Be Creative: It Improves Your Health + Free Printable

Anyone who engages in any kind of creative practice — from writing to painting, music to embroidery — knows that the process of making feels good.

It’s a kind of meditation. The quiet focus. The satisfaction not only in the prospect of the finished product, but in the journey that you lose yourself in as you move your pen across the page or ease your needle through fabric. There’s something intangible about making a thing, even if no one else will ever see it, that brings about a different kind of consciousness.

Research has begun to show that creativity can actually improve physical and mental health. But artists and makers have known this forever; although we welcome the research to back us up, we don’t need it to tell us that our creative lives are healthy. That when we make things, we’re engaging in something that is supportive of our well-being.

The reason we never needed scientists to tell us that what we were doing was good for us is because we experience it; we feel it; and what we experience and feel within our creative work is difficult to demonstrate in numbers. It’s not easy to articulate in words, either! So, instead of trying to explain it, I want to invite you to join me on a practical exploration of creativity and wellness.

Are you in?!

If you’re ready to start, grab a notebook and pen and write down how you feel right now. Be thorough: write down how you feel physically, emotionally; what you’re worried about; what you’re happy about; and anything you really want to change at the moment.

And then set the intention to do something creative every day for the next ten days. Depending on the kind of creative practice you choose, you might work on one project, a little bit at a time, each day; or you might make something completely different every day.

Don’t feel restricted by things you’re already good at — choose anything. It could be writing songs, prose, poetry; it could be sketching or painting; it could be mending clothes by hand, or spending thirty minutes creating rhythms with wooden spoons. Whatever you feel like doing: do that.

At the end of each day, spend a few minutes writing in your notebook. This in itself is a creative practice, so enjoy! Write down how your creative endeavour made you feel each day, and how you feel in general.

And then when you reach the tenth day, sit down with your notebook again and, just as you did at the beginning, write a detailed account of how you feel.

The daily writing is the ‘small picture’, intended to record each day’s creative activity. The writing at the beginning and end of the ten days is the ‘big picture’, which will give you a sense of where you started and how far you move from that point.

Ten days isn’t a long time at all, but I’m willing to bet that what you write at the end will be significantly changed from what you write at the beginning.

To make this exercise easier for you to follow and try I have created a PDF worksheet that you can download for free. I would love to know how you go so if it works and you have enjoyed this Acting Pure Tip please be sure to leave me a comment below so I know.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE PRINTABLE WORKSHEET

Until Next time, enjoy your creative process!

#actingpure #creativity #feelgood