Play, rest and meaningful work, perhaps key ingredients to a fulfilling life

Some recent lived experience has inspired me to reflect a bit on the interplay of these three things - play, rest, and meaningful work - and how they are integrated into everyday life. I recently wrapped up a 10-day vacation visiting family, who I haven’t seen in over 3 years. Rest & play were front of mind and intentions for our family vacation. It was a wonderful time spent playing, resting, laughing, reconnecting. We all returned with renewed energy and perspective. These topics have also come up in conversations with my clients as strategies for reducing burnout and overwhelm and increasing energy and life satisfaction.

What do play, rest and meaningful work have in common? 

Well, for starters, they all can be FUN! They also help us create a fulfilling and integrated life. They help us navigate what we want our lives to look like and how we want to feel. When our lives are made up of these three ingredients, we are energized and inspired. Look at children as an example, they have space and energy for play and rest and one could argue that everything they do is meaningful work because they are learning and growing every single day. 

“Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children, play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood.” ~ Fred Rogers

Let’s define these three terms for context. I’m using the below definitions: 

• Meaningful work: fun, purpose-driven, aligned to your values, contributes to your continued growth and challenges you to step out of your comfort zone.
• Play: fun for fun’s sake. I asked my 8 year old what it means to play and she said, “to have fun!” so I’m going to go with that. 
• Rest: the art of doing less to relax, recharge, reset, pause.

You can use these definitions or make up your own. You get to define what falls in and out of these buckets. What may feel like rest to one person, may feel like play to another. There are no rules here. Once you define what play, rest and meaningful work means to you, consider the following: 

• How much of each is currently present in your life? 
• Do you need more or less of one of them? (Note: Different seasons call for different things, honor them).
• How do you want to integrate these things into your life?

A life filled with a combination of play, rest, and meaningful work helps you live a beautiful and integrated life. By integrated, I mean connected, each part of our lives supporting the other. When our lives are integrated, often one part ignites or inspires something in another creating a beautiful flow and synchronization. You could be playing with your children or in a team sport with colleagues and be fully immersed in play when a spark of genius ignites and helps you with a challenge you were having at work or vice versa. So rather than compartmentalizing pieces of our lives, we let them weave together and support each other to create a beautiful whole. 

Sometimes we may not incorporate all three all the time, and that’s ok show yourself some empathy and self-compassion and check in with what you need. You may need more rest some days or more play or more meaningful work. Get curious and meet yourself where you are and with what you need. We are working towards creating an intentional life and it may look different each day, week, month but collectively they make up a beautifully integrated life.

A beautifully integrated life increases our levels of satisfaction and our overall engagement with life. We feel more alive! Play, rest, and meaningful work bring a sense of aliveness, calm, and inspiration into our lives.

“There is virtue in work and there is virtue in rest. Overlook neither.” ~ Alan Cohen

How do you integrate play, rest and meaningful work into your life? 

"Play is the royal road to childhood happiness and adult brilliance." ~ Joseph Chitton Pearce