Creativity and Health
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Stress and Illness
Creativity and Health: Introduction
Creativity goes to the heart of who we are as human beings - not just in terms of our art and inventiveness, but in terms of what makes us truly thrive.
Look at the love a mother has for her child, and the joy and inspiration that keeps a musician motivated even after achieving commercial success.
Innate human creativity is our most valuable yet underappreciated asset, being by far and away our most powerful - and intelligent - drive.
Take the effort it takes to maintain a healthy lifestyle. This succeeds best when we nurture our own, innate initiative to adopt measures like healthy eating, exercise and social engagement - and on terms that are meaningful for us personally.
A few other examples of our innate creativity are our imagination and inspiration, our generosity and our courage. All make us feel more connected - and more "ourselves" and "at home in our own skin" - and can be contrasted with the altogether different kind of influence of stress
, powered by "stress forces" like anger
and fear
that make us "beside ourselves" with rage, or "scared out of our skin".
The purpose of this website - and the accompanying book
- is to explore creativity as it applies to our nature, health and well-being.
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Just as we already do so-called "creative types" like artists and inventors, we should celebrate the human creativity that's innate to all of us.
This personal, innate creativity is as necessary as the technological innovation and creativity that's revolutionised our economy - if we're to reverse worrying trends like today's rise in illnesses like obesity and teenage depression.
True health goes with being innately creative, while distress and illness come when minds (as well as habits and compulsions) become "locked down". Returning to depression, therefore, in this illness everything can appear to turn monochrome grey, while thoughts can become uniformly negative. Anxiety, meanwhile, can make us overwhelmed by the sense of danger, and simmering anger can be unrelentingly harsh in its judgement of others (or even our own self). In every case, the mind becomes a (highly "efficient") factory of sameness when it produces only "one track" thoughts, beliefs and moods.
Again, we come back to the same conclusion: we need to reconnect with our own, innate dynamism and creativity.
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The perspective being presented here is that there are two competing sets of "forces" within us; one that enables - and another that robs us of - our true aliveness and health. These are:
(1) Creative forces like love and joy - that move and inspire us, not just emotionally but also in terms of how committed and engaged we are in our lives. These forces give us real power and freedom, and need only that we give them our backing.
(2) "Stress forces"
- that attack us from the inside, like fear, anger
and compulsive desire
(the kind that makes us obsessed or addicted). Given half a chance, these deprive us our own, real power and freedom, and destroy our self-creativeness.
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Without self-creativity, no "miracle" of modern science can spare us from the evolving social fractures and epidemics of our age. Now is the perfect time
to grow our awareness and knowledge of self-creativity, and to stand up for this priceless resource.
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