Do you often get creative? Ever crave some creativity in your life? Maybe creativity is a practice you should add to your wellness toolkit.
Expressing yourself creatively could take any form (not all of us are Picasso). This could include activities such as writing, colouring in, doodling, listening to music, expression through make up or fashion or even gardening. It’s about letting your mind wander, exploring new perspectives, processing repressed memories or emotions and getting into your flow.
Flow is a mental state that you achieve when you are totally immersed and absorbed in an activity, you feel engaged and energized. I often ask clients when was the last time you were so focused on an activity that you lost track of time?
When you allow yourself to engage in mind wandering, you essentially allow you mind to drift between multiple topics. I find driving or taking a steamy, long shower often gets me into a mind wandering state. Studies have found that allowing our minds to wander improves our creativity and fluid intelligence, our ability to problem solve and put discrepant pieces of information together.
Creativity is shown to improve your mental health, make you happier by increasing dopamine (your feel good, reward hormone), relieve stress and anxiety, help you process trauma, boost your immune system and even make you smarter through enhancing connections across your right and left brain.
So I guess writing this post and watering all my house plants at 5am counts as my little creative expression this Wednesday.
As organizations we could include opportunities for this expression in the way we physically structure our buildings, the culture we foster and behaviour we encourage as well as the way we plan our work.
Oh by the way I personally advocate that applying Snapchat filters to unsuspecting family members is creative 😉
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