Reboot Your Life: Discovering the Rhythm of Work, Life, and Play with Aaron McHugh

To me, what I'm constantly playing with is how do I, you know, for me, I hold out what's the highest value impact I can make. It means I am really skillful at saying no, which is still really hard for me. But I. But I actually do it. I say no and I say yes to fewer things. But I really do live the Greg McEwan less but better. So less but better. I rest more frequently and then when I show up, I'm fully there. I'm fully, fully alive, awake, alert and going for it. And therefore the impact of the time I do have is much greater.

Hey there friends. Welcome to Happiness Squad. This is the podcast dedicated to helping you unlock your full potential by mastering the art and science of happiness. We bring on the best leading experts on these topics to help you unlock your true potential and live with more joy, health, love and meaning in your life. Your host is no other than the star combo of Ashish Kothari and Anil Ramjiani who are both on a mission to provide you with an unfair advantage to be the masters of your experience and leaders in your industry. Get ready to be moved, challenged and enlightened on this podcast. It may change your life. Thanks for being here and joining the squad.

Hey Happiness Squad, it's great to have you with Ashish and I as we continue to discuss with our guests who are industry leaders helping individuals and organizations unlock their inner happiness and flourishing. How often do you use the expression I'm seeking a work life balance? Personally, I use it quite frequently, but what if you heard that this balance is a myth that potential reframe and shift in our approach to how we work live? And that's right, play may lead to new insights, practices and behaviors, behaviors. Our next guest tells us more. Meet Aaron McHugh, a writer, podcaster, adventurer, author and an absolute career liberator. He's written Fire your Boss and he hosts the fast growing podcast Work Life Play. He also leads Reboot your life experiential weekends, he speaks widely and he's helping drive large culture transformations in North America. Aaron shares his personal story that no matter how hard he tried, he was never able to achieve this perfect moment of everything in his life, working in perfect Zen harmony and balance. After the death of his daughter Hadley in 2011, he found himself desperately trying to hold his life together. He was a human doing, not a human being, and the solution was nothing short of a complete do over, a reboot as he calls it. Out of that emerged a new vision for his life, a new story. He Discovered a third rhythm, a repeated pattern of movement where work, life, play could coexist within the experiments of each day. Now he's on a mission to share that discovery with as many people as possible. Like you and me, Ashish, I and Aaron discuss so many amazing topics. How do you value yourself finding rest between big moments, sprints in your day and how do you find a way to integrate play into your life? Wait, how do we integrate play into our life as adults? Well, stay tuned till the end and you'll obtain some awesome tips from how Aaron does that and I promise you it'll brighten up your day. Hey, let's rewire for happiness together. Please join Ashish and I as we welcome Aaron to the happiness squad. Hey Ashish. Hey Aaron. How are you both doing?

Really groovy today.

I'm loving it Anil. I had an early morning start. I Woke up at 5:30 and I went on a walk near my house. And today Aaron, since you live in Colorado too, I had one of those moments for the first time in nine years I saw a full grown mountain lion cross my breath.

No way. Oh my God.

It was just amazing. It was like early morning, it was misty, you know and then you see this creature, just majestic creature just go by, you know and you're reminded right then and there that's not man and nature. We are nature. It was just beautiful man. It was just like one of those I'm still glowing. I came back and you know I was telling Lizzie about it but so I am fantastic. We've lived here nine years, the first time ever and just in majestic. Full grown, right? Full grown like this beautiful mountain lion crossing my path. So I feel magical right now.

Yeah, that is a bit of magic.

I was going to say I, I saw, I saw trains and traffic in London. So Missouri for you Aaron, anything majestical? Because I think otherwise Ashish, you're going to win the prize on that one today.

Yeah, I don't think I can compete at a prize level but I think what's special for me this morning is I'm back where I grew up as a kid like late grade school through high school and I haven't been here really like this. I've done a quick stop in but probably for almost like 15 years or something. So it's really fun to be kind of a then and now. So my mom and I for Mother's Day yesterday went and revisited a number of the kind of geographic locations of my life in Seoul and for her as well. So it was really Special day yesterday. And we're going to continue some more of that today.

Awesome. Well, just now on the back of that, I would like to say to all of our listeners out there, happy Mother's Day, and we hope you had an amazing weekend with your family and really cool that you got to spend that time with her. Aaron, you know, so speaking on that and where you are, you're best suited, your best place to share your thoughts on the question we love to ask all of our guests when we first kick off, and that is, you know, what does happiness mean to you and, and how has it changed from your younger years until now?

