woman creating vision board with cup of coffee.

Create Your Own Self-Love Vision Board

The most important relationship that you will ever have in your life is your relationship with yourself. Creating a self-love vision board is a creative and relaxing exercise that offers an opportunity to cultivate a strong sense of love and acceptance through creativity and the power of visualization.   Vision boards are a collection of images, words, and memories arranged to inspire you and help you manifest your goals or vision. Visualization and manifestation are empowering tools to create a positive and more accepting connection with yourself.    When we have a healthy level of self-love and self-esteem, it significantly impacts our mental, physical, and spiritual well-being. Vision boards are an amazing tool to help you tap into Love for Self. Ask yourself: Who am I? What am I calling in? What brings me joy? What do I love most about my life?    Once you create a vision board, we recommend placing it where you will see it often — such as near a mirror or on the wall in a room you use frequently. Remember to take a moment each day (or several times throughout the day) to look at it and reflect on what it means to you.   Vision Boarding Materials:  Poster board, as big or small as you desire. Pro tip: you can leave space to add on throughout the year whenever inspiration strikes you. Stickers! Give yourself a gold star! Magazines, postcards, cut outs. You may be surprised where you’ll find inspiration and what messages or images you’ll find on everything from receipts to old flyers once you begin looking. Scotch tape, scissors, glue — or even better: glitter glue! Markers, gel pens, colored pencils, crayons. (Yes, crayons!) Childhood photo. Connect with little you, and make time to PLAY! At no extra cost: your own imagination and creativity.    Listen to our podcast episode on Embracing Self-Love to hear how we create self-love vision boards in our workshops — and to get more ideas on how to create yours!
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Master conductor Benjamin Zander.

