109. One Tip To Bring "Play" Back Into Your Life

Hey. Hey. Welcome back to Friday Bullpen Sessions. My name is Andy Neary, and this is episode 109. Today. I want to talk to you about playing like a kid again. Yes, let's talk about playing.

As hard as you are working right now. Now, if there's one person who needs to hear this episode more than anybody, it. It's yours truly. Yeah, that's why I'm talking to you about it today, because I am in the middle of doing this myself. And I'm going to share with you the one tip that my coach, Christina Lacuer. Yep. I talked about her last week, the one tip she has given me to help me bring playback into my life. And it is such a simple tip, but I want you to make it a part of your weekly or at least monthly practice. And I'm going to talk to you about it right now. So why am I even talking about this episode, about this topic? Well, I don't know about you, but I love what I do. I love working. Working makes me feel good. Working lets me feel like I'm in flow. And that's a good thing. If you're out there listening in and you absolutely love what you do, whether you work for somebody or you own your own business, consider yourself lucky. Because the statistics out there today on the number of folks, number of Americans who absolutely hate their job. Alarming.

It's sad to actually watch how many people out there right now are living a life of unhappiness just to get a paycheck. They hate what they do. But you know what? It's paycheck. You know, they've got good health insurance. That's no way to live life. And I did that for a long, long time. It was just a couple years ago that I realized if I'm going to live out my dream, if I'm going to live out my full potential, I have to go do what I know, what I was born to do. And that's coach. But again, when you love what you do, it's easy to do it for 14, 15, 16 hours a day. And all of a sudden, before you know it, one year, two years, five years passes and it's been all work, no play. And I get it. It may lead to financial success, it may lead to business success, business growth, you name it, all the accolades. But I'm here to tell you, as somebody who has gone through it time and time again, if you don't feel unfulfilled in every other area of your life, on the personal side of your life, Is it worth it? It's not. And I've learned the hard way what that means. And as I shared at the beginning of this episode, I'm still working, still work in progress in many ways. But one thing I've been very intentional about.

Since 2021 really started was that I am trying as hard as I can to make play a part of my life. A couple episodes ago, you heard me talk about my fly fishing experience. You know, I spent three days.

In Park City, Utah with a group of men who are out to kick ass. And it was three days filled with masterminding, collaborating, strategizing, skiing, fly fishing. Hell, we even went to the Woodward airpark and spent 90 minutes playing like kids in the foam pits. Yeah, you should have checked that. You should have seen a bunch of men in their upper 20s to their early 40s playing in foam pits amongst a bunch of, bunch of young kids. It was quite the sight. And for three days, I really wasn't even allowed to think about work, which, whoa, that's a struggle for me. In fact, I remember when I went to Kyle's first event in North Carolina last fall, I was like, okay, cool, three days, get to play some golf, get this NASCAR experience. But you know what, I'm gonna, I know I'm gonna get some time to break away, maybe make a call or two, check my email. Oh, hell no. Kyle makes sure you don't have much time.

And so that was something I intentionally put into my Life here in 2021. Two weeks prior to that, Amy and I decided to go to Jacksonville, Florida, spend a little time with her brother or sister in law, and then drive up through Savannah, Georgia to see a client of mine, drive up and end up in Charleston, South Carolina and spend a couple days enjoying all that Charleston, South Carolina has to offer. We had never been. I got, I spent some time coaching in the mornings while we were there. It was kind of that whole work life balance we're all seeking or work life integration. Right? So I've really made it deliberate to try to put some play in my life because it's so easy to let the months fly by. And it's work after work, work, work, work, Saturdays, Sundays, work, work, work. And again, if you're listening in and you're an entrepreneur, you own your business, you get this right. There are no Monday through Fridays. There really are no weekends. Work is always there in one way, shape or form. That to me is one thing I think that separates an entrepreneur from those who are not is that ability to integrate work into your life versus knowing you're a punch in, punch out person. Monday through Friday, you live for the Friday nights at the bar with the buddies or the drinks. And then you play Saturday, Sunday, and you come back and do your thing Monday through Friday. As an entrepreneur, you don't have that. There's no seven days a week. It's just one day bleeds into another in many cases. And so I still, though I went to this trip in Park City, though Amy and I went to Florida and South Carolina, I still struggle on a consistent basis to put play into my life when I'm here in Fort Collins at home coaching my clients on a weekly basis. And so about two, three weeks ago, Christina and I were sitting down for one of our coaching sessions and we spent that coaching call focused on planning out April. We were at the end of March. I wanted to know exactly what my next month was going to look like. And so we spent time going literally day by day through my typical week. And Christina made me tell her exactly everything I do every single day. And the clarity. The one interesting thing that came out of that conversation is when I look at my calendar and I feel like I am literally go, go, go, go, go. From about 7 in the morning until 5 or 6 at night. After doing this exercise with Christina, I realized that I actually have a hell of a lot more time throughout my week than I realized. Here's the mistake I was making. Now, this is not the tip I want to give you, but this is definitely a mistake I want you to avoid. You see, what I was doing every single week when I would plan my weeks is whenever I didn't have coaching calls or I didn't have my broker branding academy or I didn't have my podcasts that I was recording, I would fill that space with more work.

