146: Why PLAY is PRODUCTIVE

Foreign. Welcome to the Earn your happy podcast. I'm Lori Harder, founder of The Bliss Project, 3 Time Fitness World champion, fitness expert and cover model, turned self love junkie, lifestyle entrepreneur and author.

Each week I'll bring you a guest.

Or a thought that will help you bust through your fears, connect to your soul and get focused and clear so you can elevate your life, business and relationships. We don't wait until we're ready for someone to tell us we're good enough. We take what we want and we anoint ourselves, get ready to earn, own and unapologetically rock your happiness every single day. Are you with me? Here we go. Welcome back to the earn your happy podcast and it is time for another quickie because there's always time to fit in inspiration. And this quickie is brought to you by my Bliss habit e course that is@theblisshabit.com it is a 12 week e course that you do online at your own pace. I have had over 5,000 women join this course. It's absolutely one of the favorite things that I have been able to take a part of. It is all about building and finding your tribe online. And if you decide, this is also a beautiful thing because you get to meet a lot of the women in the tribe. If you decide to go to my Bliss project event, which I will have details coming out in the next couple weeks for next March 2018. But again, it's a 12 week course you take at your own pace. It comes with over seven and a half hours of video training. You get weekly assignments that you can do soul assignments, you get meditations and you also have this incredible group of women where you can, if you choose to, vlog so you can do video blogs every single week where you guys are connecting, you're talking to each other, you're talking about what you learned in the course that week. And also I have bonus content with this course all about masterminding. So if you guys follow me at all, you know that I am huge into masterminds, which is where women get together. Women or men, you can do this with whatever you want, whomever you want, and you connect over different topics and you meet weekly or bi weekly or once a month, month, and this teaches you exactly how to do that. So if you're interested in masterminding or you're interested in busting through your fears and your blocks, really learning about how to create more abundance in your life or a gratitude practice or your action plan or creating a clearing so that you can allow all of the blessings to come in and really figure out what's blocking you. Then you definitely want to check out this course right now so you can go ahead over to theblisshabit.com to go check out more, really see if that resonates with you and pulls at you. So I would love to see you in that group if you definitely feel the call for this. So today, this quickie is all about playing. Yeah, totally playing. Okay, so we just got done with the holiday weekend. Although it felt like the longest weekend ever. Like July 4th, when it falls on a Tuesday. It's kind of like you celebrate for, like, four days, right? Or maybe you just chose one. So this play came to me today because I just got to play yesterday, and I haven't really taken a day in a little while to just have fun on the beach and play volleyball and be silly and be goofy and play in the sand and go play in the water and have fun and just be light. Right? Because when I think of play, it just is like, be light, Be silly, be goofy. So I started researching this morning about why play is important, why play is the work. I'm writing about this in my book as well. And play is the work. And sometimes for us really type A people, we need to say things like, play is the work, because we have to remember that it's also equally as important as the work. So. Stuart Brown is the founder and president of the U.S. national Institute for Play. Hi. How do I get a job there? I'm sure that we all could. So play. He says play benefits the prefrontal cortex. Cortex. So the prefrontal cortex is responsible for impulse control. And we all know if we are masters at impulse control, and we know how to really make sure that we are creating more of that in our life. You know, discipline. Right, Discipline. It's the key to everything that really happens in the prefrontal cortex. So play shapes our brain, he says, opens our imagination, and invigorates the soul. He also says that children who are play deprived end up with social and emotional issues. So free play. So not just sports or computer screens or things that you're doing alone. This is like really free play where you're talking, you're playing, you're being light, you're. You're kind of even, you know, as a child, he talks about, you're testing boundaries, you're seeing what works, you're being playful. And, you know, truly, in my life, play is so rejuvenating, and it gives me something to look forward to. So Recently, I've really had to look at it like, it is just as important as writing. It is just as important as creating new programs. It's just as important as making sure that everything is getting done. Because I'll tell you, I've never felt like play is more important than right now. Because with my book, I find that if I'm just grinding it out, right, Like, I gotta go sit down. I gotta go, right? I gotta go go finish this project. I have to do this, I have to do that. It's like the creativity is totally stuck, and it can be blocked. But the second I get outside in nature, or my husband and I go for a hike, or I just got to go spend time with my amazing, beautiful friends that I mastermind with Lindsey Sikornik and Danette May. And they brought in so many women from all over the world. And we just played, we hiked, we had fun, we danced like maniacs. It was insane. And I came back feeling more productive and creative from a full week of play. And, yes, we did a lot of work, but I can honestly say that I felt most shifted from the times that we were light and playful. And that's just where I'm at in my life right now is, you know, for many type A people or people who are really getting things done or people who feel they want to be taken serious, or people who have big projects or are starting businesses or have businesses right now, it's kind of like we have a lot of trouble viewing play as something that's okay for us or something that we can build in or make sure that we're doing because it doesn't feel productive. So what we have to do is realize exactly how productive play and rest are, right? So I know I just brought rest into the game, but really, it's that idea of the letting go, the lightness, the play, the rejuvenation, and how important these things are. Otherwise, you get blocked, right? You get stuck. It's no fun. That's when you go totally overboard because you're like, this sucks. I can't do it anymore. Like, this, all of this, like, building a business and going after my goals like, this is too much. I'm not having any fun. Well, that's where you got to build in the fun and build in the play. Because the play is productive. The play is important. The play is creative. The play is freedom. The play is expansion. The play is real connection, you guys. So play is productive. It's just as productive as working. You go back with a fresh set of eyes, a fresh perspective. You are a new person afterward, right? So also, Stuart Brown says to look at play as being able to. It's hygiene for your brain. He says play is hygiene for your brain. So really, it's like this cleansing of your brain and coming back as a different person and for real, massive stress management. So plan your fun out. So what I want you to do is think of what that would be, what that would look like to you to plan and play every week. Maybe it's with your friends, maybe it's with your family. You know, I just got to play volleyball on the beach yesterday, and I was like, everybody who came, we probably had like 20 or 30 people. They were like, why don't we do this more? We live right here and this is so fun. And honestly, we were having a blast just making jokes and being goofy and being silly. It was like, absolutely not a serious volleyball game. And, you know, it was probably the best part of my entire month because I just really, really, really felt the freedom to play. And I came back to all the things I had to do to do today. And I felt rejuvenated. In fact, look at it. I have a quickie podcast, right? And I'm also going to go and write about this in my book. And if I wouldn't have done that, I wouldn't have had same experience and I probably would have had to sit about an hour longer to come up with the topic and write everything out. Where today it just flows. So if I can tell you one thing, it's when I play and when I go do new things and when I get in nature and try new things, I have so much to say. I have so much more content. I am just in the flow. I don't have to dig up something and think I don't know what. Do I want to talk about what's relevant? Because your life is relevant when you are playing. Your life is relevant when you are doing new things and you are connecting. So go play. Here's your permission slip. I'm signing it. And you can go have some fun because you're going to be so much better for it. And for the love of God, stop being so serious. Nobody can take it, right? We all just want to have a little fun in our lives.

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