Yeah, I love that question. I've been thinking about the last few days in preparation for this, and I think if I started back then, we'll just say, you know, in the beginning, I thought happiness was an emotion, an experience, and like, I don't know, like a constant state that you're trying to achieve. But it was very, I think, looking back, very fragile and very dependent on circumstances. And what I've learned now after crossing over to turn 51 just a few weeks ago is that it's much more about, really more of a deeper joy is what I would call it, and a place where I'm experiencing just. Parker Palmer is an author I love, and he uses this phrase about being grounded in the, the, the ground of your being. And to me, it's much more about a sustainable joy and that, that may or may not be a particular mood. I have one, one hour to the next, but something much deeper and sustainable that I can access regularly.

I love that. I love that. Right? Just the joy of being. Just the joy of being. Creating this space for us to kind of really. Wow, that's beautiful. I haven't read a lot of Parker Palmer's work. I've read a lot of work, but that's something I want to pick up, Aaron. And you know, it's amazing to me, my friend, you and I have known each other now for almost, gosh, close to 10 years, you know, and you've always been somebody who was filled with joy, right? My experience of you has always been filled with joy, this lightness of being. You know, you just kind of very, very grounded, right? So. But also filled with this lightness of being. But I know that your life hasn't always been filled with just sunshine and unicorns and rainbows and happy places. And you yourself weren't always a person of being. You know, you were very much a doing. You were a senior executive at a software firm. I Mean, you, you had a very different life. So share with us, you know, because we have a lot of guests and people go like, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, oh, my God, yeah, you're doing this work now and of course it's wonderful. But share with our listeners your story of how, you know, life has shaped you into who you are now and the work that you're doing and the being that you have become so.

Sheesh. Back in the beginning, what I remember was at a career level, I just didn't have a big master plan, but I was in sales, marketing, innovation, worked in software companies, broadcast companies, and just progressed along the way and found myself running commercial sales organization for a global software company. It wasn't gigantic by any stretch, but the pressure was no less real for me, I guess is what I would call it. So we had just gone public in the UK. I was in charge of like 60% of the company's revenue. And I loved that. I loved the challenge of that and I loved the, I don't know, maybe just the conquest of, I would call it in David Brooks language as the first mountain. So I was on the first mountain. I was climbing it. I felt like I was really skilled at it. And I had this story in my head is that I was really good at suffering and that no one was willing to suffer as long and as hard as I was. So to me, at a competitive level, it was like, I'm happy to compete with anyone who wants to compete with me. It wasn't. I don't know if it's. There's arrogance in there for sure, but.

I just, I relate to that. That was part of my first half. First half of my life. Right. Yeah. I work harder than any of you. Come on. Game on.

Yeah, right. Yeah, exactly right. So now we do that on a. Neil, you and I talked about a triathlon course. Like, one of my favorite parts about a triathlon course was, you know, at the back of every person on the run, you can see their age number because it's written with a marker on their calf. And so I could see somebody who's 36 years old, 52 years old, 28 years old, and I was like, I am coming for you. I am coming for you and I will stalk you down. So to me, that was just how I lived is now. I didn't always say that or I didn't necessarily. I didn't walk around with a chip on my shoulder. I was still, you know, a good human. But in my interior life, my interior story and narrative was Very driven by suffering, by conquest, achievement comparison. And I would say an endless. An endless what? Ended up being bullying of myself because I just bullied myself from one mountain to the next, one conquest to the next. So I'll pause there.

