As you might imagine, I read a lot about the link between creativity and mental health, and one thing that keeps coming up is that creativity is a great way to tap into a human need that’s fundamental for wellbeing: play.
Play is more useful than you might imagine - it improves our problem-solving abilities, it helps us connect to other people, it builds empathy and compassion, it increases your energy levels, it reduces stress, it improves brain function and, unsurprisingly, it increases creativity.
But I find play really, really challenging.
Learning to play
I have two young children, aged 5 and 2, so I’m expected to play a lot. But, come closer, I’m going to whisper this because I feel ashamed to admit it: I don’t really enjoy playing with them that much. Their games are pretty basic and repetitive. Narratively, they don’t really go anywhere, and the characters are pretty two-dimensional. I’m also normally being asked to play these games after a long day of work, or a long night of being woken up repeatedly by at least one child, sometimes both.
However, when I think about it, I’m not sure that I was ever all that good at playing.
I remember, as a young child, being irritated by how, well, childish other kids my age were. I found the games they wanted to play pretty dull, too simple and actually kind of pointless. I just didn’t get it. Which might have something to do with why I found it hard to make friends.
What did everyone else learn that I didn’t? What gene am I missing?
There’s certainly other playful activities that I enjoy doing with my children - arts and crafts, exploring nature, playing board games and card games (my kids are experts at Dobble, which is ridiculously addictive). But they don’t always want to focus on those kinds of structured activities - they want to play in the purest sense, free, with no rules and no restrictions.
So maybe that’s my issue. I like the structure. I get irritated when my five-year-old daughter wants to bend the rules of a board game so she can win. What’s the point of playing if you’re not going to follow the rules?! The rules are what create the fun, they’re what let us all know what game we’re playing and give us that thrill of things going well or going a bit off piste. It’s a hollow victory if you’ve bent the rules (or, ahem, cheated) - you haven’t really won. No one else seems to get that. “Oh, just let her do it, it’s only a bit of fun,” the adults around me say. But it’s not fun if you’re not following the rules, I want to shout. I don’t. I let her cheat. I lose my sense of fun for the game.
It’s funny, because I think if you asked people who know me well to describe me, highly structured and a rule-follower are almost certainly not things that would be high on their lists. I’d be amazed if they appeared anywhere on their lists. I’ve always been the rebel, the one questioning why things had to be the way they were, why they couldn’t be different. My ADHD brain thrives on variety and, ooh, look, new shiny thing!
So what is it about play that brings out this love of rules in me?!
I don’t have an answer to that. This post isn’t going to end with a big epiphany about my childhood (no one else in my family has trouble getting stuck in to play) or some early trauma that forever damaged my ability to play (I’m pretty sure I’ve always been like this).
But it is going to mid-point with an observation about the nature of creativity. Which is that, structure really does help your creative habits to thrive.
Structured freedom
Whilst I might not have been great at playing with other children when I was young, I was good at disciplined arts. I was a ballet dancer - and you don’t get much more strict than that! I did a lot of acting as a child, and into adulthood, and one of the first things you learn about performance is that even the most seemingly free elements - like improvisation - require structure. Good improv performers have learned, and carefully crafted over years, a range of techniques that they can deploy in any given situation. The seamless and apparently completely natural way that they use them is a result of how painstakingly they have nurtured their skills.
Even in my career, helping businesses to generate creative ideas required me to develop a careful structure. In order to enable people’s imaginations to run completely free and for their most wild and innovative ideas to come out, it turns out you actually need to give them clear parameters within which they can let go. Too much freedom makes our imaginations retreat, because our brains are busy worrying about so many factors that need definition. Once we define those boundaries for them, their brains are free to run uninhibited.
You will often hear people in the writing community say that books are written by sitting your butt in a chair and writing. It sounds obvious, but it is hard. The discipline needed to keep showing up and writing words, even when you don’t feel inspired, even when you’re exhausted (side eyes at my kids and their nighttime shenanigans), even when you’ve already dragged 20,000 words out of your weary brain and you know there are still another 60,000 to go, even when you just don’t know if this is even working, or if anyone will ever read it. There’s a huge amount of self-motivation and determination required to keep showing up and keep writing.
I haven’t exactly nailed it. I’ve got two novels that have hit the 20,000 ish word mark and are currently somewhat wandering off the path. I’ve also got two non-fiction books that I keep thinking about starting (ooh, look, new shiny thing!). But the discipline of showing up twice a week for Substack is helping. The discipline of showing up on Instagram to provide creative prompts and inspiration for creative habits to my audience is helping. Turns out that, in order to write, you really do need to, actually, write.
Creativity does help us to tune in to a sense of play, but it also requires discipline and structure to keep up a creative habit. Are those two things at odds with each other? Not necessarily. But, much like my kids, they might bicker sometimes, and they might need some help to work together productively.
Cultivating playful habits
I do want to get better at unstructured play. So what can I do about it?
Like anything else, it’s a habit and it requires practice. So showing up with my kids even when I feel uncomfortable and pushing past that discomfort to do it anyway is helping to build my playful muscle. I do, sometimes, find myself lost in the moment, however briefly, while I rescue baby Rapunzel from the wicked witch for the 17th time in a row (my daughter’s taken the story of Tangled and very much gone her own way with it).
While I’m working on cultivating my own creative habit (and helping others to do the same - check out my Creative Sparks posts for help in building your own creative practice), I try to build in as much play as possible. Making creativity a regular habit requires discipline and structure, but what we do when we show up for that practice doesn’t have to always be rigid and defined. It can be as simple as walking down a new street or trying a new food and being present to that experience. There are days when you have to show up and write words, and days when you have to go on an adventure. They both support each other.
Trying to let go of my perfectionist tendencies is definitely part of the process. Not everything I create, and not every game I play, has to be perfect or purposeful. One technique I find really helpful for this is drawing with your non-dominant hand, or painting with your eyes closed (it does get messy, but that’s part of the fun - put a cover down and wear something you don’t mind getting dirty). Creating without being attached to the outcome is highly freeing.
Tuning in to what games I enjoy more than others is also a help. I find it a lot easier to play with cars and building blocks than I do to play pretend because I know what I’m supposed to do with those things. And my kids can meet me in the middle a little bit - maybe it’s ok to set some parameters at the start of the game about how we’re going to do this so that I have that sense of structure that I need. It might just help them to let their imaginations run free too.
I know I’m not the only parent who feels like play is a challenge, and that I’m letting my kids down by not being “good enough” at it. Above all else, I think we need to stop giving ourselves such a hard time. Letting our kids figure out their own games is good for their imagination and problem-solving abilities, and their sense of independence. We can find ways to connect with them that work for all of us. And we can learn from each other - as parents, we develop our skills in play, and for our children, we can help them learn how to structure their creative habits.
As with most things in life, there’s a delicate balance that needs to be achieved for the real magic to happen.
I adored reading this Allegra 💛
Discipline is certainly under-rated in our culture but I have heard it said that it takes discipline to achieve freedom.