The Importance of Play

People all around the world work too hard. What is too hard? Anything beyond enjoyment is too hard. If you are not enjoying what you are doing, you are working too hard at it. The solution? Play. What is play? It's the "playing, action, or conduct of a game." The game is life, and the conduct and action are always our choices. Our conditioning is that we have been trained to believe working hard is how we get what we want in life. But do we really want lives where we work hard all the time? I certainly don't. I want to play, to love what I do, and out of that love, which many have called following your bliss, I want to be rewarded with enjoyment, satisfaction, and the means to take care of myself and my family. Usually that means means money. Let's play!

So how do we retrain our thinking from believing that hard work is necessary in order to be successful, and into knowing that loving what we do is what really produces astounding results? Work. That's right. We just may have to work at playing for a while, until it becomes more natural to our lives. Play will become second nature, but it takes time, like all successful processes do. Taking action like this over time is what I call inspiration. Just remember that this particular work is temporary, and it's by choice. It's not the work that we do when we're filled with this undefined dread of something "bad" happening, as if we're going to be kept after school in detention if we don't either "tow the line" or put our "noses to the grindstone." Those familiar phrases are all our childhood training in the "work ethic." The only ethic to working too hard (remember how work is defined; anything beyond enjoyment) is that we've been trained that it's an "ethic" meaning that there's some sort of "moral principal" associated with working hard. The only thing working hard means is that we're working hard. That's it. Nothing more, nothing less. There's nothing either ethical or unethical about it.

There's nothing unethical or ethical about enjoying our lives either, but I do have that preference. If I am going to be given this miracle of life, I want to honor it by enjoying it with as immense a satisfaction as I can generate. At times, it's fun to work hard. But those times are when I choose to do so. Yet even then, it's play for me, because what I choose to do with my time is to spend it doing what I love, no matter what. If I don't love it, I don't do it. Yes, that's an absolute for me, as much as any human being can operate under absolutes. Of course there are things I choose to do that I don't seem to like all that much, or that I'm bored with sometimes, yet even then I do my best to enjoy my time, regardless of how I am spending it. Sometimes it's easier than at other times to do that, but that's not a function of the circumstances, that's a function of me from my judgments, my perceptions, and my opinions of what's fun and what's not. For instance, I love spending time with my kids, I just don't love doing some of the things they love to do. I'm not all that into video games, and I have the judgment that they're a waste of time. Yet spending time with my kids definitely is not a waste of time. So what do I do? I spend time with them, and no matter what they like to do with me, I like to be with them. It's a win/win situation for all of us that way. It's also great practice for me to generate by choice being satisfied no matter what I'm doing. That way, when I'm doing what I love to do, I'm naturally inclined to be even more satisfied!

How about those things I need to take care of in my life that I have in the past not been so enthusiastic about doing? Like laundry, cleaning, and grocery shopping? Those too much be approached with this new mindset, or lo and behold, that boredom will spill over into areas of my life that I don't want to fill up with that energy. If there is one thing we always do, it's to spend time doing whatever we are doing. This is the key and most important point of this entire article. That time we spend is the only thing of value we will ever have in this lifetime. Why would I want to spend something that precious, feeling something that I don't really like, such as boredom? Wow! No way! If I am in charge and in play, what I want to do is spend my coin on satisfaction, excitement, and playing as if life really meant something. Turns out, it does! Life means that we have been given this incredible gift of time, and it's always up to us to choose in what way we experience that gift. It's also up to us to decide how we use up that gift. Because I can guarantee you one thing for certain in this lifetime; that this lifetime has a finite amount of time for all of us. Think about that!

So how does this conversation apply to being successful? In every way! Think about any time (your time) when you were having fun, playing, and doing what you loved. What happened? What happened was that the end result did not matter so much to you, because being in the moment and enjoying yourself was what mattered the most. When you are in that flow, have you ever realized how much more you accomplish? When you are playing as a real estate agent, a parent, a writer, or a carpenter, ever notice how more people who can support you in your success are somehow drawn into your space, and things working out in the way you would like them to just seem to happen naturally? All without a great amount of work, and without all that much stress. This phenomenon is so common, so basic to our lives, that it has become a proverb for us. It's something that we have all experienced at one time or another. It's like spending so much time working so hard at finding "the one." When we give up working so hard at doing that, all of a sudden they somehow miraculously show up in the seat right next to us! All without working hard! In fact, all through playing and enjoying our lives.

That's the key indicator of our success; enjoyment. Even when we are "working hard." Because I have not given up working hard, since there are times when I do enjoy doing exactly that. But now it's my choice to play at working hard, and it has become a choice through the realization that I don't have to. I don't have to stress, I don't have to put my nose to the grindstone, and I don't have to work hard in order to produce results. In fact, just the opposite is true! So let's play!

TB Wright is the creator of The One Penny Millionaire!™ web based seminar series, and the author of Be BAD! Do Good! How To Get What You Want In Spite Of Yourself! which is available at www.onepennymillionaire.com.