Yeah. No, I love it, right? This notion of you were looking for worthiness outside you wanted to conquer, to feel, to truly feel I'm worthy that, you know, earn your stripes, so to say, and just keep earning the stripes. Every day I got to earn my stripe. Right. There's so many, you know, I always talk about. I had this insight in my own career, Aaron, where, you know, I used to say, you know, I have this high bar and I gotta keep getting to this bar, right? And my bar is higher than everybody's bar, and that's a good thing. Till I realized that my bar. There's nothing wrong with having a high bar, but if your bar is driven from a fear of, if you don't meet the bar, you don't belong, people will, you know, your clients won't like you. Versus a truly a drive to kind of make sure we do the best that we can. Therein lies it's a very thin line. But that's the difference between what you're describing as I have to. I'm going to get you. I have to get ahead. Versus I want to do my best. I want to, like, you know. Yeah, I love it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And to your point there, that fear, the fear driver, I didn't. It was out of my view. I didn't realize that fear was ultimately a lot of what was driving me. It was fear of not being good enough. It was fear of failure. It was fear of scarcity and poverty that I had come from, of returning to that. So there's just a lot. And you mentioned the fine line. It was so much so that because it was so highly functional and I was rewarded so heavily for it in work, life, everywhere, it was out of my view that there was liabilities to it until it got to a place where I found myself in a burnout, you know, many years later. So, Neil, you were saying.

Yeah, no, I was actually going to compliment what you both were saying on. You know, our listeners are probably thinking, hey, when you're young and you've got that energy to burn that mountain, you want to climb that first one. Like, there's. There should be nothing else that they should be focused on. I'm, you know, when I was single, I thought, right, that's what I need to do. But I just want to. Before we go further, Aaron, you know, you were doing that, but you were married, happily married, you had your kids. But I'm wanting to understand maybe more how did that inner struggle that you had or that suffering, that conquest that you were pursuing, what was that on your family? How did they feel about that or how did they have to adjust alongside?

Just thinking out loud for myself here is as I move from telling a story from my head and move into telling a story from my heart, then what is also true during those years is that at home. So I've been married almost 30 years today I have three kids. And at the time when our kids were little, during the chapter of the story I was just talking about there, our middle daughter was born special needs and was in a wheelchair. Her whole life was severely disabled. So seizure disorder, cerebral palsy. We fed her through a tube, she wasn't able to eat, we changed her diapers and you know, her whole life until she passed when she was 12. And so to me it was like at home, it was intense. Trying to keep her alive and trying to keep my family together, to try and keep a marriage together, to try and do all that just kind of survival based living at home. And then I would then go to work. So the kind of way I, I thought about my life then was I had three shifts. I had the morning shift in the morning with my family and daughter's medical needs, family's emotional needs. Then I would go to work and then I was in some version of startups in technologies where there was always high stakes and making payroll or getting paychecks and bonuses was never a guarantee. And then I would come home and go back to my third shift, which was second shift of the day for the family. And so to me it became so normal. But I didn't realize again, this fear ingredient of how much that was driving what I was doing, how I was doing it. And the urgency and the intensity that I viewed every my whole life through. And I think what was challenging in it is that objectively there were things that were very serious. But what I couldn't see and didn't know was how much intensity I was bringing to it. That was an amplifier that I was making things worse, often not better, by how I was showing up to my own life.

And it is so true, right? You know, we don't control the chaos outside, but sometimes I love your word, we amplify it. You know, it's this notion of if you are drowning, our natural tendency is to flap our legs and arms even harder when if we just somehow let ourselves be, we will float.

Good point. I was not a floater, Ashish. Yeah, yeah.

Like continuously, right. I was a fighter. Yeah, I'm a fighter, too, especially when it comes to water, because I actually don't float. Right. And so I really, I mean, I fight water even when I have a life jacket around me.

Man.

Lizzie always laughs at me, right? Lizzie always laughs at me. They're like, you have a life jacket, you're not going anywhere. It's like, no, but I am. You know, so, Aaron, I mean, you know, so talk to us a little bit. Share with our listeners a little bit. What shifted? What was that moment for you that you were like, wow, this isn't working out. I need to go do something different.

