Having a regular creative practice can help you live better.

Having a regular creative practice can help you live better.

How?

It’s related to the idea that how we do one thing is how we do everything - we tend to have ways of thinking and feeling and moving through the world that are similar, no matter the circumstances we’re finding ourselves in.

And so if we regularly play with a blank page (or in our kitchen or our garden or sewing room - however we like to create) and watch what we do and how we do it, the parts that feel fun and the parts that challenge us, we start to see connections with how we live life in the world outside our blank page or our art journal or our kitchen or our garden or wherever we like to create.

Want an example? Here’s a few.

For some of us (a lot of us) blank pages can be intimidating. All that empty space, endless possibilities of things to fill it with. How do you know where to start? Even if you know what you want to fill it with, making the first mark can feel a bit daunting sometimes.

And that can be kind of like life - even if you know where you want to go, taking the first step can feel a bit daunting sometimes.

A regular creative practice (like any kind of regular practice) can become a little mini world we can step into that helps us concentrate on just what’s in front of us - maybe a blank page - and for a while, nothing else matters but our journey with the page.

We can step into our creative world feeling anxious and come out again a while later feeling more at ease. Or we can step in feeling curious and excited and come out having learned something new about how to use a pencil or about how the colour red makes us feel dreamy today.

We can step in and get frustrated that the thing we’re drawing doesn’t look like how we want it to look, and if we stick with it long enough that turns out to be perfect because where we ended up was surprising and awesome. And then we can step out and use that same skill of persistence and letting go of rigid expectations in the rest of our lives, allowing us to be surprised there, too.

What we learn from creating something on the page - about ourselves and about the act of creation itself - is very transferable to the rest of life. As it becomes easier to hear and trust our inner knowing on the page, so does it become easier to hear and trust our inner knowing in our lives.

As we learn what we like and how we like to work on the page, so we can use that same skill in life.

If you don’t yet have a regular creative practice and you’re curious to try and see if you like it, perhaps you’d like to join a friendly group of creative explorers and come along to the fortnightly online therapeutic art group that my good friend and fellow art therapist Rose and I are running.

We’ll be drawing something different each time we meet, and it can be really nice to be able to drop in and have someone else give you the guidelines so you don’t have to think so much about what to fill your page with. Kind of like a yoga class, having someone up the front guide you through the poses so you can just move.

Our first group is October 12, and every two weeks following. If you’d like to find out more about the art group and save your spot, click here to do that.

And if a group isn’t for you right now, consider this post a gentle encouragement to create something and see how you feel while you’re doing it and after you’re done. Happy creating!