Is Productivity Ruining Our Mental Health? Why We Need More Play (Piera Gelardi)
Episode Notes
When did being a responsible adult become synonymous with being serious all the time?
Somewhere along the way, many of us learned that curiosity, playfulness, imagination, and wonder were things we needed to leave behind in order to grow up. But what if those qualities aren't distractions from a meaningful life?
What if they're essential to it?
In this episode, Dr. Alison Cook sits down with entrepreneur, creative visionary, and author Piera Gelardi to explore why playfulness is far more than a luxury—it's a powerful source of resilience, creativity, connection, and emotional well-being. Together, they unpack how stress, perfectionism, and the pressure to "have it all together" disconnect us from our authentic selves, and how reclaiming play can help us feel more alive.
You'll learn:
- Why playfulness is a sign of emotional health—not immaturity
- How stress, perfectionism, and the "cool police" rob us of joy
- The surprising connection between play and resilience
- How to move from a pressured state into a playful state
- Practical ways to reconnect with curiosity, wonder, and creativity
- Why your childlike qualities may actually be your greatest strengths
This conversation is a gentle invitation to loosen your grip, laugh a little more, and rediscover the parts of yourself that make you feel most alive.
More Resources:
Order Piera’s book, The Playful Way: Creativity, Connection, and Joy Through Everyday Moments of Play
You can now preorder Dr. Alison’s newest book, The Secure Soul, and immediately receive the first 3 chapters as well as early access to the companion guide!
Connect further with @dralisoncook on Instagram
Curious what Family Role may have shaped you? Take the Family Role Quiz to learn how you may be showing up in your relationships with others.
Want to hear more like this? Start here:
Episode 188: Tiny Joys, Big Healing: Retraining the Brain for Hope with Dr MaryCatherine McDonald
📖 Find a full transcript and list of resources from this episode here
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TRANSCRIPT
I hoped I would get to the next stage of my career by cosplaying serious adult. I felt more
disconnected. It was like I kind of lost my intrinsic motivation. So she said, what do you think
the qualities are that got you here? Curiosity, experimentation, creativity, my joyful,
creative personality. So why do you think that those qualities you have to like...
throw in the trash can to get to the next level. She said, what if you actually lean into those
more as your superpowers to grow? When we listen to the cool police and we try to not be cringe,
we try to not stand out. We're not expressing ourselves. We feel a bit empty in life.
When we try to be a responsible adult and make that mean just being completely serious and zipped
up in our serious suits, we lose connection and joy and wonder and curiosity and all of these
beautiful things that make us feel alive, creative, connected to each other.
Hey everyone and welcome back to this week's deep dive episode of The Best of You. Have you ever
noticed as we enter into these summer months how quickly the summer can begin to steal your sense
of playfulness? These are the very months that are supposed to be more laid back and carefree and
yet they can become the season of stress. There's less structure. And I know structure for me is
often what keeps me steady. So in the summer, it can throw me off kilter. Often our kids are at
home, which is fun, but also creeps into our downtime, our sense of order. Lines are long.
The weather is hot. Someone says the wrong thing. Your child won't cooperate. Your inbox is
overflowing. And before you know it, you're running on fumes. You're tense, maybe even short with
the people you love. And you start to become that anxious, tense adult who isn't any fun.
Well, today's episode is an invitation for all of us back into a playful spirit,
because here's the thing about playfulness. It's not only good for our relationships and for our
emotional health, it's part of our spiritual formation. Jesus says in Matthew 18,
3, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
Now, I want to unpack that for a second. What does Jesus mean there? What does it mean to become
like little children? Obviously, we're adults. We're caring for other people. We need to be
responsible. We need to be mature. We need to work on ourselves, right? All these things we talk
about. And Jesus isn't calling us to become irresponsible or childish.
This isn't an invitation to become something we don't want to be. However,
there's something so important here that Jesus... and I tend to think of it like this.
If you think about the context of this passage, the children are running to Jesus.
They're curious. They're open-hearted. They're excited. They're trusting.
They sense someone who is there for them. And I think this has something to do with that childlike
spirit Jesus is calling us. to recover. Children, when they feel safe,
are naturally curious. They're imaginative. They're in their bodies. They laugh easily.
