doesn’t do this. Even that person you think is grounded and talented and has a large audience, they still suffer the same comparison syndrome, they still have to question their motive of why they create.

We ask, what is the point? What do I have to add? What have I achieved? These are tough questions to answer. But may I gently suggest that they are the wrong questions.

Perhaps, you and I, we need to ask, WHY? What if we start at the beginning and ask why? Why do I create? May I suggest some answers that you may think answer why you create, and yet can serve to send you off down a distorted path?

Do you create because you want attention?

Is it because you want attention? Ouch, I’ve felt the warmth of approval of the number of hearts on an Instagram photo. I know. This can not be my why. This is not why I create, because I know I am fickle, and well, if I am fickle, aren’t we all fickle? Attention or fame is not what it is made out to be. How many likes or hearts will satisfy my desire for attention? Is this the reason I create? Pretty soon, the heart of my creativity will die. I will lose myself to creating for the masses. If I create only to capture others likes I will lose my own heart eventually. I will not know what makes me come alive. This is the tension, we want to sustain our creativity, we want to share, we want numbers because we think it means more freedom, but it is a trap. If we can’t stay authentic and true something inside our soul will die.

“The human soul was not made for fame” Al Andrews

Do you create because you want to earn money from it?

I know this, as someone who has worked in the creative industry for over a decade, this will not truly satisfy your creative soul. Most of us need to earn a living and if we can do it by being creative that is a good thing. But believe me when I say soon you will have doubts, don’t think that you won’t have to deal with everything else involved in creating a business. Soon you will start to question am I just creating for the money? Am I losing my creative soul as I create for whoever is paying the bill? There will be more questions and doubts and struggles and ideas of selling out and worth and value and compromise. It will take hard work and many things you may not want to do to satisfy the brief and bring in the income. It can’t be the only reason we create.

Perhaps there is a better “why”

May I suggest that there is a solution to this. This is how I deal with the doubt and the vulnerability hangovers. Asking yourself, reminding yourself of this one question will bring you back to the start. This will be the best, most authentic, one question that will keep you grounded. It will keep you connected to your soul. Your “why you create” could be because you love it and you can’t not create. Because you come alive sensing the joy in your soul knowing that this life-living is the point. This is what you were made to do, this is where you feel most alive, this is what truly satisfies your soul, to notice the beauty, to see the good, to create because this. is. who. you. are. If we start here we can not lose. No one can take this from you. No one can give attention or pay you to do this that will make it worth any more to you.

This is the place of authentic creativity.

You are made in the image of the Creator, and in your imaging of him, you create. This is worthy of God, this is your worth-ship. Following the inner call of your soul, that he placed in you, to create beauty and truth. Your creativity is a gift to God and to the world. Holding in outstretched palms your offering with the statement; look what I made. Look what God made me create. This offering has something of God in it. Look at what it tells you, draws you to, reveals in its beauty, in its life.

“Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on behalf of the actor. It’s a gift to the world and every being in it. Don’t cheat ud of your contribution. Give us what you’ve got.” Steven Pressfield, ‘The War of Art’

The other questions are secondary and if you are called down those other paths you will figure it out one small step, a day at a time. But if you daily start from here, from this place of: “because I am creative” and forget the secondary questions, your soul can breathe. In the end, it is your soul that lasts. All the other things will fade away.

For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world (attention, money, power) but loses his soul?

For when you need to hold onto hope

April 24, 2018April 24, 2018

At the start of things; new years, new decades, new seasons, we look to the possibilities. We have hopes and dreams for this future we see spanning ahead of us. We make plans and set goals and set our hopes by hitting them. We hope for good things, like a wish we can make true.

We set off with a hope translated into expectation, the way it should be. And yet. Sometimes our dreams come crashing down around us. Time outruns us. Plans fail. Dreams die. Hope is lost. But not all hope.

And then things start to go well and suddenly a curve ball, situations change, people let you down. Just this week whilst trying to write this piece on hope, something that made our family feel hopeful changed and again I found myself navigating dashed hopes, dealing with people letting us down and disappointment. My biggest loss of hope was when a business my husband and I owned couldn’t continue to function. Dreams of providing a home and income for our family were broken. I started to lose hope that God would ever provide for us again. It broke my heart to see my dreams fail. Especially those that felt God ordained. Over the journey of recovery there have been amazing times of provision where we find hope but there have also been situations so unbelievably difficult where the enemy of hope seemed to reign. It doesn’t always make sense and I’ve often had to reevaluate and remember where and what I put my hope in. Hope involves trust and it is difficult to hope on things, situations or on people when we can’t trust them. They are all fallible.

