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30 Days to a better man<br />
4. Social Play. Social play encompasses a wide variety of forms, from<br />
roughhousing with other guys, to flirting with the opposite sex. Dr.<br />
Brown argues that “the basis of human trust is established through<br />
play signals.” If you’ve ever bonded with a friend by wrestling, or felt<br />
a sense of belonging after playing a game of ultimate frisbee, you<br />
understand how this works.<br />
5. Imaginative and Pretend Play. This is the kind of play that comes<br />
easiest to kids and hardest to adults. We lose a lot of our capacity for<br />
imagination as we age. But if you’ve ever gone paintballing, dressed up<br />
for an adult Halloween party, or wholly let go of your adult cynicism<br />
at Disneyworld, you know that we still have some capacity for it.<br />
6. Storytelling/Narrative Play. Storytelling is not something we ordinarily<br />
think of as play. But as the Institute for Play argues, “It is in<br />
[our] capacity to produce a sense of timelessness, pleasure and the<br />
altered state of vicarious involvement that identifies narrative and storytelling<br />
with states of play.”<br />
7. Transformative/Integrative and Creative Play. Sometimes we can<br />
use our play to create new things and foster ideas. You can brainstorm<br />
crazy ideas for an invention, jam out on your guitar as you think of new<br />
songs to write, or make a funny video of your cat to post on YouTube.<br />
Today’s Task:<br />
Play!<br />
While play may seem like a silly frivolity, it’s actually an essential part of<br />
our health and well-being. Manning up doesn’t mean turning into a robotic<br />
stiff. You should also maintain some of your boyish spirit. You need to make<br />
room in your life for things that you don’t have to do, but that you simply<br />
do because it gives you pleasure. So today you have to spend at least 30<br />
minutes in pure play.<br />
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