How being creative calms your mind

Do you ever feel like your head is about to explode with all the tasks on your to-do list, social obligations and other worrying things? You may have tried meditating to calm your mind. Personally, I have too little patience for meditation. Just when my head is busy, I don't have enough rest in my body to do 'nothing'. At those moments, being creative helps to clear my head.

You could compare being creative with mindfulness exercises. By concentrating on what you are doing, you can think about nothing but the project that your hands are working on. Scientific research shows that the stress hormone cortisol decreases when you are creative. It does not matter what kind of creative activity you choose, nor about the result. It is mainly about the process that has a positive influence on stress.

Just focus on something creative makes it nice and quiet

Inspiration and new ideas

It also works the other way around: when you have peace of mind, there is also room for inspiration and new ideas. I myself completely relax in nature and that is how new ideas often arise during my walks in the woods. Not only because of the beautiful materials that nature offers, but also because of color combinations, special shapes or patterns from nature.

New ideas often come to me when I take a walk in the woods

To the forest

That's why in this video I take you to the forest and get creative with a tree trunk disc. Wood burning is wonderfully relaxing to do. After you have made your drawing with pencil on the wooden surface, all you have to do is trace it with the wood burning device. A very mindful 'job'.

Hopefully I have inspired you to take a moment for yourself and get creative.

• Are you inspired and do you also want to burn wood? You can find the DIY wood burning package here in the imakin webshop.
• More DIY inspiration can be found here at Happlify

Author - Jinske Verpalen van imakin DIY design Do It Yourself but more modern, tougher and quirky! Jinske translates the latest lifestyle trends into feasible DIY projects. Her mission is to inspire you to get creative (more often) and to show that DIY is not difficult, but above all a lot of fun. At www.imakin.nl you will find the best all-in-one DIY packages that you can easily get started with. Do it yourself, it will make you happy!