E140 Vitality and Creative Fitness
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Beth: Okay
Hello Hello, my friend. Welcome back to another episode of Create Today. Before we get started, I want to ask you a question. Have you ever been texting someone, you know, a lot of back and forth, how you doing, what's up tonight, uh, how about dinner, whatever, and suddenly they just stop texting you back? N- no bitter argument, no reason that you can think of, just silence.
And your texts, they just sit there read but never returned. Oh, we call that ghosting, right? That's not an unusual term these days. But here's my question for you. Have you ever ghosted yourself? Have you? And by ghosting, I'm talking about what you're doing for yourself. And of course, here inside Create Today, I'm looking at what you're doing [00:01:00] for your creativity.
So let's be fair. Pretty much no one wakes up and decides, "You know, today's the day I'm gonna ghost my creativity." No one does that. No, quitting or canceling, ghosting your own creativity, my friend, that is a slow creep. You get busy. Uh, you get tired at night. Other people need you.
Uh, your to-do list seems too long, And you tell yourself you will get back to your creative passion next week, and next week turns into next month. And one day you realize that, you know, you can't actually remember the last time you enjoyed doing something creative just for yourself.
Now, I want you to take a second and think about what happens if you stop taking your vitamins or, even worse, if you just stop taking a prescription that [00:02:00] you've been given to keep your heart or your cholesterol or your allergies healthier or in check. When you slowly stop taking vitamins or prescriptions, you don't feel it right away.
But not giving yourself those supplements or prescriptions long enough, and your body will start telling on you, right? you're going to feel tired or sluggish. You're gonna catch every cold that walks by. And your body, well, it just starts to push back, and you can't just grind or wish your way to feeling better when this happens.
Well, similar things can happen when you ghost your creativity. and science nods its collective head about this. You see, your stress levels go up and joyful moments become less and less apparent. And anxiety, which is always looking for an opening, [00:03:00] it moves in, and it fills the space where your creativity used to have a happy home.
And I'll be honest with you, I have ghosted my own creativity. That's why I can talk about it today. A few years ago, my sketchbook sat closed, and I told myself, "Oh, I'm just busy with a demanding job right now, and it's got a long commute." And I told myself, "Well, Beth, your job is creative. So you're still creating.
It's all good." Now, looking back, I know that I was more than just busy. I was exhausted, and I was burning out, and creativity was the first thing that I let go of because at the time it felt like the easiest and safest thing to skip. But I was wrong, and that wasn't a wise choice.
Creativity is a vital part of creative wellness, and what [00:04:00] we're gonna talk about today, creative fitness. Creativity in my life had been keeping me steady, but I didn't realize it, and I took it for granted. And letting my creativity sit idle was how I burned out.
Ooh, and it wasn't pretty. And it took a long time before I felt that familiar zing of joy flit in and out of my days again. So today I'm here to help you stop from ghosting your creativity. This is Create Today, and I am Beth Buffington. And today we are talking about your creative fitness. Not creativity as a hobby that you squeeze in if and only if you have leftover time.
I'm talking about creativity as a critical supplement to your life that becomes a vital sign of your happiness [00:05:00] and even your health. now, this kind of creative practice is something that your doctor should realistically be checking on alongside your blood pressure, your diet, and your exercise.
My doctor should really say to me, "Beth, um, how much sleep are you getting? And are you exercising? And, and what are you doing creatively in your life? Tell me." You see, a healthy creative practice is not a reward for a well-managed life.
It's proactive maintenance for a well-managed life. I am so happy you are here with me today. This is going to be an eye-opening episode. It's going to help you take a look at the real cost to you and your happiness when you ghost your creativity. And today we'll show you why and how you need to keep creativity as a maintenance tool [00:06:00] for life.
Stick with me to the end, and you're going to discover the science behind creativity's power to bring happiness and health to your life.
And then stay for some simple guidelines for how you can introduce or reintroduce creativity into your life to maintain your creative fitness
Now, if you've been with me for a while, you know I talk a lot about my Going Forwards creative practice. These are four words, revive, realize, refine, and release, that you can use to maintain a consistent creative practice to monitor your needs in heart, mind, body, and soul Today we're going to use these [00:07:00] four words
as we look through the lens of creative fitness or your creative vitality. But first. let's talk about what's actually happening in your body and your brain when you ghost your own creativity.
