7 Reasons to Unleash Your Inner Artist

Do you have a persistent and unrelenting desire to create? No doubt! Your creative impulse is as natural and necessary as your heartbeat or your breath. Your expression may differ from others but it is an essential element in living fully.

I've been singing, dancing, and writing since I was a child. The exquisite bliss that I experience when I'm in the clutches of my creations, stirs my heart and feeds my soul. Time stands still, or speeds up. I lose my sense of self and am transported to a world that is saturated with the sheer joy and pleasure of being a song, a dance, a story.

Even though I've pursued these creative passions for the love of them, I've also shared them with others, whether in a dance competition, a cabaret show, or my own blog. I can't count the number of times dear ones have discouraged me from pursuing these passions. Echos of ‘Get a grip.' and ‘Be realistic.' have followed me most of my life.

I'm sure my story is not much different than yours. The world at large has not historically cozied up to artists. It has not been the safest path throughout time, and though well intended, these warnings have often proven to be an impetus to creative expression. But the world is changing, my friends. With the advent of technology, and the vehicles to share our creations, being an artist is more a reality today than ever.

Joseph Beuys, a German sculptor and performance artist, popularized the idea that “everyone is an artist.” He didn't necessarily mean that all people should or could be creators of traditional artworks. He meant that we should not see creativity as the special realm of artists and that everyone should apply creative thinking in their own area of specialization, whether it be finance or the fine arts.

Sir Ken Robinson, an internationally recognized leader in the development of creativity, innovation and human resources, describes the experience:

The arts address the idea of an aesthetic experience. An aesthetic experience is one in which the senses are operating at their peak, when you are present in the current moment, when you are resonating with the excitement of this thing that you are experiencing, when you are fully alive. The process connects us to our authentic self and facilitates moments of vitality and connection.

According to artist Jessica Wachter, an artist is “anyone who has the courage to come to the canvas of life and expose his or her gifts.”

Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of Eat, Pray, Love, recently released a new book, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear. She shares that creativity is not dropping everything to pursue a career as an opera singer or a painter (unless you want to). She invites us to explore “a life that is driven more strongly by curiosity than by fear.”

There are many perspectives on being an artist and an infinite number of ways to engage in creative expression. This isn't so much about fame or fortune, as much as it is about shaping and sharing the creative forces that live within. One thing is certain: your creative impulses won't go away.

Here are 7 reasons to unleash your inner artist:

1. Enhances Creativity and Innovation. There isn't a manual to being an artist, and there isn't a manual for Life. Obstacles and challenges are inevitable. However, when you make creativity a habit, you continue to learn new, resourceful ways of solving problems in your artwork, and in life. You take risks, try new things, and strip away inhibitions in a healthy way.

2. Increases Self Awareness and Self Discovery. Creative expression can lead you to a deeper level of understanding of yourself. As you create, you plumb the depths of your being, accessing what you think and believe. The more you create, the more you discover your habits, impulses, and desires. When you take the time and energy to develop your own ideas, you come to respect your inner nature and are better able to express yourself to the world on a regular basis. Artistry reveals your authentic Essence.

3. Heals Your Physical Body. The process of creating art doesn’t just make you feel better, it also creates real, physical changes inside your body. A study published in the Journal of Psychosomatic Medicine used writing as a treatment for HIV patients. It found that writing resulted in “improvements of CD4+ lymphocyte counts.” That’s a fancy way of saying that the act of writing actually impacted the cells inside the patient’s body and improved their immune system.

4. Helps You Make Meaning Out of the Madness. At its most powerful, creative expression can be a tool for transformation. It enables connection to your inner voice and allows you to be seen and heard. It can make the unconscious conscious. The arts make sense out of our existence, as well as offer an emotional outlet for joy, pain, suffering, and unanswerable questions. It can be used to express thoughts and feelings that are too big or too difficult to put into words.

5. Creates Your Own Personal Oasis. Art can be an oasis, a place to find relaxation and calm. It can also be used to release pain and unexpressed feelings. Creative expression can be both a way to find calm and a way to release pain. As you express and integrate unacknowledged feelings, you honor and integrate your whole being.

6. Keeps You Young. Creative outlets keep you young. Experts theorize that hands-on activities such as cooking, gardening, making jewelry, crocheting and sculpting may work to enhance mental clarity because they activate additional parts of the brain. In a recent four-year study, it reported that people who took up creative activities in middle age were less likely to suffer memory loss.

7. Creates Community. When you create, you naturally connect to others doing the same, and an instant sense of community is formed. Whether you're exchanging ideas, providing feedback to peers, or simply creating next to each other in silence, the sense of connection experienced as artists is undeniable and deeply rewarding.

Dr. Jeremy Nobel, Founder and President of The Foundation for Art and Healing, summarizes the major benefits of creative expression as follows:

Art allows you to do three things, and this is where the healing comes from. Art puts you in the moment, puts you in touch with yourself and allows you to bring forth something that did not exist before. And those three things taken together are incredibly powerful in terms of adjusting your understanding of yourself, your relationship to yourself, your relationship to the world and your sense about possibilities for the future.

In our uber-connected world of television, social media, and on-demand everything, it can be easy to spend your entire day consuming information and simply responding to all of the inputs that bombard your life.

Art offers an outlet and a release from all of that. It shifts you from consuming to creating. Take a minute to ignore all of the incoming signals and create an outgoing one instead. Produce something. Express yourself in some way. As long as you contribute rather than consume, anything you do can be a work of art.

Creative expression can enrich your life in everyday ways. It can brighten your mood, spark your imagination, or unleash the joy that lives in your heart. It's a tradition that is thousands of years old to heal what ails us and make sense of the adventure of Life. The world is waiting to taste your unique flavor of creative expression. Ready to share it? Say, “Yes!”

 

 

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