Rest *and Play* Are Requirements, Not Rewards

We all know that sleep is good for us, but it turns out that play is super good for us, too! Both are vital for healthy brain functioning – though, obviously, sleep is most important in that category. But we need both rest and play in order to live vibrant, fulfilled, and joyful lives. 

And we don’t have to earn them!! Rest and play are our birthrights. We are allowed to both rest AND play regardless of how “productive” we have or haven’t been!! (Yes – I’m shouting about this!)

So this episode is your reminder, pep talk, and permission slip to let yourself play! To let go of the inner critic bullshit and lean into the magic that can happen when you’re just doing the thing for the sake of doing it (not to get a particular outcome). And to take whatever nap or form of relaxation you need in order to recharge.

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Resources, References, and Links

Note: book recommendations include affiliate links. If you buy a copy, I’ll get a tiny commission, and that would be super cool.

Episode #8: “Recharging Your Batteries”

Tricia Hersey of The Nap Ministry. And author of Rest Is Resistance.

Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker. A whole book on how important sleep is! (In case you need convincing).

Sleep hygiene! Check out Andrew Huberman’s “Toolkit for Sleep.”

National Institute for Play.

Stuart Brown – Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul. The subtitle says it all, in my opinion.

Huberman Lab: “Using Play to Rewire & Improve Your Brain.”

Episode #38: “Saying ‘Yes, And’ to Life.”

Spotted Dick recipe. If you try it, please let me know how it goes!!

Brene Brown – The Gifts of Imperfection. Excellent book in which Brown outlines 10 guideposts for wholehearted living.

Catherine Price – The Power of Fun.

Transcript

Note: this transcript was generated by AI. Please forgive any malapropisms and misspellings. It’s the robot’s fault!

Cate Blouke (00:00.231)

Rest as a concept (to me) should also include this idea of play. Because play is a form of active rest. It’s a form of like letting our minds relax the grip of self-control, of self-monitoring, of self-criticism, and approaching the world from a lens of curiosity and inquiry and fun and joy and beauty. And there’s been a whole bunch of research about how that’s super good for us!

[podcast intro]

Cate Blouke (01:11.034)

Hello, my friend. How are you doing with your sleep and your recreation? That’s what we’re here to talk about today. 

And I just wanna say, I know that you know that you need more sleep and that rest is important. And I hope you know, you probably know if you’ve been listening to me, that joy and play and creativity and fun are also important parts of life. 

But, you know, if we did the things that we knew were good for us, then we wouldn’t really need therapists or personal trainers or life coaches or the entire self-help industry because the truth is it’s not just that easy. And so this episode is a pep talk and a reminder and a permission slip to really remember and prioritize taking really good care of yourself by getting more rest and especially by getting more play. 

I’ve talked about rest a number of times on the podcast. Way back in episode eight, we talked about the importance of recharging your batteries and paying attention to like which battery needs recharging. Is it physical? Is it mental? Is it emotional? Is it spiritual? Because we all get depleted in a variety of different ways.

And when I was thinking about this episode, it was originally talking about how rest is a requirement and not a reward. That’s a lovely little phrase that I got from one of my clients a while back. We had a beautiful conversation about it. Because honestly, in modern capitalist society, we have deeply internalized this sense that our value is tied to our productivity. And it’s super toxic.

Tricia Hersey of The Nap Ministry talks about this a lot and I love this quote where Hersey says:

Cate Blouke (03:33.773)

“Our drive and obsession to always be in a state of ‘productivity’ leads us to the path of exhaustion, guilt, and shame. We falsely believe we are not doing enough and that we must always be guiding our lives toward more labor. The distinction that must be repeated as many times as necessary is this: We are not resting to be productive. We are resting simply because it is our divine right to do so.” 

And I love that, right? That like, we are divinely allowed. We have the right to rest. And that rest and play aren’t the things that we have to earn. And they’re also not tools for then like letting us be more productive. That’s not what we’re here to talk about.

Rather, that these are fundamental rights and fundamental necessities to our overall well-being. And I really respect and appreciate Hersey’s work. I also struggle a little bit with the “nap ministry” idea, right? That rest is about napping. That’s a way that my system has internalized this idea of what rest is.

And my poor little neuro-spicy brain just doesn’t work that way. I’ve never been a particularly good napper. And I really love this idea of active rest. And that’s where play comes in. 

So yes, we all need more sleep. Yes, we need more time to just like be, to go lay in the grass and stare at the sky, but not at the sun, because that’s bad for your eyeballs. You know, that that is important. 

But rest as a concept to me should also include this idea of play. Because play is a form of active rest. It’s a form of letting our minds relax the grip of self-control, of self-monitoring, of self-criticism and approaching the world from a lens of curiosity and inquiry and fun and joy and beauty. And there’s been a whole bunch of research about how that’s super good for us! 

