Time to play

When you find yourself stuck, what’s your go-to move?

Grit your teeth?

Push harder?

Start blaming?

Give up altogether?

I do all these things (and more).

But what if we saw being stuck as a time to play?

I don’t mean time to play tag or twister or to get out the trumpet.

I mean time to bring a playful attitude to being stuck.

What if instead of shame and blame, curiosity and creativity were the flavours that we brought to stuckness?

Of course, this all depends on not feeling like an idiot for getting stuck in the first place.

Instead of “arrrgh, no!” it calls for “ah, interesting!”

Is that too much of a leap?

It’s a tough one I know, seeing things that hurt as opportunities to be explored rather than problems to be solved.

It sounds a bit like positive thinking.

And what good is that in the face of things that hurt or scare us?

But maybe this goes deeper than positive thinking.

It could be an invitation to fundamentally change the way you think and feel about things.

When that happens it’s awesome.

You feel a sense of relief and an opening up of new possibilities.

But even if that’s true, how the heck do you do it?

Honestly, I’m not sure.

I suspect that’s part of the deal with exercises like meditation.

All those slightly annoying things that happen, like your mind wandering all over the place, are opportunities to move from “arrgh, no” to “ah, interesting”.

This stuff happens so often that you get into the swing of being playful with all the little things that don’t go quite the way you want them to.

And in time you discover how to do this with big things too.

Want to find out more? Feel free to send me an email or schedule a free conversation about mindfulness coaching.