Does creativity improve your mental health?
What is it about creativity that draws us in and makes us crave more? We admire works of art that cause us to pause, take our breath away. We find solace in expressions of beauty whether in nature or human made. Grand buildings and cathedrals. The intricate patterns on butterfly wings. There’s a connection from collectively holding one’s breath and sipping beauty in.
Although works of art are often perceived as the primary canvas for creativity, there are many, many ways to experience creativity. Including on the inside, whether we share or not.
What is it about creativity that connects with people? Does creativity open herself to anyone? How can we bring more creativity into our lives? And how does creativity improve our mental health?
what is it about creativity?
When I was in high school, I loved to orchestrate wacky surprises. Like climbing on the roof of our family suburban home to tack up “Happy Birthday Sh***y Soph” in giant 4’ newspaper letters for my sister. Contact papering the family ‘67 Volkswagen van in bright orange with giant black polka dots and eye lashes over the headlights, naming her the Lady Bug for all us Bonness girls.
For me doing something surprising for someone was and is a delight. Birthdays and April Fool’s Day surprises were plentiful growing up, especially with my mom.
When we were young, Mom made us feel special on our birthdays. Out to dinner with her and dad. Only the three of us. That ws a BIG deal with a large family. Not sure how long that went on, but I attribute my love of lobster to that birthday dinner when I learned there was no Santa Claus.
My parents told me to order anything on the menu — and yes, even the Maine lobster in Wisconsin. I felt my childhood dripping away a little as I dipped the flaky lobster pieces into melted butter learning to savor the flavor-burst on my tongue. My first remembrance of savory, although I didn't know the term back then.
The shockwaves of no Santa Claus hit like ocean waves. I'd hear the crash of the words. See Mom's lips moving and inside I had little Santa Elves jumping up and down saying, “No! No! It is not true! Santa is real!"
Another deep-down, quieter voice saying, “You knew that." I'm sure some part of me started keeping track of the clues. Noticing a bag from Marshall Fields or Boston Store. The flash of a store tag on clothes wrapped in tissue paper under the Christmas tree. A different color for each of her five daughters. One sister as a baby always enjoyed the tissue paper more than the gift, despite the green dye all over her chubby little cheeks.
With each buttery bite, another wave hit me making it seem okay. Especially when Mom asked me to keep it a secret. A grown-up secret from my younger sisters.
April Fool’s day would come with sticky Vaselined door knobs. Saran Wrap over toilet bowls. Being woken up, saying we were late for school on a Saturday.
These practical jokes were contagious. As was the special attention Mom gave everyone. She had a way to make people feel special.
Little creative surprises trigger ripple effects that may not be realized until decades later when comparing notes with others. Or, you may never know the positive impact you have on others..
There are so many ways to create and be creative. One of my favorites is brainstorming. Love the flurry of ideas. (More in the morning if all caffeinated, or while running listening to a podcast — really jogging — barely). Ideas all jamming in my head. Talking all at once. On top of each other.
Imagine a baseball game where everyone cheers on their team, and fans for the opposing team trash talk. The voices blend together. Until there's a pause — or someone yells crazy loud. Your attention can't help but be drawn in that direction and you can't help listening.
What about the softer voices? While in a brainstorm session, allowing pauses gives a longer span of time and space for other voices and ideas to surface and be articulated. Turned up. The little whispers given permission to perform. At least at the entry portal of being documented and captured for later expansion into what–if–ing.
Before I retired, I loved my office whiteboard. Brainstorming doodle-clouds, and priorities tracked in color-coded lists with lots of asterisks and connecting lines. Creativity in the openness of possibilities. Expansion and contraction all within your mindscape. A game of sorts, white-boarding. Creativity, a mental white-boarding exercise.
When I examine areas in my life where I’ve been creative, they don’t always result in something tangible. Often, problem-solving involves a tremendous amount of creativity. But for many, the process isn’t viewed or appreciated as creative.
In this month’s podcast with Alison Shapiro, one of the skills as an illustrator she attributes to her recovery from not one, but two brainstem strokes, was her being open to the unknown. That uncomfortable place where you don’t think the painting (or writing or whatever project) will ever work out.
But you keep forging on. And overtime, not right away, the effort, the energy going into the piece or the project begins to take shape. Same thing in traumatic event recovery. We can all take away tips from Alison on how to prop up our mental health. No traumatic event required.
One of the many quotes attributed to Pablo Picasso highlights the importance of the unknown space when he says, “Inspiration shows up when you do the work.”
What little creative bursts happen when you show up in your life?
Watch Picasso Make a Masterpiece
a documentary by French director, Henri-Georges Clouzo (3:48 min)
'Le Mystère Picasso' is a remarkable documentary film in which stop-action & time-lapse photography are used to capture Picasso at work. Not many of the works he created for the documentary survive. Here's how one of them came to be. (He’s quite the ham.)
“Inspiration shows up when you do the work.”
— Picasso
how can we bring more creativity into our lives?
To be creative, to bring something into being, make something unusual. But creativity can also mean having a more creative perspective. Seeing things with fresh eyes.
After my strokes I came to terms with the fact I needed more of my energy channeling into what I felt was creative. Something was missing. I’d been in reactive mode chasing, trying to keep up with whatever corporate todo list was served up.
I went through life with my eye on something above the crowd in the distance as I was swept along headed in the same direction, but with my own — lets get along, whatever happens, happens — flow.
It’s as if I’d be walking and try to turn around and do a 360 degree scan. That meant walking backwards and sideways to keep my place in the crowd while looking for a better perch or a way out of the mass movement. That takes a lot of energy. My energy split and a habit took hold.