They trust easily. They experiment. They're adventurous. And all of this happens because when
they're safe, they're securely attached. They know someone is there looking out for them,
which so often is our job in the summer. But what if we too can learn from the children around us?
because we too have one who is always looking out for us. But somewhere along the way,
so many of us have learned to leave that part of ourselves behind.
We've learned that being responsible means being serious, that it means we have to hold everything
together, that we have to try to be perfect or polished. We've learned that being spiritual means
being serious. We've learned that the only way to survive is to tighten up, look down,
and try to work harder. But here's the paradox.
Sometimes the very qualities we think we have to abandon in order to be serious adults are the very
qualities that bring us back to life. Curiosity,
wonder, playfulness, movement, imagination, joy.
These qualities are a crucial part of resilience. They're a part of how God designed us to move
through hard things. And they're also part of what helps us love other people and ourselves better.
Richard Schwartz, the founder of the Internal Family Systems model of therapy, described
playfulness as a quality of the true self. comes, it flows out of that centered,
grounded, spirit-led place inside of us. It's not forced positivity or pretending everything is
fine. It's a spaciousness, a freedom, a vitality, an ability to drop your shoulders,
take a breath, and laugh at yourself and at all the shenanigans and absurdities around us.
Playfulness helps us stay present to what's hard without being consumed by it.
And this is what I love about today's conversation. My guest is creative visionary and author,
Piera Gilardi. And she tells this incredible story about being stuck in a long TSA line.
It's one of those tense moments where everyone is frustrated. Everyone is anxious. The atmosphere
feels like it's buzzing with tension. In the middle of it, she makes a tiny,
playful choice. That choice doesn't change the length of the line.
It doesn't magically fix the situation. But it changes her experience of the frustration.
And that in turn changes the experience of the people around her.
I've noticed in my own life recently that when I can find my way back to a good inner eye roll,
I can laugh at myself. I can laugh playfully with the people around me.
The room changes. The stress lifts. Suddenly you're back in that spirit-led place with just a
little more creativity, a little more joy, a little more lightness as you walk through the day.
This is the power of playfulness. It doesn't deny the reality of what's hard,
but it helps move through reality with more connection, more creativity,
and more humanity. And a lot of us need this right now. The world has been a lot.
The summer can be a lot. can be a lot. Marriage and family and relationships and friendships and
church life can be a lot. And maybe the invitation for you today is not to try to do one more thing
better or get one more thing right, but instead to return to a playfulness that God has placed in
you from the beginning. A little wonder, a little laughter, a little curiosity,
a little freedom, a little joy. My guest today is Piera Gilardi.
Piera is a creative entrepreneur, speaker, author, and the co-founder and former executive
creative director of Refinery29, where she helped shape one of the most influential media brands
for women and launched an immersive creative experience, 29 Rooms.
She's also the co-founder of NumaLuma, which is a platform devoted to helping people rediscover
creativity and play in everyday life. Her new book The Playful Way is a beautiful practical
invitation. to move from pressure into possibility. And she helps us reclaim play in practical
ways. You're going to get some practical ideas in today's episode to reconnect to a sense of wonder
and play. I love this conversation. It's so refreshing. It had me smiling from ear to ear,
and I know it's going to have something for you as you enter into the week.
Please enjoy my conversation with Piera Gilardi.
