Play is the path.

Speaking from personal experience, if you've been spending the last 10 to 20 years trying to be good grown up than this suggestion might be a little bit tricky for you.

Whatever challenge you have in front of you, I humbly suggest that a good dose of playtime will help you get there better and faster.

When we use our "grown up" minds (i.e. the prefrontal cortex) to work on a challenge or figure something out we get a lot of focus and reason. But, we miss out on the loose connections and odd but insightful relationships that are the lifeblood of creative and innovative solutions.

The best way to access these types of insights is to let your subconscious work on the challenge while you engage in play.

How does this work?

Well there are certainly many things at play (haha...pun intended...😂). But one mechanism discovered by neuroscientist Dr. Mark Beeman, suggests that increasing happiness increases the likelihood of insight.

Here's a short and entertaining Ted Talk about the power of play to help us get past roadblocks of all sorts.

Love,

Marijke Ocean

P.S. I confess that when I first started to trust this idea myself - it took some practice to remember how to play. One of the first things I realized I had to loosen up was my self-consciousness. It was a doozy to realize how much this was ever so subtly in my way. One thing that I love for this: Improv classes! Small steps work too - watch a silly movie, play a sport you loved as a kid. How do you like to play?