Play gives us space to practice new life skills

A willingness to dive in. Brainstorm. Brain dump. Not knowing where it will take you – but embracing the process fully. It’s so interesting to me. The inner dialogue when I first sat down. Something like “ugh, I have no idea what to create. Everything I create is the same somehow. It’s been done before. Overdone. Who am I to play with art? Who do I think I am to put pen to paper? It’s not going to be very good. Uncomfortable. I don’t even know where to start.” ………….

and then, you know what? You START.

You begin.

You put the stories aside and show up.

And play.

You make a mess. You make mistakes. You turn a page. Or enter another vignette.

You play.

All that comes next had something come before. And you look at what worked, what didn’t work, and feel into the sparks that light you up and bring you joy. “This seems to be working here….oh, this line feels good. That color combination really works. I like the composition of that one.”

And you stack and layer and make sense of the mess. Learning the grains of truth and wisdom along the way. There is no wisdom gained without first the try – there is no wisdom gained without the mistakes or missteps or opportunities for stretching and growing.

The process is messy and intuitive and brings up so many thoughts and stories.

Like life.

Which is why play is so incredibly important to your health – it gives you the opportunity to practice new patterns and ways of being in a non-threatening or high competition way. It’s just play. But you are training your brain to experiment and try and lean in and test out new dynamics, new stories, new discomforts without much consequence.

Even those considered “artists” feel a sense of “ahhhhhh” when they sit down to a blank page. The difference is, they start. They trust. They begin. They aren’t afraid of messing up or making mistakes. They know that any experience and experiment will feed into their cellular, gutteral wisdom.

And they begin.

What are you waiting for? What life work are you putting on hold? What fear is holding you back? What blank page are you staring at, with stories in your head, waiting to begin?

Lean in. Show up, Messy. Dive in. Begin.

You’ve got this 🙌

xoxo – Jessica 💗