The founder of the model, he talks about the qualities of kind of when we know when we're in the
true self, when we're in that nervous system regulation, when we're connected, you know, and a lot
of them are clarity and calm. But one of them is playfulness. Right. And that's what you're
speaking to. So I would just love to kind of start there because you opened the book with such a
relatable. frustrating story I was just in one of these where you're I think in a TSA line at the
airport so frustrating and you have this moment of becoming playful could you could you share that
with us yeah absolutely so I was at the airport and there were huge delays the TSA line was you
know snaking this way that way it looked like it was miles long and our flight was in an hour and
we were going on a vacation that we really needed um and have been really looking forward to and so
we're just looking at this line and you know the the atmosphere in the airport is so tense you know
it's like it's like a thousand like stress flies like buzzing in the air it feels like and you know
everyone's huffing and puffing and getting annoyed with each other when you know they accidentally
bump each other with their roller suitcases and whatnot and i feel myself starting to just have
that internal voice of like why didn't we leave earlier why did you know that spiral and i
recognize it i say oh i'm spiraling into you know i'm spiraling and i decide to just i we're we
started around the first bend of the first turn in the line and i just made a split second decision
i raised my hand to my partner and he looked at me confused but he gave me a tentative high five
and i said yes one turn closer and he kind of giggled and then like the people around us looked at
us you know they were like slightly amused confused uh so then the next time we went around the
next turn my partner philip was ready so he raised his hand we both high-fived we said in unison
one turn closer and that time people you know chuckled around us and by the third turn in the line
this dad raised his hand for a high five before we even raised ours and You know,
he and his kid were laughing. And then by, you know, basically as we went along in this line, each
turn more people got involved or started to laugh. And so what had been this very pressured,
stressful situation where everyone was, you know, kind of isolated in their own frustration became
suddenly laughter, camaraderie. You know, we weren't going any faster in the line,
but we. felt so different. And we had sparked this moment of laughter and connection for the people
around us. And so ultimately, the state that we were in before that, where we were spiraling,
we were white knuckling, we were stressed out, we were in our minds fighting against what was
happening. That's what I call the pressured state. And when I took a breath and caught myself and
realized that i had a choice to show up a different way and i chose the playful way it didn't
change the situation but it changed us and it changed the people around us it's such a powerful
story because i loved that opening and you're such a great writer you just bring it to life but i
just thought oh my gosh that's it it's so simple but we so often don't choose that You know,
that moment was just this, you know, just a second of you making a different choice.
And you talk about how as children, this is much more normal for us.
We kind of automatically are we're automatically able to play. It's so sort of intuitive.
But as we become adults, we lose that. Why? What's your talk? And how do you describe in the book
why we lose that that childlike desire to play? Yeah,
play is intrinsic to all humans and we... we always can have access to it but we have to practice
it and we we often lose touch with it so i think of it like a muscle that you know if you decide
that you want to be more in touch with it it's about choosing it and finding those moments to
practice it but as as we grow up a lot of things happen i mean unfortunately for a lot of people
they have adverse childhood experiences that might you know mean they have to grow up much faster
there are also a lot of like systemic and privilege-based barriers who's allowed to play and
where. So all of those things are definite realities. And then there's also just the social
conditioning that we get from a very young age. When you think about it, as you start to get into
grade school, all of a sudden, play is just for resource re you know recess so it's this very very
small pocket of time you know unless you go to a school where play is integrated more mindfully but
at most schools it's really about you know doing things a certain way point a to point b it's sit
you know sit still pay attention don't joke around and you're you're you know that's like how how i
grew up you know all my report cards kind of talk about that so there's that then there's sort of
the layer of you know as we get older being a responsible adult and sort of being taught that that
That means being joyless, you know, for whatever reason, that responsibility means seriousness and
approaching things seriously. We have that perfectionist voice that tells you, you know, I
couldn't, I can't afford to make mistakes. So I'm not going to experiment. I'm not going to
explore. I'm just going to try to get the right answer and do it perfectly. So we get all these
voices. There's the cool police, you know, tells you don't stand out. Don't be cringe, you know,
and all of these things, you know, slow. slowly remove you know pull us back from our playfulness
and they pull us back from our authentic selves right like when we're not when we're so
perfectionistic that we're not taking any risks or doing any exploration you know we lose we lose
so much of you know what could be and and that those sparks of inspiration those um those trials
that actually get us to a better answer and something that's more aligned for us when we you know
when we listen to the cool police and we try to not be cringe we try to you know not stand out
we're not expressing ourselves you know we we feel a bit empty in life.
When we try to be a responsible adult and make that mean just being completely serious and,
you know, zipped up in our serious suits, we lose connection and joy and wonder and curiosity and
like all of these beautiful things that make us feel alive, creative, connected to each other.
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It's so true. It almost gets conditioned out of this.
And I almost see it in different... The older I get, it gets conditioned out of me in different
ways. And I was noticing, you know, I'm... in my fifth you know I'm menopausal and I've got to get
to the gym right and get those those and I was at the gym the other day it just reminded me of this
when you said this and I was so out of place I wasn't it was not cool you know this was like a
everybody there was under 30 with like huge biceps you know I was not you know the cool police I
was like I am I am not the cool police here I am so sticking out like a sore thumb and it was just
stressed me out like this And then this older woman, and you could just tell she did not care.
