Eudaimonia (Happiness)

According to Wikipedia, Eudaimonia is a Greek word literally translating to the state or condition of 'good spirit,' and which is commonly translated as 'happiness' or 'welfare.'

Since being diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder in 2021, I have been studying Positive Psychology, and I find it fascinating.

Thanks to the pandemic and my mental health scare, now more than ever I am cultivating my creative life, and not just in the area of music, which I was literally born into. But also in writing short stories and poetry, painting and crocheting. These are all areas that while doing them, I am totally emersed. Nothing else matters.

So, today as I going through my Psychology lesson, I am introduced to the idea of eudaimonic wellbeing as it relates to living a creative life!

According to Psychologist Carol Ryff, there are six dimensions of eudaimonia:

1. Autonomy ("I have confidence in my opinions, even if they are contrary to the general consensus")

2. Environmental mastery ("I am quite good at managing the many responsibilities of my daily life")

3. Personal growth ("I think it is important to have new experiences that challenge how you think about yourself and the world")

4. Positive relations with others ("People would describe me as a giving person, willing to share my time with others")

5. Purpose in life ("Some people wander aimlessly through life, but I am not one of them")

6. Self-acceptance ("I like most aspects of my life")

While reading through this, I felt like I was nailing most of these ideas, except for number six. This is the challenge for me, and one that I'm taking on.

I'm trying to get to that place of intrinsic motivation--a love of creating for the sake of creating, and not for the external rewards.

I have always considered myself to be self-motivated. I use strategies to facilitate creativity like scheduling time to create. Sometimes this yields nothing, but most times, I get in 'the flow' and lose myself as my muse awakens.

I allow myself to daydream because I believe that unconscious processes can facilitate creativity, especially our dreams.

I get my senses involved, be it visual, auditory or tactile.

And, I'm learning to appreciate and embrace my high need for solitude. I like to create in isolation, which is why I'm producing my own music now. I love writing because this is something I do alone. This stems from my aversion to asking for help I think.

Where I get tripped up is my need to set goals and deadlines, and if I don't have a concrete creative product to show by my self-improsed deadlines (a written story, a completed song, etc.), then I feel like I have failed. And this leads to anxiety and stress.

The creative process can be brutal at times, divine at other times. What I am learning through Positive Psychology is that we need to experience intense emotions--both positive and negative--which can add deep meaningfulness to our creative lives.

Being a creative makes you multi-facited! Creatives are so much more than just individuals, we are a multitude according to creativity researcher Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi. We can have messy minds and we need to be free from the bonds of standardization and domestication. We will never fit 'the mold' so why try? Just be your weird and wonderful self! You are one of a kind.

I encourage you to fully embrace your creativity! Don't conform ... transform. The creatives of this world wield colour, imagination and fun all around us like stardust. We add the shimmer to the mundane. We are not afraid to express and feel. We are the soul of the Universe.

Create for the sake of creating and let the Universe take care of the rest!