Frontiers Friday 117: Play (Part II)
The value of saying all of your worries in cartoon voice, George Bernard Shaw on play and getting old, and "press play."
Here is Part II of the series on Play!
📕Read: Play It Away
Charlie Hoehn gives a refreshing antidote on how play can help your anxiety. Go to Hoehn's website to get a free e-copy of the book!
Key Graf:
- For three hours each week, I thrust myself into situations where I was guaranteed to look foolish
- Any project I pursued had to be aligned with my Play History (for more about play history, see FF116 Play, Part I).Here’s a little fun exercise from Play It Away:
- I would say all of my worries out loud in the most ridiculous voice I could conjure. I wouldn’t resist the thoughts or try to hide from them; I would bring them out in the open and dress them down in the voice of a chipmunk on helium. Do it now: Practice saying your worries out loud in the voice of a funny character. Do this for 60 seconds.🎧 Listen: Freaknomics Radio: Where Does Creativity Come From (and Why Do Schools Kill It Off)?|
This particular episode from Freaknomics Radio is a gem. Steve Levitt and his team featured a host of legends like Ai Weiwei, Rossane Cash, Elvis Costello and Wynton Marsalis, asking them about their early years.
I felt the chills listening to Rosanne talk about her at 12 years old, writing a letter to her father, Johnny Cash, while he was on the road. Her mother was worried about Rosanne following in the footsteps of her father.
Johnny wrote back. He said to his daughter, “I see that that you see the way I see.” Although she was conflicted as she witnessed her father go downhill due to the influences of drugs and alcohol, his words meant the world to her.
Another highlight for me was listening to Dean Simonton’s (big fan of his work) view on the importance of diversifying experiences.“What “diversifying experiences” means is you’re exposed to one or more events, in childhood or adolescence, that puts you on a different track from everybody else.
So instead of being raised just like all the other kids on your block in a very conventional fashion, you all of a sudden find yourself different. You see yourself as different. You have different goals. And these diversifying experiences can take a lot of different forms, and often you look at the lives of a lot of creative geniuses and you see more than one of them operating.”
This episode goes further to talk about a particular backfire effect: play and creativity can be significantly undermined when you reward people for their behind.
Reviewing 128 studies on the effects of rewards Deci et al. (1999, p. 658) concluded that:“Tangible rewards tend to have a substantially negative effect on intrinsic motivation (…) Even when tangible rewards are offered as indicators of good performance, they typically decrease intrinsic motivation for interesting activities.”
From My Desk, Full Circles (Archive): Here’s One Mental Model to Change Your Life: Press Play
When your life feels like is on pause, press play.
Play, do something fun, get down on the floor with a baby. Go to the beach, strum that guitar, sing in the bathroom, or go tickle your partner.
🎧 Listen: Damon Albarn, Lonely Press Play
Lead singer of British band, Blur and the main architect of Gorlliaz, Damon Albarn is someone I highly regard in his song craft. His ability to bring people together in various projects is pretty amazing.
Here’s a song from his solo album Everyday Robots.⏸ Words Worth Contemplating:
“We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.”
~ George Bernard Shaw
Reflection
What is one thing you can do this weekend that is playful?
Announcements
3 more weeks left to join the 13th cohort of Reigniting Clinical Supervision (RCS).
Are you a clinical supervisor?
If so, the online course Reigniting Clinical Supervision (RCS) that has been going on for more than 4 years is about to begin it’s next cohort.
Start Date: 2nd of Jan 2023, Mon.
Registration Closes: 30th of Dec 2023, Fri.
RCS is specifically designed to help you raise the bar of in supervision, and become more effectual with therapists, so that your positive impact promotes therapist’s development, and ultimately impact their clients.
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And if you are residing in a country where your currency is at a significant disadvantage, please drop me an email. If you are interested, I wanna help.
I’ve addressed the issues of clinical supervision in various places. For example:
Clinical Supervision at the Crossroads (An interview on Psychotherapy.net)
Frontiers Friday #30, #31, and #32 on the research findings of clinical supervision.
BIG HUGS TO NEW PEOPLE WHO ARE AT THEIR FRONTIER!
If you've just joined us, I'm glad you can join us at the "bleeding edge." Feel free to check out the back catalogue of Frontiers of Psychotherapists Development (FPD). You might also want to go into specific topics in the FPD Archives like
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In case you missed it, see the most recent missives
Devotion to the Craft (6 Parts)
Caring for People in Organisations (3 Parts)
Clinical Supervision (3 Parts)
Feedback Informed Treatment (4 Parts)
Unintended Consequences (2 Parts)
Deep Learner (4 Parts)
Going Further with Deep Learner and The Use of Obsidian (6 Parts)
See What You Hear, Hear What You See (4 Parts)
Trauma (3 Parts)
Deliberate Practice (5 Parts)
Empathy (6 Parts)
Therapist Effects (2 Parts)
Client Point of View (4 Parts)
Tech Tools for Therapists (4 Parts)
Emotions (6 Parts)
Sensitivity (3 Parts)
Alliance (6 Parts)
Existence (6 Parts)
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Daryl Chow Ph.D. is the author of The First Kiss, co-author of Better Results, and The Write to Recovery, Creating Impact, and the forthcoming book The Field Guide to Better Results.
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p/s: Big thanks to David Prescott and his team at Safer Society Continuing Education Center for the invitation to speak at their webinar series.