The challenge this month is to focus on and create time for things that bring us joy. As I was visiting with family this holiday season, we had dinner at a diner that had an arcade in it. After we ate our dinner, we spent time together and I played Dance Dance Revolution in the arcade. If you haven’t played DDR, it is a dance game with a metal pad on the floor. As the music plays, there are arrows that tell you where to tap the pad with your foot. The more you feel the rhythm of the game and make it a dance, the better you do… (at least until the arrows get so fast that you have to hold on to the railing!). Back when we lived outside of the expensive Bay Area, we had more space in our home and we used to have a home version of the game. When I stepped on that video game, I remembered how much I love it. I thoroughly enjoyed the music and the dance, and I decided then and there that I need to find an arcade near us that has it.
In his book Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul (2009), Stuart Brown describes play as something that we enjoy so much that we lose ourselves in it. We lose track of time. We want the play to go on and on. We feel free to experiment. We lose our sense of self-consciousness. For me, DDR is play. Nobody makes me do it, and I don’t want it to end. So my goal this month is to find a DDR machine nearby and make time to play it. (If you like my idea and find me there, please take turns!)
So the question of the week is: What are the things that you enjoy now or have enjoyed in the past so much that you lose track of time and don't want them to end? Talk about it. Journal about it. And make some time in your calendar to do it. Then let me know what you picked!
Bonus: Bringing Baby Home is a great place to make some space in your life to increase positives and learn respectful strategies to deal with the negatives. Join us for a special Valentine’s Bringing Baby Home class in San Jose on February 8-10. Class size is limited to register today!
For more inspiration: See Stuart Brown’s TED talk on play here.