Well, again, from stories from My heart, I was leaving for London. Anil, coming your way across the pond, and this would have been eight years ago. My wife said matter of factly that it's easier when you're gone. It's easier when you're gone. And so I took that with me across the pond. And we weren't yelling. It just was matter of fact of like, it's just easier when you're gone. And to me, that was that trip started looking at. I was in Spain after London, and we went out in this market with a guy I was hiring to come to the US and he and his. I told him I wanted to come see him before he picked up and moved his whole life and just meet his wife, meet his kids and just make sure he was. He thought this was a good idea, and we thought this was a good idea and that his family did. So they walked me around. We're in the city and we go through this market and kind of like tapas and beers and, you know, desserts and. And I remember asking his wife about life there in Spain and what is it that in Madrid that she loves most? And remember her turning to her husband and kind of looked at him to see, like, can I honestly answer? Like, is it okay if I tell your new boss the truth here? You know, host. The eye contact move. And he's like, nodded his head like, yeah, go ahead, go ahead. This one. And she went on to say, he's like, yeah, you Americans like you. You guys, all you do is work. You. You don't have a life. We have a life. We have a life here. Let me tell you about our life. Let me tell you about our friends. Let me tell you about our Sunday siestas. Let me tell you. And I just was like, Whoa, what. What planet have I arrived on? You know, here I'm carrying the banner of, you know, it's easier when you're gone. And I'm hearing this lovely woman talk about how. What I would call like a second mountain life that they were experiencing as regular and normal. So that disruption to me I brought back, and then I ended up on a bunch of medications, depression meds, anxiety meds, and sleep meds, to try and just regulate my 92 beats per minute heart rate while sitting in a chair and my body was exploding. I didn't know this because I just thought that was intensity, Competition, must, wins first mountain pursuit stuff. But then when I start hearing these stories from my wife and family, my present experience of it. So honestly, all that led to a medical leave of absence where I called my CEO that I worked for and just said, I know we're two months away from finishing the year and I own 60% of the revenue. I think we're going to make it, but I can't be here to steward it across the line. I have to tap out and go take care of myself. And he's like, okay, so what do you think you need, like a week or two? And I was like, no, like months. And I can't give an answer for how long. And he was like, what? And I said, yeah, you know what? What's broken in me or flawed or wounded. I don't think I'm going to even get a clue about how I got here in just a matter of weeks. I really need to step away. And I was like, I understand if that's just not workable or if I just need to resign, et cetera. He was amazing and said, go take care of yourself. We'll be here when you get back and just help us transition this and get this set up for success while you step away. And it was really humiliating, to be honest, because I was on the phone with HR and they're like, what's wrong with you? Like, I don't understand. You don't look like anything's wrong with you. And they weren't being unkind. They were just like, can you medically, you had to describe, why are you taking a medical leave absence? And I was like, well, ptsd. Well, how do you have ptsd? Well, I've been caring for my wife and I, my family, for our daughter who's chronically ill for 12 years. And so it was really what began my transition to look at the power of. You mentioned Joy earlier, Ashish, and being is. I was a human doing. I was not a human being and I undervalued human beingness because you weren't doing anything. And so to me, when I got to the place where I couldn't do any more, I was incapacitated. I was on the sidelines of life. It really challenged deeply my long held beliefs about what makes me valuable. Because what made me valuable was doing shit. What I learned through severe humility, not by my choice. I didn't want to be on the sidelines of life, but in deep surrender. I found myself in a new place that I had to begin to accept there were new possibilities.

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You know I want to highlight Aaron for our listeners. Take in this moment because for Aaron it required him to go through a burnout to get there to recognize that he was operating as a human doing versus a being. We don't have to go through a burnout. I think we are at a very unique point in time where if you think about as an executive, you have more to do, you have higher goals under higher operating conditions to deliver. And across almost over 200 executives, every one of them. I was actually at a conference where there were 70 of them last week and I asked the question of how hard have you been working? How much of a doing mode have you been in? And almost every one of them had both their first. Nobody actually had their hand up right because we don't want to actually acknowledge what's going on. And I said literally guys, how hard have you Been working. Show your hands. And then for a moment I was like, you're not working at all, are you? Like, no. And then all of a sudden, 10, eight, you know, hands. Somebody stood up. They're like, my hands don't capture what I, what how hard I work. Literally stood up. And then a couple of other people stood up, right? I mean, they're all sitting. And I was like, show your hands and the whole body shows up. Right? And then I said, okay, let's sit down. And let me ask you a question. How would you rate yourself on a 1 to 10 again, use your fingers to say, where are you at your full potential? What percentage of your full potential are you operating at? And where are your organizations? Almost every one of them was at a three or a four. Okay. And the reason I highlight this, dear friends, is the following. You can go through a burnout and realize I can't do more, but I invite you to do the following, to do this introspection. You're being asked to achieve more. You are already at a 10 or 11 on doing. Do you have a choice? You don't have more in the tank to do to achieve. But almost consistently, if you're operating at a three or a four or a five, wouldn't it be better to shift our energy into being more, achieving more by being more, not by doing more. And that is how we can truly become more effective and be at our best selves as individuals, as teams and organizations. So we're going to pivot to that a little bit. And from Aaron and his long hard earned lessons, so we don't have to earn those lessons the hard way. Let's make new mistakes together. Let's make new mistakes, mistakes together.

