The mood-boosting power of creativity

Maybe you'd like to write, maybe you'd like to dabble a bit in watercolors, maybe you snap pictures of the sunset and pride yourself on finding the perfect filter. Or maybe like me, you'd like to crochet. I know, right? All the cool kids are doing it. Creative pursuits like these aren't only reserved for people who make art for a living. And they're not just hobbies. They're actually one of the keys to improving happiness. I'm Garbya Bailey and this is Happy Enough, a global male podcast on the pursuit of happiness and why it matters in an era where it feels like all the chips, and I mean all the chips, are stacked against us feeling good. This week we're talking creativity. Researchers have found that making art in whatever form can make you happier in a few ways. Let me break it down. One, it literally changes your chemistry by decreasing stress hormones and increasing feel-good hormones. Two, and maybe more importantly, it helps you connect with other people and we already know that social connection is one of the biggest predictors of well-being. Several studies in the Journal of Positive Psychology show that a simple creative act everyday can lead to better reported mental health. When we talked about guests for this episode, I have to admit I had my "hold up you guys, I know a guy" moment. You might know Stuart Reynolds. He goes by the name Brittle Star and he is all over the internet. He's a comedian. He's a social media personality and for I think all of my life he has been one of the most creative people that I know. I wanted to ask him what his creative process is like and how it has affected his mental health. Our conversation is right after the break. Okay, so let's start with just kind of setting the table. Your social media personality, you've got hundreds of thousands of followers on Instagram and even more on Tiktok. You've got a podcast, a new book, congratulations called Lessons from Cats for Surviving Fascism. You're creating constantly and I know a lot of creative people. You're probably the most creative person I know. You're just churning stuff out. It's quite incredible. I just want to know how you got started on this creative journey that you're on now as Brittle Star. I appreciate the kind words, slightly veering into quantity over quality, but that's okay. I'm very prolific, we'll just keep it at that. It all started back in my current thing I do as a career, I'm air quoting that, is social media content creator and that started in 2013 on an app called Vine and I started Vine because first of all, I was just a viewer, someone who was consuming vines and enjoying watching them and all that kind of stuff. And I was in a rather sort of like depressive state, like a very dark sort of place. About five years prior to that, our business had been hacked and we lost huge contracts because of it and we ended up like a dire fiscal straits, like notice on the door of our house stuff, like not good, really, really bad, honest to God, eating lentils for about two years for every meal. I really hate lentils now, understandably. And I remember sitting in a traffic light in Stratford here one day and I was like thinking to myself, I don't think I can remember the last time I laughed out loud. I thought that can't be good. That's a weird thing to notice to the point where it got rather to get to the point where I did notice the fact that I hadn't laughed out loud in a long time and I couldn't remember the last time I did. Well, I have to change this. I have to make a concerted effort to be happy. So I went home and watched a bunch of YouTube videos and watched outtakes from The Office, the American series. And I started laughing and I was like, this is really amazing. It feels great. And this is the kind of thing I want. I want to have a job where I can laugh every day or at least to be happy about something at least one point during the day. And so that kind of led me into looking at Vine. Our youngest son, Gregor, said you should check out Vine. It's like Twitter except video. And I did and I really enjoyed it and I loved it and that I started making ridiculous vines on my own with a plastic Chewbacca doll that I was 12. As one does. As one does. It would have been ridiculous for me to be. Yeah. It would have been ridiculous for a grown man at the age of 43 at the time to be making videos on his own while his children were at school and his wife was at work. So I thought I needed some sort of deferment, some sort of buffer and that was Chewy. But Chewy and I would make videos and then I would go down to the pub on the weekend and I'd see the bartender. The bartender would be like, "Hey, I love the new Chewy video." And I was like, wow, this is amazing. I'm making myself happy by making them. And I'm apparently making other people happy when they get to watch them. So this is twofold. This is amazing. And that kind of started the whole thing going and it's been, I think that kind of feedback for people knowing that I'm making people happy by doing something that makes me happy is just, it's fuel to keep going. For sure. Like did you feel that you needed to kind of chase the dragon in this? That you made these vines and then it had to be something that you had to keep perpetually doing to just keep yourself above water? Yeah, I think to start, like I said, there was definitely a concerted effort of like, "I'm going to try to make myself happy." And I think making the videos and the content for social media made me happy, scratched an itch, made me feel like it was cathartic and it was an outlet for me, which was great. I think another time that really stands out to me is like one of those moments where I thought, "Ah, this makes doing what I do a lot easier." I was going to the first vine meetup in Toronto at then Young Dundas Square and there's about two and a half thousand people there, it was craziness. I was the oldest on stage by 25, 30 years. Don't even say it. Don't say it. I know. It was horrendous. I was standing, at one point I'm standing