Play Series

Note: This is a compilation of Frontier Friday, a weekly Substack published, originally released on 09 Dec. 2022

PART I

One of the most profound ideas I’ve learned to take very seriously is the idea of play.

Playfulness is an antidote, play is a pattern-breaker.

Play is soulful. I don’t practice an instrument, I play with an instrument.

Play is lens-widening.

Play is what we are deeply hungry for in the classroom, in our work, and in the bedroom.

But in so many ways, we are play-hungry.

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1. 📕Read: Play
   This is a life-changing book by one of the leading researchers on play, Stuart Brown.
   It didn’t really provide me with new insights per se, but rather, it helped named things for me.
   It also made me take the idea of play more seriously in my life, especially since when I became a father. This played out as well in my work helping therapists in their professional development and clients who have lost a sense of playfulness in their lives.
   
   Brown’s definition of play is useful:
   
   “Stepping out of a normal routine, finding novelty, being open to serendipity, enjoying the unexpected, embracing a little risk, and finding pleasure in the heightened vividness of life.”
   
   Properties of Play:
   • Apparently purposeless (done for its own sake)
   • Voluntary
   • Inherent attraction
   • Freedom from time
   • Diminished consciousness of self
   • Improvisational potential
   • Continuation desire.
     
     
2. 📽 Watch: Play is More Than Just Fun
   
   
   
   
   It was this TED talk by Stuart Brown that got me interested in his writings.Here’s a snippet from this 2008 talk.
   
   NEOTENY“You may not know this word, but it should be your biological first name and last name. Because neoteny means the retention of immature qualities into adulthood. And we are, by physical anthropologists, by many, many studies, the most neotenous, the most youthful, the most flexible, the most plastic of all creatures. And therefore, the most playful. And this gives us a leg up on adaptability.”
   

3. 🎧 Listen: Play, Spirit and CharacterThis might sound like an overkill on references by Stuart Brown, but this podcast episode is well-worth the listen.Long-time readers of the Frontiers would know that I’m a fan of the On Being podcast.
   In this conversation with Krista Tippet, Brown noted an interesting point, that lack of play as a child is often seen in violent individuals.
   
   
4. 👀 Sneak Peek into Deep Learner Course on Creating Play
   
   
   
   In one of my courses aimed at helping practitioners become Deep Learners, I provided an exercise about examining your play history (Again, thanks to Stuart Brown’s work).
   This is an important piece, which is why I’ve made this section of Deep Learner free to access.
   
   
   
   The comments from participants are deeply moving and instructive.
   
   Note: Deep Learner is currently open for folks to join and go at their own pace.
   
   
5. ⏸ Words Worth Contemplating:
   “A lack of play should be treated like malnutrition: it’s a health risk to your body and mind.”
   ~ Stuart Brown
   

Reflection:

Take a moment to reflect on the following:

Think back to your memories as a child. What is your play history like? Vivify them in your mind’s eye as you recall these memories as a child…

“When have you felt free to do and be what you choose?

Is that a part of your life now? If not, why not?

PART II

1. 📕Read: Play It Away
   Charlie Hoehn gives a refreshing antidote on how play can help your anxiety. Go to Hoehn’s website to get a free e-copy of the book!
   
   Key Graf:
   – For three hours each week, I thrust myself into situations where I was guaranteed to look foolish
   – Any project I pursued had to be aligned with my Play History (for more about play history, see FF116 Play, Part I).
   Here’s a little fun exercise from Play It Away:
   – I would say all of my worries out loud in the most ridiculous voice I could conjure. I wouldn’t resist the thoughts or try to hide from them; I would bring them out in the open and dress them down in the voice of a chipmunk on helium.
   Do it now: Practice saying your worries out loud in the voice of a funny character.
   Do this for 60 seconds.
   
   
2. 🎧 Listen: Freaknomics Radio: Where Does Creativity Come From (and Why Do Schools Kill It Off)?|
   This particular episode from Freaknomics Radio is a gem. Steve Levitt and his team featured a host of legends like Ai Weiwei, Rossane Cash, Elvis Costello and Wynton Marsalis, asking them about their early years.
   
   I felt the chills listening to Rosanne talk about her at 12 years old, writing a letter to her father, Johnny Cash, while he was on the road. Her mother was worried about Rosanne following in the footsteps of her father.
   
