Life Kit - How to bring more play into your life

Episode Date: July 7, 2025

Play isn't just for kids. Research shows it can help you adapt to difficult circumstances, collaborate better and problem-solve. In this episode, play researchers and enthusiasts share the benefits of playtime at any age and how you can bring more play into your life. This episode originally published July 27, 2023.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

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and her mom would tell her, go outside and play, she knew what that meant. Play for us was going outside, climbing trees. It was making mud pies. It was, we used to like, reenact a lot of like current events. Like the Olympics, the 1996 Olympics I believe.

The 1996 Olympics were an iconic moment for young girls. The dream team for us was made up of gymnasts. Dominique Mochiano, Kari Strug. We little ones were obsessed. We'd set up this little bench, and I'd run and I'd jump over it like it's a vault. And it's literally just like a sitting bench. So just use our imagination, and it was fun.

It really felt, I mean, of course it wasn't real, but it just, it felt, I mean of course it wasn't real, but it just it felt like I was somebody. Like a lot of kids, Whitney was fluent in play. You probably have an idea of what play is, but here's a definition I think really rings true. I define play as any joyful act where you forget about time. It's where you're like fully immersed in the moment. It's when you're your you-est you. That's Jeff Harry. He's a play coach.

Companies hire him to get their employees to play more. I like to say I make work suck less because work sucks right now and it really doesn't have to. And he says play looks different depending on who you are. It could be whitewater rafting or pickleball. It could be making a podcast. It could be whitewater rafting or pickleball. It could be making a podcast. It could be cooking. As adults, we often stop playing.

Sometimes we even forget how to do it. Dr. Stuart Brown, a play researcher and physician psychiatrist by training, says that is a problem because play is a central part of our existence. It's as basic as sleep and nutrition. It just doesn't necessarily produce the same outcome as hunger or fatigue. But the need to play is there in all of us,

and we all have deficits when we don't experience it sufficiently. On this episode of Life Kit, why we should play as adults and how to do it. We'll help you figure out what feels like play to you using the concept of play personalities and how to work it into your life, even if you don't have, you're not alone. Maybe you want to feel more in control of your emotions, or you're looking to reclaim

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Pop music. Prestige dramas. Netflix slop. That's 15 years of buzzy pop culture chit chat, and here's to many more with you along for the ride. Listen to Pop Culture Happy Hour on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. Before we get into the how of play, let's talk about the why. First off, you should know that humans are not the only animals that play.

Obviously, domesticated animals like dogs and cats do it, but so do bears and leopards and bison and ravens and dolphins, and the list goes on. And from an evolutionary perspective, play might not make sense at first. It often seems to have no purpose, and it can come at a cost. It uses up energy, and it can even be dangerous. But animal play scholars and biologists argue that play does serve a number of purposes, that it can help us adapt to difficult circumstances,

to practice skills that we need to survive, to problem solve and to collaborate. Stuart Brown, whose voice you heard just before the break, says there's a lot of research on how animals play and also on how humans play when we're kids. But there aren't as many studies on play in adult humans, for now at least. We have learned a lot though from watching other social animals. For example, there's research on rats, who are highly playful creatures. The researcher prevented them from playing,

and then after, watched them run a maze and also socialize with other rats. The play deficient rats have the inability to socialize as well as those who have played. So the play itself is seen as a necessity for rat health and rat pack socialization. He says the same seems to be true for humans and other social animals. As you can see, there are a lot of reasons you might want to incorporate more play into your life. Also, come on, feels good, right? So let's move on to the how portion of this episode

and get back to Whitney Bae, our make-believe Olympic gymnast. Classic story, she grew up and she learned from the world that her playfulness was inappropriate. Whitney studied engineering in college and when she graduated, she went to work for an engineering firm in Seoul. They were like kind of pushing me, hey you need to be more serious. Like don't be so funny goofy. Like this is a serious workplace. Be more serious. So you would get that feedback like at the office? All the time, every day. My boss would be like, you're laughing too loud. And I was

like, it's funny, I can't help it. Or they'd be like, oh, your clothes are too bright, you know, these kinds of things. And I was like, I feel like I'm losing myself. Whitney's talking about a concept that psychologists call the inner child. There is an aspect of you that Knows what you want that is always known what you want your your kid self Knows what makes you happier kid self knows what makes you fulfilled and satisfied So take away one figure out your play style by getting in touch with your inner child. Let's start with a question that Jeff shared. What were your favorite ways to play as a kid?

Were you super into Legos or Erector sets? Finger painting? Make believe? Catching fireflies? Seeing how far you could catapult yourself off the swing set? For me it was Barbie's. Hello, Barbie. Let's go for a drive. I love to dress them up in the coolest fashions

and also create storylines for them. They'd be in love triangles filled with passion and betrayal. Tonight's the school dance. Gotta look great. OK, so then you're going to think about what kind of play that is. What's at the center of it?