Conductor of Joy

Some people say classical music is dying. Benjamin (Ben) Zander looks at the drop-off in listeners and drying up of public funding as an opportunity to be seized, which is pretty much the way the 77-year-old founder of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra (BPO) views everything. “I try to live life by the philosophy that you can reinvent any story so that it’s more exciting or energizing or happy-making,” Ben says. “It’s about possibility,” he clarifies, a theme he touches on frequently in his star turns on the lecture circuit, dispensing wisdom gleaned from his nearly 50 years of coaxing orchestral musicians to reach into their souls and produce heart-rending music. He has been a four-time keynote speaker at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and has addressed top brass at major companies like McKinsey and Pfizer as well as for the U.S. Army. Ben’s success isn’t simply about talent or charisma, though he’s plenty charismatic. Instead, he uses novel leadership techniques that turn the traditional way of conducting on its head and give every member of the orchestra a voice, a stake in the outcome. That’s not an easy feat, since orchestral musicians are a notoriously grumpy lot (one famous Harvard study found that they rank just below prison guards in terms of career satisfaction), but Ben won’t stop until everyone around him is invested, or enrolled, as he puts it. “If the eyes of the people around you are shining, you know you’re connecting,” he says. Firing on all cylinders Ben is a master connector, as evidenced by his TED Talk—with 7,646,626 views and counting. He encourages not just his musicians but buttoned-up CEOs to access their emotions through music. To demonstrate, he leaps up from the leather-tufted chair in his living room to his 9-foot Steinway grand, a gift from his late father, a Jewish survivor from Nazi-era Germany. As he pounds out a few rousing bars from Beethoven’s “Eroica” Symphony, he practically bounces off the piano bench. “See? It’s about joy!” he exclaims. “Could it be any clearer?” Ben brims over with joy, though if you ask him how he stays so happy, he replies that happiness isn’t the whole story. “I say, ‘You’re happy? Good! What else you got?’ To me, it’s not just about being happy. It’s about full engagement, about firing on all cylinders, it’s about wow!” he explains, his body taut with a 25-year-old’s energy. As founder and conductor of the BPO as well as the Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra, along with numerous guest conducting stints—“I’m traveling to Spain, England, Israel and Sweden, and that’s just in a month!” he says— Ben always seems to have room for one more commitment, one more connection in his schedule. How does he fit it all in? “I tend to say ‘yes’ to everything,” he says, laughing, referring to a recent last-minute meeting with teenagers at Booker T. Washington High School in Tulsa, Oklahoma. After two students there learned that Ben was coming to the city for a concert, they wrote and invited him to speak. Ben shifted his packed calendar around to make it happen, hoping for 40 or 50 kids. “Seven hundred students showed up! I had the time of my life!” he recounts, his own eyes shining beneath bushy white eyebrows. Choosing to be happy Yet happiness hasn’t always come easily to Ben, nor to his family. “Happiness is a discipline,” he says. “I wasn’t born with a sunny personality. I’m equally prone to moodiness, but at a certain point, I discovered that my mood was my choice. It wasn’t something I had to wait for, like a sunny day.” As an example, Ben points to a small bust of his father, which rests atop the gleaming grand piano. His father came to England from Germany, and at the outbreak of World War II he was sent to an internment camp in England’s Isle of Man. “He lived with thousands of other refugees behind barbed wire,” Ben recounts. At that point, the elder Zander had lost everything—his mother, who was exterminated in the Chelmno concentration camp, plus seven other family members along with his money, his profession (as a lawyer), his home, his culture. “Yet my father looked around and said, ‘There are many intelligent people here—let’s start a university!’ ” says Ben. “There were no blackboards but there were things to talk about, and soon they were doing 40 lectures a week, right there in the camp.” You could say that this anecdote embodies Ben’s worldview. “It’s an example of how, if you are disciplined about it, you can look at anything as rich with possibility,” he says. Ben explores this principle in his best-selling book The Art of Possibility, which he co-authored with his former wife and collaborator, Rosamund “Roz” Stone Zander. The sequel, Pathways to Possibility, has just been published, and though Roz is sole author on this one, the book is peppered with “Ben” anecdotes. Time to pay attention Though now divorced, Ben and Roz are still close (she lives just down his leafy street in Cambridge, less than a mile from Harvard Square). Ben looks back on their separation, 20 years ago, as a major turning point in his life. “I’d already lost one marriage,” he says. “When you lose two, it’s time to pay attention.” By paying attention, Ben turned that separation into a new beginning. Until then, he admits that he was a typically imperious maestro, “going through life like a bull in a china shop, having a wonderful time and bashing people along the way.” When Roz expressed her dissatisfaction in the marriage, the two had what Ben calls a “transformational conversation.” That conversation led to The Art of Possibility and, for Ben, to a new way of thinking, conducting and living. “My life was successful, but in some ways, it was at the expense of my marriage, of the people around me,” Ben says. “When the marriage ended, I went from being a fool to being aware, from being narcissistic to going for having shining eyes around me,” he says. One way Ben accomplishes this is by inviting his musicians, children and adults alike, to leave notes on their stands after every rehearsal, with their thoughts on the performance, and on how everyone might do things better, including Ben himself. While this might seem like the normal kind of give and take between any leader and his team, orchestral conductors are an autocratic lot, not known for asking a musician’s opinion, much less apologizing. Ben apologizes—sometimes mid-song—and then some, routinely stepping off the podium to do a few dance steps to demonstrate a passage, or even asking a member of the orchestra to take over for a spell. These techniques, he says, keep everyone around him invested in the process. “I’ve learned that you don’t have to push people around,” Ben says. “Giving up that way of being has been a great relief.” A spark of inspiration Ben’s exuberant methods get results beyond heart-lifting music. He aims to do nothing less than to change people’s lives. “Take a look at this!” he says, reading from a letter he received from a woman who played violin in a concert he recently guest-conducted. The musician starts by detailing how she endured years of being made to feel invisible in the back row of her section. And then came Ben, who gave her the freedom to express herself with “innocent playfulness,” to look at life in a new way. “You not only gave us your imagination, your authenticity, your passion and energy, but you made it okay for us to feel the same way, to play the same way,” she wrote. “It was like giving water to someone in the desert.” “I’m using my energy so that I can create experiences like this,” he says, clearly moved. “To me, this is happiness,” he says. More than that, the letter embodies his life goal of connecting, of affecting everyone he meets, of awakening them to their own possibility. “I want to keep doing what I’m good at doing. Knowing I can make a difference—that is what gives me purpose. To get a letter like that, I mean, what could be more rewarding?” As Ben approaches 80, his reach, his capacity to change attitudes, whether of a cynical CEO or a violinist in the back row of an orchestra, is more powerful than ever. “In my master classes, I used to teach 50 students. Now, those classes are online, and 35,000 people watch them on YouTube.” Ben is also teaching conductors to conduct differently. “You have to be very careful about the words that are coming out of your mouth, whether you are a conductor, a parent, a spouse or a politician,” he says. “Years ago, I didn’t realize that I was being demeaning. But if you do things right, you get happiness, and people will flourish all around you.” Paula Derrow is a writer and editor who specializes in psychology and personal essays. She divides her time between New York City and Connecticut.
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Coloring Books for Grown-Ups

