Your Daily Mental Health Pick Me Up!
Do you ever feel like if you’re not an “artist,” then it’s a waste of your time to spend what little free time you do have drawing for fun?
I know that for myself, and for lots of my family and friends, we’ve all felt that way before… We don’t want to spend free time engaging in something that we aren’t good at. But where on earth did a feeling like that come from? Since when did doing something for the fun of it get looked down upon?
You might have already suspected it, but for a lot of people it comes down to that subtle (and sometimes even unspoken) societal pressure that what you spend your time doing should strictly be for productivity and monetization.
So if you’re not good at drawing, why would you spend time doing it?
Simple.
Daily Drawing is HUGELY beneficial, especially for your mental health. And you can actually reap those benefits whether you’re good at it or not.
So let’s get into it, because in this post-lockdown era, improving and prioritizing your mental health is deeply important.
In fact, we can break this down into 2 simple truths (that might even be helpful to write on your bathroom mirror, if you like):
Your worth is NOT based on your productivity, skill level, or income.
You can boost your mental health when you make space for creativity. Just for the sake of it - just for you.
So let’s start with #1:
Your worth is NOT based on your productivity, skill level, or income
Read that one again if you need to. 🤗 Because in this day and age, it’s not hard to fall into the trap of busy girl bossing, bragging about being burnt out, or desperately clawing at that corporate ladder. You know that oftentimes to get ahead, companies can place worth on your productivity, your skill, and how much money you can make them.
And all of those messages coming at you can understandably deter you from creative time, because it may not seemingly have a direct impact on your career future. You might even see it as a waste. But your true worth is not actually measured by your productivity, skill, or income. And drawing is, in fact, NOT a waste of your time because of its many mental health benefits (which we’ll get into in a moment).
The point is that all that societal ‘mumble grumble’ in the back of your mind shouldn’t keep you from getting into a creative pastime that you deserve to enjoy, just because it’s not making you any money.
At Simple Daily Drawing we believe it’s important to remind yourself that you’re allowed to enjoy things that don’t benefit or directly impact your professional life. You’re allowed to enjoy things just for the sake of it because a lot of the time, those are the things that we need the most.
Which brings us into #2:
You can boost your mental health when you make space for creativity. Just for the sake of it - just for you.
Daily Drawing is a really easy way to relieve stress. It lowers your cortisol levels, gives you some quality “me time,” and fosters calm and relaxation in an otherwise ‘go-go-go’ type of world.
I personally saw the proof of this during covid lockdowns, when I started giving a daily drawing prompt to my family. We would all share our masterpieces with each other at the end of every day, and marvel at the creative differences each person produced for the same prompt. We saw our moods improve, stress dissolve, and our bond become stronger.
In fact, a March 2020 study done at the University College of London by Dr. Daisy Fancourt scientifically confirmed what our own family experienced. This study had 72,000 participants aged 18 and older tracking their involvement in the arts in addition to the state of their mental health.
What they found was a strong correlation between spending time being creative with having a healthier mentality. Those who spent at least 30 minutes EVERY day participating in arts activities had “lower reported rates of depression and anxiety and greater life satisfaction.”
And you might be thinking that you need to be considered an artist in order to gain those benefits from drawing, but when you break it down to its bare bones, drawing is actually considered a skill. Not a talent. So you don’t need to be an “artist” to get the mental health benefits from drawing, and your drawing can actually improve over time (but of course that’s not the point).
It didn’t matter to my family if we were any good at drawing. The experience of drawing - and the benefits of drawing - was far more important than how good our masterpieces turned out.
I’ve seen firsthand how unlearning the expectation that everything I do with my time should be for a profit has drastically improved my mood, my relationships, and my mental health. And Simple Daily Drawing wants the same for you too!
At Simple Daily Drawing, we encourage you to foster your creativity regardless of whether you're the greatest at it or if it's making you money. It's deserving of your time because it's mentally healthy for you to enjoy the things that are for creative fun and to make space for those things in your life.
You can in fact just draw to draw!
And you’ll get a lot back from it.
No - maybe not in money, or in major career climbing.
But definitely in life satisfaction and new, creative ways to bring you joy. Things that can’t be physically measured, but matter the most. And drawing daily has been scientifically proven to bring you joy….It’s like a daily mental health pick-me-up.
Simple Daily Drawing’s monthly sketchpads are one of the easiest ways to get back into your creative side and boost your mental health. Each sketchpad comes with daily prompts, so you can join a community of people (including many beginners) who are all drawing their own creative rendition of the day’s drawing inspiration with you.
And we hear you - we know it can be hard to get back into that child-like love for the arts. We know it is hard to break free from constant productivity, skill level anxiety, and money-making expectations.
Just know that there’s a whole Simple Daily Drawing community excitedly waiting to welcome you back into your creative side, and we can’t wait to see you reignite your mental health along with it!
>> Check out the Simple Daily Drawing Community
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