She was much older than me, just came running over to me. And she's like, we have the same orange
shoes. And we did. And it was so adorable. And just to your point, I immediately found joy.
And it was her being connected. And it made me think of it when you said the cool place.
Why is that still getting to me?
it doesn't matter i walk into a room where i'm not fitting in and i immediately sort of shrink and
then this one yeah and this one person who doesn't care and that just changed my whole experience i
had a great time we kind of like kept checking her yeah yes and it's it's powerful it's really
powerful and yeah i the way i think of it is that that pressured state yes what we get into when
we're feeling perfectionistic, when we're feeling judged or self-conscious, you know, that,
that, Oh, I don't want to stand out kind of voice. Like all those things shrink us. So I sort of
think of that pressured state as being clenched hands, right? It's like in our body, we can feel
it. Like everything is tight. Our shoulders are up, you know, maybe we're clenching our jaw,
our hands, you know, our breath is maybe shorter and we're white knuckling, you know? And when
we're in that playful state, we're more like an inflated balloon we're like that woman you know
pointing out the orange we're we're more filled with air um so i always i always kind of think
about that and how what state even just noticing what state am i in right now um is really helpful
just the awareness so you you talk about a point of burnout in your own life and realizing that you
were thinking about it as burnout. You were thinking about it as a creative block maybe. And that
was really underneath it was a disconnection from play. So what, how did you recognize that?
How did you, you know, cause you're in the white knuckling. How did you recognize what was actually
going on there?
Yeah. So, I mean, I grew up in a very playful family and I, you know, moved to, I was,
I'm very, you know, colorful, exuberant. creativity has always been core to my life and my career
and so when I was starting my company Refinery29, my first company,
I brought a lot of playfulness and a spirit of curiosity, exploration,
experimentation to the work that I was doing. And that really served me.
We built a company that was growing and we were hiring a bunch of people.
We started hiring people from more corporate backgrounds.
We also had a lot more pressure on us, a lot bigger goals, you know,
investors that were looking at our progress. And so it started to feel very pressured.
Yes. And I also started to feel like I was standing out in a not good way with my,
you know, being this colorful, creative, playful person that was now sitting in boardrooms where
people were slinging all this jargon that I didn't know and saying things I didn't understand. And
so I had this, you know, I had this huge imposter syndrome and I had and I thought,
you know, I think these playful qualities that got me to this point now aren't appropriate,
you know, and I want to be taken seriously. So I need to be serious. And so I and I think of it
like we're zipping ourselves into our serious. So good. Like it's like. You're getting in there and
it's a tight suit. So I started to stop exhibiting these playful things.
I thought if I asked a question in a meeting, then people would immediately know that I didn't know
the answer. I thought if I floated big wild ideas, people would think I was an unrealistic dreamer.
And I thought if I cracked a joke in the meeting, I would be seen as a joker. So I stopped doing a
lot of these. things that were really natural for me to do in my work. And I hoped that I would be
taken seriously from that. And I hoped I would get to the next stage of my career by cosplaying
serious adult, basically. And what happened was that I wasn't learning.
I still didn't know the answer to these. you know things i mean i was googling like a maniac but
like i still didn't you know still didn't have the answers i felt more disconnected it was like i
kind of lost my intrinsic motivation um i just felt yeah i felt very disconnected and i really lost
my perspective too I remember laying on my apartment floor and crying about what a failure I was,
like sobbing hysterically about what a failure I was. And I wrote this list of all the ways I was
failing. And it was at a moment when the outside world would have thought, you know,
this was my career peak thus far. But inside, I was so brittle,
so depleted.
I was able to realize that I was underplayed and overworked because I had the,
had the privilege at the time to recognize that I was in this bad state. I actually thought, I
thought I should probably just leave my company. I should resign because I wasn't clearly wasn't
cut out for this. Um, and fortunately I got connected to this coach,
Katya Verison and, uh, When I talked to her, the first thing she asked me was,
what do you think the qualities are that got you to this place in your career where you have all
this pressure, you know? Because in some ways, like Billie Jean King said, pressure is a privilege,
right? Like in this case, you know, I had built something. It was a result of success in some ways.