So yes, rest means getting enough sleep and you absolutely need enough sleep. I don’t know if you haven’t heard this, but getting under six hours of sleep for like three days in a row is cognitively the same as walking around a little bit drunk.

Cate Blouke (05:50.587)

So, BT dubs, we need sleep. It’s not optional. And if you’re having challenges with that, I deeply empathize. Sleep can often be challenging for me as well. And it’s super important to talk to a physician about it, because like we just can’t get by with not enough sleep. That whole toxic idea of I’ll sleep when I’m dead will kill us. It will shave off years of our lives. So.

Yes, let’s all get sleep. Let’s all turn off our devices an hour before bed and be more mindful of our blue light and read books and drink chamomile tea and take really good care of ourselves. And I can point you towards some really excellent resources that are gonna talk way more about that. (This is not an episode about sleep hygiene.) It’s an episode about active rest and joy and play.

So if we’re gonna talk about that, then obviously I need to offer you a definition of what I mean when I’m talking about play. 

Because we often think of play as something that children do, that it’s about being silly or being goofy. And yes, I am a very playful person in that particular regard, but play is really about curiosity and exploration and letting go of self-criticism and self-judgment. 

And like, who doesn’t want more of that in their lives? I know that I really enjoy life a lot more when my inner critic isn’t being an asshole to me. 

So, to provide a really technical definition from Stuart Brown, the founder of the National Institute for Play, Brown defines play as “any activity that is absorbing and apparently purposeless, and that provides enjoyment and a suspension of self-consciousness and sense of time. It is also self-motivating and makes you want to do it again.” 

So the key components of play, according to Brown, are a sense of flow, that you kind of like lose sense of time, that you’re really engaged and really present with what happens, and that it’s a low stakes environment. So essentially play is any form of enjoyable exploration.

Cate Blouke (08:13.679)

Like it doesn’t have to be board games. It doesn’t have to be improv comedy to name some of the things that I really enjoy, right? But it’s about enjoyable exploration and engaging the part of the brain that comes up with new and different and alternative pathways. 

And so for those of us who like cooking, playing around in the kitchen is play, singing songs that you enjoy, playing music. Like there’s a lot of different things that constitute play. 

And the premise of this episode is that those things are necessary for our well-being. Like those aren’t the rewards that we get to do because we worked really hard. Like I just fundamentally want to reframe this idea that like rest or play are things that we have to earn. 

And rather that if we want to be living joyful and vibrant and wholehearted lives, rest and play are things that we should be centering first, right? That like we should be getting, (oh God, I’m shoulding), but like we should be getting vegetables, we should also be getting rest and play. 

And to un-should that, I want to say we get to get sleep. We’re allowed. We’re invited. We’re encouraged to get sleep, to get play into our lives, to get a sense of curiosity and exploration. 

And if you want a whole hour and a half rundown of the science of like why this is really, really good for you and why it’s important and why it’s helpful, I’m gonna link to the Huberman Lab episode all about play. It’s super great. And the TL;DR is that Huberman talks about the fact that play builds our neuroplasticity. It is good for our brains for us to play. 

And he has a slightly different definition of play in that he doesn’t actually think that fun is necessary. And I’ll get to the definition of fun in a minute, but that essentially what is happening cognitively for us when we play is that our brain is exploring different pathways.

Cate Blouke (10:32.943)

And what’s really important for something to count as play is that it be a low stakes environment. Interestingly to me, Huberman points out that once adrenaline is present, once we get kind of stressed out or competitive or activated and like that part of our brain kicks in that says like, “I have to do well,” and adrenaline shows up, then the cognitive benefits of play go away. 

The chemicals that are happening that help us create new neural pathways and create neuroplasticity stops once adrenaline shows up. And so thinking about last week’s episode about saying “yes, and” to life and improv comedy, that made so much sense to me because I fucking love doing improv. I love exploring possibilities, being silly, being creative with other humans. It is very fun for me. And again, we’re going to get to the definition of fun. But once I have to do it in front of an audience, my capacity to let go of the low stakes environment evaporates and adrenaline shows up for me. And so it stops being play and it stops being fun.

And so what’s really important about play and thinking about the ways that you might incorporate more play into your life is that it has to be low stakes. 

So to give another example, I enjoy cooking, I enjoy baking. Those are forms of play for me. I like trying new recipes and just being like, let’s see how this is going to turn out.

I had a really great time this weekend with my cousin here in Portland. We did a British themed dinner and I made Spotted Dick. Which resulted in so many dick jokes. Like it really was not about the steamed pudding, which is what Spotted Dick is. And again, I’ll link in the show notes, but it’s essentially like cake that you steam in a pot, which is sort of weird, and it has raisins in it and a custard sauce. 

