Latest / Silver FM 100.6 / How to bring more play into your life

Transcript

How to bring more play into your life · Silver FM 100.6

0:00
Speaker 1: You're listening to Life Kid from NPR. Hey, it's Maryel.
0:07
Speaker 1: When Whitney Bay was growing up in Illinois and her
0:10
Speaker 1: mom would tell her go outside and play, she knew
0:13
Speaker 1: what that meant.
0:15
Speaker 2: Play for us was going outside, climbing trees, it was
0:19
Speaker 2: making mud pies. It was we used to like reenact
0:26
Speaker 2: a lot of like current events, like the Olympics, the
0:31
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety six Olympics.
0:33
Speaker 1: I believe the nineteen ninety six Olympics were an iconic
0:36
Speaker 1: moment for young girls. The dream team for us was
0:39
Speaker 1: made up of gymnasts dominiqueo Ciano, Harry Strug. We little
0:44
Speaker 1: ones were obsessed.
0:46
Speaker 2: We'd set up like this little bench and I'd run
0:49
Speaker 2: and I like jump over it like it's a vault,
0:51
Speaker 2: and it's literally just like a sitting bench. So just
0:53
Speaker 2: like use our imagination and it was fun. It really
0:57
Speaker 2: felt I mean, of course it wasn't real, but it
0:59
Speaker 2: just felt like I was somebody.
1:03
Speaker 1: Like a lot of kids, Whitney was fluent in play.
1:06
Speaker 1: You probably have an idea of what play is, but
1:09
Speaker 1: here's a definition I think really rings true.
1:11
Speaker 3: I define play as any joyful act where you forget
1:15
Speaker 3: about time. It's where you're like fully immersed in the moments.
1:19
Speaker 3: It's when you're your usdu.
1:22
Speaker 1: That's Jeff Harry. He's a play coach. Companies hire him
1:25
Speaker 1: to get their employees to play more.
1:27
Speaker 3: I like to say I make work suck less because
1:31
Speaker 3: work sucks right now and it really doesn't have to.
1:34
Speaker 1: And he says, play looks different depending on who you are.
1:37
Speaker 1: It could be whitewater rafting or pickleball. It could be
1:40
Speaker 1: making a podcast, it could be cooking. As adults, we
1:44
Speaker 1: often stop playing. Sometimes we even forget how to do it.
1:47
Speaker 1: Doctor Stuart Brown, a play researcher and physician psychiatrist by training,
1:52
Speaker 1: says that is a problem because play is a central
1:55
Speaker 1: part of our existence.
1:57
Speaker 4: It's as basic as sleep and new attrition. It just
2:01
Speaker 4: doesn't necessarily produce the same outcome as hunger or fatigue.
2:08
Speaker 4: But the need to play is there and all of us,
2:12
Speaker 4: and we all have deficits when we don't experience it sufficiently.
2:19
Speaker 1: On this episode of Life Kit, Why we should play
2:21
Speaker 1: as adults and how to do it will help you
2:24
Speaker 1: figure out what feels like play to you, using the
2:26
Speaker 1: concept of played personalities and how to work it into
2:30
Speaker 1: your life. Even if you don't have a lot of
2:32
Speaker 1: free time. Before we get into the how of play,
2:50
Speaker 1: let's talk about the why. First off, you should know
2:53
Speaker 1: that humans are not the only animals that play. Obviously,
2:57
Speaker 1: domesticated animals like dogs and cats do it, but so
3:00
Speaker 1: to bears and leopards and bison and ravens and dolphins,
3:05
Speaker 1: and the list goes on. And from an evolutionary perspective,
3:09
Speaker 1: play might not make sense at first. It often seems
3:12
Speaker 1: to have no purpose, and it can come at a cost.