Yeah, it was a result of a certain kind of success, you know? A certain kind of success, that's a
good way to put it, yeah. Yeah, and so she said, what do you think the qualities are? that got you
here. And I said, curiosity, experimentation, creativity. You know,
I also said, I think my personality, my joyful, you know, my joyful creative personality,
like allowed me to meet and connect with a lot of people. And so she said, so, so why do you think
that those qualities you have to like throw in the trash can to get to the next level?
She said, what if you actually lean into those more? as your superpowers to grow and so I didn't
necessarily know if she was on the right track or not but I decided you know I mean right now I'm
at this place where I'm thinking of quitting my own company so I might as well try it and so I
started you know I started leaning more into these playful qualities and what I saw was you know
when I asked questions in a meeting I actually wasn't left out of the room. In fact, people leaned
forward to hear the answer and thanked me afterwards for asking because they were too afraid to.
So my curiosity was helping me to get more knowledge and it was helping me to actually help other
people to also have a better understanding and to clarify what was happening.
I started going back into that big idea. visionary you know imagination mode and what happened was
that we started to have these breakthroughs these like breakthroughs and innovation and do things
that you know ended up being sort of the most the thing our company was most known for came from
leaning into being more imaginative and i started just bringing back my my joy and my humor and
that made me feel much more connected and my day-to-day brighter and so yeah in that moment i was
like so burnt out i was just so so brittle yeah and i found that yeah like i identified that i was
overworked underplayed and when i brought that playful spirit back it brought me back to life
there's such a your time you know i think about the word authenticity right as you're when we are
when we are really inhabiting our true selves, like who we were made to be,
that's when we're going to bring the best. We're not only not going to burn out, but we're going to
bring the best of who we are to the table. I love that.
I love that story. I think it also makes me think of there. You said something really profound that
it was like you had reached this level of success, which is when the pressure. came in.
And I even think about that happens in so many different ways. It can happen with work. I just was
listening to you going, oh my gosh, I've been thinking about that this last six months. I'm like, I
notice I'm losing the play. I'm trying to be somebody because I, you know, and it's not sustainable
and it also isn't your best work. But I think it happens. I was thinking about parenting where we
think our kids need some type of person or some perfection. And really what they need is us.
and our realness and our playfulness. You know, but it's like when the stakes get higher,
something in us goes back to that pressure cooker when actually as the stakes get higher,
that's almost more when we need the playful self.
Yeah, we think of play too as something, oh, I'll do that when times are good or I'll do that when
I have a little free time. Yes, yes. Or, you know. when it's low when it feels low stakes and the
thing about it is that play play is the most helpful actually in those in a lot of those more high
stakes moments when we need you know because play play that playful spirit of exploration
experimentation curiosity that taps us into being stronger problem solvers it helps us to be more
connected to each other and more collaborative it helps us to lower our stress which you know
stress you know shrinks like shrinks our creativity and our resources for finding solutions finding
answers um so playfulness actually is really incredibly practical and useful but we see it as
something that is frivolous and recess That's so, so true. So you've already talked about this a
little bit in your own story and just there that sort of almost the opposite is the inner critic.
When criticism comes in, either towards ourself or towards others, what are the kind of the most
common voices that will shut that play down? You've kind of talked about this, but I think it's
helpful to really name them and notice them because that's when we can make that pivot. Yeah,
you know, I think something people also don't think about, they think of playfulness as being,
because we see it as being frivolous, we don't see it as being courageous. And it's incredibly
courageous to be playful because it requires us to be our authentic selves. It often requires risk.
It requires us to stand out. And so it takes a lot of guts.
And so in the book, I talk about these different powers of play, but I did a whole chapter about
self-compassion at the end because in order to have that courage,
I think we have to nurture our own inner voice and our own self-compassion because there are these
voices that kind of tell us not to play. And those are that voice,
the perfectionist voice that says, I can't afford to make a mistake. I need it to be perfect.
I can't, you know, I can't explore and experiment and play. There's the voice that says I have too
much responsibility to play around. There's the voice that says,
yeah, blend in, don't stand out, don't be cringe.
Yeah, I'm trying to think of some of the other voices, but those are some big ones. You're going to
make a fool of yourself. That's a big one, I feel. You're going to make a fool of yourself. Yeah,
that one really. Yeah, no one's going to take you seriously.
