The Joy of Creativity: A Conversation with Creativity Coach Christine Hennebury

Back when I was a kid, I really enjoyed doing crafts, making things with paper plates, obsolete catalogues, wallpaper scraps, and whatever else I could get my hands on. And, at one point, I actually felt confident enough in my own artistic abilities to enter (and win!) a fire safety poster contest at my school. (That was back when I was in Grade 3 and I still have that poster tucked away in one of the many “miscellaneous sentimental papers” boxes stacked in a corner of my office.)

One of the many pieces of digital art I’ve been creating over the course of the pandemic.

But here’s the thing: at some point along the way, I lost confidence in my ability to draw or make other kinds of art. I somehow internalized a message that said that my art wasn’t good enough and that I should focus my energies in areas where I actually excelled, like writing. (This also explains why I stopped doing anything even remotely athletic, but I’ll save that story for another day.)

Anyway, fast forward a couple of decades and I found myself at midlife, living through a pandemic. At a time when there were fewer and fewer options for finding joy in the everyday, I found myself drawn to creative projects, like making digital art. I’m happy that I listened to that voice in my head that kept telling me, “You need to do something creative.” Because the moments I spent making art—either on my own or during a group Zoom call with friends—were some of the most relaxing and joyous experiences in an otherwise really stressful and difficult time.

This experience got me thinking about how common it is for adults to put creative pursuits on the back burner for years, if not decades; and how grateful I am to be stretching my creative muscles once again.

I decided to reach out to my long-time friend, creativity coach and writer Christine Hennebury, to have a conversation about this very thing.

What follows are the highlights of that conversation: my questions and Christine’s answers.

Not all adults are actively engaged in creative activities, including arts and crafts. What causes us to abandon the creative activities, like drawing, that gave us so much joy when we were kids? How do we find our way back to that joy?

There are all kinds of developmental and social reasons why many of us move away from creative activities. We seem to develop the idea that we have to be good at something for it to be worth our time. We become more likely to compare our creative efforts to reality (“This doesn’t look like a horse!”) or to a more experienced artist’s work (“I can’t draw like she does!”) and that frustrates us. Eventually we start thinking of ourselves as someone who can’t draw (or write or dance or whatever.)

Writer and creativity coach Christine Hennebury.

But the joy of creativity isn’t about producing masterpieces. In fact, it is not about producing at all.

Sure, there’s a certain pleasure in completing a piece of art but the lasting satisfaction and joy comes from the experience of creating.

We need to focus on the activity of creating rather than on the results.

Try things like:

• drawing circles and colouring them in

• drawing a few scattered stars and then making lines all over the paper that stop on one side of each star and continue in the other

• writing a description of your cup or your dog or your morning

• tearing up bits of paper and arranging them in a pattern

• taking photos of each of the next four squares (or circles or flowers or shoes) that you see

• choosing family theme songs for the next few days

• creating a little dance to the theme song of your favourite show.

Don’t try to create something good, just stick with the process. If you make a mistake, decide that it is part of the project.

It will feel a bit weird at first because we are used to working toward an end product, but try not to talk yourself out of the process. Good feelings will come from letting go of the expectation to be good and from dismissing the idea of having an end product.

What would you say to an adult who insists, “But I’m not creative/artistic at all!”

Creativity is not just about being an artist.

Creativity belongs to everyone and we all express it differently.

You may not spend time doing specific artistic activities, but I’ll bet you use your creativity all the time.

Perhaps you’re a problem-solver, coming up with solutions by combining old ideas with new ones.

Maybe you rearrange things in your living room so they’ll be more pleasing to the eye.

You might be the person who creates the song parody for a family party.

You could be someone who doodles on your work notes, or who plays with filters on Instagram, or who adds a bit of flair to gift wrapping, or picks the perfect songs for the party.

We all have creative instincts one way or another and we can all choose to develop them in a variety of ways for our own enjoyment.

Creativity for its own sake helps us to weave extra relaxation and satisfaction into our lives. We don’t have to be good at our chosen activities, and we don’t have to have a finished product.

Doing something because we like it and because we like how it makes us feel is always worthwhile.

Start small. Choose something that only takes a few minutes of your time, and no special equipment, and practice it regularly. Notice how it makes you feel. Remember that fun is always the goal.

And if people aren’t sure how to get started?

Search for prompts or challenges on Pinterest or Instagram. Buy or borrow a book of creative prompts. Download a prompts app, or participate in one of these challenges.

To learn more about Christine Hennebury and her latest creative endeavours, please visit her website.

Ann Douglas is the author of numerous books about parenting including, most recently, Happy Parents, Happy Kids and Parenting Through the Storm. These days, she is hard at work on a book for and about women at midlife.

Back-to-School Parenting: That White Space on Your Calendar? It's Called Breathing Room

That white space on your calendar? It's called breathing room -- and it's good for you and your kids.

Back-to-school season also happens to be extra-curricular activity sign-up season: that time of year when it is tempting to sign your kids (and yourself!) up for every conceivable activity. Everything sounds so exciting and so much fun. And it is -- as long as it doesn't tip your family into complete overload mode. 

Last year at this time, I shared some strategies for resisting the temptation to fill each and every square of your family's calendar with all kinds of fabulous activities.

This year, I'm going to build on that earlier post by talking about the benefits of leaving a little white space on your calendar -- of allowing your child to experience a healthy amount of boredom.

