Play It Away: A Workaholic's Cure for Anxiety (8 page)

Fortunately, the competitive sports world is not the play world. Anyone who wants to play can be included, no matter how sloppy or unskilled they are.
That’s because play is NOT about winning or being the best; it’s about harmony.
Tone down your cutthroat competitive streak and relentless desire to dominate.
¹⁹
Those traits are counter-productive, and they’re a buzz kill for your friends. Give yourself permission to relax, fail, and lose.

Rule 3

H
AVE
F
*ING
F
UN!

I play real sports. I’m not trying to be the best at working out.

—
K
ENNY
P
OWERS

Exercise is a proven way to reduce stress and depression. But what’s the best type of exercise? Running on the treadmill for an hour? Doing hundreds of sit-ups? Self-inflicted torture via P90X?

How about ‘None of the Above’? All of those activities are lame and miserable. People only do them because they think getting in shape has to be a punishment.

Exercise should not feel like
work
; it should be
play
. In other words, physical movement that gets your heart racing, causes you to sweat, and is legitimately fun for you and your friends.

If you want to be healthier and happier, you should start thinking of exercise as an opportunity to Play. You don’t have to track your time, measure your heart rate, or count your calories. Forget that noise. Just focus on having fun while moving around with your friends.

FREQUENCY:

Aim for 30 minutes per day (or more, if possible).

COST:

Free, or very cheap. Try not to think of play in terms of costs. This is an investment in your health and happiness, with a guaranteed return.

DO IT NOW:

Write down your Play History. Schedule a daily reminder in your calendar to Play! Ask a friend, co-worker, or neighbor to play catch for 10 minutes.

RESOURCES:

Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul (
playitaway.me/play
)
If you want to read more about the science behind play and its essential role in fueling happiness, pick up a copy of this book. It’s fantastic.

Aerobie Flying Ring
(playitaway.me/aerobie)
This is the best toy for playing catch. It’s light, durable, portable, and extremely fun.

Charlie’s Play Picks (playitaway.me/fun)
Check out the entire list of my favorite activities, toys to play with, and fun places to play.

Local Play.
Search Yelp.com for “co-ed sports” or “improv comedy,” then sign up! For a negligible fee, you get to be surrounded by fun people who like to play. Totally worth it.

¹⁴
This idea comes from the book
Play
by Dr. Stuart Brown.
¹⁵
Anyone can pull great pranks if they’re equipped with super glue, duct tape, water balloons, an air horn, and/or a hidden camera. My personal favorite prank is to leave Chick-Fil-A mayonnaise packets under toilet seat bumpers. The results are breathtaking.
¹⁶
To see a visual list of play activities, visit
playitaway.me/fun
.
¹⁷
Just to reiterate: the best forms of play are physically active, mildly competitive, and require you to interact with your friends face-to-face. Video games can technically fall into that category, but they are usually a solo activity where you’re sitting alone indoors, staring at a screen for hours on end. Just because you’re playing
Call of Duty
or
Candy Crush
all the time doesn’t mean you’re actually playing.
¹⁸
This dynamic made sports unnecessarily dramatic and miserable. As a result, I have very little patience watching professional sports. It’s not fun for me to sit around yelling at people who take their games way too seriously.
¹⁹
If you can’t help but take play seriously, you’ll need to find other playmates who act the same way and can compete on your level.

Bonus Points

15-Minutes of Sun and Fresh Air

I grew up in Colorado, a beautiful state with 300 days of sunshine each year. As a kid, I spent a ton of time outdoors, and always had easy access to fresh air and natural vitamin D. But when I moved to a major city, I found myself in a shadowy concrete jungle. I was surrounded by tall buildings, and spent the majority of my days indoors, seldom feeling the warmth of the sun. The air was permeated with an array of foreign smells, like truck fumes and homeless people’s feces.

A lot of my friends love living in big cities, like New York and Los Angeles. Personally, it drove me nuts. The noise and chaos are incessant, and it’s really difficult to get adequate sunlight and fresh air. I realized I wasn’t getting enough of either in downtown San Francisco, so I came up with a few workarounds.

For starters, I would stand on the patio each morning with my shirt off,
²⁰
trying to absorb the sun for at least 15 minutes. I was also taking 2,000 IU’s (two drops) of liquid Vitamin D-3 each day.

For fresh air, I left the windows in my apartment open to increase the circulation, kept an air purifier running in my bedroom, and left the city for a nature hike each weekend.

Currently, I’m living in Austin, Texas. Each day, I spend a minimum of 15-30 minutes out in the sun and fresh air (again, no shirt). I don’t put on sunscreen; I just absorb the sun’s rays until it feels like I’ve had enough.
²¹
It’s just as effective as caffeine for charging up on energy.

If you’re a workaholic, you’re probably spending your days in a temperature-controlled room with artificial lighting and poor air circulation. These conditions are foreign for human beings. You need to get outdoors so you can get some sun and fresh air, whether it’s through play or just laying out in the grass. You’ll have more energy, you’ll feel happier, and you’ll look healthier.