Yeah. A lot of times it's like we're trying to meet serious energy with serious energy.
Yes. Like we think it's a mismatch to bring playfulness into a situation.
What I've been loving is I've been as I've been doing this book tour, I've been going to done this
in four different cities now. I've been hosting these story hours where I share some of the
different powers of play. curiosity, imagination, wonder. And then I tell a story about a time that
that quality has helped me in my life. And then I have the audience share their own stories.
And it's been incredible to hear, you know, people telling stories about being at their parents
funeral and bringing humor with their siblings into it as a way of connecting with each other.
you know, helping to like move through the grief and also to connect to their parents who are, you
know, deceased, but were playful, funny people. Or, you know,
someone shared this hilarious anecdote about going home for the holidays and deciding, you know,
that they wanted to break the cycle of constantly fighting with their parents and trying to change
their parents and reverting to like an adolescent state. So they said they decided they were.
not going home for the holidays they were going on safari and when you're on safari you don't try
to change the animal's diet you don't get in the animal's face about you don't like that they did
you just sit back and think wow this is wild it's
been so fun to hear people's stories a lot of parents you know sharing you know funny ways they get
their you know they like get cooperation their kids brushing their teeth um you know people have
been sharing ways that they're transforming you know mundane tasks through you know through play um
so it's been that's been really fun to just hear these firsthand anecdotes.
And I think everyone has one when they start to see also gratefulness as not just goofing around,
but how it's, how it also represents, you know, humor and curiosity and wonder and imagination.
you know, moving, you know, moving our bodies is so playful. So once I start to kind of open people
up to these different powers of play, the stories that I'm hearing are just so incredible and
vivid. I love that. And I love that you call it a power because it is powerful. Like even just
listening to you tell those, I'm like something shifts and you've touched on these,
but I really kind of want to just take a second and drill down on these. I think there's eight of
them. Yeah. Can you, can you say them again? I've heard you say curiosity.
Yeah, I will say, I will say the powers of play. Let's see if I can remember all eight.
It's a pop quiz.
There's the joyful gesture. So this is someone who brings humor and levity, and they're really
amazing at diffusing tension because humor helps us to de-stress. It helps us to have a little
distance between us and whatever's going on. So the joyful gesture, their power of play is humor
and levity. Then there's the visionary dreamer. So they're the... one with a big imagination who
sees beyond the you know what is to what if um so they're really great at imagining new
possibilities um then we have the curious quester so the curious quester is someone that might go
down rabbit holes of curiosity there they ask a lot of questions they're more of an experimental
you know take a more experimental approach to life And so that's always really good for finding new
ways and also illuminating situations. We have the mover and shaker.
So these are people who find play through moving their bodies.
And they're really amazing at recognizing that our bodies are also,
you know, powerful for helping our minds to get unstuck. So they can help move through stuck
situations by moving their bodies. um we have the wonder wanderer so this is someone whose powers
of noticing are really amazing so you might be walking down the street with them and they're the
one that's pointing to the cloud that's shaped like a rhinoceros or the little you know sparkly
bracelet that's in the crack of the sidewalk they're just always noticing they notice patterns they
notice um and they're also really tapped into just the beauty of day-to-day life
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That's a pretty good list. And I think the listener can go get the book to get the rest of them.
Yeah, get the book to get the three that I'm not remembering right now. I love the way that there's
different, you know, because we're going to resonate with different ones. Because, you know, then I
can almost feel the tension of, I'm not funny, you know, like. But then it's like, but I'm a
dreamer. It's like there are different ways we all play differently. And finding your own kind of
unique. I think of people I know who have sort of a dark sense of humor that sort of is like,
that see the, and I'm like, there's a playfulness in it. And again,
I think what's interesting is you're not talking about We're not trying to bypass what's hard.
No. Right. And any of these things, just like we talk on the podcast all the time, any any strength
or anything can have can become a mask. Right. Right.
But at the same time, that that ability to the flexibility that we know is such an important part
of resilience to kind of flip into. I love the story about going home and seeing the family as the
safari to harness that. as a tool to use in a hard situation is,
is really powerful. And then kind of knowing your own unique way you're going to do that.