Don't follow me.

Yeah, let's. Let's figure out different ways. So, Aaron, you know, you talk a lot around this notion of work life balance being a myth. You know, you changed your life, you did a lot of work. We can obviously get into that a lot. But talk to us, my friend, a little bit about what, what are you doing now and how, what are some hard learned lessons that you want to share with our listeners around what allows you to be more and what they can do to be more.

I just reread a section of essentialism from Greg McEwen and this powerful lesson he talks about, he's retelling someone else's story, is named in these few words, is protect the asset. Protect the asset. And he goes on to tell a story of this executive who burned out. And he said the Painful lesson I learned is to protect the asset. And when you reflect on that, what that means is that me, you, each, all three of us are the asset of our individual lives and stories, careers and families. And most of us, like you just mentioned, Ashish, through the constellation of people raising their hands and standing up, most of us live in a world where that's not rewarded and advocated for. The norm is to, let's just say, abuse the asset or run the asset to depletion. Like you said, there's no more in the tank. So to me, how the biggest shift I made from eight years ago to today is that I value myself for who I am at a very, very deep level and know that the greatest contribution I can make to any and all circumstances I find myself in is by operating with a full heart, a whole heart, a replenished, resourced self. And that to me is spiritually, emotionally, physically, relationally. So I There's this great story from this first woman who ever won the Iditarod dog sled race in Alaska, dominated by men for decades. And she steps in. Her name is Susan Butcher. And the old paradigm, which is very similar to the way most of us work, is they would race for 12 hours and then they would take off for 12 hours, get back on the sled, race for 12 hours, rest for 12 hours. She blew it up with a totally different way of operating. She would race for two hours, rest for an hour, race for two hours, rest for an hour, and repeat that on a 24 hour clock. So her big paradigm blowing way of racing this massive, gnarly, difficult race was rest more, rest more. She won. She broke the course record and redefined how the Iditarod race is run today. So it turns out resting more frequently doesn't have to be super. You don't need two weeks vacations. Rest more, protect the asset so you can keep going. And to me, that is like a mind blower. Like what you mean you can rest more and you can fill your tank and go further. So to me, what I'm constantly playing with is, is how do I, for me, I hold out what's the highest value impact I can make. It means I am really skillful at saying no, which is still really hard for me, but I actually do it. I say no and I say yes to fewer things, but I really do live the Greg McEwen less but better. So less but better. I rest more frequently and then when I show up, I'm fully there, I'm fully alive, awake, alert and going for it. And Therefore, the impact of the time I do have is much greater.

So many thoughts.

Yeah, I was like, wow, right? It stands out. Protect the asset, rest more. You know, this notion of rest is something we talk so much about, Danil. You know, we've talked about it in that last podcast. You know, it's so much of our work. We talk about, you know, this notion of even micro breaks, you know, for our listeners. Think about this, dear friends, this notion of check, first of all, check the asset. Step number one is just tune in. You can protect the asset if you know where the asset is. You know, you know a car when it runs out of fuel, you know the car when it's running out, it's getting overheated, right? Externally we have sensors on everything. We don't have sensors internally, even though we watch, carry around watches now, most people have Apple watches or some other device. Check the asset. Aaron recognized he was sitting at a heartbeat of 92. Where's your heartbeat? Where is it? Throughout the day, check in. How are you feeling? Rather than just get a cup of coffee and boost that down, just stay with that for a minute. What is your body really needing instead of grabbing that next piece of chip or chocolate? Maybe it is just water. Maybe because you haven't had water and you're thirsty and you're going for food, or maybe you are feeling stress and you need the sugar or the salt as something that is a reward seeking hit towards something else that needs tending to. So this notion of checking into the asset so you can protect the asset, take the right action and micro breaks, right? So this notion of every other, every other hour, you know the lady, her name, what was her name? Susan.

Susan Butcher.

Susan Butcher, Right. Susan Butcher, dear friends, rested for an hour between two hours. What if I try this wild thing for you to try tomorrow or right after this podcast, after every two hours, just plant your feet and just take six breaths for one minute. You don't have to rest for an hour. Just one minute, just one minute. Close your eyes, follow your breath. Breathing in, just knowing you're breathing in and breathe out, knowing you're breathing out. And then check the asset, see how you feel. This notion of rest is so, so, so important. It's beautiful. Anil, over to you, my dear friend, for reflections from you.

