#26 Sid Shares

Good morning,

A very Happy August to you and yours. I hope you had a wonderful July and you got to see some much needed sunshine. It sure does make a difference!

Here is my August monthly dose of “Sid Shares.” A list of what I’m enjoying and exploring.

The above pic is of Florence (light green dress), me, Beatrice (red dress) and Freddie (right) helping me in the office. The energy my wonderful children bring to everything is amazing. And the more I embrace their energy, creativity and love the greater my life becomes.

With this in mind I'm dedicating August to 'Play' - an activity, or activities done for enjoyment. I think that as adults we're pretty rubbish about continuing to embrace, enjoy and participate in play. In Sid Shares #21 I mentioned an amazing TED talk by Shonda Rhimes. Her great talk was about saying 'yes' to everything, and how she said yes to her daughters when they asked her to play with them. It was a real life changing experience for her and her family. That talk and being with my children really got me thinking about 'play' and what it means to me as a Dad, an adult (I use that term loosely as I'm in no way grown up) and being a human being.

Play for children is so important. It allows them to use their innate creativity to develop imagination, dexterity, thinking, emotional strength and aids healthy brain development. It is through play that children engage, interact with and make sense of the world around them. But play is so important for us all. Sadly, as we grow up and accumulate commitments we lose many of the attributes that play gave us.

We often view play as being something that we only do as children. And we often think of it as childish. But why?

This brilliant Ted talk on The decline of play by Peter Gray is a great insight into its importance. And helps explain how play is natures way for mammals to acquire skills to develop successfully into adults.

So, how do we continue to develop as people and not lose the fun, joy and excitement that play brought us?

Adult play is our chance to participate in an unstructured fun experience. When was the last time you had a pillow fight? Or, built a sandcastle because you can? Or, ran barefoot in the rain? Regular fun and laughter through play is proven to improve our mood making us feel relaxed, upbeat and positive. Which can reduce everyday stress levels.Taking part in regular play activity is important for our emotional, physical and spiritual development (known modernly as wellbeing).

Studies have shown that being physically active and regularly solving puzzles may help postpone dementia later on in life. As well as physical wellbeing we should concentrate on regularly stimulating our brains through play - all the muscles in the body need to be kept active! Playing board games, exercising, solving a crossword or completing a Sudoku can also achieve this.

So let's dedicate August to play and take the opportunity to play more.

This quote is from the amazing Heraclitus, “Time is a game played beautifully by children.” Oh how true is that!

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With love, kindness and joy xxx