Finding Joy and Building Resilience through Hobbies

In late 2019, YouTube kept recommending that I watch a video by the creator Bernadette Banner about historical hand sewing. Finally, I watched it, and this one action drastically changed how I would spend the next few years (including months spent in lockdown). 

My love affair with hand sewing began with this one video. I learned the basics of sewing as a child, and I still had an old sewing machine tucked away in my closet, mostly unused for years. Inspired by this video, I pulled out the machine, searched for any bits of fabric laying around the house, and slowly started to create. Before long, any unattended piece of fabric in my house was at risk of being turned into one of my creations! When my machine broke down and I got sick of tinkering with it, I started stitching whole garments by hand. This hobby has turned into a meditative practice and a place to play and learn. 

Hobbies are often treated as a cute pastime, a nice thing to do if you’re lucky enough to have some leisure hours, or a craft to monetize as a side hustle. But I propose to you that hobbies can be an invaluable resource for building resilience and finding joy!

The mind of a beginner

Often I hear people say they won’t try anything new unless they know they will excel at it right away. Fear of awkwardness, shame, failure, and embarrassment can lead us to avoid risk at any cost. But in this quest to avoid vulnerability, we miss out on all the benefits of being a beginner. As I have explored this beginner mindset, I’ve found that the process is much the same no matter what hobby/craft/skill I’m learning. Beginners know they will make LOTS of mistakes. They know they will have LOTS of questions. The more I practice being a beginner, the more I feel comfortable just getting started somewhere, asking questions, and learning from my mistakes. This year I’ve been learning about bread making, and while “moderately edible” is probably the best way to describe my attempts at sourdough, my rye bread is pretty good and I’ve found that kneading dough is surprisingly calming. Trying new things and possibly being really bad at them (at least at first) is a great way to build perseverance and learn to tolerate frustration. 

From passive consumer to active creator

I often talk with people about “living your values” (a principle of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy), and this leads to discussions about how we spend our time. Most people say they would like to spend less time passively scrolling on their phone looking at content created by someone else. In the digital age, there is endless content to consume. This is happening at the same time that convenience culture makes it easier and easier to stay passive, consume, and outsource various life tasks. Now, I’m not saying this is all evil and we need to throw our phones in a lake, make all our own clothes, and never use DoorDash. What I am suggesting is that we use hobbies to purposely expand our skills and put ourselves in a more active, creative role. Maybe showing ourselves that we can be creative, find new solutions, and figure out hard tasks through hobbies could lead us to be creative, find new solutions, and figure out hard tasks in other important areas of our lives. 

Creative communities

Another thing I often hear from my clients is how hard it is to make friends as an adult. When we were kids, we were thrown together with other kids through school and extracurricular activities. While that didn’t necessarily mean making friends was easy, we at least had a built-in pool of people we were around and could maybe befriend on the playground. As adults, it’s pretty easy to go about our lives without many opportunities for building friendships. My number one cheat code for making friends as an adult is this: Pick something you’re interested in and find a class, organization, etc. for people who share that interest. It may take time, but I bet if you keep exploring your interests and meeting people who share them, you will find some pretty awesome new friends. A good resource for this can be found at www.meetup.com.

Lifelong learning

Would you like to never feel bored again? Would you like to keep your brain engaged, active, and continually growing? The answer, my friend, is hobbies! Many hobbies are accessible to beginners but also leave tons of room for continuing to learn and hone your skills. And while I threw the digital age under the bus a couple sections back, the great thing about the digital age is that we have so many resources for learning new skills! When I want to learn a new knitting technique, I just enter the knitting shorthand from the pattern I’m working with (such as k2tog for “knit 2 together”) into YouTube and find a number of short videos of experienced knitters demonstrating that stitch. Last year I also learned a lot about how to improve my composting by stumbling upon Farmer Jesse with No-Till Growers. If you love learning and want to have easy access to courses from top professors on a variety of topics, from physics to crochet to the history behind the legend of King Arthur, The Great Courses Plus is an amazing investment. Whatever your interests, there is probably a fantastic digital resource out there to deepen your knowledge, connect you with others, and lead you on one adventure after another!

I hope you’re feeling inspired to explore your passions, learn new skills, make lots of mistakes, and build new friendships. Be well and get crafty, friends!