2.5 Creativity and well-being

What’s the relationship between well-being and creativity? How can you promote your well-being in different avenues of your creative life?

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What is well-being? The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines well-being as being happy, healthy, and prosperous. Well-being researchers discuss different dimensions of well-being at the individual level—emotional, psychological and physical (Martela & Sheldon, 2019, Warr & Nielsen, 2018, Fredrickson et al, 2015). People generally try to take care of their well-being in different dimensions of life, like work, family relationships and friendships.

For example, well-being can be reflected in:

• the ratio of positive and negative emotions you experience during a day;
• the level of satisfaction with what you achieve
• physical stamina.

In this sub-chapter, we’ll focus on the first two types of well-being and how creativity can enhance them in professional life.

There are some personal strategies related to self-awareness that we can develop for a higher sense of well-being. For instance, Aalto University’s Oasis of Radical Well-being suggests tools and strategies like accepting our emotions, cultivating self-compassion, frequent movement and high-quality connections.

Creativity can lead to a sense of mastery and achievement. When you explore your creative identity and experiment, it can lead to a sense of meaning, self-actualization and authenticity. When creativity is understood as engagement in artistic activities, such as crafts, drawing, singing or dancing, it can generate positive emotions like awe, joy, gratitude, hope, inspiration and vitality.

Here, our focus is on choosing creativity as a strategy for living a life of purpose, meaning, and joy. In this sub-chapter, we’ll explore what it means to live with creativity and its impact on our subjective well-being.

Creative problem-solving and emotional awareness

What’s it like to participate in a daring project without prior experience? How does it feel during the project? How about when the project is over?

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Smith et al., (2022) found that experts whose jobs require creative thinking and skills experience fewer positive emotions than people who use their creativity in their free time. This may be explained by the nature of work-related problems, which involve high levels of complexity and uncertainty. Identifying high-risk, daring problems that affect the lives of millions of people, solving unexpected and ill-defined problems, and implementing a new project are three types of work challenges that require creative approaches. Being in such a work situation means going through a creative process where emotions play a central role in finding the way to solutions.

At the outset, negative emotions, like dissatisfaction and frustration, direct attention to the problems (Zhou & George, 2001). Once the creative process is underway, positive emotions help show when a solution works well, while negative emotions mean that something isn’t quite right and more exploration is needed. Overall, understanding and managing the emotions that arise during the creative process is essential to ensure that they work in the service of original and useful outcomes.

Self-awareness and self-regulation during the creative process thus influence the psychological and emotional well-being of the creator. In addition, throughout the creative process, experts may be driven by their need for autonomy, competence and relatedness (Martela et al., 2023, Martela et al., 2018). Once the process is over, creators will enjoy a sense of accomplishment.

The more challenging and novel the problem is, the more highs and lows will be experienced in well-being. Being a creative problem-solver at work is a matter of emotional awareness and perseverance.

Petrou & Jongerling (2022) showed that, in the context of the COVID-19 crisis, incremental creativity at work was related to both employee well-being and performance, while radical creativity was primarily related to employee development. Radical creativity at work is not born out of satisfaction or feeling self-sufficient—quite the opposite, it may become a valuable strategy of proactively dealing with a crisis, even if it doesn’t always feel good.

Therefore, leaders in organizations looking for radical creativity should encourage employees to break the rules in a way that protects employee well-being. For instance, Astro Teller, the head of Google’s innovation lab X, talked about the secret to making people feel comfortable in big, risky projects and exploring daring ideas in a TED talk: ‘Rather than avoid the mess, pretend it’s not there, we’ve tried to make that our strength.’

X’s mission is ‘to create radical new technologies to solve some of the world’s hardest problems.’ A team of inventors, scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs, works on the world’s toughest problems, like clean energy, food supply and healthcare. Even when experimental projects don’t go as hoped, the people involved in the project receive bonuses and positive reinforcement (Sawyer, 2017).

Creativity is needed to solve ill-defined and novel challenges in the workplace. While such challenges come with uncertainty and face resistance and a storm of emotions, solving them leads to personal growth and a sense of achievement. Organizational support is valuable, especially when companies want their employees to engage in radical creativity.

