Five Things That A Playground Can Teach Us About Relationships

This weekend, I took Katie and Leah to one of the many local parks here in Austin. The brilliant thing about our city parks are the really neat playgrounds…and on weekends, there are always a gaggle of kids enjoying the freedom of playing. As I watched, it occurred to me (with a little help from Jason) that there is a lot we can learn about relationships - and in many cases relearn - from observing how kids interact with each other.

1. Lack of judgment
Watch kids play and first thing you notice is that there is a lack of personal judgment taking place. When a new boy or girl enters the scene, they don’t fret and wonder how this fellow player is going to add to their social circle. They don’t worry if hanging around with them is going to build or kill their cred as someone cool or hip. They don’t get hung up in a bunch of the social tangles that we create everyday. The only question they have is whether they want to have fun and play.

2. Sometimes you need a buddy
While kids can go off and play by themselves, they know that the teeter-totter doesn’t work very well with just one rider. And the merry-go-round works way better when someone else helps push. Listen for the laughter on a playground and you’ll likely see a group of kids enjoying the heck out of themselves - together

3. Free to begin, free to leave
There’s no planning, no exchange of business cards, no tearful goodbyes (well, only when you have to actually leave the playground). Kids live In the moment. They’re single-mindedly focused on swinging higher, sliding faster, climbing farther. When a friend leaves, another friend may enter.

4. Sometimes you lead, sometimes you follow
Notice that there’s never one person ordering others to go push them on the swings or spin them on the merry-go-round. There’s just a mutual sense of helping. And if someone’s hogging all the fun, they get left behind pretty quickly. That built-in sense of fairness means that there’s always a fluid agreement of leadership and followership.

5. It’s all about sharing the experience
For kids, it’s the fun of being together and enjoying the companionship and fellowship of others. There’s an acknowledgement that discovery is better when you can share it with someone else.

If all of this is true, what happened? Unfortunately, we went through that crazy mixed up time called adolescence. We were bombarded by all sorts of messages about what’s cool and hip and dorky and childish. Most of us figured out that some pretty good defensive armor was necessary to survive the hallways of middle and high school. Then, as adults we never stopped to check whether these things we learned during these tough times still work. If we did, we’d recognize that they don’t.

No worries. The cool thing is that as adults, we now have the maturity and insight to come back around to the lessons we intuitively knew on the playground. So, next time you find a playground inhabited by some fun-loving kids, sit down and just observe. And think about how you can bring some of these lessons that may be locked inside of you back out into your work and life.

Any other playground lessons to share?

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If You’ve Never Failed You’ve Never Lived

This YouTube clip is making the rounds through Twitter and it’s just too darn good not to share here. It’s also related to Vicky’s first post at the new Remarkable Parents blog.

“If you’ve never failed…you’ve never lived.” We can stew about our failures or we can celebrate them. Which one do you think is going to help us create the kind of life we dream about?

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Bloggers Unite for Human Rights Today

I try not to stray too far away from the core topics behind the Alchemy of Soulful Work (though maybe I should be a little more lax with this), but I’m compelled to write today as a part of the Bloggers Unite for Human Rights event. For me, the reason is simple: without basic human rights and freedoms I would not be able to write about workplace issues. And the very notion of employee engagement and joyful work is only possible if our foundational liberties are taken care of. I know I sometimes take this for granted and am thankful for the opportunity to be a part of this movement today.

There are places in this world where sitting and writing ideas like I’m doing at this moment would likely land me in jail. China is one such place which continues to not hesitate to send journalists and dissidents to prison for speaking out against injustice and censorship. And the sad fact is that some of the companies we support turn a blind eye to this…or in the case of Yahoo! agree to cooperate with this gestapo behavior. One action you can take today is send an email to Yahoo! and let them know you think they need to change their actions on human rights abuses.

And lest you think I might let my own country off the hook, I’m also taking the United States to task for it’s hypocritical use of the Guantanamo Bay facility for illegal detentions. It’s very existence and what actually occurs there makes a mockery of every proud ideal this country was founded upon. I hope you’ll join me in the initiative to Tear it Down.

If you’re able to freely read this post, write about it, and talk about it to your neighbors and friends then know that there are individuals out there who have no voice and are invisible. We can stand for them and speak for them. This is our freedom.

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