Creative Health: The antidote to our robotic lives

The moment you've been waiting for: What is Creative Health?

Hey there,

Katina here, Daydreamers’ Co-founder and Chief Science Officer. Over the past few weeks together, we’ve been exploring the edges of what it means to live a creatively fulfilling life - especially in an increasingly chaotic (some might say dystopian 😵‍💫) world.

So far, we’ve redefined what it really means to live a “good” life and who gets to be a “creative” person. Before we go any further and get deeper into the weird, niche elements of Creative Health, I figured I should explain what we’re doing here.

At this point, you might be wondering: What exactly is Creative Health?

I’m a big believer that words don’t necessarily teach - but feelings and experiences do. So, let me start by asking you a question that illustrates the crux of that answer: In your day-to-day life, how often do you feel like you’re merely…existing?

Like you’re just moving through the monotony of life’s hamster wheel?

As a society, we don’t often talk about the confusion, shame and overwhelm that comes with living a “robotic” life. One that’s the same repetitive drag of the last, completely devoid of enjoyment, connection and creativity.

That’s because in a world that’s largely focused on achieving, optimizing and producing this trade-off seems par for the course. We’re taught to be on a constant search for that amorphous more, where delaying pleasure is a give-in.

So, it’s common to feel like something is missing in your day-to-day - but we don’t yet necessarily have the language to describe what that ‘something’ is.

That ‘something’ is what we’ve spent the last few years identifying at Daydreamers. We’ve found this void begins when we ignore an essential-but-overlooked element of our well-being: Our Creative Health.

For a long time as a collective, we’ve deprioritized these seemingly frivolous elements of our well-being - like our capacity for imagination, awe, wonder, curiosity and fulfillment. We’ve been told that they aren’t core to our survival, but instead, just parts of life we get to experience if we’re lucky.

But, those parts of our well-being aren’t simply how we reach the tippy top of the self-actualization pyramid. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. They are our core, human "factory settings” - and when we disregard them for long enough, they’re a sign we’ve become chronically ill, as individuals and as a world.

Here’s why Creative Health is the antidote to our robotic, exhausting lives - and most importantly, why we can’t overlook it any longer.

Primer: Health is bigger than just eliminating illness

Before we break down the specific, unique elements that make up your Creative Health - let’s start by expanding our definition of health writ large. Have you ever considered that being not ill and feeling well are two distinctly different things?

Typically, our health (at least in the United States) has been focused on simply eradicating illness, not helping us thrive. We react to clear problems. We have binary answers. We ask: Are they visibly sick…or not?

This structure of reactive healthcare started out with the best intentions. It helped us discover, cure and eradicate diseases, ultimately serving as the basis of extending the human lifespan over the past two-hundred years.

But, as our world has become more complex, our approach to healthcare hasn’t.

Many areas of our health - from chronic, physical pain to emotional languishing - are nuanced and difficult to pinpoint. They don’t get fixed with a simple pill or a one-size-fits-all protocol.

And on top of that, we’ve bucketed all forms of going from baseline to thriving into a massive, consumer-driven bucket of “self-care.” We’re told to buy candles and take baths in order to cover up living in an increasingly lonely, burned out and detached world- instead of really investing in the root cause of our struggles.

Changing a system from reactionary to preventative isn’t easy - and people have actually been hard at work on this for two decades, at least. Scientists began researching the health “spectrum” back in the early 2000’s when psychologists began to notice a clear gap in well-being.

For example, Dr. Marty Seligman, the former head of the American Psychological Association, recognized this in himself and his patients; they didn’t meet the criteria for clinical depression - but they definitely weren’t…well.

Back then, we didn’t have the language, tools or research to differentiate between the two. But ever since, there’s been an explosion of resources to help us define that messy middle in between struggling and flourishing.

And that’s where Creative Health comes into play.

Defining Creative Health: The key to feeling more alive

From our POV, creativity isn’t just something we do.

Creative Health is so much bigger than that - it’s a core part of our well-being on it’s own, just like our physical or mental health. And at Daydreamers, we’re starting a movement to talk about, value, and strengthen this new category of our health: Creativity.

If you’re a reader of this newsletter, you probably know by now that creativity as a practice and tool is linked to a plethora of well-being benefits - from reducing stress to strengthening our cognition to even increasing our longevity.

While artists have known the positive impact of creativity for centuries, science is now catching up. There are dozens of studies that demonstrate the clear impact that being creative, regardless of one’s skill, can have on specific health outcomes. That naescent-but-innovative research was actually the genesis of first building Daydreamers - and we see the impact of it in our work every day. Our members alone, on average, reduce their stress by 80%(!) and increase emotional resilience by 36% - just by being creative consistently.

But, creativity isn’t merely a health outcome. It’s a way of life.

From our definition, Creative Health is the state of being when we are fully engaged, challenged and fulfilled in everyday life. It comes about when we align our body, brain and mind to activate our natural capacity to create.

