Five creative steps towards joy

I’m writing this in the middle of that grey and gloomy time of winter when the sparkle of Christmas is a fading memory and Spring seems a lifetime away (even though the supermarkets are starting to put Easter Eggs on the shelves!). It’s dark and grey and cold and rainy.

So now seems like a really good time to bring a little joy into our lives.

Happiness is not something that comes ready made. It comes from your own actions. Dalai Lama

I came across a lovely and very readable report by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (The Futurist, Sep-Oct 1997, Happiness and Creativity: Going with the flow). He is the psychologist who first described the state of ‘flow’ — where we become completely absorbed in an activity. He was writing about the link between creativity and happiness.

He found that one characteristic that is shared by most creative people is that they love what they do. What makes them love what they do is the burst of joy that they get when they make or discover something new. Think about this — think back to the last time you made something new…it might have been a batch of cup-cakes using a new recipe, or a report you wrote that shone new light on a problem. Remember the feeling that you got? Most likely you felt joy through creativity.

I think that this has a powerful link with our human craving for novelty but while you can certainly get pleasure from buying something new, reading a new book, seeing a film and so on it never matches up to the joy that you experience through bringing something into being yourself.

But going back to flow, the activities most likely to move you into a state of flow are ones that present a balance between skill and challenge. They stretch your existing skills in a manageable way. The activity gives you immediate feedback on how you are doing. You lose your self-consciousness and with it you also lose your fear of failure. The activity becomes an end in itself.

One of my creative practices is making jewellery. If you ask a jeweller how they feel when they are using the saw to pierce out a complicated piece, you tend to get a similar reaction. Pretty much every one will get a dreamy look on their face and say ‘Oh! It’s almost meditative!’. Until the saw-blade breaks, that is! This is how it feels to be in a state of flow — but it’s not just meditative, it also often feels calmly joyful.

This is interesting, because Csikszentmihalyi believes that there is a direct link between flow and happiness — the more we experience flow, the happier we are likely to be. That simple.

I would add to that. I strongly believe that creative activity is a great pathway to the experience of flow. Creative activity (by my definition) is anything that requires you to imagine a situation that isn’t the case right now. Before you throw your hands up in the air and tell yourself that you don’t have that kind of imagination, hear me through. We all have this kind of imagination. If you’re sitting at your desk, and it’s a great chaotic mess, you have the ability to picture your desk as a clear, uncluttered and inviting surface. Once you picture the clear desk, it’s possible to create it.

Now, that’s a very simple example. Decluttering the desk might not get you into a state of flow because a key part of the equation is missing. You’ve imagined the future situation and you’ve engaged with making it real. But it doesn’t contain much of a challenge. So consider this equation:

Flow = imagination + engagement + challenge

On the surface, this looks very straightforward. So why don’t we find ourselves in a state of flow more often? Why isn’t it a daily occurrence? My belief is that you need to build some flow fitness and that this flow fitness can be achieved by building some small but powerful habits into your day. The following list is by no means exhaustive, but it’s a great starting place.

Five steps to joy through creativity

1. Try to be surprised by something every day. This might mean trying something new. It might mean finding something new about something familiar. This is a great way to strengthen your ‘noticing’ skills. Paying deep attention and noticing as much as you can about something you see, or taste, or hear or feel is a core creative skill.

2. Turn your awareness inwards and focus on the thoughts that make you feel good — practice mindful pleasure. There is a lovely NLP technique called Circle of Excellence. This one is best done standing up. Close your eyes and imagine a circle on the floor, right in front of you. Now imagine a time when you did something really well, when you felt a sense of achievement. Picture yourself in that situation — what you saw, what you could hear, what you were feeling — make the picture big and bright until the feeling is really strong. Step forward into the circle and let that feeling fill you up. Repeat this a couple of times more. If you ever want to re-create that feeling of joy, just picture yourself stepping into that circle.

3. Stretch yourself. Keep the things that you do interesting my making them more complex. Challenge yourself by looking at a situation from as many points of view as you can imagine.

4. Find a way to express what moves you. It doesn’t matter how — write it down, speak it out loud, use sound or images…just express it.

5. Practice gratitude. This fixes joy in your heart and invites more joy into your life. When we think about something that makes us feel bad, that feeling penetrates us immediately — that is simply part of your instinctive response to threat and it’s hard-wired into your brain. When you think about something good, something you are grateful for, you need to hold on to that feeling and let yourself experience it as fully as you can for at least 15 seconds to give it chance to enter us completely. Try it — 15 seconds is about the time it takes for three deep breaths. Name the thing that you are grateful for, and let yourself feel the gratitude while you take those three deep breaths. Now you’ve fixed it in your heart.

None of these practices are quick fixes but nonetheless they are things that can be done with a comparatively small effort on your part. It takes time to embed a habit into your day to day routine and I’d like to suggest that you choose one or two of these practices and challenge yourself to work them into your routine for the next thirty days. Make the experiment of flexing your flow muscles and seeing if it does, indeed, invite more joy into your life. It’s got to be an experiment worth making!