When did adults stop playing?

What are some suggestions for adding play back into our lives?

“It took me … a lifetime to paint like a child,” Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso’s self-portrait evolution via Rare Historical Photos

Pablo Picasso spent his life *working* to become more playful. Yet so many adults—including myself—do the opposite.

The older we get, the less playful we become. As an only child growing up in upstate New York in the 1970s, I spent my free time roaming the woods behind our house; I rode bikes with kids in the neighborhood; and I got lost in books for hours and hours (thank you, Lucy Maud Montgomery).

Those activities are the definition of play: imaginative, self-directed, intrinsically motivated and guided by rules that leave room for creativity. Play can provide a significant amount of joy without offering a specific result. It can feel silly, unproductive and time consuming, which is precisely the point. Play is easy to recognize in children and animals—an impromptu game of tag or chase—but what does it look like in adults?

As adults, play is often low on our list of priorities. We’re living in a world that’s more conducive to productivity than playfulness. In the never-ending to-do list of adulthood, play can feel like a waste of time. We exhaust ourselves with tasks we should or have to do, but we rarely have time or energy for activities we want to do.

I talk about the “shoulds” that are placed on us in my new book “Fired Up: How to Turn Your Spark Into a Flame and Come Alive at Any Age”, available now.

Yet researchers say play benefits adults by releasing endorphins, improving brain functionality, and stimulating creativity. It can help keep us feeling young and energetic. Play can improve our memory and stimulate the growth of the cerebral cortex. Play also triggers the secretion of BDNF, a substance essential for the growth of brain cells.

Playful adults do exist—and we should emulate them. Researchers categorize playful adults into four types: “those who outwardly enjoy fooling around with friends, colleagues, relatives and acquaintances; those who are generally lighthearted and not preoccupied by the future consequences of their behavior; those who play with thoughts and ideas; and those who are whimsical, exhibiting interest in strange and unusual things and are amused by small, everyday observations.”

If you don’t see yourself reflected in any of those descriptions, don’t despair: “A less playful person can learn to be more playful, much like an introvert can learn to be a better speaker by observing the techniques extroverts use,” says René Proyer, a professor of psychology at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg.

I’m just now, in my 50s, understanding how essential play is to my mental health as an adult—it’s a basic human need that’s as important to well-being as sleep. Instead of waiting for my annual vacation, I want to incorporate play into my everyday life. But I’m not quite sure what play means to me outside of vacation, yet.

👉 I’d love to hear from you in the comments:

• Do you consider yourself a playful person? If you are, what do you do? Give me suggestions!

• If you don’t play, what do you wish you could do, and what’s stopping you?

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For women ready to stop living on autopilot and playing it small, Fired Up will show you how to shatter your self imposed limitations and unleash your potential so you can finally start living the life you’ve always wanted. Click to order.