5 Reasons Art is Good for your Mental Health
Have you ever wondered why so many people have creative hobbies?
Apart from it being fun and entertaining, art also brings cognitive benefits to the table. Keeping your mind sharp as you age is just as important as keeping your body healthy.
You don’t have to be talented to create art. You aren’t supposed to be born with it. Art is never a waste of time, not even when you don’t know what you’re doing. There is a general belief that you have to create masterpieces to be considered a real artist. Or that you have to see an art therapist to benefit from the positive impact art has on your mental health.
These are just generally believed myths. We all have the power to be creative. Besides, all that matters is the process of creating art, not the end result.
Here are the amazing benefits of art for your mental health:
1. Reduced Stress Levels
It is a well-known fact that high levels of stress affect your mental health. Letting go of expectations, perfectionism, and the fear of messing up will influence your cortisol levels to drop and let your brain enter a state of deep relaxation. For example, releasing stress in the form of painting promotes easy brain decluttering, helping you get rid of all the negative thoughts running around in your mind.
2. Improved Self-Esteem
Big or small, any kind of achievement makes us feel better about ourselves. This is available for any type of craft or hobby — you don’t have to create a masterpiece to reap the benefits.
Creating art makes our brain produce dopamine, which makes us feel good, and it improves our focusing ability. We also get a boost of dopamine after we finish a creative project, which gives us a sense of accomplishment.
3. Enhanced Problem-Solving Skills
Because making art is all about self-expression, there are no wrong answers. Whenever we create something we are encouraged to come up with our own solutions of getting to the end result. Practicing this kind of thinking encourages your brain and trains it for more complex circumstances the same way learning math does.
4. Increased Intelligence
Engaging in something new such as a creative hobby creates new connections between your brain cells. It is believed that intelligence is correlated to
the number of brain cell connections we have and creating art highly encourages the brain’s plasticity.
5. Improved Memory
As a creative hobby, painting helps memory recollection skills and sharpens the mind through conceptual visualization. It has been concluded that people who delve into creative activities have less chances to suffer from memory loss illnesses as they reach old age.
Art is not only a guaranteed ticket to multiple mental health benefits, but it also fun for ourselves and people around us. Painting, for example, is such an easy way to start enjoying art that you won’t even notice time flying by. The most important things to remember are to relax, let go, and enjoy your creative me-time.
Suzanne Thee is a Dutch entrepreneur with a Masters in Business IT. A couple of years ago, watercolor painting changed her life as it helped her to relax, better balance her work- and private life and taught her to let go more. She then started to give workshops around the world to share this experience with others and has taught hundreds of people, from IT developers to space engineers, bankers and lawyers, who never hold a brush before, how painting helps them to de-stress. “When we make art, we enter a ‘flow state’, which helps us to let go of stress and live more in the present moment” is what she would keep reminding her participants. She is currently developing an app to help people discover creative ways of relaxing and enjoying their free time through online painting- and other creative meditation sessions.
