Let’s forget about those to-do lists.

They can wait for a few minutes, or even an hour because we certainly deserve a break—a self-care moment in between all the other things that we should be doing.

Thankfully, this tip is soothing and requires very little money (looking for a high-five right about now).

Here’s the easy tip:

Pick up a pen or a Sharpie (gotta love their sweet smell), put the tip on a blank page, and make lines that flow into curves, and then into whatever our subconscious decides to draw.

Doodle-dee, doodle-dah today. Doodle right now. Not later, but in this very moment in which we are present. Sip your coffee, and get lost in the creative process.

All we need are a few basic supplies: a black pen, blank paper (scraps of paper and the backsides of recycled paper work great) and a collection of colors (I prefer oil pastels, but markers and crayons rock the job, too).

Art isn’t meant to be for the elite or for the masters of Fine Arts, so don’t let us use that as a roadblock to our creativity. We can make art in the ordinary.

Art is in the doing, and we can do that even if we tend to spend more time in the digital landscape where we consume more often than we create (although Instagram is pretty awesome).

Creating means being spontaneous, and hopefully unattached to the outcome because sometimes a simple sketch will turn out to be gorgeous, and other times it’ll get crumbled to toss across the room for the kitty to chase. It’s all a practice.

The key is to let go of our artistic inhibitions. Even the simple act of taking a Sharpie and drawing a swirl of black lines, and then coloring them in allows us to relax from the holiday hurries.

The simple act of art is in the discovery—an instant feeling of chilling out as the ink or swirls of paint create our experience.

In between the chaos of holidays, we’ll do a better job of enjoying them if we take down time.

So pick up a pen* and try to color outside the lines of our conscious lists of things to do, and let your subconscious draw out the joys of this season. Even better, we can use this idea for place mats during the holidays, and get our whole clan to chill out with art.

Here’s my Doodle-dee-dah picture in which I used a Sharpie and oil pastels. Try it!

*Try drawing with your non-dominant hand, too!

Relephant read:

Color Me Calm.

Author: Jessie Wright

Editor: Catherine Monkman

Image: Author’s own.