Welcome back. I am Alexia Usgaard. We're continuing in this special series celebrating 50 episodes, where we are revisiting some of my favorite moments from the show so far. One of the biggest things I have seen over and over again in my work with clients is that when we intentionally cultivate play back into our lives, everything shifts. Everything elevates. This doesn't diminish or shrink our ambition. Instead, it expands it - in a way where it doesn't deplete us in the process, or deplete what we care about most in the process. Today, I'm sharing the exact ritual I give my clients to bring the play back to their lives. If this resonates, the full episode goes even deeper. I'll drop the link below. Without further ado, let's get into it.
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.
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 - that's why I wanted to share with you here.
There's been so much research showing the mental health impacts, the emotional impacts, the creative impacts, the nervous system impacts of 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. 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.
We're gonna have things that come around that are not maybe our favorite things. 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 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, 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 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, just found delight in doing or creating, or just spending your time doing? And for some, honestly, play can be daydreaming. It can be the art of literally lying in the grass. I have some people in my life where their play is literally just being able to sit in the grass and have absolute blank space in front of them to just daydream into their imaginations. So really think about that version of you, that sweet inner child within you. What did they love? What brought them joy?
I've got a delightful ritual for you to incorporate into your life to experiment with. 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, I actually found joy in my attitude toward even some of the most mundane tasks that I previously found so draining and would struggle to just get through.
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? It can be 20 to 30 minutes that you block out on your calendar that become a non-negotiable play date. This is your play date ritual. 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.
The big thing I'll say from a structure perspective is: the intention is that there is nothing about this activity that has to be productive. There is nothing to optimize. This gets to just be whatever you want to make it. 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 to 30 minute period. If you have more time, even better.
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 of music that I loved listening to in high school, and I just want to have fun rocking out, dancing wild to songs that have always brought me joy. It could be pulling out art supplies, craft supplies, things that you always kind of push off and think, "I'll get to that eventually." But you pull it all out and you just let yourself, for 20 or 30 minutes, draw, paint, be silly, maybe do finger painting. You could even pull out one of those mandala coloring books that I know some clients have loved.
Or for some clients, they've loved to go schedule a dance class - they get to be guided through a fun type of dance that they've always found joy in but just haven't really let themselves do. Like they loved hip hop dance when they were young and they're like, great, let me go to a hip hop dance class.
Sometimes the play could be that you're just gonna go and walk around your neighborhood, maybe explore a new coffee shop or bookshop that you never seem to have the time to explore, and just let yourself explore. You could be the type where play is often about exploring new places and trying new things. Or even - and I think this is fun - if you're someone who really likes to build things and enjoys the tactile, you might be someone who pulls out the Legos or something along those lines. If you're a storyteller, maybe you write all the time for work, but you've been desiring to write more fiction and playful short stories that you never seem to make the time for - another great example. But the key is that you choose something and you block off the time.
And then the extra little invitation I'll give you is to add some ambiance to it, because again, this is about pleasure. I love to make everything into a ritual. So whether it's lighting a candle, making sure the ambiance feels really nice and joyful - 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.
Just notice, if you do it for a few weeks - I like to give the invitation for a few weeks in a row - because here's what I also want to name: when we do this, it's gonna be amazing to watch the resistance that wants to come our way when we're really prioritizing our play. This is where the meetings want to get scheduled, people want our attention, other demands always want to show up. I'd really like to invite you to realize this is where our beautiful inner saboteur loves to 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.
So if you feel awkward the first week, the second week you come in a little less awkward, a little bit more like, 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, my goodness, why have I not been doing this more? I just love to give you the invitation again - experiment, have fun with it. Know there's no right or wrong way. This is just you making your play a priority 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 ripple into other areas in ways you will see and ways you may never see. Because what I find is when you elevate one area of your life - because our lives are holistic, they're spider webs - that elevation in one area has a beautiful ripple effect on all the other areas.
If this episode resonated with you, I'd love to invite you to share it with someone in your life who could use a dose of elevation today. Thank you, as always, for being you, and thank you for being here. Until next time, I hope you continue to elevate your life one intentional day at a time.