Creative hobbies and well-being

Studies show that creative hobbies promote well-being in many ways.

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What artistic activity have you performed lately? Was it work-related or a hobby?

Artistic activities are centred around an artistic skill, such as drawing, design, creating music, photography, visual arts or writing. A creative hobby can be an artistic activity, but it can also be any activity you engage in creatively as a pastime. It may be a distraction from other worries, or it could be a way to develop your creative identity in a way isn’t available in your professional life. Irrespective of the motive, it’s about enjoying a creative activity without expecting to be paid for it or gain recognition as an expert.

Having a creative hobby enables emotional well-being through the experience of positive emotions and psychological well-being through a sense of meaning, purpose and competence (Smith et al., 2022). For instance, Silvia et al. (2014) examined a sample of college students, about one-quarter of whom were majoring in the arts. They found that the individuals who reported doing something creative during a typical day—drawing, writing, creative cooking, etc—were more likely to feel happy and active.

Conner et al. (2018) had similar findings. Doing an artistic activity led more positive emotions on those days. According to Richards (2010), creative activities are both a cause and a sign of well-being.

You may be already going to the gym or running for physical health. But are you ready to dedicate some time to a creative hobby in the name of emotional and mental health?

Aligning your creative identity with your work role

How well does your creative identity align with your professional role?

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Creative identity is about seeing creativity as the core of who you are and what you do. When you’re aware that you’re a creative person but your professional role feels disconnected from your creative identity, your development can get stunted (De Valverde et al., 2017). You may feel frustrated and disengaged from work.

Luckily, these negative feelings can be excellent motivators for setting a new career goal so you can feel like the right creative person in the right job (Velcu-Laitinen, 2022). Four lines of inquiry can help find a specific way to express your creative identity:

• Do you think you’re a creative thinker who loves taking initiative? You may want to look for entrepreneurial jobs within a company or even start your own business.
• Do you think you’re a resourceful person who likes to motivate people to get things done? You may want to take on a leadership role.
• Did you discover an artistic skill that you’re ready to exercise as a pro? You might want to look for a job in a creative industry.
• Did you tap into some knowledge area that you absorb like a sponge? You might be interested in getting recognized as a niche expert.

Often, the satisfaction and sense of meaning a creative individual gets depend on the possibility of realizing their creative identity in a specific work environment.

References

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Berkman, E. T. (2018). The neuroscience of goals and behavior change. Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research, 70(1), 28-44. https://doi.org/10.1037/cpb0000094

Conner, T. S., DeYoung, C. G., & Silvia, P. J. (2018). Everyday creative activity as a path to flourishing. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 13(2), 181-189.

De Valverde, J., Sovet, L., & Lubart, T. (2017). Self-construction and creative “life design”. In The creative self (pp. 99-115). Academic Press.

Fredrickson, B. L., Grewen, K. M., Algoe, S. B., Firestine, A. M., Arevalo, J. M., Ma, J., & Cole, S. W. (2015). Psychological well-being and the human conserved transcriptional response to adversity. PloS one, 10(3), e0121839.

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Martela, F., Lehmus-Sun, A., Parker, P. D., Pessi, A. B., & Ryan, R. M. (2023). Needs and well-being across Europe: Basic psychological needs are closely connected with well-being, meaning, and symptoms of depression in 27 European countries. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 14(5), 501-514.

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Sawyer, K., (2017). Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration (Revised Edition). Basic Books.

Silvia, P. J., Beaty, R. E., Nusbaum, E. C., Eddington, K. M., Levin-Aspenson, H., & Kwapil, T. R. (2014). Everyday creativity in daily life: An experience-sampling study of “little c” creativity. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 8(2), 183.

Smith, K., Pickering, A., & Bhattacharya, J. (2022). The creative life: A daily diary study of creativity, affect, and well-being in creative individuals. Creativity Research Journal, 34(4), 460-479.

Velcu-Laitinen, O., (2022). How to Develop Your Creative Identity at Work. Apress.

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Zhou, J., & George, J. M. (2001). When job dissatisfaction leads to creativity: Encouraging the expression of voice. Academy of Management journal, 44(4), 682-696.