Play!

This is episode 131 of the Empowered Team Podcast. Welcome to the Empowered Team Podcast where we explore how to optimize your performance in career, sport and life. And now your host, vitality and peak performance coach, Kari Schneider. Today we are talking about play. Today's topic is actually play free. And the reason this is coming up is because we've actually been trying to implement play back into our lives. And it seems so bizarre that this is something that we're consciously and intentionally scheduling. Because Paul has a professional sport background. It seems like something that would be so easy and natural to do with kids, and yet it's not. So in today's podcast, we're going to share. I'm going to share some of the reasons why play is so vital for us, especially right now with these Covid times, but also for our greatest fulfillment, our greatest happiness, and our really most active brain. So the reason this topic came up is because we got really into adulting over the last 10 years, and that meant a lot of stress and a lot of business and a lot of growth and a lot of suffering and trauma and all of the things that come with blended family, raising kids, running a business, family suicide, all the stressors that that happen just with life. This is what happens in many people's lives. And what I noticed is that there's this part of us that was lost, the fun part. Paul and I used to play tag. We used to play hide and go seek. We used to play pranks on each other. And a lot of that went away. And so we've been consciously trying to renew those parts of not only our personal relationship, but also within our family. These are the three things that I noticed that play had become. And before I get to them, I want you to look forward to where we're going with this because there's going to be four main takeaways that I think will make a really big difference if they exist in your regular life. And I dug into the research to see why, because it's not just about having fun. It's really also about who we are as human creatures. And as Paul and I have gone through the last decade, I realized that any sort of play that we had, even though we've got kids, had turned into play that fell into these three categories. Forced play with the kids. So we were trying to tick the box to say, okay, somebody's been hassling us to play with the toys or play with them, and we'll tick the box and make sure it happens. Or number two, competitive play for winning if we were playing with each other, it was only fun if I won, or it was only fun for him if he won. And this very much came from being in high performance sport for so long that Paul didn't play for fun. He played to win, period. It was his job. That's what he did. And that's all. That's the only way he did it. And that translated, and has translated for many of my clients into that kind of mentality in a hard driving behavior. And it's any, any of the activity is only fun if it's winning. And if there's any sort of failure, if there's anything that's not working, then it's not, it's not worthwhile. So number one was forced play with the kids. Number two is competitive play for winning. And then number three was play that wasn't fun for everybody. Two people might have been finding it fun and someone else was hating it or being picked on or just, you know, the bottom of the. The game was just not working for them. So those three categories, it seemed like that's where most of the play was happening. There wasn't this engagement of play in the way that it's meant to be. And then I started to see a few more instances or the rare occasion that was really, really memorable. And I started to notice why it was memorable. There would be these times where maybe we're playing soccer as a family and somebody had already cried or somebody had already gotten hurt. But then maybe in that same game, there was a lot of laughter and cheering and joking. And then something unexpected would happen. Like grandpa would show up at camp with steel toe work boots on and join in on the soccer game, much to everyone's delight and also for more laughs. And those kind of spontaneous, unexpected experiences created something that I couldn't quite put my finger on it. What was it? Was it family bonding? Was it just a fun experience? But it seemed to accumulate into so much more than just that. And the same thing happened one time when we were living in Turkey. Paul's mother, grandma, started playing soccer. And it terrified Paul because he had never seen her run and, and joined in, in the soccer game, only to have her slip on mud and fall and get fully muddy and all of the things. But it was hilarious and no one got hurt. And it was so memorable, something that we would never forget. And so I started to look at this in the relation to some of the clients that I've been working with over the last year and throughout Covid. And people seem so Desperate for something that is different than just the regular drive or trying to connect on Zoom or social media. And there's this missing tangible thing called play. And so we've been trying to introduce it in a number of settings and the most amazing thing has started to happen. And so I started to dig in to see why this was so important, why was this something that was making a huge difference for people? And so I started to define play. And I didn't define it. I looked up the definition. And play is the engaging in activity for enjoyment and recreation rather than a serious or practical purpose. And as adults, when we're adulting, why on earth would we do something that's not going in the direction that we want to go? There's so, so many reasons. And I started to dig into that. Play is important for so many reasons. The social rank that you look at dogs and animals playing, they're trying to establish dominance, learning social rules or etiquette and important behaviors for whether it's an animal or for us. I think of Maeve when she would ask Paul to do some house wrestling, and he's like, what? Or home wrestling or house wrestling, she'd say, and he's like, what? What are you talking about? And what she meant was roughhousing. And they would do this kind of maybe pillow fighting and tossing around, slow motion fighting moves. And she thought it was the funnest thing. And it was akin to puppies playing and rolling around and, you know, just play wrestling like kids do or, you know, any of us have done, I would hope. But she loved it so much she couldn't remember what it was even