Purposeful hand use enhances well-being in a technologically saturated culture.
Research has shown that creating or tending things by hand enhances our mental health and makes us happy. Dr. Kelly Lambert (bertlab.com) explored the relationship between hand use, current cultural habits, and mood. She found that hands-on work satisfies our primal need to make things and could also be an antidote for our cultural malaise. Too much time on technological devices and the fact that we buy almost all of what we need rather than having to make it has deprived us of processes that provide pleasure, meaning and pride. Making things promotes psychological well-being. Process is important for happiness because when we make, repair or create things we feel vital and effective. It’s about losing ourselves to the moment, allowing the rest of the world to continue without us having to notice and just making things.
When I was a young man, my father often pointed out that I did not study for my subjects at school nor did I make things (I wasn’t good with my hands). Ergo, I was set for a life of non-achievement, dreaming and possible drug use. I hate to admit that his jibes would come at least 75% true. He never, ever watched me play sport so had not a clue about how good at that I possibly was. In truth, I was and always have been, up until the night of the burnout, a dreamer. Now, I only dream about tooth extraction. I also dream that I will one day be good with my hands.
Research has shown that hand activity from knitting to woodworking to growing vegetables or chopping them are useful for decreasing stress, relieving anxiety, and modifying depression. There is value in the routine action, the mind rest, and the purposeful creative, domestic or practical endeavor. Functioning hands also foster a flow in the mind that leads to spontaneous joyful, creative thought. Peak moments occur as one putters, ponders and daydreams. One can be tickled, moved or transformed by a thought or idea along the way as well as by the endpoint.
Psychology Today
My Little Big-Man phase of being a landscape gardener exposed me to the joys of building or creating things of feverish beauty or of beautiful functionality. Perhaps, I tended towards the functional with my love of creating lawns from the madness of an overgrown garden or simply creating fences whose geometry was simply gorgeous. My landscaping years were my forty-night escape into the ethereal wilderness of the immediate present (I was living for the moment). Indeed, that present sometimes presented me with a feeling of absolute euphoria!
Creating something with your hands fosters pride and satisfaction, but also provides psychological benefits. Because it can uncover and channel inner stirrings, wounds smart less and growth ensues. When you make something you feel productive, but the engagement and exploration involved in the doing can move your mind and elevate your mood. As you sift, shape, move and address your project your inner being moves too. As one of my clients said, “It isn’t so much what you can do, but what you do do.” The process itself provides value.
Creativity is a powerful tool for altering the inner life because making things or transforming inner states into outer productions fosters solace and satisfaction, even if the stimulus arose from an injury. Wordsworth described poetry as the “spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling.” Take it out of your mind, through your hand and into the world. Fragmentation and tumult turn into focused drive. Order arises out of disorder. And because it is your own order–organic and not imposed–it provides a special peace or feeling of resolution. As another client said to me after she finished typing a novella that stemmed from a troubling event, “I got rid of the story.” This is a form of sublimation or turning the raw into the refined. You may or may not be conscious of what perturbs you, but creative action with your hands, mind and body can turn undermining forces into usable energies.
Psychology Today

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Strange how doing banal repetitive yet necessary physical work, automaton-like frees the mind. A scary thought. But the mind wanders and filters through the bulldust that drifts about us and finds a nugget to shape and polish. Sometimes the thoughts turn out to be unpolishable due to being waste, but even that’s not a waste of time. Drop it, wash our hands, move on.
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Most definitely.
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Mike, what an honor. Thank you for including me in this post. You just shed light on decades of mindless handcrafts that “occupied me and my time”, including doodling during class. Now, it makes sense why my mind was producing such activities. I love this article and anything to do with psychology and human nature decoding; moreover the reason for gardening, cooking, and all the other hands-on activities.
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I think we are happy when we are ‘doing’ real things.
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One more thing: Perhaps, after reading your insightful post the kids will not be reprimanded for texting nonstop, at least in this household 🙂
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Perhaps…
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A great reminder we all could use. There is definitely a sense of satisfaction in creating or repairing something. A sense of self sefficiency.
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Definitely a good point.
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