Color Yourself Happy

Here’s a new twist on stress reduction. More adults are turning off phones and tablets, putting credit scores, diets and gym workouts out of their minds, and picking up crayons and coloring books for their relaxation and self-expression. Not your 5-year-old's coloring books A new top seller on Amazon is simply titled Adult Coloring Book and is full of intricate "stress relieving patterns" from geometric shapes to fleur de lis. Selling more than 1 million copies and helping launch the coloring craze is 2013's Secret Garden, by Johanna Basford, whose pen-and-ink illustrations come to life as you discover tiny creatures and complete her scenes. Become mesmerized by the patterns "Chances are last time you spent an hour or so coloring in you didn't have a mortgage and you weren't worried about a nagging boss or the financial crisis!" Johanna says. "Coloring in seems to help people think about a time when life was simpler and more carefree." Adult colorists can't wait for her next book, The Lost Ocean: An Underwater Adventure & Coloring Book, on sale Oct. 27. Jim Gold is a veteran journalist who splits his time between Seattle and the Bay Area.
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Tori Amos

Tori Amos Still Listens to the Muses

When Tori Amos is ready to createsomething new, she stops singing and starts listening.“As a musician, my output is sonicand verbal—it’s all about sound—so thatis a paradox that took me a long time tounderstand,” says the eight-timeGrammy Award nominee. “I become quiet. I have togo through an observational mode.”By being still and listening to hermuses, she says she’s able to absorbinfluences that might be drowned outby the sound of her own voice. The classically trained pianist-singer-songwriter has followed those musesfor as long as she can remember; shebegan playing piano by ear at age 2, andbecame the youngest person to win a fullscholarship to the Peabody Conservatoryof Music’s preparatory school at 5.“Listening has always been mygreatest inspiration,” she says. “It allowsyou to observe the world and expandsyour palette.”Diverse influencesNurturing her creativity relies ontapping into influences that reach farbeyond music. Her latest album,Unrepentant Geraldines, was inspiredby becoming still and “listening” tovisual art.“When I’m able to hear a painting,rhythms come to me as a melodicphrase, and I know the visualmedium is pushing me tocommunicate with me,” shesays.Often, the message orinspiration she receives is fardifferent from what the artistwas expressing, but Tori views itas a creative extension of thatvisual art.“What’s happening is that I’mbeing opened up to something that Iwasn’t open to until I saw that painting.I’m hearing rhythms that I had notheard before that moment.” Itsparks a whole new realm of inspirationand ideas.Crossing sonic boundaries“I don’t know that I’m alwayscomfortable with the direction my artgoes, but you have to explore it and seewhat happens,” she says. “What I donext might not be everyone’s cup of tea,but it’s important to keep crossing thesonic mountains and not feel like I haveto play it safe.”Inspiration, she says, can be found inmuseums, travel, poetry and stories, andeven walking through the market. Torisays there is no substitute for staying inthe moment, observing life as it happensand then letting those experiences shapeyour creative expression.“Whatever I’m doing, I just observe itand let it happen. I let my bones drink itin and hear the rhythm of what itis saying.”Try a different mediumOne of the best ways to expand yourcreativity, she suggests, is stepping awayfrom the familiar and experiencing lifeoutside of your normal scope.“Writers feel they need to read books,and musicians feel they need to listen to music, but when you go to a differentmedium than your own, it really cleansesyour palette and expands your tastes,”she says. “Then you can return towhatever it is you’re doing andre-approach it from a completelydifferent context.It lets you become neutral and open tohearing something that you haven’theard before.”
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Pomander balls for the holidays

Pomander Balls

The simple, repetitive process ofmaking pomander balls is one of my favorite holiday expressionsof “japa,” or a relaxing, repetitiveactivity we do with our wholehearts. This mindful repetition caninvite the “relaxation response,”which describes the body’s gradual return to its resting state.The aromatherapy effects ofthe pomander ball’s orange, clove,cinnamon and nutmeg comfort and enliven the senses.You will need: About eight organic oranges, five tablespoons whole cloves, ground cinnamon and nutmeg and decorative ribbon of your choice.1.Using a sharptool like a skewer, poke holes allover the orange.2. Fill eachhole with a whole clove.3. Roll in a small amount of ground cinnamon mixed with a little bit ofground nutmeg.4. Repeat with as many oranges as you would like. You can group them in a decorative shallow bowl, or spread them out around your home.Enjoy!
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Girl with paint on her hands