called. But as a little kid, she just wanted that physical contact, the goofing around, the risk for being hurt, but, you know, being a bit scared but not knowing if you were going to get hurt. All of those things were part of the dynamic within that. And it's establishing that motor coordination, fine tuning of muscle movements, doing all the feedback in the training, all of those things are happening in that play. Wrestling, that play fighting, the roughhousing. And those are the kinds of things that we're naturally drawn to, but we've been socially pushed away from. There's not as much play on the playground in school. There's so many things that are not allowed in terms of touching other people. There's no social contact or physical contact within Covid rules. There's so much less play going on because we can't get together in groups. So what happens to our overall play, especially when for us is we're trying to intentionally bring it back. I remember a time, this is just a few months back. We were in this window of time where things had opened up. We were allowed to be together in small groups in the outdoors. We decided we were going to run our in person retreat. And we knew that people needed to bond. Even though this group had been coaching online, we'd been. Everybody had been getting to know each other to a certain level, but nobody was really connecting. They were all strangers. And then everyone was meeting together for the first time in this retreat. And when we got together in this retreat, I almost can see it as though it was a social experiment and we were some lab rats in an aquarium and somebody was watching us from above because we knew everyone in the group, but the group didn't know each other. And on the second day, the day after everyone had arrived, we got together on this pristine, perfectly raked beach volleyball court to play a little fun beach volleyball. We'd split up the teams. On one side of the court, there was forest. On the other side of the court there was beach and beautiful water. And people were tentative. They didn't. They weren't quite sure. We had ranges of abilities from volleyball coaches to professional volleyball players to people who had never done an underhand serve before. They'd never played volleyball before. There was such a range of ability. But you've also got these people who are highly competitive, business people, realtors, physicians, teachers, police, like highly, highly, either competitive or professional or proficient in what they do. And everybody was so tentative getting out there. And after we got out there, within the first five minutes, if somebody was watching from above, they would have seen this unbelievable shift in, in social dynamic, in bonding, inability to laugh and have fun. And the biggest thing that I noticed was just that everybody lightened, everyone elevated. Everyone had this different sense, this way of being that didn't exist before the play. It's this kind of thing, this intangible thing that we're missing right now when we don't have our sports. And, and I'm not even talking about regular sports that we have because so many times even kids end up playing just for winning. They've learned from their parents that they have to win. They've lost the fun of playing sports even at an early age. So I invite you to redefine the play in your life. Redefine play in your household, add play in if it's not there, even in your work environment. So not only is it important for establishing social rank in animals or learning social etiquette or rules, in animals. But it's also practice or warm up for some real thing. Imagine when you were a kid and you were playing house or pretending to be someone like a teacher. I used to play, do role playing like that all the time when I was a kid. I'd pretend I was a teacher, pretend I was, you know, maybe a spy or different things like that. Wanting to learn more and pretend and imagine my way through those things. It also increases cognitive and creative skills, separating from the physical side of things, but also allowing us to stretch our brains in ways that we wouldn't ordinarily do in day to day life. So in that example I gave of the retreat, we notice the same type of thing right now when we're in more of a lockdown scenario. More stay at home orders, more kids that aren't on the playground, and more of us who just don't have our regular way of being. And three things, three things are coming out when I notice that we've been implementing play more in our lives. Paul and I decided to play chess. The game took a really long time and he was winning. And by the end of one day, where we decided to stop, we realized the next day we were going to keep playing the game. But Paul kind of bailed on it. He's like, yeah, I don't want to play. And I realized in that moment he was playing to win. And once he knew he would win, he didn't want to play anymore. It wasn't fun for him. Once the element of risk or the element of the unknown wasn't there anymore. Same thing happened in a Monopoly game. And I realized that there that competitive thing was again, it wasn't playing for fun. So a couple weekends ago, before things were completely shut down, we had this time away with our whole family. It was all of us. And we rarely get this anymore because they're older and they all have jobs and there's more of a commitment in other places. There's so many polls. But we planned play, we brought a whiteboard, we brought Monopoly, we brought all these things in order to play with each other. We brought Frisbee, we were going on hikes. We're doing these things because now we've learned how to establish play in our family group to reinforce and renew our social bonding, our family bonding, our fun, our laughter. And what it does for us as a family is something that's so far beyond just having dinner together. It's so much more than just having a conversation over Zoom or FaceTime. It's so much deeper for Our memories that we actually can look back and remember that time because of the fun we had and the laughter and the goofy things that occurred. We play Pictionary on a whiteboard, we try different things, we explore a little, and it ends up being so much more than it would have had we just been together. It brings more variety, more levity, more, more connection. So the three main things I invite you to explore in playing specifically are these. And this comes from research. It's playing is social bonding. It's social in animals. It promotes bonding