When was the last time you lost track of time doing something purely for joy? Not productivity. Not growth. Not optimization. Just…delight. If it feels hard to answer, you're not alone.

Entrepreneur burnout and leadership depletion don't always show up as overwhelm. Sometimes, they show up as the quiet absence of joy.

The most accomplished women entrepreneurs I work with share a similar pattern: Somewhere between scaling their business, leading their teams, and holding everything together…play disappeared. Not intentionally. Not consciously. It just stopped feeling like a priority.

And when play disappears? Everything starts to feel heavier than it should.

In this Elevation Dose, I'm exploring why high-achieving women often feel depleted even when everything is "working," and why the solution isn't more optimization - it's a return to play.

Because the truth is simple: The most successful women are often the most deprived of play. And that deprivation is quietly costing you your intuition, creativity, presence, and magnetism.

Inside I share:

• Why entrepreneur burnout often comes from doing too little of what brings joy - not too much
• My personal moment of realizing I had no idea how to rate "play" in my life
• Why play is a leadership competency and burnout prevention strategy
• The Play Ritual: a 30-minute weekly practice for sustainable performance
• How to identify your unique play personality

This episode is for the accomplished woman entrepreneur ready to lead from devotion, not depletion

Resources Mentioned:

• National Institute of Play
• Play Personality Quiz

Work with Me

I'm opening select Concierge spots for 2026 - private advisory for women entrepreneurs where your business expands while your leadership becomes sustainable, embodied, and delicious.

→ DM me "concierge"

→ Or apply at: alexiausgaard.com/concierge

If this Resonates

Share what form of play you're trying this week - DM me @alexia_usgaard

Leaving a review helps Elevate Daily reach more visionary women entrepreneurs devoted to soul-aligned expansion and devotional leadership.

And of course, until next time I hope you elevate your life, one intentional day at a time.

With love & devotion,

Alexia

The moment I made the shift of no longer thinking that play is frivolous, that play is unproductive, that play is childish and started to actually shift into realizing it's one of my greatest strategies for being not just someone who lives in a way that's pleasurable, but is actually really effective in what I create and how I show up and how I innovate in the world. Welcome to Elevate Daily, the podcast for those ready to elevate their life.

one intentional day at a time. I'm your host, Alexia Ouskard, here to give you a permission slip to unapologetically savor the beauty and richness of life. Join me as we explore modern rituals, self-leadership, the gene keys, and the art of elevating your health, wealth, love, and leadership. It's time to elevate. Let's dive in.

Hello, hello, and welcome back to Elevate Daily. I'm Alexia Ouskard, and I am enthused for a playful episode happening today. And so I'm gonna give you an elevation dose episode. So these are my shorter, quicker episodes that are really here to give you one key way to think and one key ritual to really elevate how you're leading, how you're creating, and of course, how you're living and loving.

And so what I wanted to bring forward today is something I have come to see over and over again is when we feel burnt out and feel depleted, oftentimes it's not just because we're doing too much. It's actually because we're doing too little of what brings us joy. What helps us to actually experience the joy of our life. And what I have come to learn is the key to

making this shift and ensuring that our joy is prioritized, that we are experiencing everything we create, that we are experiencing our life and we're feeling through everything that we build and create and cultivate as leaders is through prioritizing play. Yep, I just said play. And if you were like me, I remember when I first got introduced to play about a decade ago, I was literally sitting at a mastermind. It was called like the level up mastermind.

And I was there, of course, in my classic overachieving way, being like, okay, great, how am I gonna level up my life? How am I gonna level up in my work? Like, how am I gonna level up in general? And I remember we had to do an inventory of different areas of our life. And I remember filling out the career section and I just went like, yep, check, I know how to rate that for myself, the love section, I knew how to rate, the health section, got it. And then there was a play category.

And I'll never forget, I got to that category and I just went absolutely blank. And I didn't even know what it meant. I literally remember just sitting there going, can someone please? And actually kind of felt embarrassed if I'm honest, in terms of having to ask like, what does play mean? And at the time I remember the coach who was leading the space explained it to me and really brought it into my life. And I'll just say,

The moment I made the shift of no longer thinking that play is frivolous, that play is unproductive, that play is childish and started to actually shift into realizing it's one of my greatest strategies for being not just someone who lives in a way that's pleasurable, but is actually really effective in what I create and how I show up and how I innovate in the world. And so that's why I wanted to share with you here.

is I wanna share with you if you're someone who is like, yes, because I know most successful women, most ambitious women, most high capacity women can tend to put play on the back burner. And I wanna really give you a massive permission slip and massive invitation to say that if it is not on your calendar as a priority, that actually you're holding yourself back from your highest potential. And.

