And one big part of that puzzle, to me, is creativity.

Often times, creativity can provide us with many benefits. It helps keep our brains sharp, it give us a greater sense of self-awareness, and it helps us deal with personal issues more effectively.

There are many different reasons why I find having a creative activity can be valuable to our happiness and mental health. I’m going to explain most of these key reasons throughout the rest of this article.

Increased self-awareness

It’s difficult to express some emotions and thoughts using just words, but things like art, music, and photography provide us with the ability to express these emotions and thoughts through other mediums.

This allows us to discover many emotions and thoughts, perhaps some hidden in our subconscious, that we can’t access through ordinary consciousness and rational thinking.

Art and creativity gives us a way to formulate these hidden and abstract emotions into something more tangible and accessible. This often helps us develop a deeper and more intimate understanding of ourselves, and our internal world.

Learning a new skill

Creativity often requires that we learn a new skill: how to play a guitar, how to paint, or how to sculpt. And when we learn new skills, this often improves our psychology in a number of ways.

First, it exercises our brains. Learning new things keeps our brains active, sharp, and flexible. When we stop learning new things, often times our brain’s power will begin to diminish, like when you stop working out a muscle.

Also, learning a new skill boosts our self-esteem. When we finally learn how to play our first song on guitar, we think “Wow, I learned to do something pretty damn cool.” Learning one new skill can often improve our confidence to learn other new skills in the future. It can start a positive cycle of continual learning and development.

A state of engagement or flow

When we get really immersed in a creative activity, psychologists say that we enter a state known as flow.

Flow is a state of high engagement or sharp focus on one particular activity.

It’s a very trance-inducing state, similar to many forms of meditation and prayer.

If you’ve ever gotten so lost in an activity that you lost all sense of time, then you’ve probably experience a state of flow. In many ways, creative activities can produce this same meditative state.

Flow is associated with intense feelings of enjoyment, and it is one of the five factors of happiness according to Martin Seligman’s PERMA theory.

Power and control.

When we start becoming proficient in something creative, there is a new sense of empowerment. It gives us a feelig of control, and it becomes an example of the ways our ideas and intentions can have a real effect on the physical world.

Perhaps this is why so many people with mental illness show interest in creativity. For many, it may be the one area of life where they feel they have some power over their situation.

This might also be why art therapy can be an effective supplement in a lot of mental health treatment. When we engage in activities where we feel in control, these activities can often become a source of stress relief.

Creativity can be a source of empowerment for people with and without mental illness.

Conclusion

These are some of the key ways that creativity can benefit our happiness and well-being. And the best part is, most of this holds true for any kind of creative act whether it be painting, music, photography, sculpting, cooking, dancing, or whatever.

It’s not hard to think of new ideas. We have them all of the time: at work, at home, in the shower, and before bed. In fact, we are constantly thinking. Generating new thought after new thought.

Writer’s block? It must be a myth. I hear people say “they can’t think of anything” – but I don’t believe them. Often I find it harder to stop the flow of ideas, rather than to get it going.

The problem isn’t that someone can’t think of anything. This rarely happens. The problem is that people can’t think of anything that they think is good enough.

That’s a key distinction.

Get rid of the “I can’t think of anything” excuse.

Next time you find yourself using the “I can’t think of anything” excuse, I want you to look a little deeper.

Ask yourself: is it really true that you can’t think of anything – or do you just not like the ideas you have?

How good ideas are actually born.

An average idea can become a good idea over time. But that will never happen if you wait for that one golden moment. The truth is you need to take what you have and start building off of it. Now.

During most creative projects, the final product often looks drastically different than the original idea. This is why taking action on an idea is often more important than waiting for that “right” idea to come to you.

You may think you have the best idea in the world, but if you can’t put it to action then it’s worthless.

And you may have a mediocre idea, but when you begin playing with it, something beautiful can begin to grow.

The key to developing good ideas is to take what you have and start from there.

Don’t wait.

I know you have ideas. And you know you have ideas. So just grab one of your many ideas and start working with it. Play with it – and see what it transforms into. You’ll probably be surprised with what you come up with.

