The Physics of Play: Why having a life with an attitude of fun is a Quantum Leap
If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun.
— Katharine Hepburn
If you’ve ever been in the audience at one of my shows or attended a lecture on Quantum Leap Thinking, you know we spend a lot of time talking about breaking the rules of conventional logic. We talk about shifting paradigms. We talk about bending reality—sometimes literally, right there on stage.
But as I look back from the vantage point of eighty years, I want to let you in on the ultimate secret behind every breakthrough I have ever witnessed or engineered.
It wasn’t born from grueling, serious effort. It was born from play.
I wrote this piece to capture exactly what happens when we stop trying to engineer our success, and start allowing ourselves to wonder:
Why Not have fun? by James Mapes
Eighty years, and my joints feel every single winter,
but my mind is still somewhere on a stage in 1974,
holding a bent silver key in the palm of my hand,
watching a stranger realize their own mind did it.
I have spent a lifetime chasing ghosts and making people wonder.
I memorized lines under hot theater lights.
I put people to sleep just to wake them up.
I dove into the blue crush of Caribbean reefs,
chasing fish that didn’t care about my resume or my age.
Let me tell you a secret about achievement:
It is a cold room to sit in alone.
The moments that saved me were always ridiculous ones.
The times I said “yes” to a road before the map was printed.
The times I risked looking like an absolute fool.
Because the child who wanted to see magic never really left;
he just grew a white beard and bought a house.
We get so serious about our legacies,
our neat little boxes of success and failure.
But when the theater finally goes dark and the crowd goes home,
nobody counts their trophies.
They remember the laughter that made their ribs ache.
They remember the dance they weren’t ready for.
So go ahead. Put on the show.
Take the ridiculous leap.
When you stand at the edge of it all,
make sure you can look back and say,
“Well, at least we had a hell of a time.”
Play is often misunderstood as the antithesis of work – a waste of time, foolishness, silly, or just plain immature.
Suprise! Play may be one of the most creative and productive forces of human makeup.
Play is a mindset, an attitude.
The reality is that babies learn through play and for babies, play is not just for fun—it is their primary way of learning. Through play and daily interactions, babies actively build brain connections, explore their senses, and develop essential motor, cognitive, and social skills.
Children learn, as I did, through ‘pretend’ worlds.
Teenagers learn identity through social play, music, risk-taking and humor.
Adults continue to grow emotionally by exploring new ideas, experiences and skills.
Play is not necessarily about education. The universe knows that play was a primary survival mechanism. There is a freedom is play, to take risks and reduce the impact of failure. Instead, we learn. Play creates an environment that unleashes the power of the elegant imagination to take risks.
I’m encouraging you to ignore the seriousness of modern society where productivity rewards being serious and ‘putting your nose to the grindstone’ becomes expected.
I guarantee you that without play, success can feel empty and the mind repetitive. And play enhances our relationships.
Play is like a magical lubricant, breaking staid patterns. It encourages laughter which positively affects our brain chemistry as well as stimulates attention. It makes hobbies fun.
So, what is play? They could write a 5000-word article on this topic alone. It could be, like my wife and I, writing. For another it may be playing tennis or golf. Some people, like me, find it through performance and entertainment, others with storytelling.
The common thread that runs through all play is liveness, freedom, engagement and fun.
It is my observation that play is about curiosity, experimentation without judgement, taking the risk of appearing foolish. This becomes rare in a world where youth and beyond are obsessed with image and the number of virtual friends they have.
You don’t lose a sense of play with age, but you can develop play by having fun. I know many people in my age range that have kept their sense of humor, maintained their curiosity, experiment with new ideas and take risks.
I cannot and will not give you a series of ‘self-help’ steps in order to play. Again, it’s an attitude, a choice.
Play will connect or reconnect you with life.
Nearly half of of Americans (48%) report that their lives are currently lacking in fun, according to a recent nationwide survey.
Your do not want to be a statistic so – ignite your life and have FUN!
IMAGINE THAT!
James Mapes is the founder of Quantum Leap Thinking™, creator of The Transformational Coach™, expert on the psychology of “applied imagination,” best-selling author, highly acclaimed business speaker, consultant, seminar leader and personal excellence coach.