I felt like, ooh, if I had an hour here or 90 minutes here, ooh, I can do some more work. I can fill in that space by creating more content, by doing, working on the business, whatever it is. I would literally just fill every empty space I possibly could. So as at the end of the week, yeah, I was go, go, go, go, go, go, go. But it was all unnecessary. Most of it was unnecessary. You see, after going through this exercise with Christina, number one, I realized I actually have more time in my day than I realize to pause, to reflect, to take Maisie out for a walk. But here's the tip. Here's what I want to share with you that Christina forced me to do. And I couldn't be happier that she forced me to do this is as we were going through my weeks, it became very apparent, depending on the week, that whether it was Tuesdays or Thursdays, I actually was done with my coaching calls by one or two o'. Clock.

And instead of filling the rest of that afternoon up with more work, Christina said, you know what you're going to do every other week, Whether it's that Tuesday or that Thursday, when you're done with that last coaching call, you're done. You're actually going to block two, maybe even three hours that afternoon to go do something fun.

Now, truth be told, I've only done this once to date. I've only put this practice in as of very recently. And truth be told, that first Thursday that I put this into place, it was crappy out, it was cold, it was raining, so I couldn't enjoy anything outside. But what did I do? I went and worked out because I hadn't got my workout in yet that day. And then I went to a coffee shop and I had lunch and I had coffee and I just relaxed. As simple as that sounds, that's something I wasn't doing because it was always work, work, work, wherever there was space, put more work in, more work in. And by the time my day was done, I was burnt out. And so she is now forcing me, which has become a practice. I am so excited about that. Every other week I am going to put at least two to three hours of play into that week. Now, I know you might be sitting there going, andy, I wish I could do that. But I'm actually an employee. I have to punch in, I have to punch out. You know, I think one thing that has changed over the last 12 months with this virtual working arrangement many of us find ourselves in is we do have more flexibility, right? And it might not be able. It might not be two or three hours that you can afford to put in your week, but even if it's 30 or 60 minutes, where in your week can you literally time block.

Play into your life?

Because it's so easy to get wrapped up in the 9 to 5, it's so easy to get it caught up in the Monday through Friday. And if there's one thing these last 12 months have taught us, I hope is that the way we work has changed work life integration is more in our face today than it's ever been. And yes, I feel fortunate that I own my own business. So no one's telling me where I have to be, what I have to be doing and who I have to be doing it with. But I also took that risk to start that business, to give me that freedom. And so I ask you to do the same thing today. Whether you do work for somebody or you do have that fortunate ability where you own your own business or you have that flexibility in your calendar, where in your weeks can you start time blocking play? Because in my world, right now, that's every other week. That's two to three hours. That week I'm time blocking. It's a Tuesday, it's a Thursday, depending on what week it is and what my coaching calendar looks like. But here's what this does. This is the last thing I want to leave you with, is when I know that I have play built into my calendar. Do I always know what I'm going to be doing the moment I put it in the calendar? No, I don't. But here's what I get excited about. Every two weeks, I have something to look forward to. Every two weeks, I'm excited that I have that time blocked to go out and have some fun. Literally, it is now part of my calendar. And when I go out and I do spend that time playing, there's no guilt. There's no checking my inbox every five minutes. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. That time in my calendar, just like my coaching calls, is designed for one purpose. When I'm coaching, I'm coaching. When I'm playing, I'm playing. And I ask you to do the same thing. Now, as I told you, I am still work in progress. I'm going to get better with this. There's probably going to be times I'm going to fail. But take it from me, take it from somebody who has struggled to try to put play in his life because I let work dominate my life, because I love it. I am excited now to be so much better at work life integration than I was just a few months ago. So give it a try for me. Like I said, it allows me to unwind. Get that clarity, get that confidence I always talk about. Because you know what happens when clarity and confidence collide. Massive action happens. Go make it happen today.