And the next question, so many reflections. No, thank you, Ashish. I think, you know, I just want to share a tip that I do. And Ashish, you brought, you reminded me of it. When I start my day, I actually draw a petrol gauge on my notebook. And what I do is I'll shade it in. I'll say, all right, I'm at a quarter tank today, right? So what am I going to do during the day to fill up as the day goes on? And Ashish, what you just mentioned about taking that one minute mindful breath, that moment, I can almost ask our listeners how many actually pause and do that be before the start of a meeting, in between meetings, or even after a meeting? I actually will try to do that and I'll make sure that if I know that I've got low energy, then I need to keep an eye on myself. And I know that if I'm going to push myself, I need to, like you said, maybe take two breaks, not even just that one, or take multiple mindful breaths as opposed to just that one. So I encourage our listeners to find a way going back to the practices. Self awareness is number one for a reason. And if you're not able to realize where you're at and give yourself that space. We're not machines. And Ashish, you and I have spoken time and time again in the past, but we are not machines. We are not human doers, we are human beings. And you know, I'm even going to loop back to the point you made earlier, Aaron, about, you know, in America, you know, I'm told we live to work, right? Whereas in Europe they just work to live. And that kind of makes me want to talk about something you and I and Ashish were speaking about before we started hitting record, which is, you know, knowing that work consumes so much time and mind space for people. You, you talk about work, you talk about life, you talk about play. And I want to maybe focus a bit more about that. How do you make sure that life and play are really integrated into your life, especially the play side?

The where that started for me was actually I was in Hawaii. I was with a friend. I was really into triathlon at the time, was really excited to be on the Big island because that's where they run the Kona World Championship for Ironman. And I was running with a pal and he turned to me, we were on the beach and he said, so, hey, when do you ever leave your watch at home? I looked at him, I was like, never. I'm a triathlete, I'm a runner. Why would I leave my watch at home? And he goes on to ask me, he's like, when do you just play? I was like, dude, who are you talking? Like, what are you talking about? I don't even know what you're doing, you're competing here. Competing here?

Like, what do you mean, play like hello?

Yeah, exactly. I got a mountain to climb. I got a race, a PR personal record to beat. And so I was like, this dude's smoking something. What is he talking about? Well, I spent three weeks there. Our family was on this respite, you know, our daughter in a wheelchair there. We were in and out of the emergency room while on our holiday. And that question really stung me and hung with me for a long time. And then every Thursday, I would show up at the beach club here. We'd get out in a canoe, get out up on a stand, stand up, paddle. And there was like, no watches allowed. And we go and do this exercise thing. It was play where it was called Run the Rock. And it was a lava rock. You dive down, you'd grab the rock, you'd run on the ocean floor while holding your breath and you'd move it along the sandy bottom ocean. The next guy then dives down, grabs it, and then you keep advancing it across. But it was this idea like, no one's keeping score. We were just horsing around. It was a bunch of, it turns out to be a bunch of millionaires and billionaires that we were doing this with, this club. And they were all boys. It was just like literally playing with a bunch of boys. And that experience, to me, really impacted me when I returned back home. And I thought, you know what? This whole story about work life balance, it is a myth in that it's missing because type A driven people like ourselves still find a way to maximize work life balance in quadrants, in measurements, percentages, all kinds of stuff. So it's like, hold on. Who do you meet that's playful? I'm like, that's a short list.

Yes.

Wow. Who do you.

Or when do you just play? When do you just.

When do you just play? When no one's keeping score. So I remember I was back at home. There was like a hopscotch chalk drawn on the sidewalk. I was walking near this place I was working from and I was like, nobody's looking.

I think.

