"Go Play!"

"Go play!" Remember your mother yelling that at you?

Today we are so busy, we say we don't have time to play. There's too much work to be done. Plus now we are anxious about this economy. Just adding to the stress.

This past week I was truly concerned about one client whose stress level is at an all-time high. It's evident in his face, his voice, the way he walks. It's affecting his relationships. While some stress is warranted, he is creating a lot of the stress for himself.

I asked him what he does to unwind. His answer was "pretty much nothing."

He is raising risks of stress-related illnesses such as high blood pressure or a heart attack. But he also is possibly damaging his brain--his cognitive abilities.

Science Says . . .

Roderick Gilkey and Clint Kilts at Emory wrote about how we need to exercise our brain, based on results of the latest in neuroscience research. Their article in Harvard Business Review (11/07) titled "Cognitive Fitness" cites play as a key way to exercise your brain.

Gilkey and Kilts write: "In adult life, play engages the prefrontal cortex, . . . nourishing our highest-level cognitive functions-those related to incentive and reward processing, goal and skill representation, mental imagery, self-knowledge, and memory, just to name a few. Play, therefore, improves your ability to reason and understand the world."

Furthermore, the article says, if play is stifled, "brainpower may actually decrease as it does in children with failure-to-thrive syndrome, a condition created by experientially deprived or abusive environments."

A Play Guide

How do we find time for play in this crazy world? Here's an exercise I found years ago..

Create a table with four columns and 10 rows. Label the table: Ways I Have Fun.

The first column is "2-5 minutes."
The second column is "5-30 minutes."
The third column is "30 minutes to a half day."
The fourth column is "a half day or more."

Here comes the work. Get yourself a cup of coffee; sit in a comfortable, quiet place; and challenge yourself to come up with examples of what play means to you in each column. Aim for at least five options in each column.

Post this near your work space, on your bathroom mirror, anywhere that you will be reminded that you need to play.

Start off small-2-5 minutes of play a day during the work week. Maybe on the weekend you can do a half-hour of something that is play. I mean PLAY, too. Just because you don't mind raking leaves doesn't mean that is play.

If you exercise regularly, just think about this as another form of exercise-this one for your brain.

If you want to learn more about the amazing things neuroscience research is learning about our brains and how we can use that information, check out "Get Out of Your Own Way: The 5 Keys to Surpassing Everyone's Expectations" by Robert K. Cooper.