Creativity can also mean having a more creative perspective. Seeing things with fresh eyes.
At times I initiated creative endeavors but there was always (not always, often) a following aspect of satisfying the corporate treadmill of revenue.
I remember one of our All Hands meetings with funny skits about the art and science of the secret forecasting process. I coaxed (coerced my staff would say) marketing people to don wigs, skip in the front of the room, make placards, hold photocopied face masks, and role-play their counterparts making fun of all the back and forth pressure senior management put on the team to accurately forecast sales. (Complete with 8-Ball “looks promising” and Ouija board props.) All in order for manufacturing to be able to miraculously deliver the right configurations, at the right time to satisfy those last minute NBC, BBC, and HBO end-of-quarter orders. (I still have a video of that skit.)
What I realize almost 25 years later with the escapades like the All Hands skit and embracing corporate, culture-hacking gaming theory during the early Agile software movement, I had no idea I was job crafting.
According to Yale School of Management professor Amy Wrzesniewski job crafting is the act of trying to figure out how you can bring more of what you enjoy into your job that’s not in your job description. You’re not changing your job, you are reframing to prioritize space for more of what you enjoy doing into your every day experiences.
How can you bring more of you into your day job, your projects, your relationships, and community?
how does creativity improve our mental health?
Over the years while working in corporate, we took oodles of personality tests. From Myers-Briggs to DISC. All to better understand different styles so teams could work more effectively together. Honoring the differences made us stronger versus lobbying for what was the one right way to be (think extraverts vs introverts - hint, you gotta have both!).
Although these tests were about operating in a corporate environment, we all looked for insights into our personal relationships and communication styles too. In the last decade the emphasis around paying attention to our own styles worked its way into a proactive mental health perspective. Learning to appreciate and embrace who we are and fret less about who we aren’t.
Last week I read an email about identifying your signature strengths from The Big Think and their weekly The Well: ideas that inspire a life well-lived with Jonny Thompson.
What pulled me into this email was the concept of signature strengths.
Obviously we all have different ones. Ultimately the productive rabbit hole search lead me to a new-to-me test. A list of 24 characteristics culled from schools of thought through the centuries.
According to Dr. Laurie Santos, a psychologist at Yale University, your signature strengths “Make you feel they’re a part of your own sense of self. They light you up. They're also the ones that when you engage in them more, the evidence suggests that you will feel better, and those around you benefit too.”
Knowing your key strengths can make you happy in anything you do.
Why virtue is key to our happiness
The Well with Dr. Laurie Santos
Yale psychologist Laurie Santos unpacks various schools of thought — from Martin Seligman and Chris Peterson's 24 character strengths to the Japanese practice of Ikigai.
When I took the 24 Character Traits test by VIAcharacter.org last week, my top 5 character strengths resonated: zest, love of learning, curiosity, love of beauty/excellence, and creativity.
According to the results: “Zest is closely linked with the strength of hope, and both are aligned with having a positive outlook. Zest is more in the moment and hope is more geared toward looking to the future.” (Hope was #6, tied with Creativity.)
Generally, I consider myself an optimist and have heard the arguments of hope isn’t a marketing strategy, you need more science. I get that. BUT, I adore the word ZEST — a joie de vie, an appetite to devour life. If Mom was still alive, I suspect, zest would be in her top 5 too.
There are so many ways to bring creativity into our lives and acknowledge it exists.
Mom’s cleverness and creativity when shopping and asking stockers to open jars for her at the store because she couldn't open them once alone at home.
My husband’s saving the wood from a walnut tree in our backyard to build rocking chairs for our three daughters 20 years later. An ode to their childhood tire swinging days and The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein. Each chair has a slot under the seat for a green leather bound copy of the book; etched on the chair backs “and the tree was happy” - the last line of the book.
Our eldest daughter channels her creativity into all things soil-and-plants gardening and sewing all kinds of clothes and gifts. Our middlest crafts creative stories (as a kid on pumpkins, brown paper bags, family newsletters; now she’s into hygge - pretty cool; look it up). And our youngest discovered the wonderful world of ceramics and focuses her creative energy into presents for all of us.
For me, since retiring — zest and creativity have infiltrated my life. They pop up in the form of vegan cheffing, writing, and my desire to spend more time exploring book arts. They’ve become a food group for happiness I eat every day.
When I journaled early one morning about what I wanted to write for this newsletter, I wrote about smashing. What? My subconscious latched onto that word. In the background I heard our yellow recycling bucket full of glass thrown into the back of the Heiberg truck. Smashing the pickle jar and wine bottles into pieces. So I ran with it … open to where it might lead me.
What words can I smash? Cram together. Break. Bend. Obfuscate. Cover up.
The word smashing lead me to realize how much my signature strengths smash together and influence where I spend my energy: zest, love of learning, curiosity, love of beauty/excellence, and creativity. I feel more grounded when using them now, versus thinking my personal ecosystem is too chaotic with all of my interests around the ripple effects of our thoughts and how our minds work.
I love patterns. Finding them, creating or solidifying them into a routine. I love the planning part. Then as rigidity sets in, they’re less appealing.
There’s an ebb and flow I’m drawn to in the patterns found in chaos. Maybe the ebb and flow is purposefully creating chaos by whim and intention. Where we can settle into the negative space around the chaos that entangles us.
Perhaps by sharing more of ourselves with others (the signature strengths that light us up) - maybe we can make ourselves and our little corner of the planet a bit happier.
What are the signature strengths that light you up? How can you creatively bring more of them into your life and the lives around you as a way to nourish your mental health ballast?
LEAVE YOUR COMMENTS BELOW.
What did you discover were your top 5 signature strengths? How can you apply them to in your life?
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