3:15
Speaker 1: You know, it uses up energy, and it can even
3:17
Speaker 1: be dangerous. But animal play scholars and biologists argue that
3:21
Speaker 1: play does serve a number of purposes. That it can
3:24
Speaker 1: help us adapt difficult circumstances, to practice skills that we
3:28
Speaker 1: need to survive, to problem solve, and to collaborate. Stuart Brown,
3:33
Speaker 1: whose voice he heard just before the break, says, there's
3:36
Speaker 1: a lot of research on how animals play, and also
3:39
Speaker 1: on how humans play when we're kids, but there aren't
3:42
Speaker 1: as many studies on play in adult humans for now.
3:45
Speaker 1: At least, we have learned a lot though, from watching
3:47
Speaker 1: other social animals. For example, there's research on rats, who
3:51
Speaker 1: are highly playful creatures. The researcher prevented them from playing,
3:55
Speaker 1: and then after watched them run a maze and also
3:57
Speaker 1: socialize with other rats.
4:00
Speaker 4: Deficient rats have the inability to socialize as well as
4:05
Speaker 4: those who have played, so the play itself is seen
4:10
Speaker 4: as a uh necessity for rat health and rat pack socialization.
4:18
Speaker 1: He says, the same seems to be true for humans
4:20
Speaker 1: and other social animals. As you can see, there are
4:24
Speaker 1: a lot of reasons you might want to incorporate more
4:26
Speaker 1: play into your life. Also, come on, feels good, right,
4:30
Speaker 1: So let's move on to the how portion of this
4:33
Speaker 1: episode and get back to Whitney bay or make Believe
4:36
Speaker 1: Olympic gymnast classic story. She grew up and she learned
4:40
Speaker 1: from the world that her playfulness was inappropriate. Whitney studied
4:45
Speaker 1: engineering in college, and when she graduated, she went to
4:48
Speaker 1: work for an engineering firm in Seoul.
4:50
Speaker 2: They were like kind of pushing me, Hey, you need
4:53
Speaker 2: to be more serious, Like don't be so funny, goofy,
4:56
Speaker 2: Like this is a serious workplace. Be more serious.
4:59
Speaker 1: So you would get that feed back, like at the office.
5:02
Speaker 2: All the time. Every day my boss would be like,
5:04
Speaker 2: you're laughing too loud, and I was like, it's funny.
5:11
Speaker 2: I can't help it, or they'd be like, oh, your
5:14
Speaker 2: clothes are too bright. You know these kinds of things,
5:17
Speaker 2: and I was like, I feel like I'm losing myself.
5:20
Speaker 1: Whitney's talking about a concept that psychologists call the inner child.
5:24
Speaker 3: There is an aspect of view that knows what you want,
5:29
Speaker 3: that has always known what you want. Your kids self
5:34
Speaker 3: knows what makes you happier. Kid's self knows what makes
5:36
Speaker 3: you fulfilled and satisfied.
5:38
Speaker 1: So take away one. Figure out your play style by
5:41
Speaker 1: getting in touch with your inner child. Let's start with
5:44
Speaker 1: a question that Jeff shared. What were your favorite ways
5:47
Speaker 1: to play as a kid. Were you super into legos
5:50
Speaker 1: or erector sets, finger painting, make believe, catching fireflies, seeing
5:55
Speaker 1: how far you could catapult yourself off the swing set.
5:59
Speaker 1: For me, it was Barby's hellob let's go for a drive.
6:02
Speaker 1: I love to dress them up in the coolest fashions
6:05
Speaker 1: and also create storylines for them. They'd be in love triangles,
6:09
Speaker 1: filled with passion and betrayal. Okay, So then you're going
6:15
Speaker 1: to think about what kind of play that is, what's
6:18
Speaker 1: at the center of it. One framework that can help
6:21
Speaker 1: you is called play personalities. Stuart Brown leads these out
6:24
Speaker 1: in his book. In his decades as a psychiatrist, he
6:27
Speaker 1: would ask patients about their early experiences with play. He
6:31
Speaker 1: and his colleagues would review the notes and they noticed
6:33
Speaker 1: some archetypes.
6:34
Speaker 4: So that there is a kind of a play fingerprint
6:38
Speaker 4: that I would call the play personality that emerges.
