Mindfulness is a beautiful, beautiful thing. But, just like most self-care activities, it isn’t for everyone–and that’s okay. I’ve tried again and again to engage with it, but I just can’t. I know it’s important to become in tune with yourself, for me, trying to sit still and consciously achieve that just brings up more anxiety. Instead, I really prefer to find something to occupy me on a surface level and let my body naturally decompress while I do. And that’s where crafts come in.
Now, I’m not saying you have to go run to the craft store and buy a full set of oil paints to curb your anxiety. I like to do simple things that can occupy my brain without taking a ton of effort. What I decide to do really depends on what’s bothering me at the time. If I’m feeling underproductive or like I’m not achieving enough, I like to make things that I can hold on to. I keep a huge bag of different colored embroidery threads in my nightstand, and I’ll make friendship bracelets. I can pick colors that are pleasing to my eyes and I get to keep them afterward, all while doing a repetitive and calming task.
If I’m going through something more stressful, like having an extra-heavy workload one week or getting a bad grade back on an assignment, I like to do something more simple that I can just get rid of after to get the negativity out of my system. To do this, I like to do some form of origami. Whether it be folding super-small pieces of paper into fortune-tellers, or making a ton of little paper stars until I fill up a cup, something about the sensation-accomplishment combo of proper paper folding fills me with a sense of calm.
I know what some of you may be thinking — this sounds a lot, like I’m just distracting myself from my problems instead of being introspective and really processing them. But, I’m really not! While I’m sitting doing these little crafts, I’m still thinking about the issues that are making me feel how I do, I’m just doing it without closing my eyes and focusing on my breathing. I’m focusing on a different kind of calming, simple task instead! I’m glad that mindfulness has become so much more well-known and is being practiced with increasingly younger people. But I also think it’s important to allow people to find what kind of “mindfulness” works best for them! Doing detailed work that I can see come to fruition makes me happy, and I hope others who struggle with applying mindfulness to their lives find some use in the alternatives I use.
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