There’s no shortage these days of things that can cause you anxiety. We’ll let you fill in the blank about what’s tipping the scale for you — there are too many to list and the list would only contribute to your anxiety. Fortunately, there are many tried-and-true, healthy ways to cope with anxiety. What’s more, people are constantly having flashes of insight about ways to live stress-free. Take Martha Beck, for example. She’s the bestselling author also known as “Ophrah’s life coach.” She had lifelong issues with anxiety and coped in typical ways such as meditating. The problem, she found, was that even effective techniques offered only temporary relief. That inspired her to seek something — anything — that would provide true freedom from anxiety.

Writing for Nicenews.com, Stephanie Friedman relates what she learned from Beck in an interview that focused on Beck’s new book, Beyond Anxiety: Curiosity, Creativity, and Finding Your Life’s Purpose. As you might guess from the full title, Beck’s surprising insight is that unleashing your creativity can silence the anxiety.

There is well accepted empirical evidence for the reason that anxiety cannot coexist, so to speak, with anxiety. It is because anxiety is associated with the left hemisphere of the brain, the part that is responsible for language and critical thinking. The right hemisphere is associated with creativity. While people can and do use both hemispheres simultaneously, intentionally focusing on using the right hemisphere, it seems, can lower your anxiety.

The value of activating the right side of your brain has been explored for decades. Betty Edwards published Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain in 1979. Based on the fact that the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, Edwards experimented with right-handed people using their left hand to draw, thereby exercising the right hemisphere. Her observation was that, voila, the right-handers experienced a boost in creativity. Although the exact scientific explanation for the increased creativity may be more complex — it may be that using the non-dominant hand may simply be forcing the brain to create new neural pathways between the two hemispheres —  anecdotal evidence, including Beck’s thesis that creativity stifles anxiety, is compelling.

What’s more, Beck brings in another interesting aspect of the right hemisphere’s function. As you may guess from the complete title of her book, she also explores the link between the right side of the brain and discovering a sense of purpose in your life.

Along with this cerebral discussion about brain function, a practical aspect needs some attention — how to fire up your creativity. Thankfully, Beck found that it can be as straightforward as setting aside time each day for drawing or painting, even if you’re not an artist. According to Friedman, Beck did that for a month and was amazed at the decrease in her anxiety. Describing Beck’s conclusion, Edwards says, “This… is the creativity spiral: the mirror image of the anxiety spiral that not only shuts down fearful thoughts, but creates a sequence of positive feedback and a sense of fascination. As she writes in Beyond Anxiety: ‘Where the brain’s left-side spiral sparks fear and makes us want to control things, its right-side spiral sparks curiosity and makes us want to create things.’”

Once you begin consciously activating your creativity, the good news is that Beck found almost anything can then trigger it in a positive way if you simply approach the task at hand in a creative fashion. Consequently, anything from cooking a meal to working on your garden can be a creative outlet — and a way to help lower or eliminate your anxiety. Simply living creatively day to day is the secret to living without anxiety.