Have you ever felt that you have lost all hope for something? Lost hope for a treasured dream or expectation of the way things will go. It hurts, and it’s a place where fear can reign. Where you feel as if nothing good will happen again. When all seems irretrievable, irreparable, lost. To be fully hopeless is a desperate situation, there comes a despair that kills our very soul. A darkness that claws at your soul. A lie that nothing will ever be good again. Loss of hope for a future that will be bearable. A loss of hope that questions your faith and makes you re work it from the ground up. To lose all hope feels like a kind of death – many dark nights for your soul. When we feel as if there is no hope, no future, we despair. If you are in this place my heart goes out to you and I can not say I know your unique situation, but know this, you are not alone and you are loved.

It says in the psalms that hope deferred makes the heart sick. The word hopeless in our daily language has become so common it has lost its potent, truly horrendous meaning. Hopeless is not something anyone wants to be.

But I believe there is a timeless hope. I have a hope for a future in heaven. At a point of broken dreams, there is also the chance for another new start, a hope for a future here and now. A hope that brings the promise of a life lived in the way it was already planned out. There is now another clean slate and the chance to dream again, once the previous dream is grieved, or re-evaluated, re-born.

It is said that God put eternity in our hearts, we feel within us this longing for something else, a better world, without suffering and pain.

“For instance, we know that when these bodies of ours are taken down like tents and folded away, they will be replaced by resurrection bodies in heaven – God-made – not handmade – and we’ll never have to relocate our ‘tents’ again. Sometimes we can hardly wait to move – and so we cry out in frustration. Compared to what’s coming, living conditions around here seem like a stopover in an unfurnished shack, and we’re tired of it! We’ve been given a glimpse of the real thing, our true home, our resurrection bodies! The spirit of God whets’s our appetite by giving us a taste of what’s ahead. He puts a little of heaven in our hearts so that we’ll never settle for less.”
2 Corinthians 5:1 (MSG)

I dream again now, but maybe with a more open hand than before and always through the filter of the ultimate hope of heaven. I am tentatively, cautiously allowing myself to dream again because I know my soul needs to hope. To hope is to let go of our limited expectations and to swap them for a joyful expectation, an unknown daring expectation for that which is not known and can not be planned out and may even surprise us on this earth. To faithfully trust that with God, the path worked out for us is better than any we can imagine. Real hope is found in the one in whom we can put our trust because he is faithful to his promises. I have a better, sure, steadfast, hope which is an anchor for my soul. My life may be a boat tossed about in the waves of this worlds troubles, but I am held, I will not be lost or sunk. I will stay secure in my everlasting, timeless hope.

We do not need to despair, our future is in the hands of God. I have hope for abundant life now and ever after, we have the hope that God is coming and all will be well. I have the hope of God with me in every moment.

Bible verses on hope

We have this hope as an anchor for our soul, and it is firm and secure. Hebrews 6:19

but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.
Isaiah 40:31

I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits, and in his word I put my hope.
Psalm 130:5

Hosea 2:15, Proverbs 13:12, Psalm 31:24, Psalm 33:20, Psalm 25:21, Psalm 62:5, Romans 12:12, Proverbs 23:18, Romans 15:13, Hebrews 10:23, Romans 5:5, 2 Corinthians 5:1 (MSG)

Hope creative project

Take a moment to breathe, slow your breathing and think of the word hope. What does it mean to you that Your hope is in Jesus? The creative project is to make holding pebbles that you can have in your pocket to remind you of your hope or just have in your home as a visual reminder of your hope – which is an anchor for your soul and like a rock it is firm and secure.

Print out the photo below at the right size for your pebble and use as an anchor template. Place the anchor on your pebble and draw around it in pencil.

I drew the anchor in two ways:

Using a paint pen, dot around the anchor outline and then increase a few times outwards.

2. Using your paint pen go over the pencil outline with the paint pen and then fill in the anchor with white dots.

For the word hope, write the word in script writing in pencil on the pebble first then go over with your paint pen.

You might want to include the verse reference Hebrews 6:19.

When the paint has dried spray the stone or rock with a clear sealer. Place the pebbles in a box to act as a spray booth.

I pray that this rock or pebble will remind you of the hope you have in Jesus, as you see it in your home. As you keep it in your pocket or on display, let it remind you that we have this hope as an anchor for the soul, and your hope in Jesus is firm and secure. He holds you safe.

This project is taken from Re: create, restore your creative soul, a creative devotional guide read more here.

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