next to a 14-year-old Shawn Mendes and I'm like, "I don't know if I fit here. This is really weird." But I remember walking across the street before I got to the event and I'm like, "What am I doing? This is crazy." We crossed the street from the Eaton Center across to Young Dundas Square and this woman who was maybe in her 50s ran up to me and gave me this big hug and I'm like, "What the hell is this woman doing? Is she crazy? Is she trying to rob me? Does she think I'm someone else?" And she said, "I just want to thank you for making your videos." They got me and my family through a really dark time recently and I was like, "Oh, well." And I didn't understand exactly how to react to that. I was like, "Well, I just assumed they were fun and silly and that was it." And they are just fun and silly, largely, but it's like this is having a positive impact and that, I think, is the pinpointed moment for me where I thought to myself, "Any time I'm feeling this is a hassle to do it, I can just think about, well, maybe it's going to help somebody else and that I get a positive feedback of. That makes you sound saintly, which is accurate." Nailed it, right? But creativity has been full disclosure to our audience. I've known you all my life. We grew up very close, your best friends with my brother. Who knew you were going to turn into some kind of, I don't know, megastar, whatever. Anyway. I mean, I did. I did not know. I did not see that coming. Anyway, color me surprised. I kid, of course you were. But you were extremely creative as a young person. That's how we know each other. You were always, you've always been creating. And I think I knew you well at a time when young men are going through a lot of angst, like you're in your teens and I knew you at that point. And you guys weren't out causing havoc, but you were making music together. Yeah. I absolutely do think there's a connection there. I think that there's, thinking back to when I was like 14 or something and playing in the band and rehearsing in your family's basement for a big chunk of that. We were busy doing that and I think just creating anything in general, whether it be music, writing, art, woodwork, I don't know, Ikea furniture, whatever you do. I think anything that you're creating and putting together and assembling and having an impact on and feel like you've kind of changed the world in some way by creating it, which is interesting. It's now just there. Now you've got a bookcase or you've got a song or you've got something that wasn't there before and I think that that has a positive impact on people and I think especially for young men, it's like you're doing something. I feel it's played a big part in my life being creative. I think it's not always been a blessing. Sometimes it's been a bit of a curse, but most of the time, 90% of the time, it's been absolutely a blessing. And it's a little bit in your DNA. I should divulge that your mother, Beth, was a contestant on The Voice UK. She was a rapping grandma, rapping with Will I Am of the Black Eyed Peas. That in itself is amazing to me, but she did this on the heels of you losing your father. Yeah. I think that's a really good point to bring up about the effect of creativity and happiness, the connection to happiness, is that my dad had died on January 25th, 2024 and on February 25th, 2024, I was standing in a TV studio side stage with my sister and my niece watching my mother duet with Will I Am on stage in front of about 300 live studio audience members. In a way, it was really reassuring to remind ourselves that life can go from horrendous to awful. We literally sat in the room when my dad died, and it was on a joyous time. Everyone was a very, very low ebb, for sure, and then in a matter of four weeks, be in the other end of the spectrum and think what the hell's going on here. But it was amazing. It was fantastic. Yeah. Yeah. Definite path. So, research indicates that making art in whatever form, whatever we're doing, it can decrease stress hormones, like cortisol. It can increase levels of feel-good hormones, like we're talking dopamine and serotonin and oxytocin, all those great things. So I'm wondering about the feelings that you feel when you hit on a super creative moment. Are you feeling all those things? Are you feeling the rush? The high? Usually, when I feel that, if I'm creating, say, a piece of video content for social media, if I'm creating that, and I'm feeling like too many of those things at once, like it just feels amazing, I've been doing it for so long that I now realize that's a sign that no one else is going to appreciate this entirely for me. There's got to be an element, I think, for the things that I do that are successful. There's always been an element of, this is really fun to do, I'm enjoying doing it. I don't think it's really good, though, I don't think it's very good. And that's usually the stuff that does really well. When I'm doing stuff where I think, man, I'm having so much fun doing this, like right down from writing it, to filming it, to editing it, to putting it out there. And I feel this is amazing, and I'm feeling at the top of my joy potential in life. And I get it out into the social media world, and everyone's like, "What the hell is this? This is garbage." Okay, so this brings me to another question that I'm thinking about. You do this, and you feel so great, and then you share it with the world, because that's a big element of what you do. Does that shift your ... Does that, does it matter to you? Are you still riding the joy wave, even though it didn't land? I've got now at a point now where it's like, it doesn't matter that much. As long as I got something out of it, then that's good, and I can move on. I really had this idea where as someone who works in creative industry, you have to kind of go through all the ideas to get to the good ones. You don't get to look at them, survey them in front of you as a bunch of really good ideas. I go, "I think I'll do this one next. Now, just to forget this one, I'll do this one." For me, it's