And it tasted like pretty okay, but the joy and the play and the fun of it was that it’s called Spotted Dick. And what was great about it and what made it play for me was that we had really low expectations. I have never made a steamed pudding. Like I’d never even had a steamed pudding. So we went into it with really low expectations of like, don’t know how this is gonna turn out. We’re just gonna fuck around and find out. And it didn’t turn out.

Cate Blouke (12:58.971)

correctly. I learned a valuable lesson about like how long to steam it so I have information for next time when I want to try it again. But it was play because I didn’t actually get particularly hung up on how it turned out. 

And I can see in my own like baking experiments and cooking experiment habits like when it is play is when I’m not really attached to the outcome. When it is not play and can be like stressful and frustrating and I get aggravated is when I get really attached to the outcome. 

And so historically, when I’ve been hosting a dinner party and I’m trying new things or things go awry, it can stop being play because I’ve added stakes, like I’ve added some level of pressure. But if I can go into it being like, yeah, like I’m gonna, the point of this dinner party is for me to try some recipes and we’re just gonna see how it turns out, then like it’s a playful experience and those are often a lot more enjoyable.

Similarly, like, I really enjoy playing board games when I’m playing to play. I don’t enjoy those things when it gets particularly competitive. And so Huberman points out that, yes, we call it playing sports, but oftentimes we get competitive about sports and then it stops being play. And so I think that’s just like a really, really key distinction is that like, we need play in our lives and it has to be low stakes.

If it isn’t low stakes, it’s not play. So if you take anything away from this episode, I want you to take that away, is that like, we need play. And once inner criticism, competition, adrenaline show up, it stops being play. 

And although she doesn’t call it this, she doesn’t actually call it play, Brene Brown cites laughter, song and dance, which are forms of play, as one of her guideposts to wholehearted living. That this is essential for wholehearted, joyful, happy life is having access to this capacity to play. The capacity to set down the inner critic, to set down the judge, to set down that sense of frustration of like, why can’t I do this right? And just like let ourselves do the thing, whatever it is. 

And that’s where the fun component comes in for me, because it is supposed to like, Stuart Brown says it’s supposed to be enjoyable. And in The Power of Fun,

Cate Blouke (15:22.351)

by Catherine Price, which is a whole book about why we need fun, and fun for her includes playfulness and play. She defines True Fun as: “the confluence of playfulness, connection, and flow.” And by playfulness, she means “lightheartedness and freedom of doing an activity just for the sake of doing the activity and not caring too much about the outcome.” 

See, this is the trend.

That in order for something to be play or playful, we cannot be attached to the outcome. And as I’m recording this, as I’ve been reflecting on all of these things, I’ve been thinking a lot about like, what would shift in my life if I approached all of it with more sense of playfulness? Like, yes, there are circumstances where we do actually have to be really attached to and stressed out about the outcome, but do we? I don’t know. I think if I can approach things with a…

sense of curiosity and a sense of like, I don’t know, like let’s see what happens more often, then like life might be a lot less stressful and just a little bit better. So that’s part of the invitation here is to sort of notice like where am I getting really attached to the outcome? Where is that like stress and adrenaline coming in and does it need to be here?

I think one of the themes and fundamental premises of this whole podcast and my work in the world is like, what will happen if we all take ourselves just a little bit less seriously? If we bring a little bit more play into our way of being in the world? And how much kind of lighter and more neuro-flexible that will make us? 

That there really is a physiological, a neurological benefit to broadening our perspective to releasing the sense of control and self-criticism that comes in and embracing a sense of lightness of play and of creativity. That play is creativity. It is exploring alternative possibilities. 

And so, you know, even if you don’t consider yourself a particularly creative person, I would challenge you to think about, like, what are the areas of my life where I let myself explore? Because that’s

Cate Blouke (17:42.981)

fundamentally what creativity is, is exploration. And even for those of us who really like baking and like following a recipe, anytime we try something new, that’s a form of exploration. 

And what I love about Price’s definition of true fun, this confluence of playfulness, connection, and flow, is that it brings all of these things that are just really good for us together in one place. 

Connection is really good for us. It’s so important. And so Price kind of argues that it’s pretty hard to have fun without anybody else. That by her definition of true fun, we have to have this sense of connection either to other people or she like does offer some like expansiveness of like we can feel connected to the flow of the universe.

But she’s a little like, I don’t know if that’s really, really what I’m talking about with fun. And I think I agree. Like I have fun on hikes. I have fun on camping trips by myself, but it’s very different from when I am with at least one other person and can share in that sense of enjoyment and wonder and awe and fun. 

So playfulness, connection and flow, losing a sense of time, being deeply present in the moment and not being attached to outcome. So those are the ingredients of fun: letting go of attachment to outcome, being with people, being really present. 