The upside of boredom

In our culture, we tend to think of boredom as a bad thing -- as something to be avoided at all costs. But what if it isn't actually something to be feared and dreaded? What if it's actually more like a gift? 

As it turns out, there are at least three significant benefits to allowing our kids -- and ourselves -- to be bored, at least according to the growing body of research on the science of boredom. 

1. Boredom encourages creativity

This happens because being bored is such a deeply uncomfortable feeling for us humans. Our brains will do pretty much anything to avoid it. You've no doubt experienced this in your own life. Perhaps you were stuck in a meeting room, waiting for someone else to arrive: someone who was running really, really late. As the minutes kept ticking away, you grew increasingly restless, and, out of utter, sheer desperation, you looked for a way to entertain yourself. Suddenly your eyes hit upon a stash of office supplies. And, before you knew it, you were making a chain out of paper clips or a patchwork quilt out of sticky notes. Anything to relieve the boredom! 

It's not just you, by the way, who finds boredom incredibly uncomfortable. One group of people who were participating in a scientific study about boredom actually voluntarily subjected themselves to electric shocks as a means of relieving those very same feelings! It was either sit there and do nothing or give yourself an electric shock. They opted for the electric shock!

The challenge for most of us these days is to actually allow ourselves to sit with these feelings of boredom and to encourage our kids to do the same. If we reach for our cell phones as a way to relieve those feelings of boredom, we miss out on the opportunities to exercise the creative parts of our brain. Likewise, if we rush in too soon to solve the so-called "problem" of boredom for our kids, we rob them of these opportunities, too. 

This is something I was speaking with Christine Hennebury about recently for a recent CBC Radio parenting column. She's a creativity coach and mother of two and a firm believer in the benefits of boredom. Here's what she had to say: "Teaching our kids to be okay with the discomfort of being bored can help us to gain a little mental real estate for ourselves -- and I think it's good problem-solving practice for them. The more problems they solve on their own -- including the problem of being bored and the ability to get comfortable with that uncertainty of 'What do I do next?' -- the fewer problems that we will have to solve for them." 

So you get a break.

The kids get to work on their problem-solving skills.

It's pretty much the ultimate win-win!

2. Being bored can reconnect you with your sense of purpose.

When you're bored, your mind starts to wander in a good way that encourages broader and more expansive thinking. Suddenly, you're able to see the broader perspective, the so-called big picture, as opposed to narrowly fixating on the minutiae of daily living. You're able to connect the dots between past, present, and future, something that allows you to derive a greater sense of meaning and purpose from your life. You know who you are, where you've been, and where you're headed. Your life actually starts to feel like it makes sense!

3. Being bored can make you a kinder person.

This is one of the more fascinating findings I stumbled across while pouring through the research on boredom while writing my forthcoming book. Spending time in a state of boredom actually encourages altruism, empathy, and acts of kindness. Researchers think that this is the direct result of the very thing we were just talking about: the fact that being bored encourages us to engage in deeper and more expansive thinking -- the kind of deeper thinking that allows us to become the best and wisest version of ourselves. We're no longer living our lives on autopilot, in a state of perpetual distraction. Instead, we have the opportunity to reflect on what matters most to us in life, like our relationships with other people. And that, in turn, encourages us to come up with creative ways of nurturing those relationships. We're so much happier and healthier as a result.

Helping kids to get comfortable with being bored

So now that we've talked about the benefits of boredom, let's talk about what it takes to help kids to become comfortable with the feeling of being bored and to figure out how to solve the problem of boredom for themselves. 

As parents, we can help them to understand that boredom is actually a good thing, not something to be feared or avoided at all costs. They need to know that the restless feeling we experience when we're really, really bored is designed to spur us to action. It's like an error message from your brain telling your body, "Hey! We've got to do something differently here!" The challenge is to figure out what that "different" might be. Maybe it means switching from a boring task (like mindlessly surfing the Internet) to a more interesting task (like doing art or solving a puzzle). And sometimes it means finding a way to make a boring task less boring (perhaps listening to some music while you're unloading the dishwasher).

And, of course, this is a skill we can practice in our own lives as well -- because being a grownup can be pretty boring at times, too. Think about it. Folding laundry is never going to rank up there as one of life's top ten most thrilling experiences. Ditto for washing dishes or, if you're a parent, listening to a six year old rhyme off an endless stream of "knock, knock" jokes. 

When boredom becomes a problem

Of course, as with anything else in life, you can get too much of a good thing -- even when that "good thing" means being bored. Extreme amounts of boredom can trigger unhealthy or even risky behaviours. Not only is boredom associated with mindless eating: it's also linked to substance abuse, bad driving, risky sex, problem gambling, and even political extremism. And it has been linked to poor grades, increased dropout rates, and difficulty managing impulses. 

That last bit brings to mind the time when two of my boys decided to relieve their feelings of boredom by playing with the can of spray paint they found in the next door neighbour's garage. As they discovered, curiosity may be the cure for boredom, but it can also get you into a lot of trouble. Or, as boredom researcher Andreas Elipidorou likes to put it: "The interesting isn't always beneficial." (Fortunately, the neighbours were pretty understanding.)

So you definitely don't want your kids to be bored 24/7. Extra-curricular activities can be a godsend -- in moderation.

It's about finding that sweet spot between total boredom and total overload.

That's where the magic happens as a family. 
 

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