Creative Well-being: Why Creativity Has The Power To Change The World

This is Part 1 in a series by Daydreamers called Creative Well-being, where we’ll dive into the why + how behind our society’s lack of creative fulfillment — and what we can do about it.

Hey world, it’s Katina + Dupi — co-founders of Daydreamers: the mental well-being company that’s solving burnout, creatively.

We’ve been working on solving this huge, social problem behind-the-scenes for the last year (more like a million, as it always is with startups), and even though our company is still in the pre-launch phases, we couldn’t think of a more impactful time to start sharing our story about burnout, mental well-being and why creativity truly has the power to change the world.

Over the next couple of weeks, we’ll dive into the science, research and thinking that’s behind our entire mission: to help more adults build habits to access their creative potential and in turn, live happier, healthier and more fulfilling lives.

Because, if you couldn’t tell, the state of our world isn’t doing too hot right now. And, even though it seems like an impossible task, we do have the power to change our emotional states, our beliefs and in turn, our entire world.

But first — here’s why this all matters:

Our world is burning (erg, we’re not kidding)

It probably doesn’t come as a surprise that adults today are more burned out, stressed and anxious than ever before in history. And, this was measured all before COVID — some are even saying that mental health issues have skyrocketed more than double their previous rates in the past twelve months alone.

But, even though over 90% of American adults say that they feel burned out at the end of their days most often — eight in ten would never consider getting traditional mental health support (think: therapy). See the problem here?

In our view at Daydreamers, we think that this growing divide of people who are struggling but won’t seek help is happening for a variety of reasons.

Our first theory: the work-gym-sleep hamster wheel. Americans today work longer hours and take less vacations than any other developed nation in the world. Literally. That means on average, we work a full day more than our counterparts in France, South Africa or even Japan. And, the culture of work is so embedded into our pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps ethos, even companies that offer unlimited vacation days notice that their employees take far less than the average two weeks off most companies provide. Never mind taking a mental health day. It’s normal to work to the brink of burnout.

Follow that with low-quality leisure. When we’re not answering emails until midnight, the majority of American adults find themselves engaging in what we call, low-quality leisure. This is passive, draining, often unconscious behaviors like watching Netflix for five hours straight or slumping on your couch scrolling through TikTok until it’s past bedtime. Nielsen found that on average, adults spent 11 hours per day consuming media — 11 hours! And, this was all before we were confined to the four walls of our home for the past year.

These issues — mental health struggles and avoidance, and spending our time either working or scrolling has led to a burned-out, unfulfilled, and stressed adult population. So much so, that nearly 60% of adults today say that they’re unfulfilled.

But, don’t worry: this is robotic, burned-out nature is exactly what we’re solving for at Daydreamers, so it’s not all doom and gloom.

What if we allowed ourselves to…dream?

We started Daydreamers, really, to help people like us feel more alive.

Creativity is a natural, innate human behavior and an accessible way to get us all off that work-gym-sleep hamster wheel + onto a more sustainable, fulfilling path.

We’ll talk about exactly how this works from a scientific perspective over the next few weeks, but for now, let’s think about how the mental health community is currently approaching the issues above — so we can start making change.

Until the early 2000s, mental health was approached in an “illness”-oriented way. Meaning that the only interventions available to the public followed a problem-solution method, bringing individuals from negative to baseline. It wasn’t until Dr. Marty Seligman and Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, two leading psychologists, got together to question why people were surviving — rather than thriving — that the positive psychology movement was born.

Unlike most people think, “positive” psychology doesn’t mean only looking at the good stuff. It’s actually flipping the entire way we see the world on its head and instead, looking at mental health from a well-being perspective instead of an illness perspective.

Daydreamers’ co-founder and Chief Well-being Officer, Katina, is an expert in this space and will be forging the connection between creativity and well-being in the months ahead. As a sneak-peak into our thinking: creativity, when used as a consistent well-being practice has the ability to send our emotions on a “positive upward spiral” and improve our psychological well-being for good.

Most of the world hasn’t caught up to looking at mental well-being from a baseline to thriving perspective. But, that’s how we’re reducing stigma, burnout and lack of creative fulfillment at Daydreamers.

So, are you with us and ready to see the world with childlike wonder again?

Peaking ahead: Burned out ‘Non-creatives’

Next week in our ongoing series, we’ll share our own stories of how we got here, a place where two burned out, mid-twenty somethings who never considered themselves creative people decided to start a creative well-being company.

For now, we hope you stay tuned for the rest of our journey.

If you’re liking this series, give it some claps so it reaches more people! And, check out our brand new newsletter, Head In The Clouds.

P.S. You can sign up for early access to 3-months free of a Daydreamers subscription (pre-launch) by taking this simple quiz. Hurry up and get on the waitlist!