6:42
Speaker 5: It's not scientific.
6:44
Speaker 4: This is not something that we're measuring with a series
6:48
Speaker 4: of neurotransmerters. But it's a clustering of what really gives
6:53
Speaker 4: you a sense of joy and engagement and sustained motivation.
6:57
Speaker 1: Here are a few examples, and you can be more
6:59
Speaker 1: than one these. There's the joker who loves to laugh
7:03
Speaker 1: and make other people laugh, whether that's through practical jokes, wordplay,
7:07
Speaker 1: physical comedy. There's the artist creator. The point for this
7:10
Speaker 1: person is to make something could be something beautiful, something functional,
7:15
Speaker 1: something goofy. As Barbie's personal stylist, my inner child definitely
7:19
Speaker 1: fell into this category. You've got the kinnesthee who finds
7:23
Speaker 1: joy in movement, you know, swimming, running, stretching. You've got
7:27
Speaker 1: the director they love to call the shots to play
7:30
Speaker 1: in the parties.
7:31
Speaker 4: One of the people that we picked out that's the
7:34
Speaker 4: celebrity director is opdrop.
7:36
Speaker 1: Also the storyteller, Hi, hello, those relational dramas between my barbies,
7:41
Speaker 1: classic storyteller behavior. Once you have a sense of your
7:45
Speaker 1: play personality as a kid, you can start to think
7:47
Speaker 1: of ways you might like to play. Now. For my
7:50
Speaker 1: artist creator side, I put together a gallery wall of
7:53
Speaker 1: art behind my couch. For the storyteller, I watch shows
7:57
Speaker 1: with storylines filled with love and betrayal, like Gray's Anatomy.
8:01
Speaker 1: Another way to find out what kind of play is
8:03
Speaker 1: for you is to listen to the whispers. And this
8:06
Speaker 1: is takeaway too. Jeff Harry says, think for a moment
8:09
Speaker 1: about what we started doing when we were stuck at
8:12
Speaker 1: home during the pandemic with nothing to do. We picked
8:15
Speaker 1: up hobbies baking sourdough bread, doing embroidery, woodworking, And that
8:21
Speaker 1: was in part because we were bored. His challenge for you,
8:25
Speaker 1: for five or ten minutes a day, put down your
8:27
Speaker 1: phone and your laptop and do nothing.
8:30
Speaker 3: When you get bored, all of a sudden, that inner
8:33
Speaker 3: child starts to whisper all these nerve sided ideas, these
8:36
Speaker 3: ideas that make you nervous and excited, you know, ideas
8:40
Speaker 3: like hey, you know, why don't you start writing that
8:43
Speaker 3: book or that blog post. Why don't you make a
8:45
Speaker 3: video on TikTok?
8:47
Speaker 1: Whitney heard the whispers when she was working at that
8:49
Speaker 1: engineering job in Soul. They were telling her to travel
8:52
Speaker 1: and to start her own YouTube channel, what is Me Whitney?
8:56
Speaker 5: Hi?
8:57
Speaker 2: Everyone? Good by? And those videos got a lot of
9:03
Speaker 2: good feedback, and so I just like kept going to
9:07
Speaker 2: the next day.
9:10
Speaker 1: She started doing improv in Korea, and then in twenty nineteen,
9:13
Speaker 1: she moved to New York to pursue a career in comedy,
9:16
Speaker 1: and she loves it.
9:17
Speaker 2: So like, I'm on the stage and I'm someone sets
9:21
Speaker 2: me up to be a rat that can do karate.
9:23
Speaker 2: So I'm on the stage and I'm doing karate as
9:26
Speaker 2: a rat, just like very imaginative, just things I would
9:30
Speaker 2: probably never really do on my own. So yeah, if
9:33
Speaker 2: I like now, I go in these wacky worlds and
9:36
Speaker 2: I just follow the fun.
9:38
Speaker 1: Sometimes smaller, less world shifting opportunities for play will present themselves.
