There’s a thin line between creative genius and emotional struggle.

Every great music piece, whether it’s a heartfelt sonata or a head-banging rock anthem, comes from an emotional well.

Emotions drive artists to create music and listeners to engage with it.

The deeper the emotional intensity, the more they’re hooked.

But which emotions serve as the most effective fuel for creativity? Do positive or negative ones result in more exceptional output? Here’s what you need to know.

The power of emotions

It’s not just about feeling good or bad, but about the intensity of what we feel.

The strength of our desires and aversions sharpen or expand our creative lens.

Low-intensity emotions

When you feel lightly pleasant or mildly bummed out, you widen your creative scope.

You’re open and you’re receptive.

Imagine you’re in a peaceful garden on a lazy Sunday afternoon. You’re relaxed, content, and maybe even a bit reflective. You’re not driven by strong desires or aversions.

In this state, your mind isn’t focusing on a single problem or idea. Instead, it’s wandering, going through thoughts and memories, connecting dots that you might not connect in a more focused state.

In this calm setting, your mind might suddenly make a creative leap.

• Perhaps you notice the way the sunlight goes through the leaves, inspiring a new approach to a design project that’s been stagnating.

• Or maybe the serenity allows you to think laterally about a problem at work, coming up with a solution that’s as surprising as it is effective.

This expansion of the creative lens is all about being open to a wide array of stimuli and ideas, allowing unexpected connections to form.

High-intensity emotions

But when we’re intensely driven, whether it’s by passion or disgust, our focus narrows down like a laser beam, sharp and direct.

Picture yourself in the final stages of preparing a crucial presentation. The deadline is looming, and you feel a surge of urgency. It’s all fireworks of excitement and anxiety inside of you. This high-intensity emotional state narrows your focus.

Your mind transforms into a finely tuned instrument, locking onto the task at hand.

In this state, you’re not looking for broad connections. Instead, you’re critically evaluating each part of your presentation, making precise adjustments to ensure its impact.

• You might find yourself discarding any excess, stirring your arguments to razor-sharp clarity, or coming up with a succinct, powerful way to conclude the presentation.

This sharpened focus is about depth rather than breadth — diving deep into a specific idea or task and perfecting it.

Creative people

Depending on the task, creative minds use one or the other emotional state. They’re able to harness the whole spectrum of human emotion.

They rise high due to inspiration but also get grounded focus (even obsessed) about one thing.

If you can embrace the messiness and complexity of emotional experiences, you can use them as a starting line for innovation and creativity according to Scott Kaufman, director of the Imagination Institute in the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania.

So next time you experience a mixed bag of emotions, you might be hitting that creative sweet spot. Channel it into a creative endeavor, whether music, art, or a business innovation.

Which emotion serves us best?

You’ve certainly felt what positive and negative emotions can do to you.

But maybe you haven’t realized how they influence your creative process.

If you had to choose one or the other to increase your creative output, which one would be better?

To answer this, let’s learn from the lives of three great classical composers.

By analyzing 1,400 letters written by Mozart, Beethoven, and Liszt, the researcher Karol Borowiecki tried to link their emotional state with their creative output.

The researcher used textual analysis software to go over these letters and measure the writer’s emotional state at the time of each letter.

(She chose these composers because they had written letters throughout their lives, which gave her a comprehensive view of their emotional ups and downs over the years.)

Once she could track their emotions accurately, she estimated the composer’s level of well-being and creativity at those moments in life.

In other words, she created an emotional map for each composer and pinpointed the relationship to their mental health and artistry.

What did she find?

For these extraordinary achievers, there was a causal link between negative emotions and heightened creativity. When they were going through tough emotional times, they tended to be more creative.

Feeling bad made them more creative.

That was the causal link, not the other way around.

The results showed that when the composer experienced more negative emotions, they created more compositions. In percentage terms, a 10% increase in negative emotions was linked with a 6% increase in the number of important compositions they produced.

It doesn’t seem like a big number, but remember that quantifying any aspect of the creative process is quite challenging. This research provides a rare empirical link between emotional experience and creative output.

And among all the negative emotions she analyzed, sadness had the most significant impact on creativity. Being sad made them pour their hearts into their music.

It seems we need emotional turmoil for creative brilliance.

Negative emotions fuel creative genius more than positive emotions.

Final thoughts

Composers harness emotions and mold them into a form that resonates with others.

Borowiecki’s study suggests that negative emotions, often seen as detrimental, can be a powerful catalyst for creativity. This challenges the conventional narrative that positive emotions are always the most beneficial for creative work.

But that’s not the case.

From hardships comes greatness.

Negative emotions are powerful catalysts for creativity.

It makes you think that the lows of life can sometimes lead to the highest in our artistic creativity. Composers can turn personal tragedy into a universal truth.

If negative emotions are the best currency of creativity, then the best artists are filthy rich in it.

But don’t turn your life into misery just to be more creative.

You might end up sinking your ship with zero creativity to show for it.