I think I'm just going to play hopscotch by myself right now. Like, just starting to be like, take myself less seriously. Every moment doesn't need to be maximized for some outcome or some score I'm keeping. So to me, it was like it started to just like. It was a very slow process of experimenting with holding things more lightly. I remember I had this stove, this pocket rocket stove. It was Made by MSR and it was on my shelf at home. And I was so frustrated by how infrequently I had gotten it out. I had these visions like, oh, we're going to go to Alaska and we're going to backpack and we're going to this. And I was like, you know what? I'm clearly, I'm not going to Alaska anytime soon. So what if I just put it in my trunk and at work I walk outside, fire it up, make a cup of coffee. And we had this joke about like pretending like as if I was a smoker because smokers get smoke breaks. Well, I'll just take playful smoke breaks and I'll fire up a coffee for the two of you. Come to my trunk, let's go get a cup of coffee. And it just became this like joy infused micro breaks like you mentioned and more of a way of living to say no. Play is essential. Play is part of resting and recovering. Play is part of like lowering the dial on the intensity that I was all too good at.

Yeah. And it is something, you know, it's amazing to me, Aaron, you know, we always are trying to teach our kids things right from a very early age. Two years old, three years old, four years, you know, all through life, you know, I'm the big culprit of that. Right. Ashwin is 13 now and I'm still trying to teach him stuff. I think as parents or as adults from other kids around, I think that's something that is a good reminder we can learn from. Most kids spend hours playing, right? We grow up. All of a sudden play is missing, missing from work, play is missing from life. As Aaron, you mentioned, even when we coat unquote play, oh, I ski, I'm skiing. How many times I can go up and down the mountain today, you know, what do you do for fun? Oh, I run. Oh, I have my pr. So even when we are actually trying to do something to restore, we're not restoring. We might be taking care of our body, but we're not taking care of our spirit. Now one person who's really spent a lot of time, like if you think, oh my God, these guys, I don't know which planet these guys are from or like what, you know, what they're smoking. This is a real field of scientific research. And I invite our listeners to look into the national institute of play. Dr. Stuart Brown has spent his entire life studying play and the impact and benefits of play, not just for kids, but for adults. And what he finds in his research is that when we play, it fundamentally increases our brain functionality. We are a lot more creative, we release endorphins, we have lot less stress, we laugh more often and we benefit in almost every domain. Okay, it's not friends that if you are playful, people will take you less seriously, people will feel more at ease and you'll have more authentic connections and communications because it is, is play. Life is play. You know, I was playing around with this, you were talking about this earlier. We live as if we can control everybody. You know, we're trying to do power, achieve things when a lot of things outside are not in our control. And in play, we can just let go of that control and just truly be, be with others. So look into that work. National Institute of Play, Stuart Brown, he also wrote a book actually on play. And as I did my research, play is one of the nine well being practices, one of the ways in which we can truly nurture our spirit. So I love it, by the way, Aaron, that, you know, play is such a big, big, big part of your life and something you bring into work, you bring into life, you bring into all the retreats you do.

You know, I, I'm listening to you, Ashish, on that one and having spoken to Aaron about what you do for play, like the hopscotch example, you know, I'm sure there are listeners out there and I've had some few conversations, like for example, with family members in the last couple of days where you're in a rhythm, where you're doing so much for yourself, for your parents, for your kids. It's hard sometimes, I think to even find that 5, 10, 15 minute break, you know, to look after yourself, let alone to play. And I think the invitation really is like, how can you find a way to play? Is it maybe playing a game with your kid, you know, even just for five minutes, for 10 minutes, for 15 minutes, you know, is it a card game? Is it, you know, tell each other a joke? You know, who can tell the best joke? Is it, you know, getting a video game out? I don't know it. I think this is where even when you both mentioned play, I was like trying to think like, what else can I do to play? I go for a run out. She's like, everything you just mentioned for play, I'm like, I do that for training. I do that with, with the watch on, you know, to measure myself. So I guess the invitation really is, look at this research and ask yourself how can you find that 5 to 10 to 15 minutes or more in your day to play? And Play can mean different things. But as long as, like you said, it's giving you an opportunity to step back from your intense work and life, find that harmony, go for a walk. You know, I don't know.

That's.

That's just something that occurs to me because I can imagine our listeners out there like, well, I can't. I can't find that respect.

Right, right.

You know what I mean?

