Employee Assistance of the Pacific

The adult coloring books available almost everywhere are proving that picking up your crayons or colored pencils isn’t just a job for children any more!

Here are some of the benefits that may make you start coloring:

Coloring can help you at work

Studies are showing that those who engage in a creative hobby outside work are rated by their coworkers as more innovative, helpful, and team- spirited than workers who don’t have a creative hobby. It appears that practicing creativity helps one recover better from the stresses of your job, and also even improves job performance!

Coloring gives your brain a break

Taking a break from dealing with too many choices a day, at work and after work, helps your brain recover. Choosing only which color to use next helps decrease an otherwise stressful set of ongoing decisions and choices and helps your brain rest.

Coloring helps you age well

Hands-on hobbies help you maintain your hand-eye coordination and dexterity so you keep this intact as you age. And remember that coloring can be a social event as well, to keep you more involved with others. Join a coloring event or color with a friend!

Coloring boosts your inventiveness

Taking a break to slow down and disengage your usual engaged mind can help you experience some unexpected ideas, associations, inventions, and creative ideas. Unstructured play can help you discover your inner creativity.

Coloring lets you nurture yourself

Even though a teacher or parent may once have told you that you aren’t an “artist,” you can now challenge that nasty feedback and allow yourself to have fun with art, even coloring outside the lines! Take pleasure in whatever you create and pat yourself on the back for having fun along the way.

 Coloring gets you away from your mobile device

Put down that cellphone or tablet before bed and pick up your crayons or colored pencils. You’ll fall asleep sooner, sleep better, and wake up more refreshed.

Coloring calms down the busiest mind

The mental health impacts of coloring are being demonstrated in research as well as in everyday lives. Coloring relaxes the amygdala (the fear center in the brain). It reduces anxiety and (if you’re not multitasking and watching a horror movie or working on your taxes at the same time) lets you immerse yourself in a meditative state that lowers stress.

Coloring can help bring back positive memories

If you colored as a child and had positive experiences doing so, remembering the smell of crayons or markers, or the way two colored pencils blend together, may help trigger a positive, pleasurable sense of your childhood.

Coloring can heal

For years, researchers have shown the healing powers of art. Cancer wards and rehabilitation hospitals use art to help people express what they are feeling and engage in a positive, creative process. Art therapists use these methods to help a variety of issues. It increases positivity, decreases heart rate and stress, and controls your attention to move away from fear and worry into something beautiful and positive.²

¹Eschleman et al, Benefiting from Creative Activity: The positive relationships between creative activity, recovery experiences, and performance-related outcomes, Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, April, 2014.

²Dovey, Dana. The Therapeutic Science of Adult Coloring Books: How this childhood pastime helps adults relieve stress, Medical Daily, Oct. 8, 2015.