very linear, and there's a gastrointestinal contextual analogy I'll make, but I don't want to make it. But that idea where you can't, yeah, you can't choose what comes out next. It just comes out, and then you go on to the next one. I don't want to make the joke too easy for those who don't like me. There can be people that don't like you. That's just not a thing. It's hard to imagine. It's hard to imagine. It's hard to imagine. But you know what? Because you're so public, I do see that there are people. You do get ... You live in a social media stratosphere. You live in that ecosystem, and as we know, it can be a very toxic place, and we talk on this show about being addicted to technology and how bad that is for mental health. But this happens to be the place where you are releasing content in order to connect with people. I wonder how you balance that with dealing with the dumpster fire that it can be out in that world. It's rough. I think if someone ... Just starting out and doing that whole process of putting your heart and soul into something and then putting it out into the world and then having it torn to shreds by people, very much a social media thing to pile on, message boards and forums right back to those days and into social media now, where it's entirely possible for someone to say one devastating comment and then a bunch of people go, "Hey, that's giving me a great idea for another devastating comment." Oh my gosh. Yeah. But I mean, at the same time, I don't care. My thought is always on the guy. You truly don't care? No, definitely not anymore. I think I went through a period where I did care more and it matters ... I mean, it also comes into my age and the fact that I'm a white old guy, whatever. You can say whatever you want. I'm doing fine. I've won the lottery. It's fine. I'll be back with my friend, Stuart Reynolds, after the break. To stay on this social media stuff though, we do scroll around and the professionals say that we're actually looking for rage bait. It's what we're taking in, but what you do is you take that bait and you turn it around. I want you to ... Maybe can you tell me about an instance where you created something during a time when the world was upside down? It was super hard. It was super stressful. People were not feeling good. Tell me. Yeah. I mean, obviously the pandemic springs to mind. That was a time that was, I think, has had far more devastating consequences than we fully realize yet for lots of different reasons. I think it was a very, very ... I think we're all quick now to be like, "Yeah, it wasn't that bad. We watched Netflix and ate chips. We sat around in our pajamas." I was like, "It wasn't all good." No. It was like a severe existential dread. One of the things that happened during that, of course, was Dr. Tam would come out and do her public health messages when she would do them during the pandemic. I thought to myself, "Her messaging is really important. This is a very important thing for us to know and understand and do what we can and pull together and all that kind of thing, but man, she is not funny." Whoever's writing her stuff is not good. No, they were good at what they did, but they weren't good at comedy. Which is funny, because she actually ended up doing a video later, which was very funny and I had to tell me I would do it with balloons or something. It was really, really good. In the meantime, when she first started doing her messaging, I thought to myself, "Well, I've got a platform and I've got ... For social media at that time was a bit of a captive audience. It was like, what else are you doing?" I thought I would take some of her messaging and I would spin it in a way that she wouldn't be able to say, "But I can say," as a smart ass satirist. I remember doing one of the first videos that it was reasons you can't wear a mask. It was all very PSA style, very soft music. I said there are some actual reasons why you can't wear a mask. You might have a skin condition. You might be under the age of two, in which case, please give mommy back her phone. Other than that, your other reasons for not wearing a mask would include sinusitis, being a big wuss, and all these chronic dickishness and all that kind of stuff. It ended up getting hundreds of thousands of views on most platforms, over a million on YouTube. I think people were happy because it was like, "Okay, good. This is all scary stuff for us. Nobody likes wearing a mask, but we'll do it if it means we get out of this situation faster. We're going to do it." It's hard when you've got, I mean, it was such a scary time, and I felt that public health has such a hard time conveying their messaging because no one wants to be lectured to when they think they're going to probably die in the next couple of days. They're like, "Back off. Give me a smoke and a drink." As opposed to like, "No, no, everyone just take a breath and just do these couple of small things. We're going to get through this. It's going to be okay." I felt sort of that was an example of taking some of the stuff that people were very angry about online and just holding up a mirror and saying, "This is dumb. Everyone just relax and do what we have to do to get through this." Yeah. Let me go back and tell you that I was going through some, my own kind of unhealthy thinking about life and my mental well-being wasn't great. I started to crochet, you might know, and do things for people, and now I'm doing kind of like this crochet art that I really, really enjoy. I really enjoy it. When we're done here, I will probably go and do an hour of it because you have been awful and I have not enjoyed a second of it. That's understood. It happens to a lot of people that know me and talk to me crochet. But I just want you to just wrap a little on how creativity does relate to mental health for you. Yeah. I mean, as I was saying, I think even from a young age, realizing that when I made stuff and specifically for me, it would be music, but it didn't matter what it was. Even when I was younger, I would draw pictures of cars