So what was interesting is, of course, in prep for this episode, I wanted to go see if there's any scientific research, if there's any research on this topic. And I was not surprised, but also very pleased to see that there's an entire body of research and work that I'll make sure is in the show notes below that's been created. And you can check it all out at the National Institute of Play. And there's been so much research showing.

the mental health impacts, the emotional impacts, the creative impacts, the nervous system impacts on really incorporating play in our lives. And I want to give a moment just to name the actual definition of how the founder of the National Institute of Play describes it. And the definition they give is that play is a state of mind that one has when absorbed in an activity that provides enjoyment.

and a suspension of sense of time and play is self-motivated. So you want to do it again and again. And I mean, and how much of us don't want to have that experience? Who doesn't want to have that experience where you're in just such a flow state of joy that time just becomes limitless, where it feels like I find when I'm in play, it's like I'm expanding time.

And what I've come to see is the more that I've incorporated play and what I've seen also in my clients who I work with, we've created rituals around them cultivating more play, that our intuitive gifts are so much clearer, our decision-making ends up being clearer, that there's so many more creative ways we think about the world. There's so many more simple solutions to complicated problems that we're able to just feel our way through. And more than anything,

I find that the way that they experience how they show up in the world starts to rather than feeling like you have to approach the draining thing. Because we all have, right? As leaders, I'm not going to be silly in naming that we don't have tasks on our to-do list that even if you are consistently in your zone of genius, there is going to be certain things on your to-do list, whether it's taxes, whether it's admin, whether it's just

personal things you have to navigate or things you're dealing with with your family or whatever it may be. We're going to have things that come around that are not maybe our favorite things to do, but I find that if you can approach them with a playful attitude, it changes it. And the best way to start really cultivating that playful attitude in general in life is by, of course, creating a ritual where you start to reconnect to that part of yourself. You start to prioritize that part of yourself. You start to find pleasure.

and actually seeing how much that spirit within you loves to be acknowledged and loves to have space to be seen and danced with. And so for myself, if we flash back to 10 years ago when I first got introduced to play and I started incorporating into my life, I had to really take a moment to get curious about what would be the activities in my life that I do.

that I cultivate where I lose track of time, where I feel naturally motivated to want to do more of them, where I feel just naturally enjoy doing them. And for me, I started to realize dancing was a huge thing that I always loved, that always brought me so much joy. Singing, spending time with animals, you know, it was cooking specific dishes with my grandmother.

It was these little things that actually would bring this sense of limitless time and an expansion of my delight. And so I started to slowly incorporate them back into my life. And if you're going, I'm struggling to really connect with what would be something that I would consider play, I'll give you two invitations. One, take a moment to really think about when you were younger, when you were, let's just say 10 years old, what did you find you just, for no productive reason,

for no proving or any accolades or rewards, what did you just find delight in doing or creating or just spending your time doing? And for some, honestly, play I find can be daydreaming. It can be the art of literally laying in grass. I have some people in my life where their play is literally just being able to sit in grass and just have the absolute blank space in front of them for them to just daydream into their imaginations. And so really thinking about that version of you, that sweet,

inner child within you, what did they love? What brought them joy? And then also I'll make sure this is hyperlinked in the show notes, but at the National Institute of Play, they also have an amazing quiz you can take showing the different play personalities. And that can give you also some support in figuring out what would be your expression of play. Because even there, right, some of the examples they have are competition for some people.

They love to play games, they love to compete, but it's this way that just helps them to feel really enthused about life. Whereas there's others who are more like the jokesters. I think it's like the humor, it's the comedian. I can't remember what their exact archetype is, but it's that person who just loves making people laugh and finding things to make people laugh and thinking of jokes and thinking of silly things like that. And actually there's even one that's about the collector.

There's the joy in like going and collecting items, finding that rare antique piece to add to your collection. You know, so there's many different ways that you can experience this. So I'd love to invite you to first off, just get curious and ask yourself, what does play mean to you? What does play feel like to you? And then when you take a moment to really connect with that, then of course I've got a delightful ritual for you to incorporate into your life to experiment with.

