The Well Played Life Book Blog

“Play is oxygen for the imagination, which sparks creativity, which ignites innovation, which combusts in paradigm shifts.” p. 6

In a recent and brilliant TED talk (Hey! What do you say we start a list of TED talks that weren’t brilliant. Pass that puppy around) Adam Grant proceeds to rock the planet with his topic, “The Surprising Habits of Original Thinkers.”

Adam is providing his own support for the ball Sweet takes a swing at on page six. 

In the film, Groundhog Day, Bill Murray plays a character that is trapped in a time loop where he lives the same day, over and over and over. This drives him into profound and suicidal depression before <SPOILER><IN 1993>he makes a turn and re-invents his existence. OR, his existence is re-invented. 

I know alot of people who feel like they are stuck in a life that is too much like that movie, living every day as though it were the same: the same work, the same patterns, the same stress, the same hopelessness…the same. 

What Sweet says prophetically, Grant affirms with research. The secret to deep, abiding change in your life is not “Do More, Work Harder.” It’s not “Keep Pushing At All Costs.” And it’s not, “Bacon Cannot Kill You.” The secret is found buried in the age old, “Cease striving and and know that I am God.” 

The way to gain momentum is to stop. 

The way to breakthrough is to rest.

The increase your level at work is to…Improve Your Level Of Play. 

Sweet’s book leads the reader on the journey of learning the Play of God, God Play. There will be plenty of time for more on that. I want to look at a couple of things that Grant says in his talk. 

Grant’s main point, his thesis, is that procrastination increases ingenuity which leads to new paradigms. 

“Procrastinating is a vice when it comes to productivity, but it can be a virtue for creativity.“

Grant cites the great “I Have A Dream Speech.” 

King had waited (procrastinated) until the last moment to get the biggest speech of his life into shape. The night before was a flurry of focus and edits. When the big day came, as Grant puts it, “He’s sitting in the audience waiting for his turn to go onstage, and he is still scribbling notes and crossing out lines. When he gets onstage, 11 minutes in, he leaves his prepared remarks to utter four words that changed the course of history: “I have a dream.” That was not in the script. By delaying the task of finalizing the speech until the very last minute, he left himself open to the widest range of possible ideas. And because the text wasn’t set in stone, he had freedom to improvise.”

In specific terms, and to reduce it down to mathematics, what he is saying is that Procrastination + Improvisation = History Making. 

The Church of the 21st Century is in desperate need of new paradigms. Paradigms that make discipleship possible. Paradigms that foster new expressions of play and the fun of faith. Paradigms of leader health and hope. Paradigms of congregational missional success. 

But what Sweet is saying (and Grant as well) is that this shift cannot be achieved in a board room. It’s not going to happen in a Powerpoint presentation. It’s not going to happen while rewriting By-Laws and Employee Handbooks. 

No. It’s going to be in frisbee golf and Madden 16 matches. It’s going to happen on a walk or in the shower (one person per one of those, especially in the workplace). It’s going to happen dancing in the rain or singing in the car. And it’s going to happen making God happy by ceasing to make yourself miserable. 

Research tells us that it’s walking around the block, getting oxygen moving in our bodies and into our brains that helps us solve problem, not thinking about solutions. Sweet is saying that play is what we were created for and by simply engaging play as a purpose for life, we move closer to who we were meant to be, doing what we were created to the way that God created us to do it - in the slip stream, the heaven rhythm...with Him. 

Stop doing what you think you’re supposed to be doing. Start doing what you were created to do…like eating at Chik Fil’ A for breakfast. Or skateboarding. Or base jumping. Or flamingo meditation. Or composing ocean sounds. Or playing Dungeons and Dragons. C’mon. You know you want to. Vin Deisel does it! 

As I thumb through the dog eared, creased and tagged, highlighted, underlined, post it’d pages of The Well Played Life, by Leonard Sweet, I have but one thought…well, I have probably two thoughts, but the first one is…there is so much great stuff in this book to steal and preach like it was my own. 

I stink at sourcing when I speak in public. My references are usually off the cuff, unprepared and if I had to think of where I got it from, one of two things would happen. 

One: you’d have to sing the Jeopardy theme to make sure that I didn’t sit there thinking for ten minutes; or

Two: I would mis-source it, most probably attributing it to Led Zepplin. 

While, I’m sure Len would enjoy the credit for his hard work, and I shall endeavor to try a little harder should I preach from this book, the point of this book is…well…break some rules and make people the better for it. The Well Played Life is a recess in discipleship: how to learn the most-excellent ways of Jesus and how to become a person who can teach others to do the same. 

Perhaps plagiarism wasn’t the best illustration, but what the heck, I’m just playing. 

I don’t know how frequently, I’ll be able to tumble this. I’d like to re-visit this material often…get it into my bones the way that Soul Tsunami did. The way that Nudge did. The way that Giving Blood did. 

BTW. Giving Blood is not a how to for extra cash. It’s possibly the best modern writing on the how to’s of preaching messages that people (including yourself) will listen to, learn from and re-imagine after they leave the four walls of the building.  

So This Is How It’s Going To Go

I’m going to throw up a quote from this book in page-ological order and talk about it as though you asked me a question about it. Please forgive me if I misunderstood the question. 

For Instance: 

“Beginning with the Mary Tyler Moore Show, proceeding with Seinfeld, and culminating with 30 Rock and The Office, some of the most popular, memorialized, and award-winning shows on TV have been those that parodied how we worship our work and work at our play.” p.3

That's the quote, from page three. Sweet's writing style dares the reader to interact. So, I'm interacting. Sweet (the slang, not the author)! Back to the quote: The author and I find this equally accurate and thoroughly offensive. 

Not the shows, but the despairing addiction to work that we celebrate in our society. “The only ‘positive’ category in which the United States still shows up #1 in the world is…who works that hardest and longest” p.3.

It’s the same in marketplace as it is in the church. I’ve been in professional ministry for twenty years and if I can be so bold as to agree with Sweet’s general direction, pastors are some of the busiest folks I’ve ever met (or been). 

We worry about smoking, drugs, drinking the tincture of the death cap mushroom, accidently being crushed by a piano while on a walk, when it’s not poison that will kill you. It’s your calendar. 

Why do you work so hard to make your work fun? And then make your fun so much work? What if God was pleased by your pleasure? What if Christianity wasn't engineered to make you suffer? What if misery isn't ministry? What if it all could be different? How can you be utterly surprised by laughter without syncing a calendar or waiting on a text? How you finish the day with so much joy you want to puke? Joy that doesn't need a committee or advanced planning?

To really answer those questions, you need to learn the art of play, or the well played life.

You might be seriously asking, “Yeah…so…how?” Well, the answer might surprise you. 

The ‘How’ is much less important than is the ‘Who.” Even better is the “Whose?” But we’ll get to that. In fact, that’s just about all we’ll get to post after post. Join me for a ridiculous endeavor. A blog about a book. No boobs. No bombs. No ads. No fads. Just digging into your soul until you discover a smile. It’s there. I promise. 

What do you need? You more than likely need to go and

buy the book.