30 Days of Creativity

Pick and choose your favorite ideas from our list of things to do, watch, read, contemplate…and share! 1. “There is a fountain of youth: It is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of people you love. When you learn to tap this source, you will truly have defeated age.” —Sophia Loren 2. Attend an art party. 3. Listen to “Giant Steps” by John Coltrane. 4. Read Where the Wild Things Areby Maurice Sendak. 5. Watch The Joy of Painting with Bob Ross. 6. “Every child is an artist; the problem is staying an artist when you grow up.” —Pablo Picasso 7. Write a haiku. 8. Listen to Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon album. 9. Read Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creativeby Austin Kleon. 10. Watch Fantasia. 11. “Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try.” —Dr. Seuss 12. Start a new hobby—something that is totally different for you. 13. Listen to Tori Amos’ Unrepentant Geraldines album. 14. Read Creativity: The Psychology of Discovery and Inventionby Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. 15. Watch Big Fish. 16. “The idea is not to live forever; it is to create something that will.” —Andy Warhol 17. Build a treehouse with your family. 18. Listen to the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album. 19. Read The Accidental Creative: How to Be Brilliant at a Moment's Noticeby Todd Henry. 20. Watch The LEGO Movie. 21. “Passion is one great force that unleashes creativity, because if you're passionate about something, then you're more willing to take risks.” —Yo-Yo Ma 22. Write a family song. 23. Make a family cookbook. 24. Read The Everyday Work of Art: Awakening the Extraordinary in Your Daily Lifeby Eric Booth. 25. Watch Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. 26. “This world is but a canvas to our imagination.” —Henry David Thoreau. 27. Have a campout in your living room. 28. Read Imagine: How Creativity Worksby Jonah Lehrer. 29. Watch Creative Galaxy. 30. Paint a self-portrait. What sparks your creativity? Let us know, below, or on our Facebook page.
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Students at Booker T. Washington High School in Dallas put everything into their art.

A Passion to Create

Step after step, note after note, scene afterscene, the students at Dallas’ Booker T.Washington High School for the Performingand Visual Arts​are working,practicing and playing. Why? To make it into a famed performing arts conservatory?To win a Grammy? To dance on the biggeststage or play in the grandest hall? Yes. Following their passions These students are driven, focused andfollowing their passions. With alumni whoinclude Grammy winners Norah Jones andErykah Badu, achieving lofty goals is thenorm at the arts magnet school. And the 2013–2014 school year was noexception, with an unprecedented fivestudents accepted into the prestigiousJuilliard School. Boasting a 100 percentgraduation rate and roughly a quarter of allthe scholarship money in the DallasIndependent School District going to theschool’s students, the curriculum,integrating art and academics, is working. Prepared to create “We are not just preparing students forcareers in the arts—although many of ourstudents do go down that path—we arepreparing them to be 21st-century learnersand contributors to society,” says PrincipalScott Rudes, Ph.D. “They have theopportunity to think creatively, think ingroups and project themselves to be articulateabout what they are passionate about. Theyare not only what colleges are looking for, butwhat employers are looking for, too.” A different kind of school environment Scott says you can feel the electricitywhen you walk through the front doors;students are singing, playing instrumentsand rehearsing scenes. It’s an environmentfostering creativity, freedom, passionand engagement. “For us as educators to see thesestudents propelled into the spotlight ina variety of ways,” he says, “it reallyreaffirms the fact that schools like Booker T.Washington need to exist.”
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Minecraft