Mind Opener MP3

Here is a very simple exercise in divergent thinking:

1) Grab a piece of paper and draw 30 circles (5 columns with 6 circles in each row). Each circle should be about 1 inch in diameter.

2) Find a timer and set it for 60 seconds.

3) Time yourself to see how many different drawings you can come up with using the circles. For example: a baseball (1 circle), a planet (1 circle), glasses (2 circles), a face (3 circles – two eyes and a mouth), etc.

The goal is to incorporate each circle into a drawing within the 60 seconds. It doesn’t matter how exactly you do it: you could have 30 drawings with 1 circle each, or 6 drawings with 5 circles each, or anything in between. It all depends on what you can think of.

And don’t worry if you don’t finish, most people don’t. At the end of it count up how many circles you completed. Put that # over 30 – that is your score.

I did this same experiment in my Research Methods class at college. Our group chose to measure differences in creativity between males and females, and this divergent thinking exercise was a great and simple way to quantify creative thinking. Given, creativity is an incredibly difficult thing to quantify, but for purposes of the class this experiment worked well (in case you are interested: we didn’t find any differences in male vs. female creativity).

This idea of divergent thinking can be extrapolated to any object or thing. The only limit is your imagination. Other common practices include thinking of how many different uses you can come up with for:

• A shoe.
• Duct tape.
• Paperclip.

If you think about it, this is really what a lot of creativity boils down to: using objects or things in unconventional ways than how they are usually used. Just like how Rosabeth Kanter describes: “Creativity is a lot like looking at the world through a kaleidoscope. You look at a set of elements, the same elements everyone else sees, but then reassemble those floating bits and pieces into an enticing new possibility.” That’s the same thing we do during these divergent thinking tasks. We look at a common element of our world that everyone else sees, but we utilize those elements in a way that wasn’t thought of before.

1. Close your eyes and vividly imagine yourself in a counselor’s room. Choose a definitive purpose for your meeting and what situation in your life you want help or guidance in.

2. Choose between 5-9 individuals (alive, dead, fictional, non-fictional – it doesn’t matter) who you would like to receive advice from regarding this particular situation.

3. Ask whatever questions you want to any of the individuals at your meeting. For each question, keep your mind open, and be ready to hear any response that comes back to you.

The stronger your imagination, the better. But don’t worry if you’re not naturally a creative or imaginary person; like most things, this skill can be developed with practice. You may not receive any insights the first time you meet with your counsel, but with practice you will get better at listening to your subconscious.

For a great explanation on the history and application of the Invisible Counselors Technique, this video does a bang up job (although there are some things I disagree with which I will address below, watch it first):

While I find this video really helpful in explaining how to do the Invisible Counselors Technique (and also how it relates to other people’s creative strategies), I don’t quite understand why it feels the need to bring up multiverses or quantum mechanics. The video originally quotes Hill as saying this is purely a fictional exercise, but then later tells how he changed his mind because the characters began to take a personality of their own.

I think the false assumption here is that our mind is a single, unitary personality. But in truth I think our personalities are much more multi-dimensional, partly because they are heavily influenced by other figures in our life: family members, friends, teachers, coworkers, celebrities, politicians, musicians, artists, actors, as well as fictional characters in movies, TV shows, books, plays, etc.

Thus, when we imagine our best friend or Mom or Abraham Lincoln in our mind’s eye, it isn’t as though we are actually channeling them into consciousness. What we are doing is projecting a vision or “archetype” of them that we have learned through prior experience with that person. Thus, I believe it is still technically a “fiction” – a projection of our imagination – although, it happens to be a useful fiction when it comes to creativity and problem-solving.

In truth, the effectiveness of the technique has little to do with whether or not these projections are “real” in some other dimension or simply “imaginary.” I think Occam’s Razor (choosing the theory that makes the fewest new assumptions) tells us that The Invisible Counselors Technique is a working of our imagination.

Given, I’m not an expert in Quantum Mechanics, but I do know that the popular consensus from most quantum physicists (and psychologists, for that matter) doesn’t support the notion that we can literally connect with the consciousness of dead minds. I won’t say it’s flat out wrong (because I don’t know), but I am certainly skeptical.