Because you see, the results of creative ghosting, it's not just a feeling. There are real physical consequences that can happen when you ghost your creativity. Let me share with you what science says about the power of creative fitness. First, let's talk about stress During a study out of the Netherlands, researchers gave a group of gardeners a stressful task, and then they split them into two groups.
Half went outside to garden for 30 minutes, and half were told to just sit inside and read, and they measured cortisol, which, you know, is your primary stress hormone. They measured it before and after [00:08:00] each of these two activities,
The results showed that cortisol dropped for both groups who had time to either garden or read before they did this stressful task. But here is the detail that really matters.
Cortisol levels dropped significantly more in the group that gardened. And the moods of these participants told a even bigger story.
Now, the participants who went outside to garden, their moods were fully back to normal after the stressful task. But the people who did the reading and just sat, well, their mood actually got a little worse.
now this was a small study, just one study comparing gardening to reading, but it points to something very interesting. When it comes to actually bringing stress down, passively resting was not the same thing as actively [00:09:00] making or growing something.
And remember, my friend, in the Create Today world, gardening is creative. Now, second, let's talk about lowered happiness. Psychologist Tamlin Conner and her team had about 650 people track their days for two weeks, And they logged how creative they were and how they felt.
Now, on days when people did more small everyday creative things than usual, they reported more enthusiasm and higher levels of flourishing even on the next day. And here is the part that makes all of this really worth mentioning. The researchers also checked whether it worked the other way around, whether just feeling good made people more creative the next day.
And you know what? That pattern did not show [00:10:00] up. First, the creativity happened, and then the happiness followed, and that happiness lasted into the next day. Now, third, let's talk about, let's talk about fog. There is a concept from environmental psychology called attention restoration theory, and it was first proposed by researcher Rachel Kaplan The idea is that focused attention, you know, the kind you use at work when you're solving problems, well, this is a limited resource, and you push it too hard for too long, and you get what researchers call directed attention fatigue.
You get tired, and it often results in irritability and trouble concentrating. Now, the fix, according to this theory, is something called soft fascination. That's interesting, right? Soft [00:11:00] fascination is an easy, effortless attention on something mildly interesting so that your brain gets to rest instead of muscling through to find more focus or solve a difficult problem.
so you can find that same effortless kind of soft noticing, that soft fascination, rather than forced concentration when you are creatively playing. So working with a craft that has tactile repetition, like knitting or blending with a paintbrush, that's an excellent way to provide your brain with soft fascination.
You see, your hands are loving the tactile texture in the craft, and your brain is relaxing in the repetitive motion that you need in order to create whatever it is you're creating. But when you skip this kind of soft creativity and it's eliminated because you're busy, your attention does not get [00:12:00] to rest, so it's unable to reap the benefits of attention restoration.
You keep attempting to focus because you've got this problem to solve, but your energy is depleted, and that's when brain fog drifts in and you barely remember why you walked in the kitchen You can't find your keys
You feel wired and tired. You are busy and yet blank, both at the same time. Does that sound and feel familiar? So you sit down, you continue or you try to finish a project, but somehow you end up scrolling on your phone, and 45 minutes later, you're still swiping and scrolling on content and videos that you didn't even really care to watch in the first place.
Ignoring your creativity does not just mean less art in the world. It means your attention rarely gets a true [00:13:00] rest
So let's walk through what proactive creative care looks like,
And let's explore how you can use my Going Forwards creative process to keep your creative fitness in check and keep away from ghosting your creativity. So first, let's check in on your vitality with our first word, revive. Now revive,
this is your daily vitality check because clarity and focus, they hinge tightly on your energy levels. Do you wanna keep your vitality bright? Do not wait until you are dead tired to pay attention to this word revive. Small, steady doses of rest to restore your energy can keep your creative pulse going strong.
This is easy enough to say or even to be mindful of, but let's talk about how you put this into practice. How do you monitor your energy? [00:14:00] How do you restore energy levels that are low? Well, this is what revive is all about. So I'm gonna share just one of many easy, quick revive activities that you can consider.
This is especially useful on crazy days when you think you don't have time to pull out a load of art supplies and be creative. So this two-minute creative reset, it's easy, and it's calming.
And first and most importantly, you must realize that you need a moment. You need a moment. And then next, you must give yourself permission to take a moment. Remember, this is just a two-minute reset, so it's not gonna take long.
