1.)  Stop “shoulding” on your play time: Okay–we get it. You’re a grown up and you have real responsibilities and commitments. Guess what…we ALL do. We are not suggesting that you shirk those important tasks or drop the ball on your obligations. We are simply suggesting that you incorporate more minutes of guilt-free play time into your day without dragging yourself down with all of the imagined things that you should be doing instead. In fact, studies have shown that those who regularly incorporate scheduled play time into their daily routines are actually more productive than those who keep their nose to the grind-stone all day, every day.

Stop being a martyr and begin allowing your own emotional health to become a priority in your life. If a task is truly important–it will get done. If you allow yourself time to refresh and reinvigorate with some playtime, it will get done even better. Stop using “busyness” as an excuse because there is always a way to make time for the things that are truly important. Your emotional well being and enjoyment of life are worth at least the level of commitment that you give to your other tasks and responsibilities.

2.)  Adopt PLAY as a way of life: Once we’ve set the intention of adding more playfulness into our days, we need to get serious about acting upon that intention. Usually, we go about living our lives doing all of the things that we need to get done and then…if we have any time or energy left over, we might allow ourselves a little snippet of time to play. Unfortunately, this approach is (as my grandpa used to say) “bass ackwards”. Instead of fitting some playtime in if we have a few extra minutes (because seriously–when is THAT ever the case?), we need to make an effort to schedule our pleasure and give it the same level of importance that we give to our “to do” list.