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# 2017-10-29 - Becoming Playful by Bernard De Koven | |
Heart | |
It might be too hard, asking too much. Telling your self to be | |
playful might be like telling your self to be happy. Granted, it'd be | |
great if you were happy. Or even just more playful. But if you don't | |
think you're either, telling your self to be happy or playful isn't | |
going to make it happen. In fact, it's likely to make you depressed, | |
frustrated, [and] angry at your self for being someone you just don't | |
want to be. | |
That's what worries me about this whole idea of telling your self to | |
be playful when you think you're not. I mean, who's telling whom? Is | |
the self that's telling you to change such an expert in playfulness | |
that it can change you? I don't think so. I think that particular | |
self is anything but playful. That's the very self that gets so | |
serious, so humorless, [and] so disparaging. And the self it's | |
talking to is probably the one that feels bad about itself, feels | |
that there's something wrong with it, something that needs to be, | |
heaven forfend, changed. | |
It's a good idea to be more playful. Just like it's a good idea to be | |
happier. But to get there, you need to stop telling your self to be | |
different. | |
Try this, instead. Try letting your self tell you. Ask it to let you | |
know when it's feeling happy or playful. In fact, I'd suggest an even | |
simpler question. Ask it to tell you when it's having fun. | |
Fun, like I say somewhere later on, is easy. Playful, happy, maybe | |
not so much. But fun? You can have fun watching television. OK, maybe | |
not like deep fun. But fun, nevertheless. You can have fun reading, | |
browsing, searching for something on the computer. You can have fun | |
eating. Chewing gum. Knitting. Taking a walk. Tasting. Feeling. | |
Smelling. Listening. Touching. You can have fun watching someone else | |
have fun. | |
After a while, after you've spent enough time listening to your self | |
talk about all the fun you're having, you can start asking your self | |
to tell you when you're feeling playful or even happy. It's easier | |
for your self now because you've been talking so much about the fun | |
you're having, and usually when you're having fun, that's what you're | |
feeling - happy, playful even. Maybe not deeply happy or profoundly | |
playful, but, you know, you're having fun, and, well, that's what | |
makes you happy, makes you want to play, makes you even want to get | |
other people and beings and things to play with you. | |
And then, see, you've become the playful person you always were, but | |
never thought you were enough, never noticed, never allowed your self | |
to believe in. And so your life starts feeling even more fun, and you | |
start feeling even happier, being even more playful. Just like that. | |
From: A Playful Path by Bernard De Koven | |
tags: book,non-fiction,self-help | |
# Tags | |
book | |
non-fiction | |
self-help |