You can take a moment. So once you have given yourself permission, hey, an applause to you for taking this moment, by the way. Now I want you to just, uh, look around the room, and I want you to notice [00:15:00] a color or a pattern somewhere near you right now. You can... Let's just do this together at this very moment.
So look around and choose something. It could be the green of a plant on the windowsill or maybe a pattern, or maybe the pattern of a candy wrapper on your desk. Something like that. Just quickly pick one thing. Look at your chosen color or pattern, and then I want you to breathe in And hold your breath, and I want you to think really quickly, "What led me to this pattern or color?"
And then I want you to breathe out. Push out that air. And then as you're breathing in, what memories does this bring up for you? And then hold your breath and think about your color and pattern again. Does it stir up any additional thoughts? And then breathe out and think, "What inspirations does your choice light up for you?"[00:16:00]
So you're going to continue to do this, breathing in and hold, and exhaling out. And then breathing in and hold, and then exhaling out.
Allow your mind to wander in any creative direction, But keep it tethered to your color or texture. This can be inspirational, it can be whimsical, or it can even be a bit ridiculous. Just allow the thought flow to stay fixed on color or pattern.
And then I want you to sit with this creative mindfulness and keep concentrating on breath in, hold, and out for just those two minutes. My friend, that's the soft fascination that we just talked about. It's just a two-minute dose, all completed on purpose to give you just a snippet of rest.
This is a quick way to take a break from stress or anxiety or a difficult task, and it's going to bring that [00:17:00] quick, fast dose that's going to renew some of your energy before you're running on empty.
Revive is all about monitoring your energy.
Now, let's check in a little more on your detection skills when we look at our second word, realize.
Now, realize this is all about catching that ghostly burnout before it becomes a crisis, And early detection, same as anything else in your health, is important. You know that old saying, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
This is such a truthful saying, especially when we're talking about your creative fitness. So let's look at a list that might help you realize some signs that you are ghosting or starting to ghost your creativity, and you know that if you are ghosting, this could lead to creative fatigue or, even worse, burnout.
So [00:18:00] here's that list that's going to help you realize some signs that you are ghosting your creativity. The world has gone a little flat. So when was the last time you felt excited about colors and textures and sounds that used to make you feel tingly or joyful? Number two, you're short-tempered over nothing.
Little things land bigger, and your response is often sharper than you really need to be or would like them to be. Number three, you feel overwhelmed with your day, even when your to-do list isn't that long. A low hum of, "Hmm, I don't think I'm capable. Why am I doing this? I'm not good at it," seems to play in the background, and you can't shake it.
Number four, ideas are knocking, but you're not answering the door. "Not now," or "We'll see," or "Maybe" have become an automatic [00:19:00] response not only to yourself, but also to the people in your life.
Number five, you're busy all day, but you rarely see or feel a sense of accomplishment at night. Number six, you find yourself scrolling to move away from stress or anxiety. But doom scrolling, it's not lowering your worries or resetting your flagging energy
Number seven, small mistakes feel like a verdict on your failures instead of just being proof that you're human and that you can learn from something that didn't work the way you thought it might.
It's a place where learning continues.
Now, if two or three of these things on this list sound familiar, please, my friend, that's not a character flaw. That's information, Use it wisely. you might have discovered a creative [00:20:00] deficiency, and the fix is not more willpower.
It is noticing, and then it is acting on the information that you have discovered
Now let's take a pause for a quick word from our sponsor, and that would be me. If any part of what we're talking about today feels like something you're experiencing, I want to invite you into a space built exactly for exploring the vitality in your creative fitness.
Come and find all the treasures available inside Create Today and the adventurous clubhouse that I am building. Inside, you're going to find my Beth's Best Books artsy book club, where we read and talk about books that feed your creative curiosity. you're going to find the Recipe Exchange, which is actually a grown-up permission to play with your food, swap [00:21:00] recipes, and treat your kitchen like a creative studio instead of another chore.
There's also an ongoing creative community challenge where right now we're all drawing coloring book pages for whatever purpose you choose. There's no pressure, no judging. We're just making something fun. And underneath all of these fun activities, there's genuinely beautiful community of creatives just like you, who also want to create for the health of it.
These are things that will help you maintain your vitality and your creative fitness without feeling like it's a ton of work. There's a link in the show notes to take you straight to join the Going Forwards clubhouse, and you can try it for just a dollar for your first month.
