The Role of Engagement, Honing, and Mindfulness in Creativity

TL;DR

This paper reviews theories linking creativity, hardship, and mindfulness, emphasizing their therapeutic potential and proposing an educational module to foster self-awareness and resilience in youth facing complex modern challenges.

Contribution

It synthesizes creativity and mindfulness theories to inform a curriculum module aimed at enhancing resilience and self-awareness in youth.

Findings

Creativity can both access and relive traumatic memories.

Mindfulness may enhance the therapeutic effects of creativity.

A proposed educational module integrates creativity and mindfulness for youth resilience.

Abstract

As both our external world and inner worlds become more complex, we are faced with more novel challenges, hardships, and duress. Creative thinking is needed to provide fresh perspectives and solve new problems.Because creativity can be conducive to accessing and reliving traumatic memories, emotional scars may be exacerbated by creative practices before these are transformed and released. Therefore, in preparing our youth to thrive in an increasingly unpredictable world, it could be helpful to cultivate in them an understanding of the creative process and its relationship to hardship, as well as tools and techniques for fostering not just creativity but self-awareness and mindfulness. This chapter is a review of theories of creativity through the lens of their capacity to account for the relationship between creativity and hardship, as well as the therapeutic effects of creativity. We also review theories and research on aspects of mindfulness attending to potential therapeutic effects of creativity. Drawing upon the creativity and mindfulness literatures, we sketch out what an introductory 'creativity and mindfulness' module might look like as part of an educational curriculum designed to address the unique challenges of the 21st Century.