among group members. It relieves in group tension, it establishes trust. And the group that plays together stays together. Social bonding is the thing that we really need right now versus just a conversation over a screen. Playing for managing stress. There's so much we're focused on and we keep looking at this thing that we're driving towards or grinding through. But humans get stressed just like a zoo animal would in a cage. So forms of play, especially ones that I just described that are fun, serve to lower stress hormones and in doing so promotes mental and physical health. One of the most important things about play is that play never happens in any sort of animal environment. Human is animal as well. Play never happens in a threatening environment. The most important features of play is that it's only engaged when an animal or human is in a relaxed state. Meaning we're fed, we're healthy, we don't have any imminent danger or stressors in our lives that are really pressing on us. That's why animals in captivity and zoos play a whole lot more than they do in the wild, since they're relatively protected and fed and all their needs are met. When they're not playful in captivity, they're typically pretty stressed. And I would say that that holds true for humans too. So one of the biggest things about play is that it literally equals freedom. Play equals this fun, this expansion, this freedom that we simply don't have otherwise. So for us, for our lives, for expanding on what really, really matters to us. Play isn't about competition. It's not about ticking a box with the kids. It's not about making it fun for me, but not for everyone else. Play is for fun. Play is for creativity. It's for imagination. It's for laughter, it's for levity. It's for learning new things, is for being goofy and spontaneous. Play is for all of the things that represent childhood. Play is for connecting with children and the child within us. Play is for bringing out the stress and off turning off the stress that's been so prevalent for all of us. Play is to be done with others instead of sitting on a phone game or a video game where, yeah, you may be connecting with them online, but it's really hard to get that extra part of play that's really creating the social bond. Play is meant to be done with others, not just by yourself. Plan for play. That's something that we're doing as a family. We're implementing play time in different parts. We're walking to the school that has the basketball net and just shooting around and seeing what happens. And sometimes we structure a game and sometimes we just mess around, sometimes we make up a game. And I'm learning so much from our little 10 year old who makes up games all the time. And that kind of free play is what brings the stress down, what brings the motivation up and has her truly enjoying her life. Pick new play. Play something different. Even though some game you've played a whole bunch of times and you've had so much fun playing it all those times, sometimes something new needs to be brought into the mix in order to stimulate the brain to get all that reward back, to get all that spontaneity fired back up to learn something new, to stimulate our brains. Play fires up the reward centers in our brains. There was massive science, a massive science breakthrough done when rats were taught how to play the classic game of hide and go seek. Hide and go seek, just to be able to play with some rats. They could have the experimenters hide and then the rats would have to find them. They would have the rats hide and the experiments have to find them. And the only reward they would get was, was just that social bonding once they found each other. And the rats would still go through the game searching, even being able to find if the person hid in the same spot over and over again. We are all wired, all mammals, all humans are wired for this reward, this seeking behavior and the social bonding and all of the other things that come with play. It's key for our development. So this is why play needs to be in our lives. But not from a need standpoint, not from a place like we have to do it, but from a place and a space of knowing that this is so bloody fun that our life won't be the best without it. So find a way to play. If you can't play with someone if you're alone at this point, play with a dog in the house, play a game outside, find a game you can do online with someone else, just in the short term until you can physically actually be with other people, even our dogs. We've been able to teach hide and go seek, and it's been one of the funnest things that we've ever done. And while you're doing this, if you're one of the driven people, that is typical for most of my clients in that they want to grow, they want to achieve, they want to get to the next level. Know that play is all part of that picture. If we don't have diversity in our daily engagements, we don't have the same focus, the same intellect and the same drive as we do with that intermittent break. We need the distraction occasionally for those same reasons of reducing stress, creating the bonding experiences, and simply changing what's in our brain to fire up our reward centers, to fire up the creative sides. The exact same things that we need to keep driving toward the goals that we have. So play again to finish up are these three things. These are the reasons why you want to play. Social bonding, managing stress and play is freedom. We're never going to play unless we've got our needs met. So bring play into the mix. Make it part of your life. Make it something that reminds you of what it's like to be a kid. Remember that when you're playing, it's not about survival. It's about exploring our abilities, our limits. It's about imagination and a creative narrative. And most of all, it makes us feel like kids again. It makes us feel younger and fun and amazing. So on that note, how have a little fun, have a little play and go for a little play free time. Go for it. Live your life. This is the only one you've got. Mix the play in with your life. If you enjoy listening to the Empowered Team Podcast, you'll love being on the team. The Empowered Team runs year round. It is our group coaching and accountability program where we take mindset and physical performance concepts and break them down to usable action steps that optimize results. To join, email us@info powerconditioning.com with subject line team. That's info powerconditioning.com we can't wait for you to be on the team.