Top 3 benefits of creating with your hands

Last week, during a midday train ride to school, I was listening to a podcast when something caught my attention. In a sea of tired looking commuters with their smartphones glued to their hands and their eyes to the screen, I spotted an old lady working her knitting needles to produce a scarf, looking perfectly content. It was such a sweet sight to see, and reminded me of the simple pleasure from making something with your own two hands. 

Maybe we’re not creating often enough. Maybe we’re replacing the act of creating with scrolling through social media, or playing with trendy fidget toys. Maybe it’s just not worth the time or we don’t have the right resources to enjoy it. 

But here’s the thing: getting hands on to create something has deep benefits that we may not notice at face value. I can’t begin to count the amount of times I’ve heard people dismiss an opportunity to create something by saying they’re not the creative or artistic type. At face value, “creating something” can seem like a time-consuming, laborious, or even daunting task – people begin to evaluate whether it’s worth the time, if they’ll be successful, and if the results are promising enough. 

Focusing only on the finished product sucks all of the enjoyment and attention out of the process itself. This is a results-oriented mentality. We’ve all heard the cliché and overused phrase “it’s not about the journey, it’s about the destination.” In this case, it’s overused because it’s true and worth reminding. When we can build something ourselves and see it forming physically, we get access to the messy, chaotic but beautiful mess of a process. 

From creating ancient artwork, medicine or weapons, to the machines that can make them for us, creating is so instinctive for humans. In the 18th century, the industrial revolution prompted the major shift from man-made to machine-made. Since then, we’ve grown so accustomed to machines making things for us, and more recently, the digital world of non-tangible things.

In the midst of this loss of physical grounding and creation, people are still instinctively drawn to creating. Think about the rise of DIYs and hands on hobbies. It’s easy to get caught up questioning whether the finished product will be deemed good or bad, but remember you can learn and express so much in the process regardless. 

Here are the top 3 ways creating with your hands will help you:  

Trust in Your Abilities

Think about the last time you got your hands dirty to make something. 

As you reach completion, there’s an undeniable feeling of accomplishment. 

To be self- sufficient is to be able to take care of your own needs without external help. Making something with your own two hands brings new confidence in being able to accomplish things on your own. You can trust in your own abilities, even if you’re not a “professional”. 

We’re so digital – online profiles, accounts, applications. This isn’t a surprise, and not necessarily a terrible thing. But in the midst of scrolling and clicking, we can lose sense of a tangible process – and the trust in our own capabilities from being able to create physically. 

Author Nora Young writes, “learned physical skill isn’t something that’s required when we are pushing buttons and clicking mice and waiting for some mysterious process to happen on our hard drive or in the Cloud to give us the result we want.”

All it takes is the effort to create and understand the process with your hands. With learned physical skill we can feel confident in our self-sufficiency, and understand the value of manual tasks. 

Have a Deeper Level of Understanding 

Writer, research fellow, and motorcycle mechanic Matthew Crawford describes how being manually competent and working with your hands allows you to see the relationship between cause and effect, since you’ll be part of all the steps involved in how something came to be. As a result, you’ll feel a stronger sense of responsibility and accountability for your actions. You’ll understand the process at a deeper level because you are responsible for it’s existence. 

For instance, if you were to make a shirt or meal from scratch, you’ve worked with all of the materials and ingredients first hand. You understand the effects of using certain tools or procedures, and finish the project with greater appreciation and respect for the final product. It hasn’t arrived perfectly put together, but you built it from nothing. 

When I worked in retail, I distinctly remember folding a pile of t-shirts fresh from the stockpile. These shirts had come from mass manufacturing, and now they were being folded for display for customers to pick and buy. 

Everything was already laid out for them, there was no sense of connection, responsibility, or accountability with these mass manufactured products. Not that there should’ve been necessarily, this was a corporation.   

But your relationship with material things changes when you know or were part of the history involved in creating that thing. In a time where machines are making everything for us, and processes happen behind the scenes, what kind of relationship should we have with material things, if any at all?   

Channel Energy into the Creative Process 

If you haven’t already heard of art therapy, let me break down the basics. In a nutshell, art therapy is a type of psychotherapy that uses the process of creating art to improve well-being. By no means do you have to be an “artist” to reap the therapeutic benefits of creative expression. Art therapy focuses on the process of creation, rather than the finished product. It can even extend beyond conventional ideas of art pieces (painting, drawing, sculpting) and include all creative activities. 

As you’ve probably noticed, the trend of “art therapy coloring books” has blown up in recent years. Though it’s not exactly creating something, people looking for a relaxing and meditative experience are turning to the hands on coloring trend for help. In 2015, US sales of coloring books alone jumped from 1 to 12 million units. (link https://qz.com/637238/the-explosive-rise-of-adult-coloring-books-charted/)

Though actual art therapists can attest that art therapy isn’t exactly as simple as a coloring book, there is undoubtedly a therapeutic quality to the act of creating in general. According to physician Carrie Barron, a hands on approach to creating allows the mental and the physical to work together to channel your energy into the creative process. You don’t really need a designated coloring book to expend that energy into the creative process when there are opportunities all around you to create, which may easily come off as “mundane.”

Not only does it strengthen your self-sufficiency, increase your sense of responsibility and improve your well-being, but creating something with your own two hands just feels damn good. We all need something tangible to get a basic sense of satisfaction. It’s crucial to take opportunities where you can work hands-on to create something. Don’t completely lose yourself in passive and elusive experiences.

Think about the culture and society we live in. Office jobs are of the norm in a “knowledge economy” dependent on intangible information, we entertain ourselves with passive media experiences like Netflix, and are engrossed in the online virtual world. 

In the midst of the intangibility of this digital realm, we have to stay grounded in the physicality of our existence. We have to stay in touch with the fundamental human capacity to create. 

“Creating” is not always a grand endeavor. Whether you’re planting a seed in a garden or making a meal, getting your hands dirty and working with materials to bring something to life is an intrinsic human quality.