We’ve all heard the saying “use it or lose it”, a rather accurate illustration of how the mind changes over time. To not lose it, and keep your mind active and happy during this stressful lockdown period, its recommended that you engage yourselves in some mood boosting and cognitively challenging activities like Music, art, Journaling and spending time with your pets. They happen to be some of the proven, science backed ways, to boost mental health during trying times.
You have got to get yourself to be creative during this time. You see, creativity is a bit like a muscle and needs to be exercised as frequently as any muscle in the body, so dedicating some time during the day is imperative, just like physical exercise. Sometimes getting started is the hardest part. To combat procrastination, scheduling a fixed amount of creative time can be a useful method of getting past the first hurdle.
To get you started, we’ve got some tips for you to keep your mind creative and happy during this period.
- Art to the rescue
Expressing your artistic self has profound positive impacts on your mental health and wellbeing during times of stress. There are a ton of creative exercises out there to get your hands on, to keep your creative juices flowing.
- Be crafty
Knitting and other forms of textile crafting such as sewing, weaving or crocheting have quite a lot in common with mindfulness and meditation.
- Read
Ok, we know what that sounds like. But think about it, you’re on a lockdown, you have ample amount of time to spend, and for the first time you’re actually thinking of different ways to spend your time. Pick up a book, one that you always thought would probably be a good read, but were procrastinating to read.
- Journaling or writing
Similar to crafting, writing about your personal experiences can help improve your mood, boost happiness, and help you find catharsis during a time of trouble or stress. According to research, writing about your lock-down experience can help decrease your anxiety and increase your mental well-being.
- Draw your stress out
Grab a pencil and start drawing. The rhythmic and repetitive motion of drawing helps synchronize hand and eye, body and mind.
- Take up an online class
It could be anything. Anything that you love or have been wanting to learn but haven’t had the time to. This really is the perfect time to learn something new or even just graze the surface of something new.
- Collage
Think of a dream. Select images from magazines which evoke it. Cut and paste, experimenting with composition and colour. A final image is going to speak to you, write down the thoughts that occur to you through the image.
- Create Memes
Creating memes is a tremendous means of being creative and entertaining. You might think, making a meme is no big deal! Creating a kickass, funny, smart, intelligent meme is no child’s play, you need to put in your best creativity.
- Video blogging
Sometimes, its nice to go along with the trend as well. Create your own video and post it. What should it be about? Anything that your passionate about, love or informative. Not only does it keep your mind active and creative but it helps a great deal in boosting your self- confidence. So, go ahead and start shooting.
- Bring out your inner chef
Cooking has been proven to relieve stress. it is a creative outlet, that helps activate all of your senses and raises your Serotonin level, which is known to help with anxiety and stress. Its time to Allow yourself to be creative, and experiment, let’s get cooking.
We’ve all experienced that phenomenon when we completely lose track of time and our awareness of what’s going on around us diminishes. Being engrossed in a creative project temporarily, allows us to stop worrying about the situation at hand and eases your mind.
Creating something for ourselves and others also helps our sense of self-efficacy, or the belief in our own abilities and is a truly rewarding feeling.
Get crafty and let your inner artist explore.
