For most people self-care means nothing more than looking after your daily basic needs of eating, sleeping and washing, if they’re lucky, just ask any parent. For others, it can be an entire world involving using all of your senses on a daily basis to get creative, regulate and build positive habits into their lives.

For me, that includes using both sides of my brain. My logical side, which for me became, over the years, a more dominant side and my creative side. I allowed my creative side to go unused for so long it felt very rusty to start using it again. If like me you have not used that creative side of yourself for a long time it can feel daunting to begin again. But let me tell you, it’s so worth it for your life/work balance.

Getting Back My Creativity.

I never gave creativity much thought until my first child (I have 5 children, who are all adults now) was diagnosed with dyslexia many decades ago. The one piece of brilliant advice I was given was to encourage his interests and talents outside of school. This was to take the pressure off him, and in turn his siblings as they were also later diagnosed, from academic life. It was to also give them a sense of empowerment. To help build their self-confidence levels and give them a place where they could achieve outside of main stream school.

If you don’t understand what dyslexia is, it’s a hidden disability that affects people’s reading, writing and spelling skills. By the time children have been diagnosed with a hidden learning disability their confidence has usually taken a pretty bad beating. People with dyslexia are also highly intelligent people and have talents for an amazingly large amount of things such as acting (Anthony Hopkins/Keira Knightly), writing (Brendan O Carroll), music (Noel Gallagher), directing (Steven Spielberg), Art (Pauline Bewick), Athletics (Magic Johnson), entrepreneurs (Richard Branson), science and maths (Thomas Edison) the list is endless really.

Anyway I had never thought of creativity as being anything other than art, music or writing. I was to discover it could be so much more and it could also help me balance my busy lifestyle. In fact, it gave me much more than a better life/work balance as it helped me reduce my stress levels and think better as an entrepreneur.

But like all good logically dominated thinkers I had to do my own investigations first. I hadn’t trained as a psychologist at the time either and my only concern was helping my child’s self-confidence. I wanted to find out in what ways could creativity help?

So What Did I Find Out?

First off, I found that getting creative involves so many disciples. These include as I’ve said art, music, writing, but it also showed me that it could involve so much more. It showed me art could include art journals and mindful colouring. Writing could include journaling and poetry. Music included not just playing an instrument but could be listening and appreciating the beauty of the music and words. But music also included singing in my car, and yes that counts.

Getting creative also included a whole host of sports (team or individual, it doesn’t matter), hobbies or interests of any kind and outdoor activities. Most of all creativity allows us to step away from our stressful and ever increasing busy lives for a short time. We can lose ourselves in that activity and become mindful of what we are doing in just that moment.

Helps Our Mental Health.

Secondly, I found that taking up any activity, just for ourselves, can be shown to increase self-confidence, decrease our stress levels, decrease the likelihood of burn out and depression and why is this important?

As psychologists we are now seeing an increase in stress and burnt out in adults. In fact, we are also seeing it happen at a younger age in teenagers and children who are finding it harder to cope with all the pressures they are increasingly under.

Too much emphasis is now being placed on society to be “perfect” and “successful” by the media and on social media. Adults and children, and yes Teens are children, are feeling this pressure in our instant result/action driven society. We have forgotten the joy and the need to be creative and place too much emphasis on the logical parts of our brains.

Helps Business.

If you need any excuse to adjust your thinking and have to have a logical reason to activate your creative mind, then as a psychologist I can assure you that it is vital for business and productivity too. I have found that studies are now showing us that creativity does help with:

1. Thinking outside the box,
2. Creation of original ideas and content, which we as a society are going to need more and more into the future if we as a society and in business are to succeed;
3. It also improves leadership skills, flexibility, reaction times
4. Boosts productivity.

So perhaps that art class or golf outing should be classed as a business expensive?

Still Need More Convincing?

What about just using creativity to increase our self-confidence, reduce our stress levels, creating a better life/work balance for ourselves. Or by cutting our chances of getting depression, chronic illness, empowering ourselves and possibly reducing our chances of getting Alzheimer’s or dementia in old age?

Yes, creativity does and can do all that. It is that important to not only our mental health but also our physical health. Stress is becoming a hugely increasing problem in our society. We need ways in which to create a better life/work balance and reduce our stress levels. Remember the saying “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy?” Well, it does more than that, it makes him stressed out, burnt out, probably heading towards all sorts of mental health and physical health problems.

Consider How It Helps You Physically And Mentally.

We know that depression is also on the rise. It is causing more problems in terms of physical health than most other physical health ailments. Getting your life/work balance is so important. Notice I use the term life/work balance not the work/life balance. That’s a big hint for any of you who think work comes first. At the end of the day, work won’t be there on your death-bed. Family and friends will and all the love they have for you. So if my hint about using creativity for better work productivity didn’t help maybe this one will.

Supporting Aging.

But what about what we consider old age problems like dementia or physical problems such as reduced mobility? We know that these can be helped by increased creative activities including sports related activity and mental stimulation such as art, chess, music, card games, etc.

You don’t have to step into any preconceived notions any more about being a grandparent. As older generations have shown us that you can lead productive and meaningful lives way beyond retirement. Grandparents, are no longer going to just sit by a fire or in a nursing home and wait to die any more. We can be and should be active all the way to the end. I for one, as a grandparent, will not be doing that. You can check in any active retirement group in the country (Ireland) to see a whole load of examples of grandparents keeping active and using their creativity to combat loneliness, build self-care and confidence, plus a whole load more.

If you need further examples of how much it has changed, just look at some of the famous baby boomers all working and living life to the full. Such as Helen Mirren, Ian Mckellen, Jeremy Irons, Judy Dench, this list is endless. Yes I know these are all famous actors but there are a great number of similar aged entrepreneurs, business, world leaders, artists and musicians out there. My point still remains you don’t have to be famous to be active, take care of yourself and get creative. You just have to be willing to do so at any age and remember it is never too late to start.

So How Did We Fair As A Family?

Let’s go back to the beginning again, my children are all grown up now. They are pretty self-confident individuals, they survived school and university. Yes, we had bumps in the road along the way, but those outside of school activities did help all my children a lot.

As a family we got involved in everything. We tried everything we could to use our creativity and it paid off in terms beyond just building their self-confidence and academics. It brought us closer as a family too. Even if I had just done it in the end to just build their self-confidence alone it would have been worth it!

Children will always follow your example. Summer camps are a great way to explore new ideas or investigate what might be on offer come the autumn months. Even if you have a tough teen dropping out of everything, then lead by example, they will come around again.

My message to you. Try it, even when you don’t think you’ll be any good at the activity, just give it a go. You never know where or how it could help you or your child in the future.

Work With Me.

Remember you are allowed to ask for support. No one is an island. If you need extra support then you can also work with me. We all struggle with stress and overwhelm from time to time. If you find this has become a problem for you and you’d like some support then schedule an appointment with me.