Right. Which is a great. What you're highlighting here is that part of us, for many of us, is so dormant, it is difficult to even know where to start to how to bring it back into our life. And so the place I would recommend for our listener friends is, like you just mentioned, Anil, in your case, you're running. So first step is you could just adapt what you're doing today with the spirit of play infused in it. You don't have to come up with some brand new thing. So one step would be by not keeping score. Just leave the watch at home. One of the things I've done in London, which is really fun, or other big cities, is I leave the front door, I leave my phone at home, and I leave my watch at home and I just run for the joy of running. And then when I'm done, I have a subway card or a Metro or a tube card with me and I ride the tube home and I stop paying attention to where I am in the city. And I just know when I'm done running, I'll go find the closest tube stop and I'll ride it and get back home. But I can just like lean into the joy of running, lean into just the joy of being there in the moment. And then I'll sort out how to get back to my hotel later, which may be an adventure in and of itself, sometimes in a place I don't know. But I think that's a way where you can take something that is a daily practice that you have, but adapt it slightly with the levity, in my case, the boy joyfulness, you know, a boyhood approach to that versus this serious executive, I gotta get shit done guy, you know that I'm trying to retire more and more.

I, I totally agree with that. And I think just, you know, Aaron, if you can, you know, just as we kind of wrap up, there was so much that we want to talk to you about. I think we just need to get you back and, and go into more details. But for our listeners, could you maybe share another few tips or examples on how they can integrate play into their day, whether it's things that you do or things that, you know, others do.

Yeah. So I receive text messages, pictures, emails from people playing. So I'll just replay a couple of those that I've received. And some of them are super fun and silly. One guy, he brought a kite to work, and he took it out at lunch and flew his kite for 20 minutes outside on the back porch of work. One guy sent me a photo of. He was in Idaho, and he wanted to learn how to lasso. Like, he would. Like the rodeo, whatever. He brought a lasso to work and would practice at breaks outside trying to lasso a barrel. Like, just silly, right? Like, didn't you ever want to be a cowboy? Here's another one for me. I recently was on a backpacking trip with some guys, and I had seen an Instagram ad from a backpacking company that makes backpacks, and these guys had skied into an Alaska St. Elias range with huge peaks in the background, and they were shoveling out their base camp, and they had a pirate flag hanging, flying in the wind in their base camp in Alaska. I'm like, I am getting a pirate flag, and I am taking it on the next backpacking trip. So I got a fire flag is about this big, the Jolly Roger. And every day, me and my pals trade who hangs the pirate flag. And you hang it from your backpack all day. And then at night, we hang it up for happy hour to signal when happy hour is ready at the guy's tent, you can come over to. And so one of my buddies, like, I don't get the pirate flag. Like, what's with the pirate flag? I mean, it's just fun. Didn't you ever want to be a pirate as a kid?

I'm getting a pirate flag, man. Like Ripley right now, after this call, I'm ordering a pirate flag flag, and I'm planting it in my garden.

It is so much fun. So then I. I loaned out my pirate flag last week to a guy who went to the desert in a backpacking trip, and they sent me photos of hanging the pirate flag over their camp. It was so much fun.

I love it.

Same thing.

I love it.

Smallest of practice to how to make something more joyful and just playing with. Let's see what comes from this.

I love it. I love it. Aaron, this has been so much fun. And as Anil said, we'd love to have you back because there's so much we want to cover that we didn't get a chance to. But I loved. I am taking so much away this notion of protect the asset, the power of rest, and the amazing story you shared about completely changing the game of how something is run by actually integrating more restrictions. Right? And now all of these tips on play. I am getting a pirate flag, my friends. Please get some pirate flags if that brought a smile to your face. And send us photos. Send us photos. We want to hear, you know, sheesh. @happiness squad.com anil@happinesssquad.com we will, on our Facebook Instagram, we will post your pirate flags. We want to hear about your pirate flags.

Yes. Let's go.

And stories of how you just play. And I, you know, there, there's so many things I took away from this as well as I just want to say thank you, Aaron, for sharing your personal story about your daughter, about your wife, about your family. It's just, it's a, it's beautiful, mate. And you know, I just, I'm going to ask listeners to also think, just pause for a moment and ask yourself, you know, I value myself for who I am. We're not machines. We can be kids. We can be playful. We can have fun. You know. Yeah, we have to work.

Okay.

We have to live. I mean, Aaron, you still work 40, 50 hours a week. It's not like you're out playing all day, but you're able to do it rested. Ashish, as you pointed out, just finding those moments. So I just want to say thank you again for sharing. Really look forward to having you back and digging more into the work that you're doing and hope to be working with you again in the future. Thank you, Aaron.

Thanks boys. Excellent.

Thank you.

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SA.