One framework that can help you is called play personalities. Stuart Brown lays these out in his book. In his decades as a psychiatrist, he would ask patients about their early experiences with play. He and his colleagues would review the notes and they noticed some archetypes. So that there is a kind of a play fingerprint that I would call the play personality that emerges. It's not scientific. This is not something that we're measuring with a series of neurotransmitters, but it's a clustering of what really gives you a sense of joy and engagement and sustained motivation.

Here are a few examples, and you can be more than one of these. There's the joker who loves to laugh and make other people laugh, whether that's through practical jokes, wordplay, physical comedy. There's the artist creator. The point for this person is to make something. Could be something beautiful,

something functional, something goofy. As Barbie's personal stylist, my inner child definitely fell into this category. You've got the kinnisthe, who finds joy in movement. You know, swimming, running, stretching. You've got the director. They love to call the shots to play in the parties. One of the people that we picked out that's a celebrity director is Oprah. Also, the storyteller.

Hi. Hello. Those relational dramas between my Barbies, classic storyteller behavior. Once you have a sense of your play personality as a kid, you can start to think of ways you might like to play now. For my artist creator side, I put together a gallery wall of art behind my couch. For the storyteller, I watch shows with storylines

filled with love and betrayal, like Grey's Anatomy. Another way to find out what kind of play is for you is to listen to the whispers, and this is takeaway two. Jeff Harry says, think for a moment about what we started doing when we were stuck at home during the pandemic with nothing to do. We picked up hobbies, baking sourdough bread,

doing embroidery, woodworking, and that was in part because we were bored. hobbies, baking sourdough bread, doing embroidery, woodworking. And that was in part because we were bored. His challenge for you? For five or ten minutes a day, put down your phone and your laptop and do nothing. When you get bored, all of a sudden that inner child starts to whisper all these nerve-sided ideas, these ideas that make you nervous and excited, you know, ideas like, hey, you know, why don't you start writing that book or that blog post? Why don't you make a video on TikTok?

Whitney heard the whispers when she was working at that engineering job in Seoul. They were telling her to travel and to start her own YouTube channel. Hi everyone, it's me, Whitney. Hi everyone. Good morning! And those videos got a lot of good feedback and so I just like kept going. On to the next adventure! She started doing improv in Korea and then in 2019 she moved to New York to pursue a career in comedy. And she loves it. So like I'm on the stage and someone sets me up to be a rat that can do karate.

So I'm on the stage and I'm doing karate as a rat. Just like, very imaginative, just things I would probably never really do on my own. So yeah, I find like now I go in these wacky worlds and I just follow the fun. Sometimes smaller, less world-shifting opportunities for play will present themselves. I was at this event one time and I was deciding what to do. Did I want to drink? Did I want to go to another panel? Was I ready to leave?

And then I saw that someone was selling coconuts. They'd chop off the top and stick a straw in. And I was like, that. That's what I want. So I got one. I told Jeff this story. I love that story so much because what you did in the moment, you're like, what will bring me joy right now?

And you just walked on over to that. But then I'm walking around, happy as a coconut, and people started talking to me. One woman with the cool silver boots complimented my drink. We chatted and exchanged info. And she even held my coconut when I went to the bathroom. And that's the thing, doing what's calling you in a given moment

can lead to connection because people think, ooh. She looks so happy. I wanna be around that type of energy. So the advice here, do the things that you find interesting and watch what adventure shows up. Okay, so we're listening to our inner child. We're following the whispers. We're starting to play. At this point, we may hear from our inner critic.

Take away three, talk to it. Jeff Harry says your inner critic is that voice inside you telling you why you shouldn't do that thing and saying that you look ridiculous when you play. You're like feeling crappy or binge watching Netflix. You got popcorn like on, you're just dribbling down, and you're just like, oh, I'm the worst person in the world. And then you were like, oh my goodness, there's my inner critic. One exercise that can help,

write down what your inner critic is saying, or visualize what it looks like and sounds like. Does it sound like that bully from third grade? Like, who's your inner critic is saying, or visualize what it looks like and sounds like. Does it sound like that bully from third grade? Like, who's that inner critic? So get a visual and then name it, you know? And mine is Gargamel from Smurfs. Gargamel would always love to suck all the joy and play out of everything, right? And literally when Gargamel shows up, I write down what it's saying. And then once you write the insults down, cross them out and write the opposite. So it's like, I'm never going to be enough. And then I write, you are going to be enough.