   Johnny wrote back. He said to his daughter, “I see that that you see the way I see.” Although she was conflicted as she witnessed her father go downhill due to the influences of drugs and alcohol, his words meant the world to her.
   
   Another highlight for me was listening to Dean Simonton’s (big fan of his work) view on the importance of diversifying experiences.
   
   “What “diversifying experiences” means is you’re exposed to one or more events, in childhood or adolescence, that puts you on a different track from everybody else.
   So instead of being raised just like all the other kids on your block in a very conventional fashion, you all of a sudden find yourself different. You see yourself as different. You have different goals. And these diversifying experiences can take a lot of different forms, and often you look at the lives of a lot of creative geniuses and you see more than one of them operating.”
   
   This episode goes further to talk about a particular backfire effect: play and creativity can be significantly undermined when you reward people for their behind.
   Reviewing 128 studies on the effects of rewards Deci et al. (1999, p. 658) concluded that:
   
   “Tangible rewards tend to have a substantially negative effect on intrinsic motivation (…) Even when tangible rewards are offered as indicators of good performance, they typically decrease intrinsic motivation for interesting activities.”

3. From My Desk, Full Circles (Archive): Here’s One Mental Model to Change Your Life: Press PlayWhen your life feels like is on pause, press play.
   Play, do something fun, get down on the floor with a baby. Go to the beach, strum that guitar, sing in the bathroom, or go tickle your partner.
   
   
   
   
4. 🎧 Listen: Damon Albarn, Lonely Press Play
   Lead singer of British band, Blur and the main architect of Gorlliaz, Damon Albarn is someone I highly regard in his song craft. His ability to bring people together in various projects is pretty amazing.
   
   Here’s a song from his solo album Everyday Robots.
   
   
   
   
5. ⏸ Words Worth Contemplating:
   “We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.”
   ~ George Bernard Shaw
   

Reflection:

What is one thing you can do this weekend that is playful?

PART III

1. 🎧 Listen: Why Adults Lose The Beginner’s Mind
   Alison Gopnik’s book “The Gardener and the Carpenter” is probably going to surface as a recommendation when Frontiers Friday covers the topic on parenting.
   In this podcast The Ezra Klein’s Show, Gopnik touches on some interesting perspective:
   • Instead of asking what children can learn from us, perhaps we need to reverse the question: What can we learn from them?The different between a spotlight and lantern consciousness e.g., why “going for a walk with a 2-year-old is like going for a walk with William Blake.”
   This episode transcript is also available here.
   
   
2. 📽 😂 Watch: Whose Line Is It Anyway?
   Even if you have ever watched this improv comedy sketch before, I recommend that you watch it again.
   As I examined my outcomes looking for patterns that might be play out in my client data (see blogpost Solving for Patterns), looking at the differences between successful and unsuccessful cases, 1 out of the five patterns I found was related to a lack of playfulness.
   Watching a show like Whose Line Is It Anyway isn’t going to solve the issue, but it can be a catalyst to spark some nimbleness. Besides, laughter widens the lens and opens the heart.
   
   
   
   Note: I’m hoping to run a short training on what we can learn from improvisation and apply them into clinical practice. If this interests you, do email me.
   
   

3. 📕 From My Desk, Full Circles (Archive): The Playful Present
   Especially in this season, I hope you seek the spirit of playfulness.
   
   
   
   
4. 🎧 Listen: Turning Work into Play
   There is an infectious quality listening to Daniel Gilbert speak. The author of Stumbling into Happiness appears on Steve Levitt’s podcast, People I (Mostly). I recommend listening to its entirety.
   Gilbert talked about an experiment that people rather shock themselves than to be bored is rather shocking.
   Another interest part of the conversation was his elaboration on an article he co-author called “If Money Doesn’t Make You Happy Then You Probably Aren’t Spending It Right.”
   Here’s 3 out of the 7 recommendations from the study:
   
   i. Buy more experiences and fewer material goods;
   ii. Use their money to benefit others rather than themselves;
   iii. Buy many small pleasures rather than fewer large ones.
   
   Some relevance to this Christmas season.
   
   
5. ⏸ Words Worth Contemplating:
   “It is utterly false and cruelly arbitrary to put all the play and learning into childhood, all the work into middle age, and all the regrets into old age.”
   ~ Margaret Mead
   

Reflection:

In this Christmas season, what is one thing you can do—as unlikely as it might seem at first—to lighten your heart and widen your lens?

p/s: Merry Christmas to you and your loved ones.

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