Why Complain When You Can Create Instead?

On the value of building and maintaining a creative practice.

Photo by Birmingham Museums Trust on Unsplash

I ended 2023 more burned out and defeated than ever before. My coaching business was doing well, but my writing was floundering. I was stuck in a spot where I needed to make choices, but I could barely keep my head above water. It was a scary place to be, but more than it was the wrong place to be. I was lost and didn’t know how I would get out.

By the time September came around, I felt like I was about to explode.

My life was nothing but work, work, work. It was a rotating door of clients, personal disasters, and slamming doors. Clients, personal disasters, slamming doors. I wanted to scream, I wanted to crawl out of my skin. Everything was bottled up and I was ready to explode. In a moment of desperation, I reached for the only thing I could - art.

I started painting in October of 2023. What began with one painting a week soon turned into an obsessive practice that ripped open my soul and set me free. Now, I have a regular creative practice of watercolor painting and sculpture. Every day, I tap into my mind and my heart and bring something new to life.

A few of my favorite paintings.

My art saved me from the trauma that was threatening to pull me under. It tapped into my mind and my heart in a way that nothing else has the ability to do. And I’m not alone in that experience.

As humans, traumatized and trying to heal, one of the most powerful things we can do is to establish a regular creative practice. It’s not only a matter of healing our souls. It’s a matter of healing our minds, too.

Creation is an invaluable part of the healing process.

My art has opened up my heart and changed my perception of who I am and who I want to be. I’m not alone in that experience. Creation, in any form it takes, has the power to move every human soul in the same way. It can change your lifestyle, your beliefs about yourself, and the way you see the world and everyone in it. That is the power of creativity…but that’s not the only power a regular creative process has.

Georgia O’Keefe had, perhaps, said it best when she summed up the ability of art to express those things trapped inside us.