Creativity
7 Keys to Becoming More Creative than Reactive
How becoming more creative can empower you to live more effectively.
Posted January 23, 2025 Reviewed by Lybi Ma
Key points
- When we're reactive, we surrender our personal power.
- Advertising, disturbing news, and social media can make us fearful and reactive.
- To be creative, we can use our strengths, spend time in nature, have a creative hobby, and set a goal.
Creative and Reactive—two words with the same letters but they’re dramatic opposites.
When we’re creative, we connect with our personal power, living from our values and strengths. And research has shown that becoming more creative can boost our mental and physical health and help us flourish (Connor, DeYoung, and Silvia, 2016; Cropley, 1990; Schmid, 2006).
How Reactivity Controls Us with Fear
When we’re reactive, we surrender our personal power. We become defined and controlled by external manipulating forces. Advertising, authoritarian politicians, disturbing news, and social media can all trigger us, activating the amygdala, the brain’s alarm center. Reacting to threats to our survival, the amygdala plunges us into the stress reaction of fight, flight, or freeze (LeDoux, 1996).
In a real emergency, this stress reaction can save our lives—for example, we can jump out of the way of a speeding car. But when we’re triggered by external manipulating forces, this reaction can make us feel angry and defensive, fearful, or weak. We can be easily manipulated by these external forces because stress shuts down our higher brain centers so we can react to threats. We’re then unable to think clearly, to act wisely on our behalf.
Here’s how these external forces can manipulate us:
- Advertisements can make us feel inadequate and insecure unless we buy their products.
- Authoritarian politicians can control us with fear, using name-calling, shaming, and blaming others.
- While it’s important to be informed citizens, exposure to too much disturbing news about crime, wars, natural disasters, and political plots can make us feel unsafe and helpless.
- Research has associated excessive viewing of social media with increased insecurity, anxiety, and depression (Keles, McCrae, and Grealish, 2020; Twenge, 2017).
How to Reclaim Your Personal Power
To reclaim your power, you can:
- Recognize and reject the four external manipulative triggers: advertising, authoritarian politicians, disturbing news, and social media.
- Actively cultivate your creativity.
Some Ways to Cultivate a More Creative Approach to Life:
- Discover your top character strengths (Peterson and Seligman, 2004) by taking the free VIA-Character Survey at VIA Character Strengths Survey & Character Reports
- Find ways to use your top strengths regularly, which research has shown, can make us happier, healthier, and more successful (Seligman, Steen, Park, and Peterson, 2005).
- When you’re feeling stressed, you can share your feelings with a trusted friend or counselor. You can even write down what you’re feeling, which research has shown can be highly beneficial (Pennebaker, 1997).
- Spend more time in nature—walking, hiking, gardening, looking up at the trees and sky, connecting with the creative power of nature (Aerts, Honnay, and Van Nieuwenhuyse, 2018; Berman et al., 2012; Ryan et al., 2010)
- Engage in a creative hobby to help you flourish (Connor et al., 2016). Some possibilities are: drawing, doodling, dancing, listening to music, playing a musical instrument, trying a new recipe, gardening, doing a puzzle, or figuring out how to fix something.
- Mindfully shift from being reactive to creative. When you’re feeling overwhelmed by the news or catch yourself idly scrolling through social media, you can shift your focus by turning to a favorite creative practice (M. M. Chappel, personal communication, December 27, 2024; Dreher, 2025).
- Set a new goal for yourself and move toward it one step at a time (Snyder, 1994). Recent research has shown a significant connection between creativity and hope (Tan, Cheng, Tan, Chew, and Tan, 2024).
By taking steps to boost your creativity, you can begin this new year with a greater sense of personal power, hope, and possibility.
This post is for informational purposes and should not substitute for psychotherapy with a qualified professional.
© 2025 Diane Dreher, All Rights Reserved.
References
Aerts, R., Honnay, O., & Van Nieuwenhuyse, A. (2018). Biodiversity and human health: Mechanisms and evidence of the positive health effects of diversity in nature and green spaces. British Medical Bulletin, 12, 5-22.
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Connor, T. S., De Young, C. G., & Silvia, P. G. (2016). Everyday creative activity as a path to flourishing. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 13, 181-189.
Cropley, A. J. (1990). Creativity and mental health in everyday life. Creativity Research Journal, 13 (3) 167-178.
Dreher, D. E. (2025). How creativity can heal your life in troubled times. PsychologyToday.com https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/your-personal-renaissance/202501/how-creativity-can-heal-your-life-in-troubled-times
Keles, B., McCrae, N., & Grealish, A. (2020). A systematic review: the influence of social media on depression, anxiety and psychological distress in adolescents. International Journal of Adolescence and Youth, 25(1), 79-93.
LeDoux, J. (1996). The emotional brain. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.
Pennebaker, J. W. (1997). Writing about emotional experiences as a therapeutic process. Psychological Science, 8, 162-166.
Peterson, C. & Seligman, M. E. P. (2004). Character strengths and virtues. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Ryan, R. M., Weinstein, N., Bernstein, J., Brown, K. W., Mistretta, L., & Gagne, M. (2010). Vitalizing effects of being outdoors and in nature. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 30, 159-168. doi:10.1016/j.jenvp.2009.10.009
Schmid, T. (Ed.) (2006). Promoting health through creativity: For professionals in health, arts and education. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
Seligman, M. E. P., Steen, T. A., Park, N, & Peterson, C. (2005). Positive psychology progress: Empirical validation of interventions. American Psychologist, 60, 410-421.
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Tan, C.-S., Cheng, S.-M., Tan, S.-A., Chew, E.-J., & Tan, X.-H. (2024). Hope enhances creativity more than well-being: Findings from a two-week longitudinal study. Current Psychology: A Journal for Diverse Perspectives on Diverse Psychological Issues. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-024-07124-9
Twenge, J. M. (2017). iGen: Why today’s super-connected kids are growing up less rebellious, more tolerant, less happy and completely unprepared for adulthood and what that means for the rest of us. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster.