The Healing Power of Creativity: How Crafting and Labor Bring Order to Chaos and Peace to the Soul

The soul-lifting power of creativity, craft, and labor comes from the fact that the products of these activities exist outside of ourselves. By focusing on outputs we are forced to shift our attention to the external world, and away from us and our ego.

There is a peace that comes from completing a project, painting a picture, fixing a broken shelf, volunteering… All of them bring our conscience into the world, away from us.

The ego is the enemy and the source of much of our suffering. Creativity, in the widest sense of the world (meaning creating anything, making anything tangible), is a remedy to our suffering.

Creating in any of its forms (cooking, journaling, building, fixing,…) is human ingenuity working to put order in the world to make sense of the chaos around us.

This is the meaning of a well-lived life. To bring order where there’s chaos. To create.

We suffer because of the chaos within, we regain peace when we create and put order back out into the world.