And that sums up kind of what happened for me in my little like spotted dick adventure this weekend. It was really fun and we laughed a bunch and it was totally stupid. And we need that like we need air, y’all. We need it like we need air.

It is not the thing that we have to earn. We don’t have to earn our rest. We don’t have to earn our play and our fun and our joy. They are our birthright. All of it, right? That like, we deserve those things fundamentally because we exist. And I just don’t believe that we should have to orient our lives around working for them.

Cate Blouke (19:59.799)

and that they don’t have to be like big grand gestures. Like I’m thinking about vacations, right? So many of us, very understandably, like yes, like we have to work to earn money to then be able to spend it on the vacation that we want to take. Great. And I really hope that whatever vacations you take are both restful and fun. But I think sometimes like one or the other of those things can dominate. 

I know my clients and myself can plan these trips that then are just like supposed to be all fun and no rest, or all rest and no fun. And so as per usual, I’m advocating for balance, but that both of those things aren’t intended to just happen on weekends or just happen on vacations, right? We’re not working Monday through Friday so that we can catch up on our sleep on the weekends or so that we can catch up on our joy and fun and play on the weekends.

That we are so much more awesomely ourselves when we can balance out our weeks and our lives to sort of get little doses of it on a daily basis or at very least like more frequently. Huberman recommends at least one hour of play a week. Cate Blouke, Joy Activist and fulfillment coach recommends at least like 15 minutes a day.

Like, get your 15 minutes of play in on a daily basis. I don’t care what it looks like. Like, it can be a video game, it can be singing a couple of karaoke songs in your living room, dancing around to a couple of songs in your living room. But whatever it is, please just remember that it’s not about being good at it. It’s not about getting a particular outcome. It’s just about enjoying the shit out of whatever it is you’re doing and letting go of that sense of needing to get it right. 

And I know for me, when I’m like learning to do something new, I can get so crunchy about like trying to do it well and get it right. And it loses all of its sense of playfulness for me. But when I can approach novel or new situations or adventures with this sense of, I don’t know how this is gonna go. And that’s what I’m here for. It’s so much more enjoyable. It’s so much more fun. It nourishes my spirit so much more.

Cate Blouke (22:22.267)

So my invitation to you with this episode is like, please, for the love of all that is holy and as a favor to me, go have some fun this week. Go play. Pick up some crayons and draw something stupid and don’t care that it’s stupid. You know, do something that you know you’re not good at just for the sake of fucking around. 

And really like laughing at how quote unquote “not good at it,” you might be. Shake your booty. Sing a song to yourself. Make up a song. And then just like laugh about how hard that is. I’ve been taking musical improv lately and it’s like really fucking hard to make up a song on the spot. But like, great, it’s supposed to be. 

You are doing brain pushups anytime you do stuff like that. You’re improving your neuroplasticity, you’re doing all sorts of just beautiful yummy things to support your physiological system and your soul. 

So please, please, go play this week. And if you do, let me know. I want to hear about it. What did you, what did you play with this week? Try a new recipe and don’t care if it’s all goofy at the end. Pick something that you’re curious about and explore it and let go of needing to get it right. Those are the components. 

And again, like, I’m harping on this because we need reminders. We have to hear it so many times. It is so hard to let go of the inner critic and to like let go of the part of us that just like really wants us to get it right. 

And so this is your permission slip to do that. Pick something you’ve been wanting to learn and give yourself permission to like not be good at it for a while. Because the truth is that’s how learning works.

Like, we have to be willing to not be good at it immediately if we’re ever gonna learn anything. And if we can bring a sense of play, it’s just so much better. It’s just so much better. So, I am really excited for whatever’s about to unfold for you. This episode felt very playful to me. And if you, you know, wanna try something, go make a spot in Dick. I promise it’ll probably not turn out right the first time because steamed pudding is weird.

Cate Blouke (24:39.872)

But I imagine if you’re anything like me, you will laugh about it when it happens. And if you’re not anything like me and playfulness doesn’t come naturally and easily, just remember that it doesn’t have to include a whole lot of laughter or silliness. It’s really just about tapping back into that young part of ourselves that’s like, here’s a thing, I wanna try it. And that’s it. So let yourself try something.

And bonus extra kudos for you points if you enlist somebody else to do it with you and have fun together. Because that’s also a huge part of the point of all of this. Is that life is better when we’re connected and having fun.

Cate Blouke (25:24.842)

Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please help me grow the podcast by subscribing, leaving a review, and sharing it with anyone you think would benefit from hearing it too. Your support means the world to me. If you’d like to get updates about new episodes, posts, and offerings, please visit settlingisbullshit.com to subscribe to my newsletter. You can also find information there about working with me one-on-one to build your most amazing life. Until next time, remember that I believe in you and that you are fucking awesome.