NO WORK. ONLY PLAY.
Name the top 3 ways you would spend your day if NO WORK was permitted, only play.
My top 3:
Outside in Sunshine
Good Music
Good Food
*If there was a fourth option, I’d add ‘Good People’. But that’s because I’m an ‘extra’ kind of person, who enjoys life’s extras.
Recently, I was asked to answer this NO WORK, ONLY PLAY question.
When I acknowledged the top 3 things that brought me joy, I was kinda surprised to see how simple they were. I was interested to find that not only could I secure 2 out of 3 nearly anywhere. At any time. I was also conflicted about why I wasn’t allowing myself to receive them more often, let alone in any given moment.
Noticing how easy it was to receive what felt playful, joyful, clear & fulfilling, revealed how previously difficult obtaining gratifying experiences had always felt.
Observing play, I got the chance to notice what it is for me. Pleasure. Because I associate play with pleasure.
Conversely, in the analysis of ‘play’, I got the chance to notice its opposite. I got to reflect on ‘difficulty’ to assess why I had never noticed how easy it was to please myself. I got the opportunity to examine why obtaining contentment notoriously felt like a specifically challenging thing for Me to do.
In an examination of challenges with pleasure, I realized how difficult things seem until we recognize their simplicity. Not simple in the sense that everything that brings us peace is easy to obtain. Rather, how simplistic things become once we start asking & answering questions about ourselves in the correct context. Honestly.
Take this ask for instance. It’s not a rocket science question. Yet, the answer was surprising & settling to the never-ending doubt within, which makes me feel that not only I am difficult to please, but that I am also difficult to figure out.
The '“I am difficult” mindset discourages consideration of the simplicities in Self-contentment. It perpetuates the idea that not only are you a difficult person to understand. You are also a difficult person to understand how to please.
In the “I am difficult” mindset, self-discovery & self-satisfaction can become laborious. It becomes work. We, & the energy it takes to manage Self, become work.
In the “I am difficult” mindset, life itself can become confusing. Making choices becomes difficult. Being present, creative, happy, nourished, rested, healthy, aroused, curious, peaceful, etc. is grueling & daunting.
In the “I am difficult” mindset, Self-nuance can become something we disregard. The difficulty it takes to understand ourselves can become a practice we resent. Our life can evolve into a project with which we invest a bare minimum of effort, often putting in more work to avoid discernment about it, because of how exhausting facing Us seems.
Self-avoidance disregards personal value for meaningfulness. Meaning gives our life purpose. A lack of purpose breeds a lack of effort. A lack of effort to discern what is meaningful, & therefore gives us purpose, is an action of self-abandonment. Self-abandonment supports perpetuating the vicious cycle of self-avoidance.
When we behave self-avoidant, it can be based on a forgone conclusion of what’s the use. Understanding our happiness, let alone what supports it, as just too much work. Thus, it feels easier to appreciate what we have, take what we can get, & find joy wherever we can vs including into the mix, finding ways to create joy, making space for it, & taking accountability to know what actions sustain it on an optimal, balanced, & fulfilling level.
The issue we have with identifying what brings us joy is living in a mindset that what we need & how we need it is problematic. The problem isn’t me or how I think. It’s not you or how you exercise your intellectual capacity. It’s what we think that impacts our focus.
A self-deprecating inner dialogue can often dispute personal needs & can turn them into:
Neediness
Excess
Unrealistic expectations
Selfishness
Superiority
Negating what is possible for us is the issue. Thinking contemptuously about ourselves is what makes understanding self-pleasure & effectuating it so gosh darn fucking difficult. The belief pleasing ourselves is exhaustingly complex work is what’s challenging, not you.
You are not a difficult person to please. Your standards aren’t too high. Your preferences aren’t excessive. Your life is not destined to be hard.
You’re you & what is for you is yours to first, discern & second, claim. If anyone knows how best to fulfill you, it’s you. But if you don’t know how to please yourself, or find value in the ease of what gives joy, no one & nothing else will either. Choose to embody the love that lives within your body.
whatever you think you are is what you become. When we understand Self as lovable & joyous we perceive love & joy as available. However, when we consider self difficult, we’re going to process information about ourselves through that perspective.
This means that everything -if not most things- about our joy is going to feel like it is a lot of work, hard, or difficult to ascertain or accomplish, as long as WE are a lot of work, hard or difficult to understand & please. And, if that is the circumstance through which we frame life, of course, play or delight becomes an afterthought, obsolete, or at the very least, an exhaustingly futile or purposeless endeavor. When self-perception is low problems with discerning self-pleasure will be high.
Play & its associations, or what it produces, like joy, ease, clarity, fulfillment & love, can feel like the greatest challenge in our life when everything we do, are, or frame our life around becomes a chore. A job. An obligation. Work. Happiness, pleasure, love, creation, & their actualization all become easier when we stop making what they are to us problematic.
When contentment is valued, it is given a chance to be clear & simple that life includes what is intentionally fulfilling! Life becomes less difficult when what brings us joy gets to be understood. Existing becomes more excitingly easeful when it & who we are stops being an impossibly challenging endeavor.
work and play do not have to be mutually exclusive, but it’s your call.
When we don’t know who we are it’s because we don’t know what we want.
When we don’t know what we want, we can become frustrated, confused & unfulfilled in life.
When we become frustrated, confused & unfulfilled in life, we can find living a hopeless, never-ending string of difficult days.
When life feels hopeless or difficult, it can be because we have accepted it as an impossible challenge for us to change it, which is what makes it seem hopeless & difficult.
When life becomes accepted as hopeless & difficult, it’s because we don’t place value in understanding what specifically about our lives could change by including hope & playfulness in it.
When we don’t value understanding what specifically about our lives could change by including hope & playfulness in it, it’s because our frame of thinking prioritizes ALL WORK & NO PLAY.
When our frame of thinking prioritizes ALL WORK & NO PLAY, all challenge & no whimsy, all heavy & no levity, it’s because we relate to Self as hard work, both difficult to figure out & difficult to please.
When we relate to Self as both difficult to figure out & difficult to please, life becomes work with very little space for work WITH play, & even less space to allow for meaningful moments where there is a purpose to NO WORK & ONLY PLAY.
Name the top 3 ways you would spend your day if NO WORK was permitted, ONLY PLAY.
For all those who are also ‘extra’ & enjoy life’s extras, I dare ya to add a fourth.
If it behooves you, a way to expand your nervous system freeze response, which can prevent you from choosing to be visible with other people, is to exercise your difficulties in this area by sharing the top 3-4 ways you ‘play’ with Me or with someone who 1.) you trust & 2.) you believe will appreciate knowing you deeper
Be good to yourself for fucks sake. 💋
With Blessings,
