Play to Recharge Your Brain

Now and then it's good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy. Guillaume Apollinaire

Most days when I take time to "play" golf, enjoy a festival or simply walk in the woods, I come back to my work very refreshed. Fact is, after I relax I work faster and with more focus. Is that true for you as well? There's more truth to this than meets the eye. The brain needs a break!

Want to see where you stand? Take this burnout test.

"You need more time to fix burnout," explains Joe Robinson, author of Work To Live: The Guide to Getting a Life. The trick is to cut yourself off from a stressor, Joe maintains, for a sufficient amount of time to give your mind and body a break. After major stressors, your body needs two weeks to rebound.

Here's some reasons why we need more play in our lives... "A recent English study shows that if you are sleep-deprived for 72 hours, the stress hormone levels rise and the brain stops making new cells" according to a recent BUSINESS LINE article, Give more power to your immune system... make it stronger

The fact that our brain shuts down and stops making new brain cells is a pretty scary situation and we need to act!

Joe Robinson offers some sound advice about how to make play and relaxation work for you and not against you...

"You have to unpack before you pack," is the way Robinson sees it. "Put together an unpacking list of the stuff that has no business going with you," he advises. These include work worries, the boss, colleagues, career progress, laptops, pagers, cell phones. Stash it until you get back.

To the pile of stuff you leave home add your guilt over taking a vacation. You also have to put aside the productivity yardstick and remember how to "do" leisure.

Here are a couple of suggestions:

• Target your passions and build your vacation around the things you like to do.
• Wander. Yes, relearn how to explore and discover, with no other purpose.
• Linger with a friend over dinner.
• Put on your kid hat. Connect with play.

How might you target time for a mini-break to relax today? Play increases serotonin, a hormone of well-being, in your brain. I desperately need some. You?

Shhh...don't tell anyone, but I'm making a dive for the links today. Happiness...you bet!