9:44
Speaker 1: I was at this event one time and I was
9:45
Speaker 1: deciding what to do. Did I want a drink? Did
9:48
Speaker 1: I want to go to another panel? Was I ready
9:50
Speaker 1: to leave? And then I saw that someone was selling
9:53
Speaker 1: coconuts they'd chop off the top and stick a straw in,
9:56
Speaker 1: and I was like that that's what I want, So
10:00
Speaker 1: I got one. I told Jeff this story.
10:02
Speaker 3: I love that story so much because what you did
10:06
Speaker 3: in the moment, You're like, what will bring me joy
10:08
Speaker 3: right now?
10:09
Speaker 6: And you just walked on over to that.
10:11
Speaker 1: But then I'm walking around happy as a coconut, and
10:13
Speaker 1: people started talking to me. One woman with the cool
10:16
Speaker 1: silver boots compliment in my drink. We chatted and exchanged info,
10:21
Speaker 1: and she even held my coconut when I went to
10:22
Speaker 1: the bathroom. And that's the thing. Doing what's calling you
10:26
Speaker 1: in a given moment can lead to connection because people think, ooh.
10:30
Speaker 6: She looks so happy. I want to be around that
10:33
Speaker 6: type of energy.
10:34
Speaker 1: So the advice here, do the things that you find
10:37
Speaker 1: interesting and watch what adventure shows up. We'll have more
10:42
Speaker 1: life kit after the break. Okay, So we're listening to
10:52
Speaker 1: our inner child, We're following the whispers we're starting to play.
10:56
Speaker 1: At this point, we may hear from our inner critic.
10:59
Speaker 1: Take Away three, Talk to it. Jeff Harry says, your
11:03
Speaker 1: inner critic is that voice inside you telling you why
11:06
Speaker 1: you shouldn't do that thing, and saying that you look
11:08
Speaker 1: ridiculous when you play you're.
11:10
Speaker 3: Like feeling crappy or binge watching Netflix you got popcorn
11:15
Speaker 3: like on you're just dribbling down and you're just like, Oh,
11:19
Speaker 3: I'm the worst person in the world. And then you
11:21
Speaker 3: were like, oh my goodness, there's my inner critic.
11:23
Speaker 1: One exercise that can help write down where your inner
11:26
Speaker 1: critic is saying. We're visualized what it looks like and
11:29
Speaker 1: sounds like.
11:30
Speaker 3: Does it sound like that bully from third grade? Like,
11:33
Speaker 3: who's that inner critic? So get a visual and then
11:36
Speaker 3: name it, you know, and mine is Gargamel from Smurfs.
11:40
Speaker 3: Gargamel would always love to suck all the joy and
11:43
Speaker 3: play out of everything, right, And literally, when Gargamel shows up,
11:47
Speaker 3: I write down what it it's saying.
11:49
Speaker 1: And then once you write the insults down, cross them
11:52
Speaker 1: out and write the opposite.
11:53
Speaker 3: So it's like, I'm never going to be enough, and
11:56
Speaker 3: then I write, you are going to be enough. Oh,
11:57
Speaker 3: I'm never going to be successful. Actually you're already successful,
12:01
Speaker 3: and you're going to even be more successful. And you
12:02
Speaker 3: cross those out and put the positive of that, and
12:06
Speaker 3: you start reading those back to yourself, and this is
12:09
Speaker 3: a positive psychology technique.
12:11
Speaker 6: It's just just pattern recognition. In many ways.
12:13
Speaker 1: You can do this. In the middle of play, your
12:16
Speaker 1: inner critic pops up and says, this is such a
12:18
Speaker 1: waste of time, and you're like, Okay, thank you, inner critic.
12:22
Speaker 1: I appreciate you, but I'm playing with my inner child
12:24
Speaker 1: right now, and actually this is a great use of
12:27
Speaker 1: my time. Okay. Take away four. Liberate Yourself. Stuart Brown
12:35
Speaker 1: poses a question in his book when have you felt
12:38
Speaker 1: free to do and be what you choose?