and stuff like that. It felt good to do. Again, it felt like the world was somehow different after you had accomplished it whatever it was you were doing. Ideally, the world is not just different, but the world is better. You also feel better, which is great. So I think that I strongly feel that there's a connection between... This is a slight tangent, but strongly feels there's a connection between if you want to be happy, make someone else happy. That's not meaning you have to give no attention to yourself. I feel like you have to make sure that you're 100%, you have to take care of yourself, and it might be someone else's job to make you happy first. But once you're happy and you can make other people happy, nothing fuels the tank more than that. That makes the whole thing of what you're doing to make people happy easier. That said, I think mental health wise, it's so important because there's a cathartic aspect to creativity. There's a venting, there's an outlet aspect to it that takes what's in your head, which gets all bunged up, and you have to just get it out of yourself in any way you can. Ideally, you do it through something creative that's going to bring you joy, happiness, contentment, solace, whatever. I remember back when I was 22, and I'd gotten married for the first time, and then I was divorced and totally everything done by the time I was 24th birthday. But 23 was a terrible year, and I remember having when it was all happening, and I was really embarrassed, and I had to go back to my mom and dad and say, "It's not working out. It's not going to work out. We're getting divorced." I was like an idiot because we'd just literally a year before had made everyone travel and do all this big expensive wedding, and it's like, "Oh, God, this is awful." I remember my brother gave me a toaster and said, "If this doesn't work out, I'm taking it back." Yeah. And then he got it back. Yeah. I think your brother also had a bet for a case of beer that the marriage would last, and I believe he'd run the case of beer. That's the kind of relationship we have, and he's just accurate about my life, I guess. But I remember being horrified that it was so soon afterwards, I'm so embarrassed, and going back to my mom and dad and saying, "It's not going to work out. This is what the situation is," and my dad was always very concerned about making sure I was happy and content and all that kind of thing. He said, "What can I do to help make you happy? How can I make things better for you?" And I said, "You can lend me $800 so I can rent some equipment and write some music." And he went, "Okay." And he wrote me a check for $800. I went down to the music store and I rented a bunch of equipment, and off I went back to Kingston where I was living at the time and made a bunch of music, and it helped. It was like I sped through the grieving process of that whole situation in about a month. I mean, there's obviously stuff you still need to work out at its own pace, but in general, it was like, all that stuff I was feeling in my head just went blah and came out in eight songs. It's like, it doesn't really matter what happens to those songs afterwards. It turns out that some of them led to fun stuff, but it was more important about just getting them out and creating it, and it became easier to be happy because those feelings, those negative feelings were non-happy feelings were now somewhere else other than my head. They were out on tape, they were out on CD, they were out somewhere else, and that was okay. That was good. That was a better feeling. So, yeah, I think the connection between mental health and creativity is super obvious to me. And I think it doesn't matter what you do, even if it's something weird like crocheting, I think it's good for you. On that note. Do you do like those big owls and stuff? Do you do those big owls? What do you mean big owls? I made a big owl crocheted for my grand niece. I made an owl pillow. Okay. No, that's lovely. And she loves it. I know no doubt that she loves it. I think that I'm talking about the ones that would hang on the wall in the '70s. It'd be like two sort of bamboo circles for eyes. For this disrespect, I'm making you that for Christmas. Thank you so much for being on the show today. I feel like I have learned so much about you, and you've just put a string of lights around the way that I feel about creativity and our well-being. So thank you for being here and being so clear and lovely. Well, thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it. I'll tell you that you make me happy. So there you go. I'll stop. I don't know. You don't really mean stop, though. Bye. That was Brittle Star, also known as Stuart Reynolds. You can find him @brittlestar anywhere on social media. He's on Instagram, on TikTok, on YouTube. You can pick your poison. He's there. And talking to Stuart and reflecting on the way that I have seen him and others use art as an outlet, I'm struck by how just engaging a little creativity can really help our mental state. It's easy for our heads to get stuck in overthinking, and it seems to me that releasing our tendency to analyze every single thing and just letting our minds and our hands meander for a little while. Well, that's just a good thing. And you don't need an audience of thousands or tens of thousands. You don't even have to share what you create with anyone, although my dog has seen a lot of my crochet art. You just need to go forth and make something, make anything. Happy Enough is produced by the effortlessly creative Kyle Fulton and Emily Jackson. Our executive producer is Kiran Rana. If you liked our show, please give us a five star rating and follow us wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you want to leave a creative little message, please do so. I like haikus. And if you haven't done it yet, you can also go back and listen to season one of Happy Enough. Maybe do that while you're painting your personal masterpiece. I'm Garbi Bailey. Thank you so much for joining us. I'm going to catch you next week. (soft music)