The Serious Art of Play
If you want to think better, increase your income, be happier, and inspire creativity, pick up a basketball, tickle a friend, or tell a joke.
In other words, play to your heart’s content. It will lower your blood pressure, raise your intelligence, and lift your spirit. And it’s free!
play is not just for children
“Stop playing around!” said a stern teacher when I was in elementary school. She may as well have asked me to stop breathing. Humans are born to play! And not just as children either.
Most Nobel Laureates, entrepreneurs, artists, performers, well-adjusted children, happy couples, families, and the most successfully adapted mammals on the planet play enthusiastically throughout their lives.
“Free play,” as scientists call it, is critical for becoming and staying socially adept, relieving stress, and building cognitive skills such as problem solving, memory, and long-term planning. Literally, play — and the laughter that often surrounds imaginative play — makes us better adjusted, smarter, and more attractive. No kidding!
In fact, studies show that murderers, serial killers and other profoundly ill people share two things in common: they were from abusive families and they never played as kids. So play is not only good for you. It can save lives!
play to heal, thrive, evolve
Play is often described as a time when we feel most alive, yet we tend to take it for granted, and in times of stress, we tend to ignore it altogether. We don’t have the time, we say. But play isn’t an extravagance – it’s an essential facet of emotional intelligence, physical and mental health, and a pleasurable and productive life. It teaches us to manage and transform our “negative” emotions and experiences, and play brings us closer to others and the world around us.
Through play and humor, we learn to try new things, think outside the box, and acquire behavioral strategies to help us survive, reproduce, and parent more effectively.
Despite the serious need for play, in adulthood many of us stop playing. We get busy. We have too much work. Responsibilities cut into leisure time. We find ourselves zoning out in front of the TV or computer and forget the essential art of creative, brain-stimulating play.
give yourself permission to play with the joyful freedom of a child
We can turn that around. Here’s how: Get outdoors more. Spend time with children. Twirl in place. Jump up and down. Put up a net and play volleyball or badminton. Find jokes you like and learn to tell them to friends. Fly a kite. Play a musical instrument, try out for a community play or join an improv theater or creativity class. The ways of play are infinite.
Games don’t always have to be competitive either. Jane Wagner, in Lily Tomlin’s celebrated one-woman show, “Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe,” wrote that, “Of all the intelligent life forms in the universe, we are the only species that plays to win. Other species play to play! Maybe that’s why on Earth we have so many losers.”
In “Play, Creativity, and Lifelong Learning,” Gina Kemp reported that play is a source of calmness and relaxation, as well as a source of stimulation for the brain and body. “Playfulness helps us be more inventive, smart, happy, flexible, and resilient. A sure (and fun) way to develop your imagination, creativity, problem-solving abilities, and mental health is to play with your romantic partner, officemates, children, grandchildren,” she says.
work or play? it’s a question of attitude
Many people think that working longer and harder will solve the problems of diminishing income, threatened health care and world-wide distress. In fact, working too much and playing too little leads to burn-out, disease, and despair.
It’s especially important for us to play during work. Without some recreation, our effort suffers. Success at work doesn’t depend on how much you work, but on the quality of work, and that quality depends on your well-being. If you take even a little time to replenish yourself through play, you can jumpstart your mood, work, and relationships with levity.
I want to create a world where everyone is a winner, where being happy and joyous is as natural as the wind bristling through the trees. A cheerful heart makes such good medicine that it’s written in the Bible that, “A merry heart doeth good like a medicine: but a broken spirit drieth the bones.” In other words, a dearth of play and laughter can cause osteoporosis!
the lifelong benefits of play
Play connects us to others. We develop empathy, compassion, trust, and the capacity for intimacy.
Play fosters creativity, flexibility, and learning. We discover that curiosity, novelty, and risk-taking can increase our ability to adapt, lead, and be part of team.
Play counters loneliness, isolation, anxiety, and depression. We are reminded we are not alone and that we can connect with others in ways that improve self-esteem, coherence, and confidence.
Play teaches us perseverance. Researchers have found that perseverance and violence are rarely found in the same person.
Play makes us happy. The state of being joyous and happy improves all our relationships, at home, at work, and in the community.
Play helps us develop social skills. Trusting one another helps us feel safe and improves our ability to communicate.
Play counters the epidemics of drug abuse, domestic violence, and isolation. By helping us to heal emotional wounds, play offers us the opportunity to change in significant ways, increasing satisfaction, income,
the guest house
We can even learn to play with all sorts of seemingly negative occurrences. The celebrated Afghan poet Rumi wrote in “The Guest House,” translated by Coleman Barks:
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
play and creativity
By learning to play with whatever enters our house, we enter into a stream of creativity that reaches back to the Bible and yet is as contemporary as Bruce Springsteen. “The fire I feel in myself, it’s a very enjoyable thing,” he said in a Rolling Stone interview. “It carries an element of desperateness. It also carries an element of thankfulness.”
Sharing joy, laughter, and our enthusiasm for living provokes artistic creation and a sense of community. Playing is instinctive and fundamental to our existence. We can be grateful for play, for it helps us thrive. By connecting us to other human beings, to sources of energy and excitement within ourselves, and to the world of delight around us, having fun is a treasure that is easily found, if we only take a little more time to play.
Big Blessings,
Dr. Marya
If you’d like to develop the arts of play, creativity, and balanced living, plan to attend one of Dr. Marya’s Quantum Leap Creativity or Creative Mind seminars. You can also bring her to your group, workplace, conference, or meeting.
CLICK HERE to find out more: The Creative Mind