And the ritual I love to give is the one that I really incorporated in my life years ago. And I saw massive shifts in how I activated my gifts, my creativity, my imagination. And like I said, actually finding joy in my attitude and even some of the most mundane tasks that passed me would find so draining and would struggle to just like really get through. And so with this ritual, the structure I'll invite you to bring forward is every week,

I know this is gonna be wild for some of you, because there's gonna be naturally some resistance that wants to come in, but let's just experiment. Maybe just try it for a month. Can you give yourself just four weeks? And it can be 20 to 30 minutes that you block out on your calendar that become a non-negotiable playdate. So this is your playdate ritual. And so on your calendar, you're gonna find a 20 to 30 minute pocket of time, and that's gonna be a time where you play. And so at least minimum,

Right? And so that can be that in that 20 or 30 minutes, the big thing I'll say from a structure perspective that I'll ask for is the intention is there is nothing about this activity that has to be productive. There is nothing to optimize and this gets to just be whatever you want to make it. And so I want you to think about based on what we explored before, what would be something that would be fun for you in a 20 minute period. If you have more time, even better.

but I also just like to keep things quite simple. so 20 to 30 minutes, that's what we've got. If that's what you got, let's do that. And so again, it could be that you do it at home in your own space, especially if you're limited with time where you're like, I'm gonna go put on a playlist that I loved listening to of music when I was in high school. And I just wanna have fun rocking out, dancing wild to songs that always have brought me joy. You know, it could be going and like.

pulling out art supplies, craft supplies, things that you just otherwise find that you just kind of always push off and think like, I'll get to that eventually and I'll enjoy that. But actually you pull it all out and you just let yourself for 20 or 30 minutes, like draw, paint, be silly, maybe do finger painting, know? You can just even pull out one of those like mandala coloring books that I know some clients have played with. You know, I think another great example is,

Okay, if you have more time, I like to invite, like I know for some clients, they've loved to go like schedule a dance class where they actually go to a dance class and they get to be guided through a fun type of dance that they always have found joy in, but they just haven't, they let themselves or like they love doing hip hop dance music when they were young and they're like, great, let me go to a hip hop dance class. Some other examples could be, you might just be someone who like lives for the frolic. I know I'm someone who definitely loves to frolic.

So sometimes the play could be like, you're just gonna go and walk around your neighborhood, maybe explore a new coffee shop, explore a new bookshop that you never seem to have the time to go and explore and just like letting yourself explore. You could be the type who play is often about exploring new places, trying new things out. Or even I think it's fun if you're someone who's a builder who really likes to build things, enjoys the tactical, you might be someone who pulls out the Legos or pulls out something along those lines and loves.

doing something from a construction building perspective. This really gets to be your way. If you're a storyteller, maybe you write all the time for work, but you're like, I've been desiring to write more just fiction and playful short stories that I never seem to make the time for. I got another good example. But the key is a name that you choose something and then you block off the time. And then the extra little limitation I'll give you is that you add some ambiance to it. Cause again, this is about pleasure.

So of course I love to make everything into a ritual. So whether it's lighting the candle, making sure the ambiance feels really nice and joyful, but just making it feel like this is my sacred space, this is my sacred time, putting the phone on airplane mode, do not disturb and really giving yourself this moment in time. And just notice if you do it for a few weeks, like I said, I like to give the invitation for a few weeks in a row because here's what I also wanna name. When we do this, it's gonna be amazing to watch.

Oftentimes the resistance that wants to come our way when we're really prioritizing our play. You know, this is where the meetings want to get scheduled. People want our attention. Other demands always want to show up. And though I'd really like to invite you to realize this is where our beautiful saboteur loves to often keep us from really getting to pave these new pathways within ourselves where we know that play is actually vital, where we know that play is actually productive. And so if you feel awkward the first week,

The second week you come in a little less awkward, a little bit more just like, oh yes, I've got this. And you might also find that you're someone who immediately goes in the first week and you're like, oh my goodness, why have I not been doing this more? And I just love to give you the invitation again, experiment, have fun with it. Now there's no right or wrong way. This is just you making your play a priority and noticing and starting to notice over time.

the impact it has on other areas of your life. Because I will tell you, I've seen it over and over again that it does. It ripple effects in other ways you will know and other ways you may never see. So what I find is when you elevate one area of your life, because our lives are holistic, they're spider webs, often that elevation, that one area has a beautiful ripple effect on all the other areas. And yeah, I'd love to give you the invitation. If you feel called to send me a DM, send me an email and share with me.

how you're incorporating play into your life. If you're someone who feels called to be supported and incorporating rituals like this. So this is an example of the types of bespoke rituals I love to incorporate in my clients' lives and their work. Of course, it gets very specific. So with a client, I'll be like, okay, actually based on your gene keys, based on your lifestyle, based on your highest vision, let's create a play ritual that's specifically focused in this way.

And just things like this, like we really go through that process of ensuring that your entire life on all fronts is ritualized in a way that is very authentic and true to you. And that ensures that we really do leverage your highest gifts, your highest capacities, your highest joy, because that's ultimately where you create and expand in the most easeful and most aligned way. And so if you feel called to be supported and feel held and receive that bespoke,

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