12:42
Speaker 4: Was there a moment, was there a circumstance, Was there
12:44
Speaker 4: a situation that allowed you to really feel like you
12:48
Speaker 4: were yourself whether you were four years old or forty.
12:52
Speaker 1: Why are we talking about freedom? Because play and freedom
12:56
Speaker 1: are interwoven. When you're doing something simply for the end result,
13:00
Speaker 1: like to achieve, you lose a part of the joy
13:02
Speaker 1: of being alive.
13:04
Speaker 4: It's easy to lose a sense of an experience, which
13:10
Speaker 4: is in it self wondrous by demanding that the experience
13:16
Speaker 4: produce outcome.
13:17
Speaker 1: When you're playing and you're not so attached to the outcome,
13:20
Speaker 1: that gives you the freedom to wonder, to be in awe,
13:24
Speaker 1: to learn for the sake of learning, So in addition
13:27
Speaker 1: to that question above about when you felt free, also
13:31
Speaker 1: ask yourself what stands in the way of you feeling
13:33
Speaker 1: free now? Is your environment unsafe? Is your job constantly
13:37
Speaker 1: in jeopardy? Is your partner always critical of you? That
13:41
Speaker 1: is all legitimate and.
13:43
Speaker 4: For many, many people living in a violent neighborhood, being impoverished,
13:50
Speaker 4: having physical illness. This is not to make life just
13:56
Speaker 4: to fun and games and play.
13:58
Speaker 5: It's not. Life is challenging for all of us.
14:01
Speaker 4: But the play nature that we have usually allows us
14:06
Speaker 4: to find within our lives, even in very difficult lives,
14:13
Speaker 4: moments of joyfulness.
14:15
Speaker 1: And that's takeaway five. Find your moments. Look, I get it.
14:19
Speaker 1: You may feel like you barely have time in the
14:21
Speaker 1: day to sit down, let alone play. But playtime doesn't
14:24
Speaker 1: have to mean spending hours every day making sand castles,
14:28
Speaker 1: though I'm kind of into that idea. You can inject
14:31
Speaker 1: play throughout the day. Whitney Bay was at a restaurant
14:34
Speaker 1: with her parents this one time.
14:35
Speaker 2: And my rule is at a restaurant, everybody puts away
14:38
Speaker 2: their phones.
14:40
Speaker 1: She taught them how to play this game where the
14:42
Speaker 1: first person says who they are, the second person says
14:44
Speaker 1: where they are, and the third person says what they're doing.
14:47
Speaker 2: Like if I say, oh, we are farmers, and then
14:50
Speaker 2: you have to say where we are, and so my
14:51
Speaker 2: mom would you know, be thinking like, okay, I'm a farmer.
14:53
Speaker 2: Where am I and just kind of using her imagination,
14:56
Speaker 2: we are farmers and we are at Walmart. You could
14:59
Speaker 2: say any and.
15:00
Speaker 1: Then maybe the third person is like, okay, we're farmers
15:03
Speaker 1: at Walmart and we are shopping for bikinis, and you
15:07
Speaker 1: do a little scene.
15:08
Speaker 2: Like could be like, hey, farmer Joe, that's a nice,
15:10
Speaker 2: hot pink bikini you got on, and so on, and
15:13
Speaker 2: it was only like ten minutes and our food came
15:15
Speaker 2: out and that was into that. But to this day
15:17
Speaker 2: we still talk about that. We're like, well, remember when
15:20
Speaker 2: my dad did this and my mom did that, Like
15:22
Speaker 2: we still talk about that fun moment that we had.
15:25
Speaker 1: You can also find moments of play by just letting
15:28
Speaker 1: yourself be playfull, even for thirty seconds. Pet a puppy
15:32
Speaker 1: on the street with permission, Pick up a pine cone
15:35
Speaker 1: at the park and ask your friend to name it.
15:37
Speaker 1: Watch people flirting on your subway. Car Stewart said that
15:41
Speaker 1: on the morning of our interview, he walked out of
15:43
Speaker 1: his house to get his copy of the New York Times.