We chose these each of these words intentionally, not only because they address often overlooked areas of life - but they give insight into the specific ways we can begin to strengthen our Creative Health:

• Being fully engaged: Creative Health allows us to be fully immersed something, simply for the sake of it - a lost “art” in our distracted, always-on world. In that natural state of flow, play and pleasure we are re-training our brain to have autonomy, flexibility, curiosity and joy. Not only are these elements the root of living an expansive, enjoyable creative life, but scientifically, they are protective against all types of pain.

• Harnessing challenge: The root of creativity is friction. Often we avoid any form of challenge in adulthood, or better yet, when we experience it we feel like we’re doing something wrong. Scientifically, experiencing challenge cultivates resilience, confidence and motivation. At Daydreamers, we like to say that Creative Health looks like a heartbeat - the highs and lows are what makes us feel alive.

• Feeling fulfilled: Fulfillment is often seen as the top of life’s pyramid, but in fact, it is the key to longevity, connection and creativity. Our creative brain is designed to help us make meaning in an increasingly chaotic world, giving us purpose in our daily life. Even more, we see Creative Health as a portal into the transcendent by opening us up to awe, wonder and all the beautiful elements our world has to offer.

Ultimately, Creative Health helps us feel fully alive - allowing us to being here for the challenges and the beauty of it all.

Now at this point, like any good skeptic you might be scratching your head at this point and wondering: Why should we focus on feeling more alive when we all have to figure out how to survive?

This side of the spectrum can often feel amorphous and even frivolous to focus on amidst all the struggle in our world. And when we think about the elements of Creative Health - like wonder, imagination, transcendence and interconnectedness - they can seem even more out of reach.

But, prioritizing our Creative Health is so much more radical than it seems on the surface. At its core, it’s a framework to help us push-back against the system that’s making us sick in the first place: the never-ending more, more, more.

Creative Health isn’t striving for more - it’s restoring the natural capacity we have to live a full life. It returns our power, our play, our freedom and our beauty to its rightful place. It gives us the strength and resilience to keep going, while allowing the space to appreciate the world as it is.

To me, it’s the essence of what we’ve all been searching for on this robotic, never-ending hamster wheel. And no matter how you begin to activate it, your Creative Health is a homecoming.

I can’t wait for all of us to begin the messy, windy road of making our way there 🤎

- Katina

Daydreamers’ Co-Founder and Chief Science Officer

*P.S.: Look out for Creative Health to hit your inboxes next Sunday. We’re still in the experimentation phase over here - if you have any preferences / times you typically read this newsletter, tell us in the comments! We’re all ears :)

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Creative Brain Teaser 🧠

Think of this as a peek into what we do at Daydreamers. We’ll share a taste of a Creative Health concept or actionable tool from the Daydreamers Platform that will help you take this week’s newsletter from a learning into an aspect of everyday life.

Your Creative DNA

• What it means: By prioritizing our Creative Health, which is made up of a unique combination of preventative well-being measures like awe, curiosity, interconnectedness and fulfillment, we can not only thrive but prevent illness down the road. If you never heard the term Creative Health before Daydreamers, you’re not alone (we coined it!). Because this category of our well-being is so new, we’ve actually come up with a series of metrics and measurements that help us measure every person’s unique Creative Health. We call it your Creative DNA. Think about it this way - just like you know that muscle mass, dense bones and a healthy heart make up a strong body - we can apply the same level of detail to strengthening your Creative Health, too.

• How to experiment with it: Everyone has unique strengths, goals and areas of growth when it comes to their Creative Health - and they continue to evolve with different stages of life. You might start asking yourself what’s most important to you when it comes to your Creative Health right now: Is it cultivating more mindful engagement in your day-to-day? Is it feeling more fulfilled and purposeful? Is it enhancing your mental flexibility and innovative thinking? Is it making more autonomous, freeing decisions that go against the status quo? Awareness is the first step towards making creative change.

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One thing we’re into 🪐

In the name of simplicity, each week we’ll share something that myself, Katina, or our team @ DD HQ is obsessed with. It can be an idea, a quote, a book or even a product that’s helping us live a little bit more of a creatively fulfilling life.

The Paradox of Choice

Speaking of the amorphous more, more more - our team is obsessed with this ~20 year old Ted Talk by psychologist, Barry Schwartz. In it, he lays out the 4 main reasons why Western, affluent countries suffer from the “paradox of choice” - and they’ve only grown in importance in our world today. Highly recommend a watch, even if it’s just to get a nostalgic peek at 2005 Powerpoint 🙃

Which paradox resonates with you the most - self-blame, anticipated regret or something else?

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Help us reach our goal of 20,000 community members here on Substack - we’re so close! Share Creative Health by Daydreamers with a friend or two who need a dose of creative living 🤍 We so appreciate you helping us share this movement with the world.