Oh, I'm never going to be successful. Actually, you're already successful, and you're going to even be more successful. And you cross those out and put the positive of that, and you start reading those back to yourself. And this is a positive psychology technique. It's just just pattern recognition in many ways. You can do this in the middle of play. Your inner critic pops up and says, this is such a waste of time and you're like, okay thank you inner critic, I appreciate you but I'm playing with my inner child right now and actually this is a great

use of my time. And actually, this is a great use of my time. Okay, takeaway four, liberate yourself. Stuart Brown poses a question in his book. When have you felt free to do and be what you choose? Was there a moment? Was there a circumstance? Was there a situation that allowed you to really feel like you were yourself, whether you were four years old or 40. Why are we talking about freedom? Because play and freedom are interwoven. When you're doing something simply for the end result,

like to achieve, you lose a part of the joy of being alive. It's easy to lose a sense of an experience which is in itself wondrous by demanding that the experience produce outcome. When you're playing and you're not so attached to the outcome, that gives you the freedom to wonder, to be in awe, to learn for the sake of learning. So in addition to that question above about when you felt free, also ask yourself what stands in the way of you feeling free now? Is your environment

unsafe? Is your job constantly in jeopardy? Is your partner always critical of you? That is all legitimate. And for many, many people living in a violent neighborhood, being impoverished, having physical illness. This is not to make life just fun and games and play. It's not. Life is challenging for all of us. But the play nature that we have usually allows us to find within our lives, even in very difficult lives, moments of joyfulness. And that's Takeaway 5, Find Your Moments. Look, I get it. You may feel like you barely have time in the day to sit down, let alone play. But playtime doesn't have to mean spending hours every day making sandcastles.

Though, I'm kind kinda into that idea. You can inject play throughout the day. Whitney Bay was at a restaurant with her parents this one time. And my rule is, at a restaurant, everybody puts away their phones. She taught them how to play this game, where the first person says who they are,

the second person says where they are, and the third person says what they're doing. Like if I say, oh, we are farmers, then you have to say where we are. And so my mom would be thinking like, okay, I'm a farmer, where am I? And just kind of using her imagination. We are farmers and we are at Walmart.

You could say anything. And then maybe the third person is like, okay, we're farmers at Walmart and we are shopping for bikinis. And you do a little scene. I could be like, hey, Farmer Joe, that's a nice hot pink bikini you got on. And so on.

And it was only like 10 minutes and our food came out and that was the end of that, but to this day we still talk about that. We're like, well, remember when my dad did this and my mom did that, like we still talk about that fun moment that we had. You can also find moments of play by just letting yourself be playful even for 30 seconds.

Pet a puppy on the street with permission. Pick up a pine cone at the park and ask your friend to name it. Watch people flirting on your subway car. Stewart said that on the morning of our interview, he walked out of his house to get his copy of the New York Times. And there on the step in front of me was a little Oregon Junko. And that little Oregon Junko was looking up at me and jumping up and down and jumping up and down. And I thought, that little bird is really glad to be alive. Okay, so am I. I'm an old guy, but I'm still glad to be alive. Okay, so am I. I'm an old guy, but I'm still glad to be alive. So I got from the immediate surroundings a sense from nature that, you know, at least that moment was a

joyful one. Okay, it's time for a recap. Figure out your play style or personality. You can start by asking, how did I like to play as a kid? And how can I incorporate that form of play into my life now? Also, follow the whispers. Whether you're at a job you hate or at an event unsure of what to do next, listen to that voice that's saying, go get a coconut. Engage with your inner critic, give it a name.

Mine's called Doreen. She is the worst. And when she starts yapping and telling me that I look ridiculous, I tell her she's wrong. Think about what makes you feel free. And by that we mean, think of a time when you felt free to do and be as you choose. What stands in the way of that now?

Lastly, find moments of play whenever you can. Sorry, I was just thinking of something else silly that I did this morning, but it's too silly to tell you. Good for you. But don't hesitate to share it. Okay, so like, I don't know if you'll know this song. I think it's like a song from the 80s, but it's like, we got the beat.

You know that one? No, I don't, but I'm a couple of generations older than you. I got food groceries delivered and I got beats. And so, as soon as I took out the bag of beats, I just started singing, we got the beats. And I was alone in my house. But I was like, we got the beads. We got the beads.

Well, you felt better when you sung it after you were singing it. I really did. See, that's part of the magic of play itself. All of a sudden you feel better. Why? Why does play do that? Why do we have that in us? And since it's in us, why don't we use it more?

Good question. For more Life Kit, check out our other episodes. We've got one on rest as a form of resistance, and another on the power of fun. You can find those at npr.org slash Life kit. And if you love life kit and you just cannot get enough, subscribe to our newsletter at npr.org slash life kit newsletter. This episode of life kit was produced by Margaret Serino. Our visuals editor is back Harlan and our digital editor is Malika Grebe.

Megan Cain is our senior supervising editor and Beth Donovan is our executive producer. Our production team also includes Andy Tagel, Claire Marie Schneider and Sylvie Douglas. Engineering support comes from Simon Laszlo Jansen. I'm Ariel Sagara. Thanks for listening. You're listening to NPR because you're curious. You want to know what the world is like beyond the surface. NPR feeds that curiosity with stories from real people with real experiences and all the perspectives that come with them. It's our right to be curious and our prerogative to listen. So keep your curiosity alive. Hear the bigger picture every day on NPR. stories you need to know in just five minutes, every hour of every day. Listen now to the NPR News Now podcast.