Hello Everybody welcome!

I hope you’re getting more and more into this and getting more courageous 🙂

By the way the term courage comes from the French/Latin word who’s root means heart. Courageous is basically being heartful. Full of heart. Playfulness is ALL about being full of heart.

What does this mean though: “doing things from the heart?” How to open our heart?
We can open up our chest area with all sorts of exercises and for sure they can help but from the heart is performing actions with love, with kindness and for the fun and pure joy of it. Performing actions from the heart and connecting with others will in turn open our hearts even more.

This week we are going to go into Random Acts of Playfulness. This is quite similar to Random acts of kindness. Doing small things without expecting anything in return, like leaving a paid coffee for someone else, volunteering to do something just to help, cleaning up your area, letting someone go in front of you in a queue, stopping what we’re doing and helping someone we see is struggling.
Random acts of playfulness are somehow a next step on.

Why? Because, it feels good and is one of the best ways of attracting more fun into our lives.

There could be more thought of fun into our actions, a little more like we’re preparing a surprise for someone. A nice surprise.

They could also just be random things in your neighbour hood to make others laugh. Some of these are things you can do on your own others we interact/play with others.

Here are a few examples:

• Saying goodmorning to strangers we meet with a little more feeling. Perhaps even singing goodmorning to people we know.
• You know those silly cat YouTube videos you ignore when people send them to you? Watch them.
• Carry bubbles with you. As Mathias mentioned in our conversation in the first week bubbles can prove surprising great results.
  Waiting in a queue somewhere? Waiting at the bus stop? Waiting to cross the street? Break out some bubbles to pass the time and inject a soapy dose of silliness into a stranger’s day.
• Leave painted rocks in unexpected locations. Turn frowns upside down by painting cheerful faces on rocks and “hiding” them in unexpected places around your neighborhood.
• Invite a few fun friends over for a “play date.” Get some kids games, art supplies, even pieces of costumes, and just hang out and have fun. Make the goal to be to laugh as much as possible.

• Play some physical games with some friends too please check out the web site: DEEP FUN that has an incredible assortment of games left to us by the late and great Bernard de Koven.

• I particularly love the Danish Clapping Game

• Take a walk or day trip without any plans or route. To make it extra playful, toss a coin to decide on the direction you’ll start out in. Then just go wherever you are drawn. Let your playfulness lead the way.
• Dance. On your own, with friends, with strangers, but just dance. Any style, any place. You can’t dance while also being stressed and worried!
• Give a high five—or five! It’s impossible not to feel energized after a high five. Use this week as an excuse to give out as many high fives as possible, to strangers and friends alike. High fives spark laughter. High fives can be silly and creative depending on how far you let your imagination travel. Next time you plan to give a high five, get creative! Do an around-the-back high five; try it while jumping in the air, or surprise a friend with confetti in your hand. The ensuing laughter will be priceless! High fives encourage play. What may start out as a high five could potentially end up in a simple game of tag or an all-out tickle war! Remember high fives can happen anytime and anywhere, just like play!
• Do art without thought of success. Grab a random stack of magazines and make a collage, without worrying about whether it’s “good.” Finger-paint. If you do art or writing, do a piece in the style of an artist or writer that’s completely different from your normal style. Have fun.
• Draw a hopscotch board on the sidewalk. Turn someone’s routine walk into a hop, skip, and a jump by sketching out a hopscotch board with sidewalk chalk. For extra fun, target a business district to inject some play into the daily grind.
• Learn something new, this could be learning a new recipe, vegan food, make your own bread, learn the names of the trees and plants where you live. Perhaps a new skill, perhaps not playful per se and that’s up to us. Learning another language is also great but perhaps start with just a few words. Learn a sentence in a foreign language, better still learn it from a real life foreigner. If you connect ask about his or her life where they came from.
• If you can’t already juggle try it out, juggling is great to get the brain going. Or hulahooping or both at the same time.
• Learn a poem by heart and perhaps even a joke. Then make a recording of it and send the poem or joke to your friends and family. Do it live too of course.

• Try a dance class, or something new that tickles your fancy with people you don’t know, yet 🙂

This week try and smile as much as possible and remember the exercise I mention in the intro video.

Share your ideas and experiences in the group.

Next week we shall move onto playfulness in your profession. How work and play don’t have to be such separate entities and onto become more playful ourselves. Taking our work and life seriously BUT NOT OURSELVES.

Listen to this great conversation on Playfulness with Kirsten Anderson.

Thank you,
Anthony