When you read the Spirit of Play what comes up for you? What do you think it is? For myself, I think of it as the essence of Joyful Play. This essence is what you can bring into any situation you are dealing with good or bad, challenging or easy, to create space, perspective, and a moment of Joy.
This is one important element to staying in Ease, Grace and Flow along with keeping yourself filled up and energized. The more you play with the Spirit of Play and can bring it into the moments you get triggered or pulled out of flow, the more consistently you will be able to remain in flow.
When you can bring in a moment of joy, play, and laughter, it creates space. A feeling of expansion that allows you to get some perspective and breath. It’s easy to stay in Ease, Grace and Flow when things are going really well. The challenge is to stay in it when you are triggered or going through a challenging time. The more you can connect with and bring in the spirit of play into these moments, the easier it will be to stay in flow. This will also allow you to course correct quickly when you get out of flow.
At some point, I’m sure you have experienced flow. Have you ever had a time in your life that you really wanted something and things just lined up for you? There was an ease to it. The next step just showed up, and you were able to accomplish and manifest what you wanted. This is flow.
The Spirit of Play, not only helps you maintain a state of flow, gives you perspective, lightens up a challenging conversation. It also brings a moment of Joy. Joyful Play can give you that pick me up, energy that fills you up so you can continue to create the things that are important to you.
The Spirit of Play can be a part of every piece of your life. When my son was younger, he would come home with math homework and ask for my help. We would sit down to do his homework and memorize his math facts. It always ended in frustration. This was no fun and completely draining for both of us. I decided to bring in the spirit of play and see what happened. I made a game out of the math facts. He loved M&M’s, so I bought a bag, and for every math fact he got right, he got an M&M. For everyone he got wrong, I took back an M&M. At the end, he got to eat all the M&M’s he had earned. Math homework became fun. It was easier and filled us both up instead of draining and upsetting us.
Another example of where I bring in the Spirit of Play, is with my coaching. When I went through my coach training, the coach I took most of my classes from and who owned the coaching school, Dave Buck, taught a class called Play to Win. This class brought the spirit of play into what we were doing with our clients. I continue to use this today. Building a business is serious but serious doesn’t mean it can’t be fun. When I work with my clients, we create a game out of what they are wanting to accomplish. We create outcomes and results that my clients want to have and then we set up experiments, challenges, and find what is most effective and important to focus on in creating the results and outcomes they want.
This allows the process of building a business which can be risky and uncomfortable to take on an entirely new energy. It’s fun and helps you stay more objective. Bringing in the Spirit of Play also helps you remain more compassionate with yourself.
When you bring in the Spirit of Play, it makes it much easier for you to keep a judgement free awareness around the process. Which, in turn, creates more ease, grace and flow.
Here are a few steps to get you started in bringing in the Spirit of Play:
- Be curious. The easiest way to bring in the Spirit of Play is to get into curiosity. A great book on curiosity is by Brian Grazer “A Curious Mind – The Secret to a Bigger Life”.
- Experiment. Create experiments around the things that you are uncomfortable doing. If you are trying to get new customers or clients, experiment with different ways for you to get in front of your clients. Experiment with different things to see what brings you Joy or feels like play. If you have children, experiment around homework or chores.
- Don’t take yourself too seriously. Learn to laugh at yourself. I’m not talking about self-deprecating humor. I’m talking about loosening up a little. Place things around you that make you laugh or smile. When the going gets tough, laugh. Ever have that moment that went so bad, that all you really could do was laugh? Have a long memory for the good and a short memory for the bad. Be easy with yourself. Give yourself some love. 🙂
The more you are able to bring in the Spirit of Play by being curious, creating experiments and learning to laugh and be a little less serious, the easier it will become to create a life of ease, grace and flow.
This is what I am playing with every day. I invite you to see how much you can bring in the Spirit of Play, and I would love you to comment below and share it with me.
“Don’t aim at success – the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue…as the unintended side-effect of one’s personal dedication to a course greater than oneself.”
~Viktor Frankl – Man’s Search for Meaning