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I LOVE THE 80'S: REMEMBER RECESS?

I'm going to go ahead and date myself here and say I miss the 80's! Gone are the days when I can hop on a bike and head to the Boys and Girls Club after school. There I would squander my days away with Chinese jump rope competitions and tetherball battles (more of a slaughter, Jasmine stopped growing in grade 2). Thinking on it now, I think I just miss being playful!

And while we touched on this back in June’s post in an effort to bring back the idea of a traditional summer vacation, I see no reason to relegate fun to just the summertime. Today I’m taking the seriousness out of life and finding more playtime, in every season, and even in my meditation practice.

The first step to adding more playfulness in life is to gamify everything. Here's an example. I was at the grocery store last week and pretended to be on a game show. You may have seen a show like this, but it's where the contestant has twenty minutes in a gift store to grab everything they want and whatever they manage to fit into the cart at the end of that twenty minutes is free. While my purchases were far from free, I couldn't help but smile to myself in the checkout line when my phone timer went off and I had everything I needed in my cart #winning! Did I look insane zipping down the aisles and getting excited when I found the rice and spices so close together, yes. But I had a blast!

My point here is, playfulness can and should be incorporated everywhere. Why? My answer is, 'Why not?" Grocery shopping is lame but it doesn't have to be, and neither do our other day-to-day routines. This brings me to meditation. While meditation is far from lame, adding a bit of fun to the practice can make it that much more enjoyable. And when we enjoy doing something, we're more inclined to want to do it versus strictly doing things out of necessity.
The challenge for you, should you choose to accept this mission, is to find a way to gamify your daily experiences. It's time for recess, go play :)
THE BLACK ZEN TEAM