Instead, we have the tendency to avoid or cling to certain thoughts and emotions.

We judge some as good, others as bad, and these judgments – in many ways – become a self-fulling prophecy.

On this site I often quote positive psychologist Tal Ben-Sahar when he says, “We must give ourselves permission to experience the full-range of human emotions.”

I’ve written before how we must give ourselves permission to be negative every now and then. If someone we love dies unexpectedly, we should allow ourselves to grieve over our loss. Similarly, when we fail at something, it is only natural that we will feel frustrated or disappointed.

These emotions are a necessary part of living, and by suppressing them or avoiding them we only let them build up inside of us. This often exacerbates the problem. It makes our emotional world more chaotic, because we don’t give our emotions a healthy way to express themselves.

In the same way, people tend to cling or avoid thoughts and emotions we associate with “happiness.”

It may sound counter-intuitive, but it’s true. Sometimes when life gets “too good,” it actually makes us feel worse – because we think, “How am I supposed to make these good feelings last? I’ve never felt this good before, I don’t deserve this.”

We create a kind of “mental ceiling” in our heads. We feel we only deserve to experience X amount of happiness at a time, and when we pass that limit we feel undeserving. We may even see others suffer, and say, “Why should I (of all people) be allowed to feel this good?”

Our happiness then becomes ridden with guilt, so much that we sabotage any opportunities to feel good – however small or simple they may seem. Some of us are even led to believe that our happiness is insignificant in the “greater scheme of things.”

Henry Ward Beecher said, “The art of being happy lies in the power of extracting happiness from common things.”

Yet — so few of us permit ourselves to experience such happiness – it’s too simple, too easy, too small, and too unimportant. It therefore can’t possibly be worth our time.

Take a beautiful sunrise as a very simple example. It happens almost every morning, yet how many of us spend the time to enjoy such a common (yet often highly rewarding) experience?

The truth is most of us don’t. We can’t. We have “more important” things to do – like go to work, hit the gym, clean the house, etc. Enjoying a moment to ourselves? That cannot possibly be important.

Of course, this post isn’t about sunrises – not at all.

It’s about all the other daily opportunities for joy that we let pass us by because we feel our happiness isn’t important enough.

A lot of people don’t permit themselves to enjoy life as much as they potentially could – even when these opportunities for joy and excitement are usually staring us right in the face.

According to the study, 68.4% of the mentally troubled said they “often felt happy,” in contrast to 89.1% of those who “often felt happy” – but didn’t have a mental disorder.

So while it is still easier to find happiness without a mental disorder, there is some evidence that mental disorders and happiness aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive.

Researchers had trained interviewers question volunteers about various psychological symptoms they may have been experiencing within the past month. They found that 16.5% of their sample fit into a psychiatric disorder. To test for happiness, the researchers asked only one question regarding how often the participant felt happy, on a scale from “never” to “always.”

(There are some obvious limitations to the design of this study. Asking only one question to measure happiness isn’t very conclusive, at all).

It was found, however, that those who suffered from alcohol abuse reported the same level of happiness as healthy participants. Meanwhile, those who suffered from depression and social anxiety had the lowest levels of happiness – although a significant number of these people still reported frequent happy moods.

The study also followed participants over time and found that those who reported higher levels of happiness at the start of the experiment also showed better recovery from their mental disorders.

I believe the broader lesson in this study is that the co-existence between mental disorders and happiness is indeed possible. And those who may suffer from a mental disorder shouldn’t fall for the “black and white” thinking that their disorder automatically means they will never be able to achieve happiness.

On the other end of this research, there is also evidence that pretending to fake happiness can be unhealthy in some situations:

• According to a recent study in the Academy of Management Journal, it was discovered that bus drivers were more likely to experience negative emotions on days when they pretended to be in a good mood.
• Another analysis of over 3 decades of research found that faking positive feelings at work was associated with lower employee satisfaction and increased job burnout.
• A third study published in Anxiety, Stress, and Coping found that volunteers at a call center who were told to “hide negative emotions” had greater increases in blood pressure and heart rate than those told to show their true feelings.

As it turns out, the “emotional labor” it takes to pretend to be in a good mood can actually be very taxing on our physical and mental well-being.

There are a couple of lessons that both business and employees could learn from this research.

One lesson for businesses is to give employees an opportunity to express themselves genuinely and openly. Of course, this doesn’t mean you want customer service yelling at people, but maybe giving employees a way to express their frustrations among each other could provide a valuable emotional release, without necessarily disrupting the “consumer experience.”

There should also be a drive in businesses to try to make work environments as stress-free and enjoyable as possible. Often times the happier workers are, the better their work performance and productivity. Because of this, I believe it is only a matter of time until more businesses begin implementing these principles.

One lesson for employees is to not feel the need to plaster on a smile every time they walk into the office. It is okay to feel down from time to time, and we need not pretend that our jobs are perfect (they rarely are).

This also fits with a common theme of this blog which is that we must give ourselves permission to be negative every now and then.

Another lesson for employees is to raise their standards. If a job isn’t at all satisfying to you, consider searching for something else that makes you genuinely happier. We sometimes underestimate our value and skills in the marketplace. We become complacent to one job, and we stop searching for other opportunities. We begin to accept the idea that a job is supposed to be something we hate, so we settle for something less than what we might really be capable of. Jobs can be difficult and tiresome, but that doesn’t mean they have to be the plague of our existence.

(I understand there are some limitations to the above, maybe based on your prior work experience, intelligence, and other factors. I only recommend that you keep yourself open to alternatives. You may not have a whole lot of different jobs to choose from, but there is often more than just one path.)

On that note, I want to remind you one last time that it’s completely natural to not be 100% in love with your job. Don’t fool yourself into thinking that needs to be the case. Often times, by acknowledging life’s imperfections, we can handle them better than if we try to bury ourselves in delusions and false promises.

Stay updated on new articles on psychology and self-improvement here.

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.