Mining for Happiness

Legos were once the ultimate building blocks of our imaginations. Hand me a kit meant for making a castle, and I’d find a way to turn it into a spaceship. I was limited only by my own creativity and the number of blocks I owned. If I’d had access to a digital world-building game like Minecraft at my fingertips when I was a kid, I would never have run out of blocks (or left my room, for that matter).Now kids have access to fully realized sandbox games (also called free roam and open world). Sandbox games are essentially digital playgrounds that allow users to manipulate and alter the world they play in. In the case of Minecraft, it is a sort of timeless primal landscape made up of 3-D world rocks, lakes, and mountains, and populated by animals.Playing in the giant sandboxMinecraft is one of the most popular games in this genre. With more than 100 million registered players, there’s no shortage of builders getting lost in a world of their own creation. There are four modes to choose from: creative, survival, hard-core and adventure. Creative is purely about building your own universe (I’ve seen everything from the Mona Lisa to a scale model X-Wing), whereas survival mode involves hoarding meat and crafting yourself a little house (a house that won’t last long once your little sister decides that dynamite would look really nice next to it). Minecraft discussions now dominate elementary school playgrounds, with pig-tailed girls discussing the fastest way to make a diamond sword (the pinnacle of pixilated weaponry in the game).Parents, meanwhile, are conflicted. On the one hand, this actually seems like a creative, interesting game that utilizes your whole imagination. And yet it seems to have swallowed our children; the game is downright addictive. Why is it so popular? One reason may be that creativity is a defining factor in happiness. When we are creatively engaged, it helps us to achieve a state of “flow,” which psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi describes as “an almost automatic, effortless, yet highly focused state of consciousness.” This state may or may not be accompanied by dilated pupils and complete lack of attention to everything outside the screen.Ruler of my domainIn addition, kids normally toil under adult rules, in a world devised and controlled by adults. In Minecraft, kids can create their own world, with their own rules. At the same time, they are driven to rack up more points, mine more ore, get to the next level and beat their peers—it all just makes you want to play longer and score higher. This intoxicating sense of autonomy and mastery (of the mines, of the score, of the game) packs a psychological wallop. No wonder we literally can’t put it down. It’s amazing to think that Minecraft was only released in 2011, and it’s now a global phenomenon.The building blocks of creativityMinecraft is not the only sandbox game that uses creation tools to stimulate curious minds. And Legos themselves are, paradoxically, as popular as ever. Nothing can replace the hands-on feel of building something with physical blocks. But kids will continue to enthusiastically inhabit Minecraft, where they can actualize their imaginations and create an entire universe for all to see. The game is even being used for some real-world applications, such as an app in Sweden that lets school kids design their own block, and something called the Block by Block initiative run by UN Habitat, which allows young people to use Minecraft to design real-world environments.Whether working together to build a grand city or fighting over fragments of iron, Minecraft and sandbox games in general give kids the opportunity to imagine and explore—to experience mastery and flow, and to write their own rules—all in the safe confines of a game. Later, maybe they will take some of those experiences and apply them to the outside world.
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Music makes us happy

Clap Along

For proof of how contagious music can be, we need look no further than Pharrell Williams’ current hit song, “Happy." The upbeat, infectious track from the 2013 movie Despicable Me 2 (and the lead single from Pharrell’s 2014 album G I R L) has not only topped the charts and prompted millions of downloads in multiple countries, but also has spawned hundreds of tribute videos on YouTube. Everyone seems to be singing (and dancing) along; the “Happy” music is as contagious as its message. The song’s effect is no fluke; studies show that our brains are hardwired to react to music. Brigham Young University psychology professor Ross Flom, Ph.D., found that babies as young as five months old reacted positively to happy, upbeat tunes; by nine months, they also responded to sad songs. And as our brains develop, the psychological effect of music only intensifies. Music as therapy Today, doctors know that music provides much more than ear candy; it’s been used to boost patients’ immune systems following surgery, to lower blood pressure and heart rates in cardiac patients and to reduce stress in pregnant women. Cal State Sacramento researchers discovered that children are happier during music therapy than during play therapy, and music therapy also is a proven treatment for anxiety, depression and loneliness in the elderly. So what is it about music that makes us so happy? For one, it’s the rhythm and tempo itself. Songs with a fast tempo written in a major key bring about physical changes that are associated with happiness, such as breathing faster. Neuroimaging studies show that, like language, music stimulates many areas of the brain and helps spark imagination. Songs with lyrics fire up the part of the brain that processes language, while the visual cortex works on creating a visual image. Meanwhile, the motor cortex wants to get in on the act, too, and makes us start tapping our feet. The cerebellum ends up playing traffic cop, using previously heard songs as a way of trying to figure out where the music is going next; and the medial prefrontal cortex—our memory bank —is lighting up with nostalgia. In short, the pieces of our brain work together like a scientific symphony to decipher this music. And the result? Imaging studies show that it releases dopamine and gives us the same kind of pleasurable feeling we get from chocolate or sex. Radio on That’s good news for people who need a quick boost of happiness. While more conventional methods of developing happiness – like practicing gratitude or exercising a signature character strength – are touted as ways to build long-term wellbeing, results from a pair of studies published last year in The Journal of Positive Psychology showed that listening to music could elevate happiness levels almost immediately. Both studies found that people who consciously tried to feel happier while listening to music reported a more positive feeling afterwards than those who simply focused on listening to the music. In other words, intentions matter. While merely listening to upbeat music will help put us in a good mood, researchers found that listening to upbeat music with the specific goal of boosting our mood can turbo-charge the effect. Sad songs, too Surprisingly, it’s not just those feel-good ditties that can boost your mood—Elton John had it right when he sang, “Sad Songs Say So Much.” A Japanese study published last year in Frontiers in Emotion Science found that people who listened to sad songs felt happier than expected when they listened to sad songs. One explanation? If we expect a song to make us feel sad, we actually feel happy when that expectation is met. So, in essence, it’s feeling sad that makes us happy – a complex emotional response that Ohio State University researcher and author David Huron calls “sweet anticipation.” What’s more, researchers from the UK found that listeners who focus on the beauty of sad songs found it to be an effective way to alleviate sadness. Their study, which was published in the journal Psychology of Music, also found that people who listened to sad songs that they felt related to their own personal experiences actually felt happier afterwards. Tunes from the past, meanwhile, can create feelings of connectedness, which boosts self-esteem and leads to a happier more optimistic outlook, according to a recent study from the University of Southampton. Studies show that, happy or sad, music can alter our mood and lift our sense of wellbeing. So go ahead: clap your hands, and check out our own Live Happy Playlist on Grooveshark.
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Woman holding up a painting of the Eiffel Tower