15:46
Speaker 5: And they're on the step.
15:50
Speaker 4: In front of me was a little Oregon junkle, and
15:54
Speaker 4: that little Oregon junkle was looking up at me and
15:57
Speaker 4: jumping up and down and jumping up up and down.
16:01
Speaker 4: And I thought, that little bird is really glad to
16:05
Speaker 4: be alive. Okay, so am I. I'm an old guy,
16:09
Speaker 4: but I'm still glad to be alive. So I got
16:12
Speaker 4: from the immediate surroundings a sense from nature that you know,
16:19
Speaker 4: at least that moment was a joyful one.
16:26
Speaker 1: Okay, it's time for a recap. Figure out your play
16:29
Speaker 1: style or personality. You can start by asking how did
16:33
Speaker 1: I like to play as a kid, and how can
16:35
Speaker 1: I incorporate that form of play into my life now.
16:39
Speaker 1: Also follow the whispers, whether you're at a job you
16:41
Speaker 1: hate or at an event unsure of what to do next,
16:45
Speaker 1: Listen to that voice that's saying go get a coconut.
16:49
Speaker 1: Engage with your inner critic. Give it a name. Mine's
16:53
Speaker 1: called Doreen. She is the worst. And when she starts
16:56
Speaker 1: yapping and telling me that I look ridiculous, I tell
16:59
Speaker 1: her she's wrong. Think about what makes you feel free,
17:03
Speaker 1: and by that we mean think of a time when
17:06
Speaker 1: you felt free to do and be as you choose.
17:09
Speaker 1: What stands in the way of that? Now? Lastly, fine
17:13
Speaker 1: moments of play whenever you can. Sorry, I was just
17:17
Speaker 1: thinking of something else silly that I did this morning.
17:20
Speaker 1: But it's too silly to tell you, good.
17:21
Speaker 4: For you don't hesitate to.
17:24
Speaker 1: Share it, Okay, So, like, I don't know if you'll
17:28
Speaker 1: know this song. I think it's like a song from
17:30
Speaker 1: the eighties, but it's like, we got the beat? You
17:34
Speaker 1: know that one?
17:35
Speaker 4: No, I don't, but I'm a couple of generations older
17:38
Speaker 4: than you.
17:40
Speaker 1: I got food groceries delivered, and I got beats, and
17:44
Speaker 1: so lesson, I took out the bag of beats. I
17:48
Speaker 1: just started singing we got the beats and I was alone,
17:53
Speaker 1: but I was like, I was like, we got the
17:55
Speaker 1: bee eats.
17:58
Speaker 5: Well, you felt better when you saw.
18:00
Speaker 1: I really, I really did see that.
18:04
Speaker 4: That's part of the magic of play itself. All of
18:07
Speaker 4: a sudden, you feel better. Why Why does play do that?
18:11
Speaker 4: Why do we have that in us? And since it's
18:15
Speaker 4: in us, why don't we use it more?
18:18
Speaker 1: Good question? Hey, by the way, did you know that
18:22
Speaker 1: life kit has its own newsletter. We sure do, and
18:25
Speaker 1: I think you're gonna like it. We have so many smart,
18:28
Speaker 1: supportive listeners that send us amazing tips of their own,
18:31
Speaker 1: and those are often featured in the newsletter. So if
18:34
Speaker 1: you want to be part of that community, subscribe at
18:36
Speaker 1: NPR dot org slash Lifekit Newsletter. This episode of Life
18:41
Speaker 1: Kit was produced by Margaret Serino. Our digital editor is
18:45
Speaker 1: Malica garib and our visuals editor is c. J. Rikolon.
18:48
Speaker 1: Megan Kane is our senior supervising editor, and Beth Donovan
18:52
Speaker 1: is our executive producer. Our production team also includes Andy
18:55
Speaker 1: Tagle Claire, Maurie Schneider, and Sylvie Douglas. Engineering support from
19:00
Speaker 1: Simon Laslow Jansen. I'm Mariel Segara. Thanks for listening.