Play
Play restores, revitalizes, and recharges Joy.
Play is essential to being and feeling alive. Yet, we often forget to play or don't allow ourselves the time to do so. As we age, many experience lives devoid of connection, belonging, and play.
Today, with social media and 24/7 connections - children have less time and opportunity for free Play:
Play gives us time for our brains to recover, our thoughts to calm down, and our bodies to recharge.
We can play without structure, rules, or competition. Play doesn't have a purpose at its purest. It simply is fun.
Cultivating and Sustaining
Learning how to create, cultivate, and sustain conditions supporting your flourishing means making better decisions.
When was the last time you felt physically strong, focused, with a playful - carefree attitude?
In the past 25+ years, science has unlocked the methods and conditions to foster flourishing: Flow (optimal experience)
Achieving high, hard goals doesn't always require sacrificing your physical and mental health or all your time and attention. We've been taught that "hustling" is the only way to make an impact, and the cult of individual effort permeates our cultural narratives.
Benefits of Play
The benefits of Play are a proven antidote to stress, pain, burnout, overwhelm, and addiction to short-term dopamine hits.
When striving for more, our addicted brains are flooded by the neurochemicals that create and support addiction - living in a loop of pain & pleasure. Living your life moment to moment vis a short-lived dopamine loop composed mostly of digitally moderated interactions 24/7 has been proven to alter our brains and limit our ability to experience satisfaction, Joy, and even happiness.
The promise of productivity through technology tools can seduce you into believing in the future or remind you of your past mistakes.
Joy exists = right here, right now.
Joy is here for us, patiently waiting for us to jump in.
You begin by accepting that your neurobiology poses particular challenges for you to bring sustainable joy into your life.
Our neurochemicals will overwhelm us and manipulate our decisions, pushing us to escape to pleasure or drawing us into the pain of striving for more.
Neurobiologists and philosophers continue to argue whether we can consciously exercise our actions to change. Or if that's just an illusion and no amount of work will overcome the neurochemical - physiological reward - systems we have inherited through evolution.
We all face many obstacles to overcome. Our neurobiology tends to be easily manipulated by fear or the pursuit of the false gods of success: fame, money, power, and pleasure.
To live well—unconstrained by our primitive neurobiology—requires extraordinary effort. But most of all, it requires practice and acceptance.
While the debate of who is in control may never be settled, embracing and actively cultivating a life filled with acceptance, discipline, awareness, belonging, and joy can help you overcome the limitations of your neuro-physiological responses.
Overcoming the act of being present now and connected to yourself, your immediate feelings, your surroundings, and others with you—not distracted by fear, mistakes, or outside thoughts—is a lifelong challenge that is best shared with others. You are not alone, but part of something much greater than your mind will ever understand.
The Cosmos is All That Is, Ever Was, Or Will Be -
Carl Sagan
You choose to belong to and live in a connected COSMOS. This is a binary decision—your red or blue pill.
Imagine waking up every day knowing you are never alone. Still, you are connected to everything and everyone - from the smallest cells in your body to the largest star systems in the universe - unconstrained by time, space, and distance - no longer manipulated so easily by your neurochemical companions of fear, regret...
You are aware and conscious of life's beautiful, dangerous dance. You see the choreography of a fly and feel the oncoming clouds and rain. You revel in the good and the bad, knowing everything changes like the tide.
Play reminds us of our cosmic origins.
Play eliminates stress, unravels worries, and opens your mind to possibilities in the infinite game.
Moving with Joy floods your neurons. You feel connected to yourself and others and experience the sensation of venturing through the world unfettered by anything or anyone.
Your Joy is infectious and infinitely more powerful than you can imagine.
Bringing more Joy into your life will transform your relationships with everyone and the thing.
It all starts with a decision not to live in the past or think about the future.
To be in the present and Play.
Join me and others and discover how to use the science of human flourishing to architect a flourishing lifestyle to become the creative entrepreneur, leader, and CEO of your life.