Create Outside the Lines

Katrina Lewis makes a living painting images with words.But when the marketing writerwalked into a local art studio to celebrate a family member’s birthday, she foundherself trading in her adjectives for anapron, a canvas and a palette of paint.“Once I got over the initial, ‘I’mnot an artist,’ I realized that none ofus were; we were all starting with ablank canvas—literally,” Katrina says. “We began painting, joking aroundand mixing colors, and I began to seemy own individualityreflectedin mymasterpiece. It was funny how we wereall essentially painting the same thing,but everyone’s looked so different.That’s when I realized this wasn’tabout painting at all; it was about beingcreative and expressing ourselves.”Katrina’s experience echoes what manypeople are finding. Instead of hitting thenightlife scene, friends, family and evenco-workers are gathering at local “art asentertainment” studios and rediscoveringcreativity they’d thought was lost. Allthat’s needed is a small fee for supplies,an open mind and a couple of hours,and the studio’s staff will supply the rest,including step-by-step instructions.Find a non-judgmental environmentIt’s a comfortable,there-are-nomistakesenvironment, says ChristyStindham, who owns a Dallas-areafranchise of paint-your-own-potterystudio Color Me Mine. “You’re safe—nobody’s going to laugh at you...You don’t have to know how to painta straight line or a brushstroke, andif you make a mistake, we can showyou how to turn it into somethingthat looks intentional, or you can justwipe off the paint and start again.”It’s that sense of safety andencouragement that allows weeknightartists like Katrina to relax and be inthe moment. Psychologists have drawnconnections between creativity andhappiness for years, but the relationshipbetween the two is on full display whenyou visit a studio on a busy Fridaynight. Whether it’s painting a pictureof the Eiffel Tower or a colorful bowl,the laughs come easy, the mood islight—it’s hard not to be happy.Let yourself go“People lose track of time,” Christysays. “They become so involved inwhat they’re doing that they look upand it’s been three hours, and theydidn’t even realize it because theywere having such a great time.”As Katrina and other modern-dayartists are realizing, what they gainfrom their night in the studio lastslong after the paint dries, they take offtheir paint-spattered aprons and returnto work.“Every time I look at thatpainting hanging in my home’s livingarea, I think of that night, of the fun Ihad,” Katrina says. “It’s my personalreminder that sometimes I have to taketime out of my schedule to be creativein a very real, very tangible way.”Find your own way to express your creativityDo as the ancients did, andtransform molten glass into art.Enjoy a fun evening out with friends atColorMe Mineor a mom-and-pop“art as entertainment” studioin your area.Gather the family, get a set ofwatercolors and some whitepaper and paint portraits of each other.Get your hands dirty—reallydirty—andtake a spin on the pottery wheel.Put creativity on your schedule and take an art class at alocal community college.
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