When it comes to managing our lives, and especially our careers, we can be so terribly, and stiflingly earnest. It’s like it’s this serious weighty problem we have to solve, and that the only way to solve it is to spend all our time making To Do lists and five year plans, and screwing up our foreheads and trying to come up with the most effective, efficient, sensible, pragmatic, responsible life choices. In other words, we feel like we have to be an ‘adult’ – and that this means leaving behind the playful, exploratory, intuitive way we went about our lives as children.
And there’s nothing wrong with being an adult, and with pragmatism and responsibility. The problems arise when this is 100% of our focus and we forget about the importance too of play.
I was working with a coaching client recently who was so bogged-down with the demands of her current role that, when it came to exploring her career change with me, she found it really hard to imagine new possibilities. She wasn’t taking the time to do the coaching assignments I’d set her, partly because she was so busy but mainly because, in her mind, she’d lumped the stuff she was doing with me along with all of the other things on her To Do list. She was unconsciously associating it with “work” – with all of the burden of her day-to-day role – and was therefore avoiding doing it when she had any time free, even though, as she said herself, when she did manage to persuade herself to get to it, she found it really energising. Far from being another strand to the work she now hated, this was actually her route out of it!
What helped this client get unstuck was to start to see what she was doing with me not as work, but as play. At CareerShifters, the organisation I do a lot of work with, we say that “those who travel lightest, travel fastest”. We see on our courses how those who can avoid getting weighed down by the seriousness of their career change, especially the importance of getting it right and doing the sensible thing are able to be much more expansive in their thinking and their ability to take action.
One person I know who takes play really seriously is my friend and colleague Sarah Dawrant, a brilliant career coach who leads CareerShifters’ workshops in London, and who also does leadership training with executive teams. Recently, I noticed that she was organising a big dance event - London’s World Dance Day 2018 - a silent disco where about 100 people are going to be boogie-ing and shimmying through the city covered in glitter! I was curious to see what had led her to organise this as it seemed very different from her normal work as a corporate trainer and coach, so we caught up about it and I asked her some questions about play.
“I think something happens to adults at some point and we become too focused on our very important careers and our very big mortgages that many other things just stop being important.”, she told me. “In the decade that I’ve been coaching, I’ve certainly heard all the reasons in the book as to why looking for joy in your life isn’t appropriate for grown-ups. “It seems rather self-indulgent, doesn’t it?” and “Work’s not suppose to be fun. That’s why they call it work.” As adults, we are so quick to say “No, that wouldn’t pay enough.” “No, I’m not creative.” “No, that’s a waste of my experience.” Without truly answering the question:
“What brings me joy? What makes me feel alive?”
I asked Sarah how she’d answer those questions, and she said:
“Authentically connecting with people, being very playful and rather silly makes me feel alive. For example, I joined a choir for people who don’t really know how to sing and it’s one of my favourite things. It’s not about getting it right; it’s about belting out Oasis and David Bowie tunes at the top of our lungs. I’ve managed to bring these things I love into my work life too. A big part of what I do, both with career changers and with corporate teams, is inviting people to get in touch with what really matters to them - as humans, to have authentic and real conversation and to have a lot of fun. Even with the most senior teams I work with, music is playing, I have them on their feet, laughing and relating in a way that’s very different to what they do normally.”
There are other benefits to taking a playful approach to life and work too…
“What I’ve learned so far from investing so much time promoting London’s Dance Day 2018 is that it’s easy to sell or promote something you are genuinely excited about. So many people have offered to join me, to dance alongside me and to volunteer on the day – and that’s because of the genuine excitement and commitment they pick up from me when I’m talking about the event.”
When we find the activities, Sarah says, that bring us joy, it can give us almost a super-human energy – because it’s coming from our soul. When this translates into work, we can find that rather than draining us, our jobs can actually give us energy.
So how can we become more playful and what if we don’t see ourselves as naturally playful?
“Forget the label, and just do more stuff that makes you smile and feel in flow. I often advise people to check in with their inner 12 year old. I ask “What would she tell you to do?” “What would he say he’s good at?” I believe that up until about the age of 12 we are more joyful and authentic and we actually know ourselves very well. Then we spend our teens trying to be anything-but-ourselves and then our 20s and 30s trying to be what society tells us is respectable and successful. Then by their 30s and 40s, people realise they need coaching to get back to who they were all those years ago!”
What I’ve found with my coaching clients is that once they start re-discovering what brings them joy, they get such a boost – not just for the career change process but sometimes, even, for the day job they’re trying to leave behind. This means that rather than spending their weekends and free time trying to recover, they can spend it taking actions towards their new career and to rediscovering more about what brings them joy, in a beautiful virtuous circle.
“When I was 12,” Sarah says, “I used to put on roller skates, put a cassette in my Walkman (yes, that’s how old I am) and skate around my parents’ basement imagining that I was competing in a glamorous roller-skating dance off. My inner 12 year old thinks this silent disco dance party is going to be brilliant!”
If you would like to go and feel some uninhibited joy and start getting back in touch with your inner 12 year old, go to www.worlddanceday.org and register for the London event this Saturday (21 July.)