Skepticism aside, the technique is valid in its own right, and I highly recommend trying it. In all honesty, I find that our imaginations are an incredibly undervalued resource in today’s society. In addition, I think in many ways ideas remain dormant in our subconscious, and an exercise such as The Invisible Counselors Technique helps us bring these subconscious ideas into awareness. When we draw upon these different archetypes that exist in our minds, we become introduced to different perspectives that we may not have previously considered. I consider it a very useful technique in cognitive empathy.

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Of course, positive psychology wasn’t the first to emphasize the importance of meaning in living a satisfying life. Probably ever since human’s first became self-aware, they have asked themselves deep and profound questions about their life’s meaning and purpose. It is a struggle that we all seem to face, but some of us deal with it better than others. The existentialist psychologist Viktor Frankl wrote in his book “Man’s Search for Meaning” how even under the harshest conditions we can find meaning in our suffering, and live with dignity and satisfaction. When Frankl was put into a concentration camp during the Holocaust, he used to give lectures to an imaginary audience. In this way, Frankl learned to cope with his suffering by using his imagination to create a more meaningful existence to his life. He believed that by playing out his imagination objectively, he could find a deeper sense of purpose. He did.

I believe we should all exercise this capacity to some extent, and I believe imagination and creativity play a huge role. The human mind is gifted with this incredibly ability to restructure the way it views reality and experience. And as Frankl demonstrates, we can take truly awful circumstances in our life and transform them into something positive for ourselves.

I found this same theme to be very prevalent in the film Tideland by Terry Gilliam. The main character is a little girl who is incredibly lonely and lives with a very negligent father (played by Jeff Bridges). In some scenes, the little girl actually helps her father shoot up massive amounts of heroin, after which the father passes out for extended periods of time. In the girl’s fit of loneliness and desperation, she goes outside and her imagination takes over. She carries around the heads of three dolls, who all have their own personalities, and together they go on all kinds of adventures. Objectively, the life of this girl is harsh and miserable. But inside her head, she finds a way to get by.

Apparently most people who saw the film found it incredibly depressing (which is understandable) but the director Gilliam emphasizes that we often underestimate just how resilient the human mind is (especially when it is accompanied by a child-like imagination).

Of course, the examples presented by Frankl and Gilliam are extreme cases. But we all go through some kind of suffering, and by creating a new layer of meaning we can find ways to overcome this suffering.

When creating this meaning we don’t need to be as dreamy (or “delusional”) as the little girl in Tideland. Often creating meaning in one’s life is as simple as writing poetry, composing a song, dancing, or painting a picture. We shouldn’t constantly live in some imaginary existence, but using our imagination in some way can be incredibly healthy and emotionally relieving. A healthy imagination, in my honest opinion, is a crucial component to mental health and living a meaningful life.

I believe that when we participate in art or other creative activities, we simultaneously change the way we think about ourselves and our world. We begin to recognize that we are participators in this game of life. Life is not just something that happens to us, but something that we also create for ourselves. And by engaging in art and creativity, we feel more capable in taking control of our thoughts, emotions, actions, and life in general. Being creative empowers us.

Interestingly, there is some empirical evidence that shows a relationship between mental illness and creativity. Perhaps some of this is due to the unconventional thinking of those with mental illness. But I also think creativity is a natural coping mechanism. If people with mental illness are more likely to suffer than those without mental illness, art and creativity is something that the mentally ill would be naturally drawn to in order to manage their condition.

But, in truth, I think most of us are naturally drawn to some form of creativity. There may even be a hunger for it, and when that hunger isn’t satisfied I think our lives become drastically less meaningful and less satisfying.

The moral of this post is to embrace your ability to create new meaning in your life. And in my opinion art is one of the absolute best ways to do this. If you don’t already have a creative hobby, I suggest starting one. Don’t have the time? Make room for it, especially if you are in need of an emotional boost.

I personally engage in creative ways by posting on this blog, taking photographs, writing scripts for movies, and composing songs on my computer. I can’t imagine how much less fulfilling my life would be without hobbies like this. They make a big difference, they help me love life more.

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