The power of playfulness in your 20s

A playful blueprint if you want to run a business in your 20s

The author on vacation in Puerto Rico

You’d be smart to not take everything seriously.

Letting your thinking be dominated by too much seriousness doesn’t leave room for creative insight.

I know life is full of pressure with deadlines, distractions and other people’s opinions. It’s a full time job staying aligned with your values—I get it—but having a sense of play works because it releases most of that pressure.

If you’re 20-something and ambitious, this article is for you. I want to talk to you about having a playful approach to things like your lifestyle and business.

If you don’t keep a playful energy, you might miss out on the true potential of your creativity; but if you do keep a playful energy, you may cause doors to open that you never knew could open.

Creativity over perfection—all day, every day—and playfulness is what let’s such creativity thrive. Imagine a business where staring at your metrics makes you feel overly serious.

Maybe you didn’t reach your target income for the month, or engagement has been on a downward trajectory recently. Every CEO, founder, and entrepreneur has their moments. They’re human. But choosing seriousness as a common response can only stunt growth. Instead, a smart founder knows that conceptualizing ideas and executing will work best—not with grimness—but with undeniable play.

What playfulness isn’t is lack of ambition, rather it’s the fuel that ignites powerful progress. Playfulness also isn’t ignoring any challenges or emotions you feel as a result of them, instead it's a way to better manage those times while keeping your creativity alive. Really, only the most obnoxiously brilliant ideas that actually work come from having a sense of play in both planning, execution and ideation. Any founder and CEO can be like this, regardless of business proposition, goals and/or missions.

Here’s a hypothesis: If a business is founded on the premises of play and undeniable inner core creativity, that business is most likely to succeed in catching the attention of not only its intended target audience, but also the attention of other people from “other” target audiences.

It’s because playfulness invites experimentation. Like trying new offers, testing content, and launching before you’re ready. And it’s easier to innovate on these things when you aren’t paralyzed by the pressure of being overly serious. There’s a magnetic effect where people want to be surrounded by the entrepreneur that is clearly enjoying themselves.

Forget writing content with jokes, memes or quirky storytelling to make people laugh. Anyone can do that. However, an entrepreneur that has some playfulness in their business approach would create products, services, and overall messages that help their audience, clients or customers become more playful in their own lives. For example, you might guide other entrepreneurs to infuse more personality into their own brand voice and visuals.

In terms of networking, what traits or skills come to mind when you think of a people-person? Well, they know how to connect well. They aren’t afraid to mess up. They also aren’t trying to figure out the perfect response to what the other person is telling them, instead actively listening. This is why a people-person can exchange ideas well with others.

I used to be an emergency room technician in a hospital where a diverse population of patients would visit. I found myself yapping with patients a lot when I would take their vital signs (and then I’d look at my watch and rush to the next patient). This is where I really increased my people-skills. From working with nurses to directly assisting them with patients, almost every interaction brought on the experience of carrying on a conversation. Before taking the role I knew it would involve a lot of communicating, so I was kind of anxious about it. Then I realized talking to people is not scary… like at all. I’ve found that the main thing you should do in order to connect well with people is just to treat them like an actual friend. That is it. You need to want to listen to them and you need to want to understand what they’re going through. And then when it comes time to respond, all you do is act like you’re talking to a friend. Basically, I got so used to talking to people in that position that it changed the way I connect with people today because I feel more relaxed when talking to others.

I’ve recently decided that I don’t want to really resist anything. The more you resist, the more things stay. The paradox is that you shouldn’t stop resisting just because you think it’ll lead to difficult things (feelings, thoughts, situations) to magically disappear. You have to find the nerve within you to actually mean it. Radically accept things. Everything. And this is the way, truly, to get to know the most playful parts of you. Because like I mentioned above, playfulness isn’t about ignoring emotions or thoughts, it’s just a better way to manage challenging times.

In your daily routines, add a sense of play by doing a weird dance in the shower, or when you get up in the morning exercise your body by moving it in weird ways. Sometimes there’s this uptight and underlying tense energy that makes us think we need to be serious and perfect all the time. Remind yourself that you’re just a child at heart. Another thing to do in your daily routine is to remove mundane tasks that, let's face it, you don’t even need to do anyways.

Onto relationships. Analyze how you’re interacting with people in your day to day life? Are you tired of seeing certain trends in your relationships happen over and over again? Try including playfulness in your interactions with people closest to you. For example, if you have friends or family who tend to take a lot of things super seriously, how can you shift your perspective when it comes to listening to them? Who you spend your time around tends to influence your emotional and/or mental state, so try listening with an open and neutral mind. This would at least help you get clear on yourself and on how you carry yourself when interacting with people in your life. Sometimes it’s important to be the example for others you love, to open their eyes to a new way of living—not forcing them but showing them how it’s possible to live a life where not everything needs to be taken so seriously.

When you’re playful about your personality and how you carry yourself, you get to attract others who are also similar in that way. You attract professional and personal relationships that are based more on letting creativity flow. I used to think that I had to be this overly professional person and that I had to be super intellectual and say the right stuff in every conversation. I feared that if I didn’t do this, that I wouldn’t attract people that would be “right” for my network.

Ask yourself “Where can I be more playful?”. Building something meaningful doesn’t have to feel heavy. It can feel more manageable by how you’re making it out to be at this moment. Play isn’t the opposite of work—it’s what makes it worth doing.