As business people, we struggle with balancing our work and life schedules and how to deal with the stress of the day. The answer may be to add a little play time into our day. Our change guru, David Peck has five tips on how to add that play time and how to wonder more.
As a magician I am consistently reminded of how unwilling we are to wonder. The solution and the answer are pressing down upon us. So as a magician I would take a coin and vanish it and for a brief second folks would stay in that AHA moment. And then almost immediately, as if we had turned a sharp corner in the road their eyes would start looking for the coin. Is it in my pocket? Is it up my sleeve? Is it in my other hand? They default to a mechanistic interpretation. It must be wires. It must be mirrors. Maybe it's the memory retardant drugs. Who knows, but there must be a solution. What I'm suggesting is that we have to stay with those moments of wonder a little longer. I think it's where true discovery takes place. Within education, philosophy, science, and relationships; meaningful life changing discovery takes place in those open moments. Here are 5 ways we can learn to linger longer.
One: Spend more time in the moment. Allow where you at to meet you where you're going to. Does that make any sense? Let whatever it is you're doing sink in.
Two: Rest. Take the time to sit back and relax, throughout your day, on the weekend, in the evenings.
Three: Shut down your BB at a reasonable time each evening and get your laptop off the kitchen table and into your briefcase or office.
Four: Spend some time playing each and every day. With your kids, online, on the golf course, reading something that is fun, or maybe even with your partner. Children aren't the only ones who need the relational benefit that comes from play. Somewhere along the line we adults have forgotten that.
Five: Manage your own expectations. It's tough in a type A, give it your all, self obsessed culture to not except too much of ourselves. We need to reach out beyond our grasp and yet know that we all have to sit back and say that's beyond my scope. Rest. Relax. Rejuvenate. And wonder more. See where it leads you.