3 Few Reasons to Get Involved in Some Crafts and DIY
Crafts and DIY are interests and skillsets that have always been around in one form or another, and that frequently go through rises and dips in popularity from year to year.
These days, the world is more convenient than it’s ever been before – and it’s certainly possible for the average person in any developed country to make it through their life without having to do too much in the way of tinkering or crafting.
Nonetheless, as many people have observed before, there are some potentially profound benefits to getting yourself involved in crafts and DIY, even if you don’t strictly “need to.”
Here are just a few reasons to get involved in crafts and DIY.
It will make you more self-sufficient and confident
It’s good to feel self-sufficient and to enjoy the increasing confidence that goes along with that. When you have a good arsenal of DIY skills at your disposal, as well as the ability to create things, you are inevitably more self-sufficient than you would be otherwise.
If your car were to break down, you likely wouldn’t have too much trouble finding a mechanic. But the same infrastructural convenience that lets you outsource the job of fixing your car also allows you to equip yourself to do some work on it, on your own. Even for small garages, there are great car lift options and there are various courses and tools that can be found and accessed quite quickly, in order to set you off on the path of an amateur mechanic.
It may be that having that level of self-reliance is even more beneficial today, as more and more of us feel some level of insecurity in our ability to fend for ourselves.
It might help you to access a pretty profound dimension of life
Robert Pirsig’s book “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,” has been considered a classic for decades now, and has inspired many people to find a sense of the transcendent in hands-on work such as motorcycle repair.
Among other things, a key point of the book is that by really engaging with some tangible task in front of you, and giving it your full attention, you can come to something like a spiritual experience – a place where you are in the state that psychologist might refer to as “Flow.”
To put it simply, you can experience a profound sense of insight and satisfaction at mindfully doing DIY, as well as crafting things.
Working on something, physically, can be a great stress-buster
There are all sorts of techniques and strategies out there today that are popular as stress-busters, including, notably, mindfulness meditation.
Often, though, one of the best ways of freeing yourself from stress is to do something that gets you out of your own head and gets you engaged with some other task or “problem” that you can direct your attention to wholeheartedly.
In that sense, working on something physically can be an excellent stress-buster, because it doesn’t leave you much space for rumination, but simultaneously helps you to process some of your concerns and thoughts in the background.