Curious and Playful

Barbara Fredrickson’s article and subsequent work are too big and important for just one post (or one small mention in a book on Choosing Hope).  In the previous post, I discussed the “Broaden and Build” model she proposed as a way to study, analyze and understand the positive emotions.  Her work was another important foundation stone in the edifice that has become positive psychology.

In her article, she goes beyond a theoretical framework and describes the benefits of pursuing the positive emotions with discipline and vigor.  She examines four “emotion families” and in the course of those discussions identifies a number of desirable benefits.

Take, for example, “play.”  Here you can see a pose we witness dozens of times every day at our house.  This is the “invitation to play” stance that our puppy, Bella, adopts to entice us into games of fetch, tug of war, tag, keep away or any other playful activity she can create.  Play is one element, according to Fredrickson, of the experience of joy.  The desire to play is hard-wired into all thinking creatures and promotes all manner of physical, emotional and spiritual well-being.  In addition, play is practice for the full and creative life we experience when we are at our best.

I would recommend the book, Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul.  Stuart Brown, M. D. (with Christopher Vaughan) discusses the nature of play, why we play, and how to live the playful life.  Early in the book he writes,

“Of all the animal species, humans are the biggest players of all.  We are built to play and built through play.  When we play, we are engaged in the purest expression of our humanity, the truest expression of our individuality.  Is it any wonder that often the times we feel most alive, those that make up our best memories, are moments of play?” (Page 5).

We will come back to Brown’s book and insights in some future posts.  Know this, however.  When you are stuck, down, frustrated or bored, you have the permission of serious psychological researchers to go out and play.

Fredrickson discusses the emotion family she calls “interest.”  When we engage with the unknown, the intriguing, the novel and the mysterious, we feel interest.  This discussion engages me (you might say that I’m interested in it), because one of my signature strengths is curiosity.  Curiosity is a member of and perhaps the senior member of the Interest family.  

If you are a curious person, or would like to become more curious, then you’ll want to get to know the work of Todd Kashdan.  I just finished Kashdan’s book, called Curious: Discover the Missing Ingredient to a Fulfilling Life.  Kashdan is relentlessly curious about curiosity.  You can make his acquaintance on YouTube and see him sport the fruits of his other passion, weightlifting (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPpVxZRqRc8).  Kashdan proposes that curiosity is “the central ingredient to creating a fulfilling life.”  We can debate that as we continue this conversation.  

In any event, he notes that “being curious is about how we relate to our thoughts and feelings.”  It is, he asserts, about “how we pay attention to what is happening in the present” (page 3).

Spend some time today cultivating these two attitudes that lead to actions: play and curiosity.  Don’t judge your thoughts and feelings during these times.  Don’t fret about how you could be using the time for something more productive.  Just experiment a bit today (and maybe tomorrow and the next day).  Then you might report in the “Comments” section about the results of these experiments.