And then it's just $9 a month for all these creative vitality activities. You can join today for a dollar by going to my website at [00:22:00] www.bdi-create.today, and you'll find everything there to get you started. Or look in the show notes, and you'll find some live links that will take you right where you need to go.
Come, my friend. Create today together with me.
Now our third word is refine, and this is where you're going to invest in your future joy. Think of it like building a storehouse of understanding and skills. There's a well-established idea in psychology called conservation of resources theory.
And the short explanation of this is people who build up, like personal resources, skills, and energy, people who develop a sense of, "Oh, I know how to do that when this happens," well, these people typically handle stress better than people who do not have reserves in a storehouse, and they allow themselves to run on empty [00:23:00] Resources, my friend, they start to compound as you build up more resources.
This creates that beautiful upward spiral. But a lack of resources tends to push that spiral downward. So if you practice a creative skill now, just because it's intriguing or you're curious and you wanna have some fun, and not because anyone is asking you to be creative, you are making a deposit before you need to take a withdrawal.
you're, taking up crochet, you're getting curious about origami, you're discovering how to make beautiful sushi rolls, these are all creative deposits. They are building your creative fitness, while they're also making you stronger and happier and even healthier.
But if you ghost your creativity, when crisis hits, it's much harder to find enough creative fitness [00:24:00] because you've nothing stored up to quickly pull and use from your storehouse. so you need that momentum in order to spiral upward.
Because this strength is your creative fitness. It's like building actual muscles so that you can lift heavier things in your life. To build your creative storehouse, your action is really simple. You just work on something because it feels good, not because it needs to be finished or because there's a deadline or somebody is demanding it of you.
So what could be simpler, right?
So this word refine, it's about the doing of something creative, but doing it for the pure enjoyment of being creative, even when there's no clear reason why you need to be doing this creative project at all. You're doing something creative just for the health of it. Now let's look at our fourth and final word inside the [00:25:00] FourWords framework, and that word is release.
Release, well, this is like, mm, kind of like an immunity boost. This is where you are letting the work go, whether that means finishing it or sharing it. Release clears the slate, and there's a real reason for why the accomplishment of the word release is so important.
So science calls this the Zeigarnik effect,named after the psychologist who discovered it. When you have a task or a job or a project that is left unfinished, these unfinished tasks, they stay open in your mind.
They create a low-grade tension that kind of lingers, and not in a good way. And that is part of why a half-finished creative project that's even out of sight is not out of [00:26:00] mind. it can leave you feeling heavy and kind of slightly guilty. Closing that loop, actually finishing a creative project, is what releases that tension.
That is your slate actually getting cleared, and it is what makes you and your confidence stronger to face the next stressful day because your brain has proof, real, recent proof that you are capable of starting something and seeing it through to the finish line.
Your action here is a small ritual of releasing. Something as simple as signing your name to your art, well, means it's done. Posting your work on social media says, "Here's some of my work." or handing it to someone and saying, "Look what I've done." these actions tell your brain, "I did this, and I am allowed to be proud of it," because you should [00:27:00] be.
So what's important here is that you actively remember to put your tools down and declare the project done.
Note that I didn't say perfect, I said done. So here's what I want to leave with you today. Taking care of your creativity is really and truly self-care,
And the best news is that caring for your creative fitness is really just straight-up fun. But because creativity is so darn fun, we often feel guilty doing it, so it becomes a reward when all the work is done, and that's the thought we must change.
Give yourself permission to create today. Creativity is what keeps you getting your work done, and creativity makes you more pleasant to be with [00:28:00] as you are doing all the work you need to get done for all the people who need you. So embrace your creative passions and give yourself permission to play.
And remember that here inside Create Today, you're gonna find fun activities that will help you keep your creative practice running strong and going forwards. So pop onto the Create Today website and try out some of the fun. Remember, you can get started this month for just a dollar. Now, before you go, I have two quick favors to ask.
Since you've stayed with me to the very end, I would love to have you join me again next week. So if you haven't yet, hit subscribe to make it easier to know each week when a new Create Today episode is ready. and if someone you love is ghosting their creativity, please share this episode with them.
Help them [00:29:00] rebuild their creative fitness. Maybe you can work on it together. Now, here are a few questions for you as you leave. When was the last time you checked your creative pulse? What does your creative fitness feel like today? And take a moment. Have you been ghosting your creativity?
Remember, it is important to take time to play and just have fun
So that you can stay creative, my friend
