Hello everybody, I'm Jemma Spake and welcome back to the psychology of your 20s, the podcast where we talk through the biggest changes, moments and transitions of our 20s and what they mean for our psychology.

Hello, everybody.

Welcome back to the show.

Welcome back to the podcast.

It is so great to have you here back for another episode as we, of course, break down

the psychology of our 20s.

If you could not tell from my little get-up today, I have my tiara on, I have my magic

sparkling wand. We are talking about the psychology of whimsy and why whimsy is so uniquely

powerful. Side note. I'm also recording this episode on Friday the 13th. And so I feel like I need this

kind of glittery, glossy princess energy to like ward off the evil spirits. The reason I really

wanted to do this episode, and now I'm debating whether I keep holding my one or whether I throw it away,

I'm going to keep it for the intro and then I'm going to toss it aside. But the reason I wanted to do this episode is because people often dismiss

the silly little things we do to keep our joy alive in life as immature. You know, the trinkets that

we collect, the games that we play, the silly scenarios or like dress up situations

that we encourage and we love to do. People label them as very childlike and unintelligent. And

yeah, they don't give them the time of day that they deserve. What these people don't know

and what you are about to is that having

whimsy in your life is likely going to make you smarter, more emotionally intelligent, more

mentally adjusted, more mentally flexible, and a whole lot happier. There is so much neuroscience

behind the power of play, the power of imagination,

the power of creativity and silliness. And today, I'm going to share it with you guys, including

everything from major peer-reviewed studies from the likes of Stanford and Harvard on the

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