Yeah. Yeah. When I, what I was hearing from a lot of people was that I'm not playful.
And when I, you know, double clicked on that, what I would find was that it was because people
think of play as being the joyful gesture, basically. Yeah. Funny.
Silly, light. And so if they're not that or they think of play as being the fun one,
you know, I'm not the fun friend, so I'm not playful. So what I really wanted to do in the book was
to show all these different facets of playfulness and so that people could see themselves in it.
And they could also understand how if they if there was a quality that they wanted to develop more,
how they might do that. and how they might practice that in their day-to-day life.
So let's talk a little bit. So for the listener who's been in that pressure cooker, maybe feels
like they've lost a little bit of that sense of play where you were when you had that.
What's a practice, you know, we can do to, because you do talk about moving out of your head,
right? So then we can get in our head with it. So what's a way that we can begin to shift from
pressured to playful? Yeah. So I think the first thing is recognizing that you're in that pressured
state. So then you kind of feel it. So the way I have, I have an acronym,
even though acronyms are my kryptonite, I have an acronym for kind of shifting state and it's play
P-L-A-Y. So it's pause. And like when you're pausing,
you recognize, oh, I'm in the pressured state. Everything's tight. I'm stressed out. I'm spiraling.
Okay, pause. And then you lighten. So you can lighten with a breath. You can lighten with a,
you know, moving your body or laughter. But essentially,
you want to just kind of try and go from being that clean. from the clenched fist to like a little
bit more of an inflated balloon. Then you activate your play power. So whatever,
you know, you kind of tap into that, whichever play power feels right for the situation or right
for you. And then you're basically saying yes and. So you're saying, which is an improv principle,
but you're saying, okay, this thing is happening. I might not want it to be happening. And I can
look for a playful approach here. So that I find really helpful for adults that feel like they've
completely disconnected with their playfulness. I usually tell them to look in the lost and found,
like go back to childhood. What made you lose track of time?
What, you know, what did you just love doing? And often there's a kernel,
it might not be that, you know, you might, might not want to play with Barbies as an adult, but
maybe that role playing, you know, that you did means that you love, you know,
you love narratives. So you love, maybe you love like sitting on the train and like imagining the,
what the different people's like lives are like, or maybe, you know, you love doing.
improv now or you know there's like so finding the thread like for me as a kid I loved beachcombing
I grew up in Maine and I loved looking for treasure along the beach and so now as someone who lives
in New York City as an adult I love going on wonder wanders so I go for a walk and I just basically
try and like I'm like I'm tuning my dial to delight And I look for things that are interesting to
me. And I look up, I look down, I look all around, I put my phone away unless I need to take a
picture of one of the amazing things that I find. And so that's sort of a practice that relates
back to a childhood practice, but it now fits my adult life and my environment. So I think people
can, yeah, look back and see if there's an adult version that seems appealing of like that
childhood interest. i love that because there's a there's definitely a connection like i was
thinking when you were talking about like the imagination you know i could just imagine worlds in
my head and sometimes i'll go back and read the books that sparked the kids books it sparked the
imagination because somehow it just opens up that pathway back yeah in my brain you know whatever
was tapped into Yeah. Yeah. I love that. And in the book, I also have like these daily,
these small practices. So a couple of my favorite ones that people want to practice play.
One is move to get out of our heads is to do a shake break. So, you know,
I think we think of a lot of times as adults, we're like, I need to move and it's tied to a should,
right? It's all about exercise. I need to be, you know, need to be healthy.
But. kind of finding some space for just like a little bit of free movement. So Shake Break is I
put on a song. I just move freely however I feel like for a minute.
And I did it before this podcast. I do it whenever I need to, you know,
like move through. Sometimes it's nerves or I just want to like wake up my energy if I'm feeling.
anxious i'm feeling sad i take a shake break i love that that one i love that's one of my own
practices that i do all the time the other is the wonder wonder which i just told you about and
it's you know we can even do it in our environment and just say like i'm gonna look up and find
five things that are green or i'm gonna look up and see if i can find five things i haven't noticed
before in my space um so that's that's one just to tap us into that the wonder that's always around
us. And, you know, so often we're so in our head or we're so in our to-dos or our stress that we
don't actually notice the world around us. And that's one that's been, as someone who lives with
depression, going on Wonder Wanders has been so helpful for me. It's such a gentle,
it's like a gentle form of play for me. I love that. Yeah, so I love that one.