FREQUENCY:

Daily, at least 15 minutes.

COST:

Free.

DO IT NOW:

Put on your swimsuit. Go outdoors in the fresh air and sunshine for 15 minutes.

RESOURCES:

Now Liquid Vitamin D-3 (
playitaway.me/vitamind
)
[This is not an affiliate link.] I was taking 2,000 IU’s (two drops) each day.

Honeywell Compact Air purifier (
playitaway.me/air
)
If you’re living in a big city, you’re probably not getting much fresh air. The best option is to put an air purifier in the room you spend the most time in. Honeywell’s is low maintenance and it captures mold, pollen, smoke, pet dander, and dust particles.

²⁰
Most females aren’t too comfortable going bare up there. Throw on a swimsuit top if you don’t want to shock your neighbors.
²¹
But don’t you worry about skin cancer?!
No, because I listen to what my body is telling me. When my skin feels like it’s had enough sun, I put on my shirt and go back inside. I don’t get burned because I don’t stay out for an excessive amount of time, which sunscreen often tricks me into doing.
It’s insane to me that we are the only species that wears clothes. We are all blocking our skin from having access to air and sunlight on a daily basis! Try to expose your body to the elements for at least 15 minutes each day. Let the sun warm your skin, and the wind flick your pores. It’s good for you.

Consistent Bedtime and Afternoon Naps

My girlfriend asked me, ‘Did you sleep good?’ I said ‘No, I made a few mistakes.’

—
S
TEVEN
W
RIGHT

Back in high school, I was obsessed with getting great sleep. I moved to the cool basement in my parents’ house, covered the windows with layers of black construction paper, and ran a desk fan to drown out disruptive noises. My sleep was amazing every night.

As I grew older, sleep became less of a priority. I did a lot of all-nighters in college and got used to going to bed at random hours – usually between 3:00 and 7:00
AM
.
²²
My erratic sleep schedule continued long after graduating. I worked around the clock, drank coffee all day, consumed junk food and alcohol late at night, and checked my bright cell phone screen while I was in bed. Then I’d wake up a few hours later and do it all over again. And what a shock:
I felt exhausted all the time.

I was chronically in a severe sleep deficit, which took a major toll on my body. But I kept ignoring my fatigue because I felt guilty whenever I wasn’t working. To me, sleep was a necessary evil that cut into my productivity.

The endless stream of digital information I was taking in every waking hour only compounded the problem. My mind never had enough time to shut down, relax, and digest everything that poured in during the day. No wonder my mental health was shot.

During the month I cured my anxiety, I made consistent sleep one of my highest priorities. The first thing I did was
optimize my bedroom for ideal sleeping conditions.
Here are the steps I took:

1. Plugged my iPhone charger in an outlet far away from my bed so I couldn’t grab my phone while I was laying down. This little obstacle prevented me from checking email or Facebook before trying to fall asleep.
   
2. Cranked up the air conditioning so the temperature in my bedroom was around 68 degrees Fahrenheit.
   ²³
   
3. Kept the curtains drawn and wore a sleep mask so that my room was as dark as I could possibly make it.
   
4. Downloaded the Relax Melodies app, which played a continuous loop of ocean waves throughout the night. 
   

Once my room was optimized, I committed to a consistent bedtime.
I set a daily reminder on my iPhone called
Get Ready for Bed
, which went off at 10:00
PM
every night (i.e. nine hours before I wanted to wake up). As soon as it went off, I’d stop whatever I was doing, hit the bathroom, brush my teeth, and change out of my day clothes. I was dead serious about obeying my phone’s command. Even if I was in the middle of a conversation, I’d abruptly end it so I could get ready for bed.

After I finished getting ready, I would switch my phone to Flight mode, open the Relax Melodies app, and climb in bed to read fiction for 15 minutes.
²⁴
When I was done reading, I’d turn off the lights and focus on the rhythm of my breath until I fell asleep.

It took several nights to adjust to this change, but within a week, I was sleeping like a champion. I wasn’t eating anything after 8:00
PM
, and I stopped drinking caffeine after 5:00
PM
. Those habits helped my body wind down earlier, but
the critical part was getting ready at the same time every night.
It set me in motion toward getting in bed, and ultimately re-trained my body to crave sleep at a reasonable hour.

I really can’t overemphasize the importance of consistent quality sleep. Every anxious person I’ve met has either been in denial about how little sleep they get, or they’re overlooking the fact that they’re going to bed at random hours every night.

One of my readers wrote this message to me after reviewing an early draft of this chapter:

When I began forcing myself to sleep eight hours a night, my physical health problems cleared up, my emotions balanced out, and my anxiety disappeared. My mind could function and that tight feeling around my eyes vanished. Eight hours of sleep is a miracle pill.

There was another aspect of my sleep routine that was critical for healing my anxiety:
I took a 20-minute nap every afternoon.

Each day, immediately after I finished lunch, I would find a spot to nap – a couch, a bench, a reclined car seat, a carpeted floor, a friend’s wedding...