How do you bring happiness and be creative?
What makes you feel happy? One of the conditions to be creative is to feel happy and grateful. When you feel stressed or depressed, you are in fright, fight and freeze mode so it is unlikely you venture out for new possibilities. Your vision becomes narrower and not noticing what is around you. Do you remember the time you felt stressed? What do you remember or did you notice at that time? I remember anything but the situations that made me unhappy.
What is your common source of stress? I recently realised it is mostly myself. I often come up with so many things I’d like to do, looking at my schedule for a day, a week and a month ahead hoping to squeeze everything in with my optimism. I am a serial victim of optimistic bias and set a very hopeful schedule expecting everything to go as per plan. As you guess, my plan doesn’t convert to actions, and frustrations and disappointments build up.
One Saturday morning, I wanted to write an article, spend quality time with a friend who I couldn’t see for months due to the lockdown, draw something with full attention, listen to a few podcasts I bookmarked, visit a café I wanted to try and cook healthy dinner. It was all in my head and I thought I could do everything by the end of Saturday. I ignored the fact that I have 16 hours (I need to sleep 8 hours).
I started the day, had breakfast, prepared to meet a friend, which took longer than I thought as I was out of the practice of getting dressed for an outing after working from home for more than a year, listened to one podcast on a way to meet a friend. When I saw the friend, we were so excited and chatting non-stop while walking Hyde Prak then moved to the café. We lost the sense of time, the long daylight didn’t help as the sun was still high in the sky at 6pm.
It was after 7 pm when I came home less than 3 hours before my bedtime. No way I could do everything I wanted. I was frustrated with myself and stressed out. Yes, I created the stress by myself by setting unrealistic plan hoping all get done somehow.
The next day, I sat down first thing in the morning and wrote down things I want to do. I allocated the time to complete each plan. I added up and it was more than 24 hours… Even the estimations of time to complete were optimistic considering my hopeful tendency. Well, I confirmed that my source of stress — myself and my optimistic bias. They don’t make me feel happy or grateful.
Since then, I write down my plan and estimates of time. Even though they are not accurate, it gives me rough ideas about how unrealistic I am. Writing down things helps me see the volumes of tasks on my hand, reflect on what I must do, should do, want to do, or let it go, and when I should do it.
In the morning, I now spend 10 minutes writing down things want to do and ask myself why I want to do this. If I don’t have a clear reason, I put it in the “parking lot” where I keep ideas and things I’d like to explore later. I look at my “parking lot” from time to time and pick up a few things to do. Some never get picked up.
I am learning to let go of things, which I found incredibly difficult most time, so I use the “parking lot” to store them in a temporary place. This system brings peace and space to my day. It might be still early to say but I feel that I am less frustrated or stressed about myself. I spend less time frustrated and more time being creative. This shift has helped me open to new ideas and experiments. As a result, I started drawing and writing after many years consumed on non-creative activities. I feel more comfortable with myself and excited to find something new about myself.
Do you have ways to bring happiness to yourself? I’d love to hear how you do it and what change you experienced.
