Creativity Clinic 15: Wellbeing and Making

Hack Circus

Making and wellbeing are linked. While it's known that making things improves your mood, I argue here (entirely unscientifically) that you can't make yourself make stuff until you feel like you have some energy to spend. So: getting creative can improve an already OK mood, but it's hard to get off that first block, especially if you've been battling mental or emotional problems that drain all your energy and make any kind of extra activity seem absolutely out of the question. The good news is that, I think, creativity expresses itself in everything we do. If we can make the decision to get up, to talk to someone, even just to push ourselves to think slightly differently, we're building new pathways in our brain and exercising the possibility of hope.