And then another one that I really love is Find the Funny. which is basically looking back at my
day at the end of the day and finding something that I can look at through the lens of humor. So
maybe it's a moment I took myself too seriously that I can laugh at. Maybe it's a situation that
stressed me out, but that if I imagine it in a sitcom, all of a sudden it seems so hilarious.
Or if I dramatize it, it feels hilarious. But it's a great way to look back at your day and kind of
find the lightness. put a little distance between you and whatever was frustrating you or stressing
you out. And then I find that because I've, because I practice it sort of retroactively,
then in the moment, I'm more able to see the lens of humor on things.
And it really, it just helps me so much to like laugh about it a little. It's not about not,
it's not, and I think we think of play as this thing that's. the opposite of seriousness.
Yeah. But it's really that that playful spirit helps us to move through through seriousness with a
little bit more flexibility, levity, resourcefulness. Exactly.
It's so well stated. And those are such practical. I love the the practical.
I love that idea of just thinking over your day. I just did it. While you were talking about it, I
was like, oh, I've been taking myself so seriously there. And I can almost imagine the screenplay.
I can almost imagine the script, kind of inner eye roll. I have like an inner eye roller.
I just start, oh, gosh. And it's not being mean. And you're so right. It's such a paradox. It's not
being mean to yourself. It's actually kind of like seeing yourself. And it's just, again, I always
think about, we talk a lot on the podcast about kind of reparenting these. parts of yourself right
it's a gentle and you know think about with your real life kids like if they're doing something
sometimes that eye roll when it's done in love not in anger it's an actual really like side eye
you're you're actually showing confidence you're showing courage and that tracks so much more with
a kid than you know getting all serious and giving them a lecture And it's right. And it's kind of
the same with ourselves. It's kind of like, oh, gosh, you know, if I can if I can sort of laugh at
myself, like I'm pretty free, actually. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. It's not about being mean and
being like, oh, why did I why was I like that? It's just more like, oh, my God, there I go again.
Freeing. It's it's very it's it's very paradoxical. I love that you're kind of highlighting that.
And even just I appreciate your vulnerability and saying you've dealt with. depression right it
doesn't these things coexist and in many ways playfulness you know some of the funniest people i
know are the people who can kind of see the humor in the darkness yeah and it's not and this is
where just to circle all the way back what i was saying about richard schwartz the founder of this
ifs model that's where he talked about that playfulness is a it's part of our design that is the
healthy kind of resilience, you know, that's allowing us to hold what's hard and also,
you know, just kind of hold it loosely, you know, hold it with a little more lightness.
I really like that. That's beautiful. That's beautiful the way you put it. Yeah. Well, I think,
you know, we also, we internalize a lot of binaries,
you know, and that is so destructive. And so playfulness is holding,
it's holding both and it's a yes and sort of energy.
And I think that that helps us to feel more whole and connected and to be able to sit with the
beauty and the pain and the... know the it's not you know the complexity of of life I love it tell
my listeners a little bit more about where they can find the book it's such a great read it's it's
filled with and you embody I just want to say the playfulness about which you know I felt it even
And I can tell it's a practice because I felt it in myself as we were talking. And I see that in
the book, too, right, that you're embodying it as you go. And it's really powerful. Where can
people find it and find more about it? Yeah, thank you so much. Yeah, I embodied all these
practices as I was writing it as well. So I really challenged myself to lean into my own
philosophy. And it helped me so much. Listeners can find the book where,
you know, major online sellers where books are sold the playful way. And if you want to also
practice play day to day, I have an app called Numaluma currently free that is all about creative
play in your day to day in those in between moments of your life where, you know,
you have a few minutes and you might be doom scrolling.
it's giving you an active form of low stakes play. So I would love to,
yeah, all about spreading play ripples. And I hope that this book and these practices help people
to feel more connected, creative, alive in their day to day.
I love it. Thank you so much for sharing your time with us. Thank you so much. I loved our
conversation. It was so delightful. Thanks for playing. Yeah, thank you. Thank you for joining me
for this week's episode of The Best of You. It would mean so much if you take a moment to
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